Mutual recognition of the results of measurements and tests and formation of a world-wide metrology system

The main prerequisites are considered in a historical aspect and steps ate taken in creating a world-wide metrology system with the aim of providing conditions for the mutual recognition of measurement results. __________ Translated from Izmeritel’naya Tekhnika, No. 11. pp. 59–62, November, 2007.     

A self-adjusting algorithm for byzantine agreement

Summary Byzantine Agreement is important both in the theory and practice of distributed computing. However, protocols to reach Byzantine Agreement are usually expensive both in the time required as well as in the number of messages exchanged. In this paper, we present a self-adjusting approach to the problem. The Mostly Byzantine Agreement is proposed as a more restrictive agreement problem that requires that in the consecutive attempts to reach agreement, the number of disagreements (i.e., failures to reach Byzantine Agreement) is finite. Fort faulty processes, we give an algorithm that has at mostt disagreements for 4t or more processes. Another algorithm is given forn3t+1 processes with the number of disagreements belowt ²/2. Both algorithms useO(n ³) message bits for binary value agreement. Yi Zhao is currently working on his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at University of Houston. His research interests include fault tolerance, distributed computing, parallel computation and neural networks. He obtained his M.S. from University of Houston in 1988 and B.S. from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1984, both in computer science. Farokh B. Bastani received the B. Tech. degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the University of Houston in 1980, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include software design and validation techniques, distributed systems, and fault-tolerant systems. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE and is on the editorial board of theIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.     

月球非军事化国际法问题探析

人类对月球的利用应致力于为全人类谋福利,提高人类的生活水平和促进经济、社会的进步和发展,一切以明确的军事目的所从事的探月行动都应该受到抑制与禁止。从月球非军事化的基本概念出发,探讨了国际法律文件对月球非军事化的规范作用,并提出了规制月球的探索利用行为,实现月球非军事化的国际法路径。     

Analysis of TRIPS Agreement and the justification of international IP rights protection in the WTO's multilateral trading system,with particular reference to pharmaceutical patents

The entry of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has seen the developing countries and the least developed countries (LDCs) suffer from the excessive burden of obligations imposed under the Agreement to embrace and implement a higher standard of intellectual property (IP) protection. One of the areas where the impact of the measures is most felt is on accessibility to affordable medicines for frontline treatment of diseases in developing countries and LDCs, where the majority of the HIV/AIDS sufferers come from. This inevitable plight, although well known, and posited by the developing countries and LDCs during the Uruguay round of negotiations, was overlooked. This also necessitated the Doha Deceleration, which does not seem to have addressed the problem. The developed countries have also successfully utilised the TRIPS Agreement's IP rights protection criteria as a benchmark, to develop a much higher IP rights protection agenda through the introduction of TRIPS-plus provisions in bilateral and other multilateral agreements entered into with developing countries. The winners in the game are the patent-holding pharmaceutical corporations, software corporations, media corporations, and the developed countries where they are incorporated. The ones at the receiving end are the developing countries and the LDCs who were promised technology transfer to build a modern economy by the developed countries, but are faced with multiple problems of non-availability of affordable medicines for health care, besides others. This article seeks to study the justification for an extended IP rights protection under the TRIPS Agreement through an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the IP rights and the patent regime. It will be argued that the TRIPS Agreement is a major obstacle that the developing countries and the LDCs have been made to face as Members of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), with no end in sight for their miseries, and that the only possible solution is a review or an amendment of the TRIPS Agreement.     

Negotiating SLAs-An Approach for a Generic Negotiation Framework for WS-Agreement

The current Web Services Agreement specification draft proposes a simple request-response protocol for agreement creation only addressing bilateral offer exchanges. This paper proposes a framework augmenting this WS-Agreement to enable negotiations according to a variety of bilateral and multilateral negotiation protocols. The framework design is based on a thorough analysis of taxonomies for negotiations from the literature in order to allow for capturing a variety of different negotiation models within a single, WS-Agreement compatible, framework. In order to provide for the intended flexibility, the proposed protocol takes a two-stage approach: a meta-protocol is conducted among interested parties to agree on a common negotiation protocol first before the real negotiation is carried out in the second step due to the protocol established in the first step.     

Does India need to harmonize the law of patent exhaustion and parallel imports?

The amendment of patent law of India in 2005 to fulfill her international obligation under the TRIPS Agreement (World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) was an outcome of an attempt to balance the competing interests of several stakeholders, including indigenous pharmaceutical companies, multi-national pharmaceutical companies, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups concerned with access to affordable drugs. The adverse consequence of this delicate balancing is introduction of some provisions in the Act whose compatibility with the TRIPS Agreement is questionable, and which therefore are prone to litigations. Section 107A(b) of the amended patent law dealing with parallel imports is one such provision, which, if interpreted word for word could have significant connotations for the rights of a patent owner. This article aims to examine the inconsistencies intrinsic in Section 107A(b) and discusses the divergences in the Indian patent law associated with the doctrine of exhaustion and parallel imports. This article also proposes legal amendments with a view to eliminate inconsistencies intrinsic in the section and enlarge the ambit of the exhaustion principle conceptualized therein, while concurrently remaining compliant with the TRIPS Agreement.     

A method of predicting the number of clusters using Rand's statistic

Distributional and asymptotic results on the moment of Rand's C_k statistic were derived by DuBien and Warde [1981. Some distributional results concerning a comparative statistic used in cluster analysis. ASA Proceedings of the Social Statistics Section, 309–313.]. Based on those results, a method to predict the number of clusters is suggested by applying various agglomerative clustering algorithms. In the procedure, the methods using different indexes are examined and compared based on the concept of agreement (or, disagreement) between clusterings generated by different clustering algorithms on the set of data. Our method having practical generality works better than the other methods and assigns statistical meaning to C_k values in determining the number of clusters from the comparison.     

Service level management with agent technology

This paper outlines a generic evaluation methodology for multimedia and real time applications. It concentrates on the application layer and the service aspect. Principles of software evaluation for quality assessment and measurement for networked services and distributed applications are used to present a specific method for measuring important characteristics. The method and the measurement procedure allow comparison of the actual characteristics of service quality with the required characteristics and thresholds. The proof of concepts will be made by the implementation of quality measurement agents following the approach outlined in this paper. Our approach of performing service level management (SLM) with agent technology is distributed, slim, minimizable to the maximum, independent in its methodology and offers comparable, objective results.     

Real and Ideal Institutional Frameworks for Managing the Common Arab-Israeli Water Resources

The Oslo A and B agreements of September 1993 and September 1995 were the beginning of a process aimed at a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israeli-Jordanian Treaty of 1994 addresses issues of water sharing between the two parties. In 1995, Israel and the Palestinians signed an Agreement on Water and Sewage as part of their Interim Agreement. In February 1996, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians agreed to a “Declaration of Principles for Joint Development of Water Resources.” The purpose of this paper is to compare the components of the two Agreements with an “ideal” institution for management of shared water resources. The “ideal” institution was formulated by 23 water experts who were interviewed on this issue. The main finding is that in most respects, expert opinions did not differ significantly from the Israeli-Jordanian Treaty of Peace and the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement.     

云计算环境下的弹性结构程序研究

针对云计算环境下云程序的弹性结构进行研究,结合Anytime算法、弹性计价模型和软件即服务层中的SLA计费架构,将总业务费用分为接入费用、使用费用和补偿费用进行计算,设计基于图像小波变换的弹性结构程序,给出程序的执行步骤和状态转换图。分析结果表明,该弹性结构程序能对程序迭代次数进行控制,较好满足用户需求。