Rethinking Large-Scale Consensus

In this position paper, we initiate a systematic treatment of reaching consensus in a permissionless network. We prove several simple but hopefully insightful lower bounds that demonstrate exactly why reaching consensus in a permissionless setting is fundamentally more difficult than the classical, permissioned setting. We then present a simplified proof of Nakamoto\u27s blockchain which we recommend for pedagogical purposes. Finally, we survey recent results including how to avoid well-known painpoints in permissionless consensus, and how to apply core ideas behind blockchains to solve consensus in the classical, permissioned setting and meanwhile achieve new properties that are not attained by classical approaches

From Roadblock to Gateway: Improving Developmental Education for Student Success

This funder's guide captures themes and lessons from an ongoing body of work that has been supported by a number of funders working to reform developmental education. In June 2011, these funders met with prominent researchers and higher education leaders to examine promising strategies to accelerate student's progress toward earning degrees and credentials by reforming developmental education and by ensuring that more students enter postsecondary institutions prepared to succeed. This brief summarizes key insights from the gathering, from research and from funders' work to identify promising areas for grant makers to support

From governance to meta-governance in tourism?: Re-incorporating politics,interests and values in the analysis of tourism governance

Despite its theorization in the political and policy sciences in the early 1990s, the concept of metagovernance has gained relatively little recognition in tourism studies. Nevertheless, its significance in the political sciences and policy literature, especially as a result of the perceived failure of governance systems following the recent global financial crisis, has only served to reinforce its relevance. Metagovernance addresses some of the perceived failures of traditional governance approaches and associated interventions, and has enabled the understanding of central-state led regimes of shadowed hierarchical authorities and local-level micro-practices of social innovation and self-government. In contrast, tourism studies have tended to restrict study of the political dimension of tourism governance and the role of the state under the traditional parallelism between government and governance. Examination of how governance is itself governed enables a better understanding of the practices of planning and policy making affecting tourism and destinations. In particular, the applications of concepts of governance are inextricably linked to a given set of value assumptions which predetermine the range of its application. A short example of the application of the metagovernance paradigm is provided from the New Zealand context. It is concluded that governance mechanisms are not value-neutral and instead serve to highlight the allocation of power in a destination and the dominance of particular values and interests

Reclaiming the secular: developing dialogic skills for a post-secular society

This research paper addresses secularization from both political and religious perspectives. One of its manifestations in the political sphere is that of globalization that can lead to alienation within society; and in the United Kingdom this is exemplified by Brexit. Within the religious sphere secularization is usually couched in oppositional terms. This paper reclaims the original use of the word secular as envisaged in a three realms’ model of society comprising profane, sacred and secular realms. The secular realm acts as a buffer between the profane and sacred realms and in this neutral, public sphere the power of reason prevails. An educational starting point for such creation is pedagogy and through linguistic, psychological and cultural analysis, this paper identifies the development of reasoning through the dialogic skills of building consensus (cumulative talk) and constructive criticism (exploratory talk). Sixty-five students from a varied background of UK secondary schools have participated in the development of these dialogic skills

The speech community

The speech community (SpCom), a core concept in empirical linguistics, is at the intersection of many principal problems in sociolinguistic theory and method. This paper traces its history of development and divergence, surveys general problems with contemporary notions, and discusses links to key issues in investigating language variation and change. It neither offers a new and correct definition nor rejects the concept (both are seen as misguided efforts), nor does it exhaustively survey the applications in the field (an impossibly large task)

Impossible organisations: anarchism and organisational praxis

Organisational scholarship tends to focus its attention mainly on conventional work organisations and so neglects the organisational practices and principles of other sites of organising. The paper considers the implications of this limited focus even within more critical scholarship through a close reading of a recent paper calling for a greater engagement with social movements. Specifically, I consider problems of understanding a phenomenon in terms of what it is not and evaluating alternative sites of organisation using conventional categories of analysis. I then go on to outline the potential contribution of anarchist theory and its enactment by recent anti-capitalist movements. These radically different approaches to organisation are evaluated and I argue that they present a profound challenge to mainstream assumptions. The paper concludes that critical organisational theory has much to learn from an engagement with such alternative sites of organisation but only if a determined attempt is made to move beyond the usual theoretical frameworks and that anarchist theory may help us do this

Rethinking the State-Local Relationship: Child Welfare Services

Outlines funding concerns and joint state-county actions needed to raise cost efficiency in child welfare services: create meaningful local flexibility, identify core outcomes, address federal funding constraints, and integrate with other social services

Trusting the Scientific Community: The Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Trust in Science

Trust in the scientific enterprise — in science as an institution — is arguably important to individuals’ and societies’ well-being. Although some measures of public trust in science exist, the recipients of that trust are often ambiguous between trusting individual scientists and the scientific community at large. We argue that more precision would be beneficial — specifically, targeting public trust of the scientific community at large — and describe the development and validation of such an instrument: the Scientific Community Trust Index (SCTI). We show the results of initial field testing to establish instrument reliability and validity. We then demonstrate certain advantages of the SCTI against other measures of trust and deference, and present correlations between the SCTI and participant scores in two trust-in-science scenarios. Our results suggest that the SCTI is a useful and compact tool for measuring public trust in the scientific community