Extending the Outreach : From Smart Cities to Connected Communities

Connected Communities (CCs) are socio-technical systems that rely on an information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to integrate people and organizations (companies, schools, hospitals, universities, local and national government agencies) willing to share information and perform joint decision-making to create sustainable and equitable work and living environments. We discuss a research agenda considering CCs from three distinct but complementary points of view: CC metaphors, models, and services

Nonbanks and risk in retail payments

This paper documents the importance of nonbanks in retail payments in the United States and in 15 European countries and analyzes the implications of the importance and multiple roles played by nonbanks on retail payment risks. This paper also reviews the main regulatory safeguards in place, and concludes that there may be a need to reconsider some of them in view of the growing role of nonbanks and of the global reach of risks in the electronic era.

Newest digital technology in management of national economic system

The content of some latest digital technologies in managing of national economic system, including Blockchain NEM technology are described in the article. Key benefits of using NEM in business management are outlined, including high efficiency, ease of use, flexibility and reliability. Among the advanced features of Nanowallet, authors describe Namespaces, Mosaics and Apostille. The areas of use of Harvesting in management of national economic system and highlights the benefits of its practical application are generalized in the article. Authors have developed a four-layer architecture that can be considered a key advantage of Catapult's newest digital technology performance in managing the economic system. It outlines its main advantages and outlines the options for using Catapult in managing of national economic system. Proof-Of-Importance factors for the work of latest digital technologies are highlighted and substantiated. Blockchain 3.0 protocols and service layers, on-line and off-line protocols, decentralized applications are installed

Improved Communication for Safer Patient Care: The Implementation of SBAR

This Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) quality improvement project aims to improve the consistency of intradepartmental communication between Urgent Care Center (UCC) staff, through standardized SBAR patient hand-offs. The aim is to improve; (1) the consistency and clarity of patient hand-offs, (2) staff experience and satisfaction with communication during hand-offs, and (3) prevent adverse patient outcomes resulting from poor communication. As a safety net hospital, traditionally serving a predominately underserved, and underinsured, multicultural demographic, the UCC is designed to alleviate the Emergency Department (ED) of non-emergent patient encounters, providing a cost effective alternative, whilst adhering to Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) provider medical screening (MSE) requirements. A microsystem assessment incorporating staff and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) surveys, in addition to observational data, indicated a need for communication improvement. Lewin’s three step theory of change was applied in formulating an educational program to address current communication concerns, explore the benefits of the SBAR communication in an urgent care setting, and applicability in UCC scenarios, with patient hand-off observations, and subsequent observations at 3 and 6 weeks. Preliminary PDSA (n=4) cycles indicated SBAR knowledge increased by 36%, SBAR use by 50%, ability to explain SBAR by 18% and the belief SBAR keeps information organized by 15%. Issues of observational data validity will be addressed in the subsequent PDSA cycles

FinBook: literary content as digital commodity

This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be

Patent analysis for social usage of blockchain

Abstract. This bachelor’s thesis intends to showcase patents related to blockchain that are aimed at individual users or communities. Patents from Europe are specifically an area of interest for this thesis. Patents were searched from European and worldwide patent databases using keywords. Then patents from these searches were analysed individually. Most interesting patents for the scope are examined more in-depth in the thesis

Evolving Bitcoin Custody

The broad topic of this thesis is the design and analysis of Bitcoin custody systems. Both the technology and threat landscape are evolving constantly. Therefore, custody systems, defence strategies, and risk models should be adaptive too. We introduce Bitcoin custody by describing the different types, design principles, phases and functions of custody systems. We review the technology stack of these systems and focus on the fundamentals; key-management and privacy. We present a perspective we call the systems view. It is an attempt to capture the full complexity of a custody system, including technology, people, and processes. We review existing custody systems and standards. We explore Bitcoin covenants. This is a mechanism to enforce constraints on transaction sequences. Although previous work has proposed how to construct and apply Bitcoin covenants, these require modifying the consensus rules of Bitcoin, a notoriously difficult task. We introduce the first detailed exposition and security analysis of a deleted-key covenant protocol, which is compatible with current consensus rules. We demonstrate a range of security models for deleted-key covenants which seem practical, in particular, when applied in autonomous (user-controlled) custody systems. We conclude with a comparative analysis with previous proposals. Covenants are often proclaimed to be an important primitive for custody systems, but no complete design has been proposed to validate that claim. To address this, we propose an autonomous custody system called Ajolote which uses deleted-key covenants to enforce a vault sequence. We evaluate Ajolote with; a model of its state dynamics, a privacy analysis, and a risk model. We propose a threat model for custody systems which captures a realistic attacker for a system with offline devices and user-verification. We perform ceremony analysis to construct the risk model.Comment: PhD thesi

A Critical Investigation into Identifying Key Focus Areas for the Implementation of Blockchain Technology in the Mining Industry

Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2023.The value of digital information is ever-increasing as more companies utilize digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to gain deeper insight into their business operations and drive productivity gains. It is therefore important to safeguard and ensure the integrity of digital information exchange. Blockchain technology (BCT) was identified as potentially providing the mining industry with a trusted system for securely exchanging digital value. However, there is little evidence or understanding of how/where BCT can be implemented and what benefits the industry could obtain. This research study provides a fundamental understanding of what the technology is in order to identify the associated capabilities and potential application benefits for the mining industry. From a technology push perspective, blockchain capabilities are used to evaluate how the technology’s value drivers map to the mining industries core value chain processes. This was done to identify potential focus areas within the mining enterprise for further research and development of blockchain applications.ARMMining EngineeringMEngUnrestricte