BEYOND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Abstract

The countries emerging from the former Soviet Union and Bloc and former Yugoslavia are trying to accelerate Iheir development by imitating the West. In law and economics, the common denominator of their efforts is private ownership. But, because of their lack of systemic instead of superficial and one-sided thinking and acting they may fail, which would be critical for the entire world, including the West. This article tries to make this clear by a brief analysis of the development economics viewpoints of the market, democracy, private ownership, and regional typology. Holistic consideration of innovation is found much more neglected in the countries under consideration than in the West. Hence, the prevailing culture may cause the process of making private ownership in Central and Eastern Europe less fruitful than it has been in the West.     

Learning in a Network Economy

We model a simple communication network model for the evolution of heterogeneous beliefs in an overlapping generation economy. Each agent gathers information from his contacts and forms an inflation forecast based on this information, using the belief generation procedures. When the actual inflation is realised, an agent is in a position to learn, i.e., adjust his own network strategy and belief. The learning is modelled as an evolving network process, i.e., a network of agents, with non-zero communication costs. Our simulation results suggest that the network economy as a whole acts efficiently in achieving convergence to the Pareto superior equilibrium, in which an agent’s perception of information is through communication and is subject to available resources.     

Feistel ciphers in East Germany in the communist era

Feistel ciphers (balanced and unbalanced) represent the most popular symmetric cipher type in modern cryptography. The invention of Feistel ciphers is usually credited to IBM’s Horst Feistel, who co-created the first publicly known encryption algorithm of this type, Lucifer, in the early 1970s. In this publication, the authors will show that Feistel ciphers (or at least a very similar concept) played a surprisingly important role in East Germany in the last two decades of the communism era (i.e., between 1970 and 1990). They will introduce four Feistel ciphers developed by East German cryptologists during these two decades. This includes an unbalanced Feistel cipher that predated RC2, the oldest unbalanced Feistel cipher known in the crypto community (by over a decade), as well as an East German DES variant.     

深度对抗视觉生成综述

深度视觉生成是计算机视觉领域的热门方向,旨在使计算机能够根据输入数据自动生成预期的视觉内容。深度视觉生成使用人工智能技术赋能相关产业,推动产业自动化、智能化改革与转型。生成对抗网络（generative adversarial networks,GANs）是深度视觉生成的有效工具,近年来受到极大关注,成为快速发展的研究方向。GANs能够接收多种模态的输入数据,包括噪声、图像、文本和视频,以对抗博弈的模式进行图像生成和视频生成,已成功应用于多项视觉生成任务。利用GANs实现真实的、多样化和可控的视觉生成具有重要的研究意义。本文对近年来深度对抗视觉生成的相关工作进行综述。首先介绍深度视觉生成背景及典型生成模型,然后根据深度对抗视觉生成的主流任务概述相关算法,总结深度对抗视觉生成目前面临的痛点问题,在此基础上分析深度对抗视觉生成的未来发展趋势。     

A semantic framework for open processes

We propose a general methodology for analysing the behaviour of open systems modelled as coordinators, i.e., open terms of suitable process calculi. A coordinator is understood as a process with holes or placeholders where other coordinators and components (i.e., closed terms) can be plugged in, thus influencing its behaviour. The operational semantics of coordinators is given by means of a symbolic transition system, where states are coordinators and transitions are labeled by spatial/modal formulae expressing the potential interaction that plugged components may enable. Behavioural equivalences for coordinators, like strong and weak bisimilarities, can be straightforwardly defined over such a transition system. Different from other approaches based on universal closures, i.e., where two coordinators are considered equivalent when all their closed instances are equivalent, our semantics preserves the openness of the system during its evolution, thus allowing dynamic instantiation to be accounted for in the semantics. To further support the adequacy of the construction, we show that our symbolic equivalences provide correct approximations of their universally closed counterparts, coinciding with them over closed components. For process calculi in suitable formats, we show how tractable symbolic semantics can be defined constructively using unification.     

A group decision support approach to evaluating journals

One of the most important decisions made in academic institutions, research organizations, and government agencies is the grading or ranking of journals for their academic values. Current methods for evaluating journals use either a subjective (e.g., experts’ judgments on journals) or objective approach (e.g., impact factors of journals), or an informal mix of the two. This paper presents a formal procedure that integrates objective and subjective judgments to provide a comprehensive method. The procedure is based on a fuzzy set approach that deals with the imprecise and missing information inherent in the evaluation process. The system was tested in Hong Kong in an assessment of faculty research productivity. Similar assessments exist in the UK, Singapore, and other countries. The proposed model can also be used for similar decisions that involve subjective and objective information.     

A group decision support approach to evaluating journals

One of the most important decisions made in academic institutions, research organizations, and government agencies is the grading or ranking of journals for their academic values. Current methods for evaluating journals use either a subjective (e.g., experts’ judgments on journals) or objective approach (e.g., impact factors of journals), or an informal mix of the two. This paper presents a formal procedure that integrates objective and subjective judgments to provide a comprehensive method. The procedure is based on a fuzzy set approach that deals with the imprecise and missing information inherent in the evaluation process. The system was tested in Hong Kong in an assessment of faculty research productivity. Similar assessments exist in the UK, Singapore, and other countries. The proposed model can also be used for similar decisions that involve subjective and objective information.     

Optimal Sequence of Inter-Generational Borrowing and Lending Leading to Escape from the Poverty Trap through an Invisible Hand

The overlapping generations (OLG) model of micro-based macroeconomics has beenutilized in order to calculate the optimal sequence of inter-generationaltransfer payments and evaluate its effects on the operation of an economywhich suffers from the poverty trap. Each generation has been assumed to livefor two periods and aims to find the optimal relationship between itsborrowing from the previous generation and its lending to the next generationso that its discounted utility function is maximized. This optimization issubjected to budget constraints, the competitiveness of labor and capitalmarkets and the equilibrium condition of savings and capital. Individuals inall of the generations are assumed to pay no attention to the utility levelof the next generation (i.e. they do not have altruism). Furthermore,government limits the domain of choices of the generations with the additionalconstraint that the borrowing and lending amounts of each generation shouldbe positively correlated. Each generation, when it compares its discountedutility levels corresponding to the two options – i.e. participation inthe payment system or not, assuming perfect information – understandsthat participation in the system is beneficial and thus wishes to share in thepayments system. This participation consists of two parts, one is borrowingwhen young (saving together with consuming), and the other is lending when old(consuming only). A moral hazard may thus occur due to the fact that the younggeneration after borrowing decides not to pay its share back to the new younggeneration when it becomes old. Thus, the government is also necessary inorder to prevent this moral hazard. However, no special objective function ofthe government enters the problem formulation. It is observed that, as animportant side effect, the sequence of transfer payments obtained can not onlybring the economy out of the poverty trap, but it also raises the stableequilibrium level of the capital-labor ratio to a level higher than that isachievable by a comparable competitive economy without transfer payments. Thesteady-state obtained has another advantage over the competitive equilibrium,viz., such an improved equilibrium is dynamically efficient and in thisequilibrium the economy would operate within the golden rule situation. Theseside effects, which are the benefits received by the whole economy as a resultof the decisions made by selfish generations, seem to be inter-generationalinterpretations of the Invisible Hand concept of Adam Smith.     

一种新的基于Meta-ElGamal的多重签名方案

提出了一种新的基于Meta—ElGamal的多重签名方案,该方案改进了基于Meta—ElGamal方案的多重签名方案中的密钥生成部分和签名生成部分,既弥补了原方案中存在的多个签名者如果生成自己的密钥时相互合作就能达到日后否认消息签名的漏洞,又避免了单个成员控制群体私钥,从而能以群体的名义伪造对任何消息多重签名的攻击。     

(Tissue) P systems working in the k-restricted minimally or maximally parallel transition mode

We investigate variants of the maximally and the minimally parallel transition mode, i.e., we allow only a bounded number of rules to be taken from every set of the partitioning of the whole set of rules. The 1-restricted minimally parallel transition mode especially fits to describe the way transitions take place in spiking neural P systems without delays, i.e., in every neuron where a rule is applicable exactly one rule has to be applied. Moreover, purely catalytic P systems working in the maximally parallel transition mode can be described as P systems using the corresponding rules without catalysts, i.e., noncooperative rules, when working in the 1-restricted minimally parallel transition mode. In contrast to these results for computationally complete models of P systems, with the k-restricted maximally parallel transition mode noncooperative rules only allow for the generation of semi-linear sets.     

Underspecification,Parsing Mismatches and Routinisation: The Historical Development of the Clitic Systems of Greek Dialects

In this paper, the historical development of the clitic systems of Standard Modern, Cypriot and Pontic Greek is discussed. These three varieties not only present the whole range of variation one can find across clitic systems in Greek but, furthermore, derive from a common linguistic ancestor, i.e. Koine Greek. This paper argues that the transition from Koine Greek to the Medieval varieties and from the Medieval varieties to the respective modern ones can be explained by making the assumption that routinisation (in the sense of Pickering and Garrod in Behav Brain Sci 27:169–226, 2004) and parsing/hearer assymetries are two important factors behind syntactic change. The claim is that the transition from Koine to the Medieval Greek varieties involves the emergence of a clitic system with encoded syntactic constraints out of a freer one, where clitic positioning was regulated by pragmatic preferences rather than syntactic constraints. Then, the transition to the modern varieties from the respective medieval ones is explained, at least partly, on the assumption that production/parsing mismatches are capable of triggering syntactic change. This last assumption combined with: (a) the tendency to obtain more generalised parsing triggers for parsing the individual clitics and (b) the fact that the Medieval varieties in question differ in minimal but crucial ways, provides us an explanation for the transition to the modern varieties.

     

Test Synthesis from UML Models of Distributed Software

The object-oriented software development process is increasingly used for the construction of complex distributed systems. In this context, behavior models have long been recognized as the basis for systematic approaches to requirements capture, specification, design, simulation, code generation, testing, and verification. Two complementary approaches for modeling behavior have proven useful in practice: interaction-based modeling (e.g., UML sequence diagrams) and state-based modeling (e.g., UML statecharts). Building on formal V&V techniques, in this article we present a method and a tool for automated synthesis of test cases from scenarios and a state-based design model of the application, remaining entirely within the UML framework. The underlying "on the fly" test synthesis algorithms are based on the input/output labeled transition system formalism, which is particularly appropriate for modeling applications involving asynchronous communication. The method is eminently compatible with classical OO development processes since it can be used to synthesize test cases from the scenarios used in early development stages to model global interactions between actors and components, instead of these test cases being derived manually. We illustrate the system test synthesis process using an air traffic control software example     

Reactive systems, (semi-)saturated semantics and coalgebras on presheaves

The semantics of process calculi has traditionally been specified by labelled transition systems (ltss), but, with the development of name calculi, it turned out that reaction rules (i.e., unlabelled transition rules) are often more natural. This leads to the question of how behavioral equivalences (bisimilarity, trace equivalence, etc.) defined for lts can be transferred to unlabelled transition systems. Recently, in order to answer this question, several proposals have been made with the aim of automatically deriving an lts from reaction rules in such a way that the resulting equivalences are congruences. Furthermore, these equivalences should agree with the standard semantics, whenever one exists.In this paper, we propose saturated semantics, based on a weaker notion of observation and orthogonal to all the previous proposals, and we demonstrate the appropriateness of our semantics by means of two examples: logic programming and open Petri nets. We also show that saturated semantics can be efficiently characterized through the so called semi-saturated games. Finally, we provide coalgebraic models relying on presheaves.     

Computer anxiety: A cross-cultural comparison of university students in ten countries

This study compared the construct of computer anxiety in university students across ten countries. A factor analysis of the Computer Anxiety Rating Scale (CARS) produced a three-factor model of computer anxiety (Interactive Computer Learning Anxiety, Consumer Technology Anxiety, and Observational Computer Learning Anxiety) for students in seven universities across the United States. The factor structures from students in nine countries (Australia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Spain, and Yugoslavia) were examined using Confirmatory Factor Analytic procedures. Each country's factor structure was first compared to the United States three-factor model and then modified to provide the best possible three-factor model of computer anxiety for each country. Results indicated that each country possessed a unique culture-dependent model of computer anxiety. For two countries (United States and Australia), Interactive Computer Learning Anxiety included learning to operate a computer plus encountering computer problems. For the eight other countries, Interactive Computer Learning Anxiety captured only the aspect of learning to operate and program computers while a separate Computer Victimization factor dealt with anxiety surrounding computer problems. The Observational Computer Learning Anxiety and the Consumer Technology Anxiety factors also differed between countries. Similarities and differences in the factor structures are discussed in light of cultural characteristics, computer education, and computer software and hardware.     

Mathematical Modeling of the Dynamics of Crisis Situations and Optimization of Capital Relocation Market Management in the Context of Globalization in the World Financial and Economic System

The article continues a series of studies analyzing the features of capital relocation (movement) and mathematical modeling of the dynamics of the world financial and economic system (FES) in the context of globalization. Structuring features of capital transfer processes in the context of a modern globalized FES and their impact on the efficiency of the investment portfolio and the economy of donor and recipient countries are considered. The relationship between the dynamic processes of the movement of borrowed capital and the Buffett indicator is established as a characteristic feature of the emergence and development of crises. The conditions have been determined whereby further capital injection, i.e., “flooding the crisis with money,” ceases to be effective.

     

Model generation for quantified formulas with application to test data generation

We present a new model generation approach and technique for solving first-order logic (FOL) formulas with quantifiers in unbounded domains. Model generation is important, e.g., for test data generation based on test data constraints and for counterexample generation in formal verification. In such scenarios, quantified FOL formulas have to be solved stemming, e.g., from formal specifications. Satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solvers are considered as the state-of-the-art techniques for generating models of FOL formulas. Handling of quantified formulas in the combination of theories is, however, sometimes a problem. Our approach addresses this problem and can solve formulas that were not solvable before using SMT solvers. We present the model generation algorithm and show how to convert a representation of a model into a test preamble for state initialization with test data. A prototype of this algorithm is implemented in the formal verification and test generation tool KeY.     

覆盖率驱动的随机测试生成技术综述

随机测试生成技术是当今大规模集成电路仿真验证流程中的一项重要支撑技术.覆盖率驱动的随机测试生成方法是目前该领域研究的热点之一,其目标是通过覆盖率指导测试向量生成,减少重复测试向量,加速验证的收敛过程,提高验证的自动化程度和效率.文中全面综述了覆盖率驱动的随机测试生成技术的发展历程、研究现状和技术分类,并结合具体实例对各种方法及其面临的主要问题进行了讨论、评价和总结.     

Electronic Commerce for the South Pacific: A Review of E-Readiness

The two most powerful forces affecting the world economy are the increasing rate of globalisation and advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The combined effect of these two forces could empower people by opening up the world's knowledge, or it could result in an increasingly divided society. For the developing countries of the South Pacific the challenge is to find a suitable niche in the global economy, ICT has the potential to be a significant enabler in creating this niche. This paper is an exploration of the opportunities made available by developments in the area of electronic commerce. How can the countries of the South Pacific best exploit these opportunities, and will they be able to benefit from leapfrogging to the latest available technology, missing out some expensive stages of infrastructure building?     

An empirical study of the impact of modern code review practices on software quality

Software code review, i.e., the practice of having other team members critique changes to a software system, is a well-established best practice in both open source and proprietary software domains. Prior work has shown that formal code inspections tend to improve the quality of delivered software. However, the formal code inspection process mandates strict review criteria (e.g., in-person meetings and reviewer checklists) to ensure a base level of review quality, while the modern, lightweight code reviewing process does not. Although recent work explores the modern code review process, little is known about the relationship between modern code review practices and long-term software quality. Hence, in this paper, we study the relationship between post-release defects (a popular proxy for long-term software quality) and: (1) code review coverage, i.e., the proportion of changes that have been code reviewed, (2) code review participation, i.e., the degree of reviewer involvement in the code review process, and (3) code reviewer expertise, i.e., the level of domain-specific expertise of the code reviewers. Through a case study of the Qt, VTK, and ITK projects, we find that code review coverage, participation, and expertise share a significant link with software quality. Hence, our results empirically confirm the intuition that poorly-reviewed code has a negative impact on software quality in large systems using modern reviewing tools.     

A coalgebraic introduction to CSP

The paper presents a first step of a coalgebraic analysis of the concept of communicating sequential processes as introduced by Hoare in [3]. We make apparent the strong relationship between CSP and partial automata, i.e., special coalgebras. Thereby it turns out that [3] is only dealt with very special automata, namely, with final automata, i.e., automata where the difference between the concepts of state and of process, respectively, disappears. The coalgebraic approach will allow us to develop a proper model theory for process calculi. As first steps in this direction we outline firstly how operations on processes can be generalized in a compatible way to constructions on automata. Secondly, we present a new method for solving recursive process equations. Finally, we discuss that the nondeterminism in CSP can not be modeled based on nondeterministic transition systems usually considered in the coalgebraic literature [5].