The Vulnerability of the Blockchain Network From the Consensus Perspective

The blockchain is a registry shared among different participants intending to eliminate the need for a central authority to maintain information. The first proposal of this technology was to eliminate financial authorities in transactions of value. However, the application of the same technique for the transaction of information could facilitate trades and offer traceability and diamond tracking around the world. The consensus is at the core of the network because it orchestrates nodes to accept new information, but it operates over a data structure in an open network, consequently leading to many complex behaviours that introduce different vulnerabilities. This work aims to highlight the vulnerability within the blockchain network based on the different participant behaviours that dominate the shared registry. Moreover, different malicious behaviour can appear on the networking layer by taking advantage of the network topology.

Government agencies overseeing municipal council funds: رقابة الأجهزة الحكومية على أموال المجالس البلدية

The research aims to identify the main internal and external monetary supplies to municipalities and their role in turning municipalities to development institutions. IN addition, this research identified the main supervision practices over the municipal councils, which are carried out by some government agencies. The effect of such practices on the adequacy of work has also been identified. the descriptive approach has been used to handle these monetary supplies based on the legislations and regulations that are related to them. the analytical approach has also been employed by analyzing some legal provisions that are related to the research. In conclusion, after having handled the surveillance of the government agencies over municipal councils funds. It is essential to show the main results that we concluded as well as stating some recommendations, which are five. Among the most important results of the study: The financial autonomy that municipalities have is not absolute and relative, which emphasizes the idea that municipalities funds are subject to control by the central authority. this can sometimes lead to imposing some restrains on the jurisdiction of the municipal councils. The study recommended Increasing the financial autonomy of the municipalities as imposing censorship over the financial autonomy may be a cause of shortage of funds.

Notarization and Anti-Plagiarism: A New Blockchain Approach

In traditional notarization processes, the correctness of the activities between the parties is guaranteed by a central authority or guaranteeing institution. In this case, the authority is not able to quickly establish the originality of the content to be notarized, or at least to have a large degree of certainty without the use of automated systems. This paper presents a new notarization platform that uses blockchain technology and integrates advanced anti-plagiarism approaches able to effectively detect copyright violations of documents that users want to notarize. In addition, our proposal includes the use of models, methods, and techniques, through which a very high level of privacy and information security can be guaranteed.

Modularity in FOLIO: principles, techniques and tools

From its earliest inception, FOLIO was conceived not as an ILS (Integrated Library System), but as a true Services Platform, composed of many independent but interdependent modules, and forming a foundation on which an ILS or other library software could be built out of relevant modules. This vision of modularity is crucial to FOLIO’s appeal to the library community, because it lowers the bar to participation: individual libraries may create modules that meet their needs, or hire developers to do so, or contribute to funding modules that will be of use to a broader community — all without needing “permission” from a central authority. The technical design of FOLIO is deeply influenced by the requirements of modularity, with the establishment of standard specifications and an emphasis on machine-readable API descriptions. While FOLIO’s modular design has proved advantageous, it also introduces difficulties, including cross-module searching and data consistency. Some conventions have been established to address these difficulties, and others are in the process of crystallizing. As the ILS built on FOLIO’s platform grows and matures, and as other application suites are built on it, it remains crucial to resist the shortcuts that monolithic systems can benefit from, and retain the vision of modularity that has so successfully brought FOLIO this far.

‘Oscar’

This article applies a persona studies approach to the case study of the Academy Awards. Key literature is used to situate an ‘Oscar’ persona within existing conceptualisations from the discipline. Oscar represents a composite persona that encapsulates an event, its broadcast, an Academy of individuals, and a larger discursive industry. It is a non-human persona that is coloured by distinctly human elements; it is collectively constructed on a massive scale, the process of which inviting constant contestation. Drawing from these theorisations I conduct a textual analysis to reach a persona reading of Oscar. As collective authors of the persona, members of the Academy, associated performers, and discursive contributors employ three distinct and consistent persona strategies: the Functional, the Spiritual, and the Ironic. Oscar’s taste-making function is enabled by extravagant staging and tempered by expressions of philanthropy yet performed with ironic self-effacement. The cumulative effect of these three performances allows Oscar manoeuvrability across the requirements of the different cultural contexts of each year. As well as providing a unique prism for understanding the Oscars as an institution, this work demarcates different levels of collective persona construction, challenging notions of central authority in production and performance, and accounting for the ongoing constructive work of publics.

The Authorities of Province and District Governments Regarding Spatial Planning in Aceh

Article 7 of the Law Number 11, 2006 on Aceh Governance states that the Aceh Province and districts or municipalities Governments have the authority to regulate and manage government affairs in all public sectors except for government affairs which are under the authority of the Government. It is further stated that the central authority includes government affairs of national issues that are foreign policy, defense, security, judiciary, monetary and fiscal matters, and certain affairs in the field of religion. It can be concluded that the Job Creation Act in its approach contradicts the principle of autonomy because the regulation is centralized.

Central Authority–Controlled Air Traffic Flow Management: An Optimization Approach

Despite various planning efforts, airspace capacity can sometimes be exceeded, typically because of disruptive events. Air traffic flow management (ATFM) is the process of managing flights in this situation. In this paper, we present an ATFM model that accounts for different rerouting options (path rerouting and diversion) and preexisting en route flights. The model proposes having a central authority to control all decisions, which is then compared with current practice. We also consider interflight and interairline fairness measures in the network. We use an exact approach to solve small- to medium-sized instances, and we propose a modified fix-and-relax heuristic to solve large-sized instances. Allowing a central authority to control all decisions increases network efficiency compared with the case where the ATFM authority and airlines control decisions independently. Our experiments show that including different rerouting options in ATFM can help reduce delays by up to 8% and cancellations by up to 23%. Moreover, ground delay cost has much more impact on network decisions than air delay cost, and network decisions are insensitive to changes in diversion cost. Furthermore, the analysis of the tradeoff between total network cost and overtaking cost shows that adding costs for overtaking can significantly improve fairness at only a small increase in total system cost. A balanced total cost per flight among airlines can be achieved at a small increase in the network cost (0.2%–3.0%) when imposing airline fairness. In conclusion, the comprehensiveness of the model makes it useful for analyzing a wide range of alternatives for efficient ATFM.

Towards Blockchain Network Platform for IoT Data Integrity and Scalability

<p>Decentralised technology backed by blockchain has gained popularity in recent years, as it secures autonomous ecosystems without the need for a central authority. The blockchain concept originated in the financial domain using cryptocurrency but has been applied to a variety of industries over the last few years. In the era of Industry 4.0, most enterprises leverage automation by using Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Despite the numerous applications of blockchain across industries, significant latency in the consensus algorithm in blockchain hinders its adoption among businesses using IoT technology. A number of studies have addressed the obstacles of transaction processing performance and system scalability, mostly based on a public blockchain. However, the approaches still involve centralised components and thus fail to fully utilise decentralisation. Here, a private blockchain-based IoT data integration platform is proposed to achieve data integrity and system scalability. Along with a lightweight IoT gateway, instead of any other additional middleware, the process and the system configuration are streamlined. By using Hyperledger Fabric, the design is validated, and the proposed architecture outperforms other conventional models in IoT data processing. Thus, decentralisation in IoT environments is achieved.</p>

Towards Blockchain Network Platform for IoT Data Integrity and Scalability

<p>Decentralised technology backed by blockchain has gained popularity in recent years, as it secures autonomous ecosystems without the need for a central authority. The blockchain concept originated in the financial domain using cryptocurrency but has been applied to a variety of industries over the last few years. In the era of Industry 4.0, most enterprises leverage automation by using Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Despite the numerous applications of blockchain across industries, significant latency in the consensus algorithm in blockchain hinders its adoption among businesses using IoT technology. A number of studies have addressed the obstacles of transaction processing performance and system scalability, mostly based on a public blockchain. However, the approaches still involve centralised components and thus fail to fully utilise decentralisation. Here, a private blockchain-based IoT data integration platform is proposed to achieve data integrity and system scalability. Along with a lightweight IoT gateway, instead of any other additional middleware, the process and the system configuration are streamlined. By using Hyperledger Fabric, the design is validated, and the proposed architecture outperforms other conventional models in IoT data processing. Thus, decentralisation in IoT environments is achieved.</p>