Providing data group anonymity using concentration differences

Public access to digital data can turn out to be a cause of undesirable information disclosure. That's why it is vital to somehow protect the data before publishing. There are two main subclasses of such a task, namely, providing individual and group anonymity. In the paper, we introduce an original method of protecting the group patterns of data. Also, we provide a comprehensive illustrative example.Вільний доступ до цифрових даних може призводити до небажаного витоку інформації. Саме тому потрібно деяким чином захищати дані перед оприлюдненням. Існують два підвиди цієї задачі, а саме: забезпечення індивідуальної та групової анонімності. У роботі ми пропонуємо новий метод захисту групо-вих властивостей даних. Також наводиться ілюстративний приклад.Свободный доступ к цифровым данным может привести к нежелательной утечке информа-ции. Поэтому следует некоторым образом защищать данные перед публикацией. Существуют два подви-да этой задачи, а именно: обеспечение индивидуальной и групповой анонимности. В работе мы предлагаем новый метод защиты групповых свойств данных. Также приводится пример-иллюстрация

Resource Guide in Exploring Ethics: A Practical Resource Guide for Tutors and Students

This resource guide will help staff and students who are studying social sciences in hospitality, tourism, entertainment, events, leisure. It outlines the ethical issues that they need to consider when conducting research for their dissertation or for industry-based projects. Social science is a general term used for the study of society, consumers, and employees, the manner in which those people behave and how it affects the world around us. Researching “people in our world” must be completed in a safe, fair and honest way. Whilst ethical policy for empirical research has been with us since the Nuremberg Code 1947, many universities have not yet developed resources in terms of practical ethical examples. This resource guide presents materials and examples for tutors of research methods, and also for undergraduate and masters students engaging in social science research. The Guide also contains background literature, power point presentations and practical examples. All social science research raises many ethical issues. Medical, sport and exercise research dealing with human enhancement, medicine, disease or gene therapy present ethical issues which will NOT be included in this resource guide. Sport and leisure research may include physical or drug-related elements which require students to conform to specific ethical procedures which can be found, in part, in the “Ethics and Sport” resource guide available via the HLST website

Is acting prosocially beneficial for the credit market?

This article argues that behaving prosocially implies more transparent information during the negotiation process of a financial contract and more cooperation among the parties to respect the terms of the contract. For this reason this work considers interest rate on loans and insolvency rate functions of prosocial behaviour along with the traditional socio-economic and financial collaterals. The context of study is Italy and the analysis is developed at a cross-regional level. We collect data from the two reports on “Relatives and Safety Net” produced by the Italian Centre Bureau of Statistics (ISTAT) in 1998 and 2003 and from the reports on “Regional Economics” produced by the Bank of Italy in the same years. A two-period panel model shows two interesting outcomes. Firstly, regions with a higher proportion of prosocial individuals report lower interest rates on loans and insolvency rates. Secondly, when we include the efficiency of legal enforcement, evidence supports the idea that a more efficient legal framework can act as a more reliable transmission mechanism of institutional norms and facilitate the internalisation of social norms

Alternative Trading Systems and Liquidity.

A diversity of so-called Alternative Trading Systems (ATS) has challenged the existing traditional exchanges. This paper studies the impact of these ATS on the liquidity on the traditional financial markets using a market microstructure approach. In the United States ATS have been particularly successful in attracting trade in the Nasdaq dealer market, whereas they are less successful in competition with the NYSE. The theoretical reasoning behind this conjecture is that the agency nature of trading at the ATS allows investors to trade directly with each other without the intervention of a dealer. We argue that since continental European exchanges are typically organized as auction markets implying an agency nature of trading, the liquidity externality will prevent the auction-type ATS from breaking through and acquiring a significant market share in Europe. Only Crossing Networks may turn out to be more successful in realizing trades in Europe as they rely on the efficiency of price discovery on their primary market.

Measuring the Affordances of Studying in a Virtual World

There has been much interest at the University of Hertfordshire in the teaching and learning in virtual worlds such as Second Life. The School of Computer Science has established a virtual campus within this system where a broad range of learning and teaching activities take place. These include presenting textual, audio and video learning and teaching materials, delivering virtual lectures, providing simulations and group working areas. Recently there has been a great deal of controversy over such initiatives, for example at my own university lecturers are divided as to the efficacy of such an approach. Some see the initiative as an interesting addition to the range of teaching and learning strategies available, likely to motivate learners. Others see it as a trivial attempt to jump on the latest band wagon, with little pedagogical benefit or justification. My own past research in this area, over several years has related to an estimation of the cognitive load imposed by desktop virtual environments and how this affected learning. Several important variables have been identified in several years of research and their effects measured. In the study presented here, a group of 80 final year computer science students used the Second Life virtual environment in order to support their practical project work. Groups of four learners used the university virtual campus especially modified for this purpose to hold meetings and to manage their software development projects. This study reports on how the group areas were established and used by the learners, the types of activities that took place and the effectiveness of the approach in this context. Quantitative and qualitative research was undertaken and it was found that there were benefits to be had by the use of such virtual environments. Recommendations are made as to the affordances of the Second Life virtual environment for teaching and learning in this context and also discussed are the potential problems inherent in this initiative related to individual differences and the cognitive burden imposed on learners.Peer reviewe