Blockchain Papers

James D. Cox, JoAnn Stetz, Thomas F. Pajak

No abstract is available for this record.

M.W. Rogers, Y.-C. Pai

No abstract is available for this record.

B Azvine, G R Tomlinson, R J Wynne

No abstract is available for this record.

Vijaya Sherry Chand, Shukla Shailesh R

The inspection system is a visible link between the large numbers of village-based teachers and the district-level administration. While it may be successful in its ‘school audit’ function, dissatisfaction with the system seems to be related to its inability to play a ‘teacher development’ role. Perhaps this failure is not of the inspection system, but of the mechanisms for teacher development. Other institutional mechanisms like the panchayati district education committee, the in-service training opportunities currently provided, or the meetings of school complexes and the pay-centre schools are unable to pay attention to teacher development issues. An alternative to such “top down” mechanisms is necessary. A perspective which puts the practices of teachers first can lead to decentralized “peer learning systems”. These systems – teacher driven and controlled – can drawn on resources already available within existing information systems, for instance, the contributions of outstanding teachers or insights from the inspection reports. District-level management systems like the inspection set-up or in-service training centres, whether bureaucratic or panchayati, can play a supportive role in the financing and monitoring of such initiatives. Such a perspective can also provide an understanding of how, in the context of the current debate on democratic decentralization, a partnership between the teaching community, the administration and panchayati raj institutions can be solved.

Lorenz Nett

No abstract is available for this record.

François Longin, Bruno Solnik

No abstract is available for this record.

R. A. Thiétart, B. Forgues

Many authors have stressed the existence of continuous processes of convergence and divergence, stability and instability, evolution and revolution in every organization. This article argues that these processes are embedded in organizational characteristics and in the way organizations are managed. Organizations are presented as nonlinear dynamic systems subject to forces of stability and forces of instability which push them toward chaos. When in a chaotic domain, organizations are likely to exhibit the qualitative properties of chaotic systems. Several of these properties—sensitivity to initial conditions, discreteness of change, attraction to specific configurations, structural invariance at different scales and irreversibility—are used to establish six propositions. First, because of the coupling of counteracting forces, organizations are potentially chaotic. Second, the path from organizational stability to chaos follows a discrete process of change. Third, when the organization is in the chaotic domain, small changes can have big consequences that cannot be predicted in the long term. Fourth, from chaos, new stabilities emerge—the strange attractors—which are assimilated to organizational configurations. Fifth, similar patterns should be found at different scales. Finally, during one single organizational life span or between two different organizations similar actions should never lead to the same result.

David Wellman

THE knot connecting the ILWU and PMA is a complicated one. Keeping the living agreement alive involves doing more than following contractual formalities. For the bargain to live and be jointly kept, private agendas are publicly presented as reciprocated efforts. The two sides try to look like they give as well as take, even when they do not. The union and PMA therefore do more than create contractual language to live with. They also cultivate a relationship in which each side can live with the other. When the appearance of reciprocity is not maintained, one side appears disadvantaged. At this point, living agreements die and defensible disobedience is no longer possible. Making the ILWU–PMA relationship work, therefore, means that the agreement must be kept alive in another sense: The impression of cooperation must be maintained even when one side takes advantage of the other. Expressed differently, a fiction must be established for the relationship to live. Constructing this social fiction is a selfconscious process; it is deliberate and two-sided. Each side is involved in making the illusions joint creations. The fiction is produced in a number of observable ways. CREATING THE ILLUSION OF NEGOTIATION One example emerged during contract talks. Coastwide negotiations began in May and concluded in the middle of July. However, because the ILWU is a decentralized organization and locals are relatively autonomous, the contract is not signed until working rules are negotiated for each port.

Kaoru Kurosawa, Wakaha Ogata, Shigeo Tsujii

In this paper, we consider ZKIPs for promise problems. A promise problem is a pair of predicates (Q; R). A Turning machine T solves the promise problem (Q; R) if, for every x satisfying Q(x), machine T halts and it answers "yes" iff R(x). When :Q(x), we do not care what T does. First, we define "promised BPP" which is a promise problem version of BPP. Then, we prove that a promise problem (Q; R) has a 3-move interactive proof system which is black-box simulation zero knowledge if and only if (Q; R) 2 promised BPP. Next, we show a "4-move" perfect ZKIPs (black-box simulation) for a promise problem of Quadratic Residuosity and that of Blum Numbers under no cryptographic assumption.

Kazuo Miyashita

No abstract is available for this record.

Richard J. Cebula

No abstract is available for this record.

H Häfner

Summary Attempting an update of the epidemiology of schizophrenia, it is pointed out that schizophrenia seems to occur with the same core symptoms and almost at the same frequency in all countries and cultures studied. Methodologically sound studies have failed to produce evidence for a secular trend of the morbid risk. The genotype of schizophrenia is expressed as psychosis, personality disorders and non-specific disorders or it goes without manifest psychopathology. Minor brain anomalies are present in most cases. The British Child Development Study showed that behavioural, cognitive, emotional and neuromotor antecedents occur in 50% of cases, thus pointing to disordered brain development, very likely not specific to schizophrenia, since found in many other mental disorders as well. A look into the hidden early course of schizophrenia revealed a significant sex difference in age of onset and a prodromal phase of some 3 to 4 years throughout the cases. A case-control study showed that it is mainly during this early course before first admission that social disadvantage in schizophrenia arises. In the prephase a disease-related lack of social ascent plays a greater role than steps of social decline. The early social course differs between the sexes mainly due to an earlier onset of the disorder in males. The actual disease variables, that is, core symptoms and type of course, do not show any essential differences between males and females. These results indicate that schizophrenia is one of the rare uniform patterns of response of the brain, capable of being triggered by a large number of causes or favoured by non-specific risk factors. In this context the protective effect of estrogens will be discussed.

Loren Schwiebert, D. N. Jayasimha

No abstract is available for this record.

Charles W. Calomiris, R. Glenn Hubbard

No abstract is available for this record.

Allen N. Berger, Gregory F. Udell

No abstract is available for this record.

J. Duato

No abstract is available for this record.

Miroslav Urban

The Accreditation Commission of Slovakia was created in 1990, six months after passage of the Higher Education Law. The accreditation procedure stresses decentralization and participation at all levels; however, it leads to major decisions concerning the disapproval or approval of given faculties and appointments to professorships. Institutions as a whole are still not subjected to accreditation procedures. The Accreditation Commission has gained wide acceptance. Its judgments can be expected to influence the financing of given faculties and programmes in the future.

Françoise Chancerelle

Private businesses and local authorities (cities, districts, regions) are linked by many interests. Firms, a source of income for local collectivities have been in ever increasing demand by the local authorities to finance their investment since the new modality of corporation tax in 1980. But with fewer businesses and jobs, companies are an important issue for these local powers and are becoming more important now with new economic responsability given in 1980 by decentralization laws.

Gustavus J. Simmons

No abstract is available for this record.

Stefano D’Amiano, Giovanni Di Crescenzo

No abstract is available for this record.

John M. Luiz, Leon Roets, Hiske Smart

As of July 1994, there were 565,856 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected persons in South Africa, half of whom were 18-25 years of age, and 27% of the adult population is likely to be infected by the year 2010 if current risk behaviors persist. By 2005, the cost of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) to South Africa's health service could reach R18 billion. The newly established National AIDS Task Force seeks to prevent further HIV transmission by promoting condom use, improving control of sexually transmitted diseases, providing a safe blood supply, adopting universal precautions for skin piercing and surgical procedures, preventing intravenous drug use, providing information about prenatal transmission, promoting policies that raise women's status, and socioeconomic development. The personal and social impact of HIV infection will be ameliorated through comprehensive health care and counseling for AIDS victims and their families, protection of infected individuals from discriminatory practices, sustainable social services and benefits to meet the needs of those with AIDS, and promotion of policies that address the socioeconomic consequences of AIDS. On the administrative level, interventions are planned to promote intersectoral coordination, ensure adequate financing, promote community involvement, decentralize planning and management, ensure program monitoring and evaluation, forecast HIV trends, and share technical expertise.

Arne Seli

The evolution of radiotherapy in Denmark is traced from its early inception in 1896 to the first three radium centres in 1913-1914, the establishment of which caused a roar of protests among the surgeons of that time. Private initiative pioneered the Radium Foundation which raised money for radium and financed erection of new buildings for the three centres in the 1930's. Radiotherapy became a separate speciality in 1950. The early 1960s saw the introduction of megavoltage therapy and the first promising results from chemotherapeutic management of solid tumors. The consequent referral of patients to centres for non-surgical therapy created a need for two new centres (Aalborg and Herlev) and called for a gradual closing down of decentralized low-voltage treatment at county level. However, the decentralization of health care in 1970 partly reversed this trend and some patients were therefore referred for decentralized treatment at major county hospitals. Such treatment mainly consisted of adjuvant or palliative chemotherapy, though in a few countries palliative therapy was supported by low-voltage therapy. In 1987 the medical speciality of radiotherapy was officially renamed oncology.

Weil Tp, Jorgensen Ne

The Republican takeover of Capitol Hill suggests that the payer-driven forces of managed care and the regional networks will serve as the centerpieces to improve the organization, financing, and delivery of our nation's health services. The "voluntary" alliances that are now being forged may stumble when attempting to restrain the inflationary spiral of Medicare and Medicaid expenditures and when seeking to finance the care of an increasing number of uninsured working poor and their dependents. The American health industry can anticipate experiencing increasingly monopolistically competitive environments. The public will eventually demand the formation of state health services commissions to foster a semblance of control. Within this framework, the German decentralized, multipayer, multitier approach, which is self-governing and allows for negotiating reimbursement rates between insurers and providers, offers a preferred model to the traditional American public utility model.

Shahrokh Saeednia, Yves Roggeman

Doctorat en Sciences