Glimmers: Resolving the Privacy/Trust Quagmire

Many successful services rely on trustworthy contributions from users. To establish that trust, such services often require access to privacy-sensitive information from users, thus creating a conflict between privacy and trust. Although it is likely impractical to expect both absolute privacy and trustworthiness at the same time, we argue that the current state of things, where individual privacy is usually sacrificed at the altar of trustworthy services, can be improved with a pragmatic $Glimmer$ $of$ $Trust$, which allows services to validate user contributions in a trustworthy way without forfeiting user privacy. We describe how trustworthy hardware such as Intel's SGX can be used client-side -- in contrast to much recent work exploring SGX in cloud services -- to realize the Glimmer architecture, and demonstrate how this realization is able to resolve the tension between privacy and trust in a variety of cases

Glimmer

Interactive outdoor sound and light installation at the Grantham Street band rotunda

Spinoza and the possibilities for radical climate ethics

In this commentary, I respond to the core question of Ruddick’s paper: How does the theoretical dethroning of humanity force us to reinvent ethics? In so doing, I expand on Spinoza’s profound contribution to the radical rethinking of the subject at the level of ontology. Although Ruddick invokes Spinoza, first and foremost, as a potential resource for ethics in light of climate disruption, I conclude that those resources offer only a glimmer of how to live differently. The work of re-imagination at the level of metaphysics is flourishing, but we have yet to develop its implications for ethics and politics

Draft Genome Sequence of Streptomyces sp. Strain CT34, Isolated from a Ghanaian Soil Sample

Copyright © 2015 Zhai et al. This work was supported by the China “973” program (2012CB721001), the “863” Program (2012AA092201), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170467), and the EU FP7 project PharmaSea (312184). K.K., M.J., and H.D. thank the Royal Society–Leverhulme Trust Africa for the financial support (award AA090088) that enabled the sampling of sediments and subsequent isolation of this unique Ghanaian strain.Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

The MNC as an Agent of Change for Host-Country Institutions: FDI and Corruption

Most empirical research examines how the institutional environment of corruption shapes the behavior of MNCs. In this study, we would like to highlight the other side of the picture: how the presence of MNC may shape the institutional environment of corruption over time. We propose three avenues through which the MNC may have an impact on its host institutions: the regulatory pressure effect, the demonstration effect, and the professionalization effect. Based on extensive data on FDI and corruption for a large sample of countries over the last 30 years, the empirical results are consistent with our general hypothesis that foreign direct investment generates positive spillover effects on the institutional environment of host countries. Such findings provide a glimmer of hope for the future of the host country where corruption is most prevalent.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57262/1/wp882 .pd