Agent fabrication and its implementation for agent-based electronic commerce

In the last decade, agent-based e-commerce has emerged as a potential role for the next generation of e-commerce. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become a serious consideration in this field. This paper proposes a new scheme named agent fabrication and elaborates its implementation in multi-agent systems based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) architecture. First, a conceptual structure is proposed for software agents carrying out e-commerce activities. Furthermore, agent module suitcase is defined to facilitate agent fabrication. With these definitions and facilities in the SAFER architecture, the formalities of agent fabrication are elaborated. In order to enhance the security of agent-based e-commerce, an infrastructure of agent authorization and authentication is integrated in agent fabrication. Our implementation and prototype applications show that the proposed agent fabrication scheme brings forth a potential solution for creating agents in agent-based e-commerce applications

Caste, Kinship, and Life Course: Rethinking Women's Work and Agency in Rural South India

This paper reexamines the linkages between women's work, agency, and well-being based on a household survey and in-depth interviews conducted in rural Tamil Nadu in 2009 and questions the prioritization of workforce participation as a path to gender equality. It emphasizes the need to unpack the nature of work performed by and available to women and its social valuation, as well as women's agency, particularly its implications for decision making around financial and nonfinancial household resources in contexts of socioeconomic change. The effects of work participation on agency are mediated by factors like age and stage in the life cycle, reproductive success, and social location – especially of caste – from which women enter the workforce

Mediated Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption and its Application (extended version)

In Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE), a user secret key is associated with a set of attributes, and the ciphertext is associated with an access policy over attributes. The user can decrypt the ciphertext if and only if the attribute set of his secret key satisfies the access policy specified in the ciphertext. Several CP-ABE schemes have been proposed, however, some practical problems, such as attribute revocation, still needs to be addressed. In this paper, we propose a mediated Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (mCP-ABE) which extends CP-ABE with instantaneous attribute revocation. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to apply the proposed mCP-ABE scheme to securely manage Personal Health Records (PHRs)

Online consultation on experts’ views on digital competence

The objective of this investigation was to provide another perspective on what it means to be digitally competent today, in addition to reviews of literature and current frameworks for the development of digital competence, 5 all of which constitute part of the wider IPTS Digital Competence Project (DIGCOMP). Some common ground exists at a general level in defining digital competence in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, which may be hierarchically organised. However, this does not provide the clarity needed by teachers, employers, citizens – all those who are responsible for digital competence development, be it their own or other people’s ‐ to make informed decisions. Further work is needed to create a common language that helps to enhance understanding across the worlds of research, education, training, and work. This will make it easier for citizens and employers to see what digital competence entails and how it is relevant to their jobs and more generally, their lives

Functional Encryption as Mediated Obfuscation

We introduce a new model for program obfuscation, called mediated obfuscation. A mediated obfuscation is a 3-party protocol for evaluating an obfuscated program that requires minimal interaction and limited trust. The party who originally supplies the obfuscated program need not be online when the client wants to evaluate the program. A semi-trusted third-party mediator allows the client to evaluate the program, while learning nothing about the obfuscated program or the client’s inputs and outputs. Mediated obfuscation would provide the ability for a software vendor to safely outsource the less savory aspects (like accounting of usage statistics, and remaining online to facilitate access) of “renting out” access to proprietary software. We give security definitions for this new obfuscation paradigm, and then present a simple and generic construction based on functional encryption. If a functional encryption scheme supports decryption functionality F (m, k), then our construction yields a mediated obfuscation of the class of functions {F (m, ·) | m}. In our construction, the interaction between the client and the mediator is minimal (much more efficient than a general- purpose multi-party computation protocol). Instantiating with existing FE constructions, we achieve obfuscation for point-functions with output (under a strong “virtual black-box” notion of security), and a general feasibility result for obfuscating conjunctive normal form and disjunctive normal form formulae (under a weaker “semantic” notion of security). Finally, we use mediated obfuscation to illustrate a connection between worst-case and average-case static obfuscation. In short, an average-case (static) obfuscation of some component of a suitable functional encryption scheme yields a worst-case (static) obfuscation for a related class of functions. We use this connection to demonstrate new impossibility results for average-case (static) obfuscation

Mixture Approach To Move Package Approval

A file encryption plan is proposed based on features of the Cloud-specific file hierarchy. We recommend using Layer Access Structure to solve the problem of many hierarchical files under discussion. We conduct and implement comprehensive experiments for the Penguin Plan FH-Club. In the current system, the cost and time of file encryption is high, the system understands some time, computing, and the cost is very high. Layered access structures are combined into only one access structure, after which hierarchical files are encrypted using the integrated access structure. The cipher text components associated with attributes can be shared across files. Club-penguin-ABE plans are affordable which are more varied and therefore suitable for general applications. Many of the hierarchical files that are discussed are resolved by using the layer of access layer structure. In the proposed system, the storage of encrypted texts and the price for encoding files are preserved. As the number of files increases, the benefits of our plan become more evident. Therefore, the encoded text storage and file encryption time are saved. In addition, the proposed plan proved to be safe under the standard hypothesis

Philosophy of Blockchain Technology - Ontologies

About the necessity and usefulness of developing a philosophy specific to the blockchain technology, emphasizing on the ontological aspects. After an Introduction that highlights the main philosophical directions for this emerging technology, in Blockchain Technology I explain the way the blockchain works, discussing ontological development directions of this technology in Designing and Modeling. The next section is dedicated to the main application of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, with the social implications of this cryptocurrency. There follows a section of Philosophy in which I identify the blockchain technology with the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault and I interpret it in the light of the notational technology developed by Nelson Goodman as a notational system. In the Ontology section, I present two developmental paths that I consider important: Narrative Ontology, based on the idea of order and structure of history transmitted through Paul Ricoeur's narrative history, and the Enterprise Ontology system based on concepts and models of an enterprise, specific to the semantic web, and which I consider to be the most well developed and which will probably become the formal ontological system, at least in terms of the economic and legal aspects of blockchain technology. In Conclusions I am talking about the future directions of developing the blockchain technology philosophy in general as an explanatory and robust theory from a phenomenologically consistent point of view, which allows testability and ontologies in particular, arguing for the need of a global adoption of an ontological system for develop cross-cutting solutions and to make this technology profitable. CONTENTS: Abstract Introducere Tehnologia blockchain - Proiectare - Modele Bitcoin Filosofia Ontologii - Ontologii narative - Ontologii de intreprindere Concluzii Note Bibliografie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24510.3360

Reluctant leaders : an analysis of middle managers' perceptions of leadership in further education in England

The research that forms the basis for this article draws attention to a group of middle managers who are reluctant to become leaders because they seek more space and autonomy to stay in touch with their subject, their students, and their own pedagogic values and identities, family commitments and the balance between work and life. This reluctance is reinforced by their scepticism that leadership in Further Education (FE) is becoming less hierarchical and more participative. In a sector that has had more than its fair share of reformist intervention, there is some scepticism of the latest fad of distributed and transformative leadership as a new panacea to cure all the accumulated 'ills' of Further Education in England. Although focused primarily on this one sector in an English context, the article draws some inferences where there are parallels with wider sectors of public sector reform and where the uneasy (and incomplete) transitions from 'old' to 'new' public management have been underpinned by invasive audit, inspection and performance cultures