Formal Approach to Design and Automatic Verification of Cooperation-Based Networks

none1The efficacy and efficiency of cooperation incentives in user-centric networks is a challenging issue that involves tradeoff among trust, social, and economic aspects. Two well-established approaches to stimulate resource sharing and cooperation rely on reputation and remuneration, the complementary functioning of which shall increase users' motivation and discourage mistrust and selfishness. In order to verify the benefits of the joint application of these mechanisms, we specify and analyze formally a recently proposed cooperation model by employing tool-supported probabilistic model checking techniques.openA. AldiniAldini, Alessandr

Catala: A Programming Language for the Law

Law at large underpins modern society, codifying and governing many aspects of citizens' daily lives. Oftentimes, law is subject to interpretation, debate and challenges throughout various courts and jurisdictions. But in some other areas, law leaves little room for interpretation, and essentially aims to rigorously describe a computation, a decision procedure or, simply said, an algorithm. Unfortunately, prose remains a woefully inadequate tool for the job. The lack of formalism leaves room for ambiguities; the structure of legal statutes, with many paragraphs and sub-sections spread across multiple pages, makes it hard to compute the intended outcome of the algorithm underlying a given text; and, as with any other piece of poorly-specified critical software, the use of informal language leaves corner cases unaddressed. We introduce Catala, a new programming language that we specifically designed to allow a straightforward and systematic translation of statutory law into an executable implementation. Catala aims to bring together lawyers and programmers through a shared medium, which together they can understand, edit and evolve, bridging a gap that often results in dramatically incorrect implementations of the law. We have implemented a compiler for Catala, and have proven the correctness of its core compilation steps using the F* proof assistant. We evaluate Catala on several legal texts that are algorithms in disguise, notably section 121 of the US federal income tax and the byzantine French family benefits; in doing so, we uncover a bug in the official implementation. We observe as a consequence of the formalization process that using Catala enables rich interactions between lawyers and programmers, leading to a greater understanding of the original legislative intent, while producing a correct-by-construction executable specification reusable by the greater software ecosystem

State of Alaska Election Security Project Phase 2 Report

A laska’s election system is among the most secure in the country, and it has a number of safeguards other states are now adopting. But the technology Alaska uses to record and count votes could be improved— and the state’s huge size, limited road system, and scattered communities also create special challenges for insuring the integrity of the vote. In this second phase of an ongoing study of Alaska’s election security, we recommend ways of strengthening the system—not only the technology but also the election procedures. The lieutenant governor and the Division of Elections asked the University of Alaska Anchorage to do this evaluation, which began in September 2007.Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell. State of Alaska Division of Elections.List of Appendices / Glossary / Study Team / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Summary of Recommendations / Part 1 Defense in Depth / Part 2 Fortification of Systems / Part 3 Confidence in Outcomes / Conclusions / Proposed Statement of Work for Phase 3: Implementation / Reference

Evaluating Ecosystem Investments

This report focuses on what was learned about best practices for evaluating the effects of ecosystem investments along with examples of how others are using these practicesin their work.MethodologyThree research questions guided this engagement:What are the new / best practices in evaluating the effects of ecosystem invest­ments?Which organizations are evaluating these investments well? What can they teach us?What relevant outcomes and indicators could Omidyar Network use to evaluate its ecosystem investments?To answer these questions, FSG conducted the following activities, in addition to drawing on our experience supporting strategic learning and evaluation in complex environments. Appendix A includes a complete list of grants reviewed and interviewees.Grants analysis: FSG analyzed Omidyar Network's Initiative Results Architecture frameworks and 23 grants within its ecosystem investment portfolio. These docu­ments helped ground our research in an understanding of the different types of ecosystem investments Omidyar Network is making, as well as how the organiza­tion currently evaluates the impact of its ecosystem investments.Literature review: FSG reviewed more than 60 publications to identify best practices in evaluating ecosystem investments—these publications included both peer-reviewed journal articles and "grey literature" (conference presentations, blog posts) by organizations employing advocacy-type strategies.Interviews: FSG conducted interviews with nine external experts (listed in Appen­dix A) to more deeply understand effective practices in evaluating the effects of eco­system investments and to identify leading organizations in this area. Interviewees were identified to glean best practices from both within and outside the traditional social sector

An agent-based model to study customers' engagement with brands from a service-dominant logic perspective

We present an Agent-based Model to study customers' engagement with brands from a Service-Dominant Logic perspective. Customer Engagement has gained attention recently in the study of customer loyalty as a process that enables to understand and measure the impact of the depths of customers emotional responses to consumption situations on their intention to retain with a particular brand. However, there is no adequate research that deeply investigate the process of engagement, especially in dynamic, competitive and complex market environments. We address this research gap by creating an agent-based artificial market model. In doing so, we base our model on Service- Dominant Logic, which offers a novel lens to look at markets and their interactions and on the customer engagement process model of Bowden to implement customers engagement with a brand. This paper basically presents a logical discussion on the formulation of the model and some initial outcomes

2020 Mom Community Action Toolkit

2020 Mom developed this toolkit to serve as a roadmap for coalitions working to improve the continuum of care for maternal mental health (MMH) disorders in their communities. 2020 Mom is committed to facilitating A.C.T.I.O.N. (Advancing Collaboration through Toolkits, Initiatives, and Online Networking) among community coalitions.This project is intended for existing maternal child health community coalitions or group leaders looking to improve screening and treatment rates for MMH disorders in their communities. We believe local leaders understand the unique needs in their regions and are best suited to address gaps in care, drive policy change, and build partnerships to improve maternal mental health.The Community Action Toolkit is a manual for creating an MMH community action plan by working through the 2020 Mom Action Cycle. This process includes: assessing the community's MMH services, analyzing findings, setting priorities, determining local interventions, and ultimately drafting an evidence-based MMH Action Plan.The toolkit includes templates for developing a membership invitation, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, project workplans, a strategy grid, SMART objectives, a logic model, and the action plan with built-in evaluation. The toolkit also provides a menu of interventions with guidance for selecting those that will address local issues within a realistic budget

A Method of Evaluating Trust and Reputation for Online Transaction

The widespread use of the Internet and evaluater-based technologies has transformed the way business is conducted. Traditional offline businesses have increasingly become online, and there are new kinds of businesses that solely exist online. Unlike offline business environments, interpersonal trust is generally lacking in online business settings. Trading partners might feel insecure about the exchange of products and services over the net as they have limited information about each other's reliability or about the product quality. Considering that enough trust needs to be created to get the online buyer and seller to take actions, trust is a precious asset in online transactions. In order to address the issue of evaluating trust and reputation in online transaction environments, this paper makes use of a social network that graphically represents interpersonal relationships. This paper proposes computational models that systematically evaluate the quantitative level of trust and reputation based on the social network. A method that combines the evaluated trust and reputation levels is also proposed to increase the reliability of online transactions