On Properties of Policy-Based Specifications

The advent of large-scale, complex computing systems has dramatically increased the difficulties of securing accesses to systems' resources. To ensure confidentiality and integrity, the exploitation of access control mechanisms has thus become a crucial issue in the design of modern computing systems. Among the different access control approaches proposed in the last decades, the policy-based one permits to capture, by resorting to the concept of attribute, all systems' security-relevant information and to be, at the same time, sufficiently flexible and expressive to represent the other approaches. In this paper, we move a step further to understand the effectiveness of policy-based specifications by studying how they permit to enforce traditional security properties. To support system designers in developing and maintaining policy-based specifications, we formalise also some relevant properties regarding the structure of policies. By means of a case study from the banking domain, we present real instances of such properties and outline an approach towards their automatised verification.Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2015, arXiv:1508.0338

Goals for the rich: Indispensable for a universal post-2015 agenda

The paper deals with the question of how a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within countries can be achieved in formulating and implementing a post-2015 sustainability agenda. Introduction After many years of focusing on the symptoms of extreme poverty with the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, the UN system is finally picking up a universal sustainability agenda, enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals, that address sustainability and causes of poverty and inequality.The Open Working Group of the UN General Assembly on Sustainable Development Goals has proposed a list of 17 goals and 169 targets. The consensus outcome of this group, endorsed by the UN General Assembly in September 2014 as the "main basis" of the post-2015 development agenda, goes far beyond the narrow scope of the MDGs. The Millennium Development Goals provided an international framework for the advancement of social development for the poor in the global South with a little help from the rich in the global North. Unlike the Millennium Development Goals, the Post-2015 Agenda with the Sustainable Development Goals as a pivotal building block is intended to be truly universal and global. Sustainable Development Goals will be for everybody, rich countries, countries with emerging economies and poor countries &nbsp

Embodying Vulnerability: A Feminist Theory of the Person

Fokus i denna avhandling utgör läkares och civilingenjörers kunskaps- och identifikationsprocesser under utbildning och arbete – vilka studeras som utsnitt ur levnadsbanor. Syftet är att beskriva och tolka relationen mellan högre utbildning och arbete, dels utifrån föreställningar i forskning och policy, dels utifrån människors subjektivitet, vardagserfarenheter och liv. Studien baseras på textanalys och intervjuer med läkare och IT-ingenjörer under de första åren i arbetslivet och yrket. Kännetecknande är att processer följs över tid genom en longitudinell design. Den teoretiska ramen struktureras runt tre länkade teman: Kunskap och dynamiker i det samtida samhället; Högre utbildning och arbete; Människors formbarhet. Reflexiv tolkning utgör metodologisk ansats. Begreppen flexibilitet, stabilitet och ambivalens används dialektiskt vid analys av empiriska data. Avhandlingen visar att människors subjektivitet och vardagserfarenheter samspelar med generella föreställningar och sammanhangens reella förhållanden. Utbildnings- och yrkesval kan förstås som uttryck för såväl reflexiva livsprojekt som subjektiva dynamiker. Att formas till civilingenjör och läkare ter sig på vitt skilda sätt. Ingenjörerna formas till generalister och ”spelar med säkra kort” medan läkarna bygger en karaktär och ”spelar med sig själva som insats”. I arbetet använder civilingenjörerna titeln som en flexibel strategi – identifikation är främst bunden till plats, funktion och arbetstid. Läkarnas identifikation med yrket utgör ett konstant tillstånd – läkare är något de alltid är, också på fritiden – yrket är starkt bundet till person. Resultaten indikerar att både ingenjörs- och läkaryrket kännetecknas av livslånga kvalificeringsprocesser. De visar sig stark exkluderande över tid. Relationen mellan högre utbildning och arbetet diskuteras vidare i avhandlingen genom människors levnadsbanor och i termer av såväl formbara som hållbara liv.The focus of this thesis is the formation of knowledge and professional identification through physicians’ and engineers’ education and work – life-trajectories are the frame of interpretation. The aim is to describe and interpret the relationship between higher education and work, partly by studying ideas in research and educational policy, partly by people’s subjectivity, experiences and everyday life. This study is based on text analysis and interviews with physicians and engineers. The characteristic of this study is that processes are described and interpreted through a longitudinal design. The theoretical framework is built up by three interrelated themes: knowledge and dynamics in contemporary society; higher education and work; the reflexivity of the individuals. An overarching interpretive approach is applied, and the concepts of flexibility, stability and ambivalence are used dialectically in the analysis of empirical data. The study indicates interplay between subjectivity, everyday life experiences and conditions in different practices. The informants’ educational and career choice can be understood as expressions of reflexive life-projects or as subjective dynamics. Becoming an engineer or physician stand out as substantially different processes. The engineers in information technology are becoming generalists and are “playing the game with a safe hand”, while the physicians becoming characters and are “playing the game with oneself as stake”. At work the engineers are using their title as a flexible strategy – identification is confined to place of work, occupation and working hours. The physicians’ identification with their profession is a fixed state of mind – they are always physicians, even in their leisure time – the profession is associated with their personality. The results indicate that both engineers and physicians careers can be characterised by life-long qualification. It appears as a strongly excluding factor. The relationship between higher education and work is discussed as life-trajectories and in terms of formable and sustainable life

Law School as a Consumer Product: Beat \u27em or Join \u27em

With rising costs, pressure on performance metrics, and competitive high-profile rankings, law schools are more than ever before being judged on a consumer satisfaction basis by both students and the public. While this perception has been growing over the past two decades, it has reached a crisis point in legal education.1 Courts have been more readily viewing the policies and practices of educational institutions as that of a customer-provider relationship and seeking ways to enforce solutions to the problems they see regarding the product sold.2 The growing trend of treating education as a consumer product that is sold to students has forced courts to consider contract claims by students and has shaped the policies of educational institutions nationwide.3 The connection between consumerism and higher education scrutiny has been explored for quite some time.4 Some have theorized that law schools are leading the way in being scrutinized from this perspective and that universities as a whole can learn from their experiences.5 When students have their choice of educational institutions, they may act like consumers and choose to spend their money based on metrics that satisfy them as buyers. This consumer mindset does not only impact admissions, but also can affect the retention of students.6 The loss of students who transfer out can take a serious toll on a law school, including potential detriments to bar passage, productive classrooms, the loss of future high performing alumni, and the cost of replacing tuition generation.7 Schools are thus currently pressured to address the consumer issue. Many of the conflicts that arise between students, as consumers, and their institutions are not necessarily based in the substance of rules. Instead, much of the complaints stem from the institutions’ transparency and communication about various aspects of the educational experience, from the classroom to students’ prospects on the job market. As such, institutions should consider the student perspective in formulating how they present their program of education and the various aspects within it. While others have questioned outright whether college students are consumers,8 this article will not debate whether law students treat their institutions with a consumer mindset. It presumes they do and instead seeks to solve the problem for institutions. Part II of this article will summarize how this mindset arose in education—specifically how it arose in legal education—and will examine previous conflicts between students and institutions as a result. Part III will examine different areas of law school operations where traditional academic mindsets and student-consumer mindsets may clash, and offers solutions and strategies as to where and how the consumer pressure should be embraced to make institutional change, and where it should be resisted to ensure the consumer pressure does not result in changes that are not in students’ best long-term interests. Part IV offers some conclusions on the approach

Understanding project management in natural resource investments from a legal perspective

This thesis reports the findings of modern day trench and strategies related to project management- in this case, natural/sustainable resource investment projects analysed from a legal or why not a lawyer’s perspectives. In a bid to further distinguish this from a scientific piece, the research proposals and analysis drown here involves empirical judgement based on the rightful holistic legal approach. The framework includes analysis or experience stemming from a high profile foreign investment project or public procurement project dope the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project (a project for the construction of an oil pipeline from Chad to the coast of Cameroon for storage and subsequent exportation to the world market; herein after referred to as “The Project”), whose improper management/execution has (is) produced a rather negative effect on nearby land, environment, nature and the local inhabitants thereby casting a gloomy cloud on, among others, the existing human rights standards. Conducted interview and data analysis in this research build-up, proved most of the findings here. Also, constructive criticism and research analysis of which majority indicate the absence of a solid legal framework from The Project, forms the basis of a proposed generalised knowledge of ideas, suggesting a subsequent adoption in future investment projects of similar nature. The conclusive remarks offer and recommend advocates of legal, development and environmental studies a chance to uphold its course while calling on fellow academicians to engage more in associated works all in a bid to change the mind-set of governments and those in authorities as such engaged in related works

The Cocoa Protocol: Success or Failure?

The use of child labor in the cocoa industry in West Africa is widespread. This report by the ILRF reviews the outcome of a significant policy instrumented drafted in 2001, the “Protocol for the Growing and Processing of Cocoa Beans and their Derivative Products,” and concludes with lessons learned and recommendations for companies, governments, multilateral agencies, and consumers