CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

A Practical Searchable Symmetric Encryption Scheme for Smart Grid Data

Outsourcing data storage to the remote cloud can be an economical solution to enhance data management in the smart grid ecosystem. To protect the privacy of data, the utility company may choose to encrypt the data before uploading them to the cloud. However, while encryption provides confidentiality to data, it also sacrifices the data owners' ability to query a special segment in their data. Searchable symmetric encryption is a technology that enables users to store documents in ciphertext form while keeping the functionality to search keywords in the documents. However, most state-of-the-art SSE algorithms are only focusing on general document storage, which may become unsuitable for smart grid applications. In this paper, we propose a simple, practical SSE scheme that aims to protect the privacy of data generated in the smart grid. Our scheme achieves high space complexity with small information disclosure that was acceptable for practical smart grid application. We also implement a prototype over the statistical data of advanced meter infrastructure to show the effectiveness of our approach

Trading efficiency in water quality markets

A crucial factor in the success of any water quality trading market is its ability to cost-effectively reallocate nutrient allowances from initial holders to those users who find them most valuable; the market's trading efficiency. We explore causes of and solutions to trading inefficiency by assessing the impact on participant transaction costs and the tradeoffs that occur as a result of policy design decisions. Differing impacts of baseline-credit and cap-and-trade markets, the impact of trading rules and monitoring regimes are discussed in this endeavour. Possible solutions of increased information flows and regulatory certainty are also discussed. We then apply this framework to three existing water quality trading schemes; two from the US, and one from New Zealand. We use this experience to extract general recommendations for policy makers looking to maximise trading efficiency when designing future water quality trading markets.Nutrient trading, trading efficiency, water quality markets, transaction costs, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Health Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Shining Light On Shadow Stacks

Control-Flow Hijacking attacks are the dominant attack vector against C/C++ programs. Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) solutions mitigate these attacks on the forward edge,i.e., indirect calls through function pointers and virtual calls. Protecting the backward edge is left to stack canaries, which are easily bypassed through information leaks. Shadow Stacks are a fully precise mechanism for protecting backwards edges, and should be deployed with CFI mitigations. We present a comprehensive analysis of all possible shadow stack mechanisms along three axes: performance, compatibility, and security. For performance comparisons we use SPEC CPU2006, while security and compatibility are qualitatively analyzed. Based on our study, we renew calls for a shadow stack design that leverages a dedicated register, resulting in low performance overhead, and minimal memory overhead, but sacrifices compatibility. We present case studies of our implementation of such a design, Shadesmar, on Phoronix and Apache to demonstrate the feasibility of dedicating a general purpose register to a security monitor on modern architectures, and the deployability of Shadesmar. Our comprehensive analysis, including detailed case studies for our novel design, allows compiler designers and practitioners to select the correct shadow stack design for different usage scenarios.Comment: To Appear in IEEE Security and Privacy 201

Do Differences in Institutional and Legal Environments Explain Cross-Country Variations in IPO Underpricing?

We empirically analyze the determinants of Initial Public Offering (IPO) underpricing using panel data for 29 countries over the period 1988-2005. Our hypotheses stress the importance of institutional and legal factors in explaining cross-country variations. We find that increased protection of shareholders and greater accounting transparency contribute negatively to variations in underpricing. When more information is available price discovery is facilitated, allowing for more effective corporate governance. Moreover, when equity markets perform well, investors anticipate companies and investment banks to time the market and require higher underpricing in return. Overall, we conclude that better investor protection and better institutional environments reduce the perceived risk of investing, and attenuate the problem of asymmetric information, thereby causing lower underpricing across countries.IPO underpricing, institutions, legal infrastructure, panel data

Influence of government policies on industry development: The case of India's automotive industry

The automotive industry in India has come a long way from its nascent state at the time of India's independence in 1947 to its present day dynamic form. As compared to the production of mere 4,000 vehicles in 1950, the production of the industry crossed the historic landmark of 10 million vehicles in 2006. Today, the industry produces a wide range of automobiles and auto-components catering to both the domestic as well as foreign markets. The development of the industry has been shaped by the demand on the one hand and the government interventions on the other; the influence of the latter being considerable. The evolution of India's automotive industry is identified to have occurred in four phases. In the first (1947-1965) and second phase (1966-1979), the important policies identified were related to protection, indigenisation and regulation of the industry. On the one hand, these policies helped India to build an indigenous automotive industry, while on the other it led to unsatisfactory industry performance. In the third phase (1980-1990), the single most important policy identified was the one with regard to relaxation in the means of technology acquisition. The foreign competition inducted into the industry transformed its dynamics. Lastly, in the fourth phase (1991 onwards) the liberalisation with regard to foreign investment had a significant influence on the Indian automotive industry as we see it today. This work traces the evolution of the automotive industry from its inception to present day and identifies the important policies made by the Indian government. The work also studies the influence of important policies on the development of the industry. --India,Automotive,Industrial Policy,Government Policy,Government Influence

Wide-address spaces - exploring the design space

In a recent issue of Operating System Review, Hayter and McAuley [1991] argue that future high-performance systems trade a traditional, bus-based organization for one where all components are linked together by network switches (the Desk-Area Network). In this issue of Operating System Review, Leslie, McAuley and Mullender conclude that DAN-based architectures allow the exploitation of shared memory on a wider scale than just a single (multi)processor. In this paper, we will explore how emerging 64-bit processors can be used to implement shared address spaces spanning multiple machines