R-CNN minus R

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have had a major impact in most areas of image understanding, including object category detection. In object detection, methods such as R-CNN have obtained excellent results by integrating CNNs with region proposal generation algorithms such as selective search. In this paper, we investigate the role of proposal generation in CNN-based detectors in order to determine whether it is a necessary modelling component, carrying essential geometric information not contained in the CNN, or whether it is merely a way of accelerating detection. We do so by designing and evaluating a detector that uses a trivial region generation scheme, constant for each image. Combined with SPP, this results in an excellent and fast detector that does not require to process an image with algorithms other than the CNN itself. We also streamline and simplify the training of CNN-based detectors by integrating several learning steps in a single algorithm, as well as by proposing a number of improvements that accelerate detection

Political strategies of external support for democratization

Political strategies of external support to democratization are contrasted and critically examined in respect of the United States and European Union. The analysis begins by defining its terms of reference and addresses the question of what it means to have a strategy. The account briefly notes the goals lying behind democratization support and their relationship with the wider foreign policy process, before considering what a successful strategy would look like and how that relates to the selection of candidates. The literature's attempts to identify strategy and its recommendations for better strategies are compared and assessed. Overall, the article argues that the question of political strategies of external support for democratization raises several distinct but related issues including the who?, what?, why?, and how? On one level, strategic choices can be expected to echo the comparative advantage of the "supporter." On a different level, the strategies cannot be divorced from the larger foreign policy framework. While it is correct to say that any sound strategy for support should be grounded in a theoretical understanding of democratization, the literature on strategies reveals something even more fundamental: divergent views about the nature of politics itself. The recommendations there certainly pinpoint weaknesses in the actual strategies of the United States and Europe but they have their own limitations too. In particular, in a world of increasing multi-level governance strategies for supporting democratization should go beyond preoccupation with just an "outside-in" approach

Review: After Equality: Why a Decreasing Turnout Harms Democracy (Armin Schäfer: Der Verlust politischer Gleichheit: Warum die sinkende Wahlbeteiligung der Demokratie schadet)

No abstrac

Towards Applying Cryptographic Security Models to Real-World Systems

The cryptographic methodology of formal security analysis usually works in three steps: choosing a security model, describing a system and its intended security properties, and creating a formal proof of security. For basic cryptographic primitives and simple protocols this is a well understood process and is performed regularly. For more complex systems, as they are in use in real-world settings it is rarely applied, however. In practice, this often leads to missing or incomplete descriptions of the security properties and requirements of such systems, which in turn can lead to insecure implementations and consequent security breaches. One of the main reasons for the lack of application of formal models in practice is that they are particularly difficult to use and to adapt to new use cases. With this work, we therefore aim to investigate how cryptographic security models can be used to argue about the security of real-world systems. To this end, we perform case studies of three important types of real-world systems: data outsourcing, computer networks and electronic payment. First, we give a unified framework to express and analyze the security of data outsourcing schemes. Within this framework, we define three privacy objectives: \emph{data privacy}, \emph{query privacy}, and \emph{result privacy}. We show that data privacy and query privacy are independent concepts, while result privacy is consequential to them. We then extend our framework to allow the modeling of \emph{integrity} for the specific use case of file systems. To validate our model, we show that existing security notions can be expressed within our framework and we prove the security of CryFS---a cryptographic cloud file system. Second, we introduce a model, based on the Universal Composability (UC) framework, in which computer networks and their security properties can be described We extend it to incorporate time, which cannot be expressed in the basic UC framework, and give formal tools to facilitate its application. For validation, we use this model to argue about the security of architectures of multiple firewalls in the presence of an active adversary. We show that a parallel composition of firewalls exhibits strictly better security properties than other variants. Finally, we introduce a formal model for the security of electronic payment protocols within the UC framework. Using this model, we prove a set of necessary requirements for secure electronic payment. Based on these findings, we discuss the security of current payment protocols and find that most are insecure. We then give a simple payment protocol inspired by chipTAN and photoTAN and prove its security within our model. We conclude that cryptographic security models can indeed be used to describe the security of real-world systems. They are, however, difficult to apply and always need to be adapted to the specific use case

Demographic Invasion, Assamese Identity and Geopolitics

This article critically examines several dimensions of the Bangladeshi migration to Assam, beginning with the historical background and the factors that led to the Assam Movement. It is argued that the seeds of the apparent failure of deporting illegal Bangladeshis were already implanted in Assam Accord. An analysis of the numbers of the Bangladeshi migrants in Assam and the problems of ascertaining such numbers has been carried out. The impact of large-scale migration on Assamese culture and politics is discussed in view of the balkanisation of the ethnic groups in Assam. Attention has been drawn to the dangers of geopolitics in terms of the proposed North East economic zone. Lastly, a relatively conciliatory and accommodating approach to solve the Bangladeshi issue has been suggested in light of the fact that historical events have overtaken some significant   provisions of the 28-year old Assam Accord

The exclusion of denizens within the Irish social and political opportunity structure: The cosmopolitan case of Muslims in the Republic of Ireland

Delaney and Cavatorta discuss the conditions of Muslims in the Republic of Ireland in terms of political participation. The idea is to investigate the background for the development of a distinct cosmopolitanism amongst the Muslim minorities present in the country. This raises important questions concerning identification, negotiation and belonging

Private Function Evaluation with Cards

Card-based protocols allow to evaluate an arbitrary fixed Boolean function on a hidden input to obtain a hidden output, without the executer learning anything about either of the two (e.g., [12]). We explore the case where implements a universal function, i.e., is given the encoding ⟨⟩ of a program and an input and computes (⟨⟩,)=(). More concretely, we consider universal circuits, Turing machines, RAM machines, and branching programs, giving secure and conceptually simple card-based protocols in each case. We argue that card-based cryptography can be performed in a setting that is only very weakly interactive, which we call the “surveillance” model. Here, when Alice executes a protocol on the cards, the only task of Bob is to watch that Alice does not illegitimately turn over cards and that she shuffles in a way that nobody knows anything about the total permutation applied to the cards. We believe that because of this very limited interaction, our results can be called program obfuscation. As a tool, we develop a useful sub-protocol $_{II}$↑ that couples the two equal-length sequences , and jointly and obliviously permutes them with the permutation ∈ that lexicographically minimizes (). We argue that this generalizes ideas present in many existing card-based protocols. In fact, AND, XOR, bit copy [37], coupled rotation shuffles [30] and the “permutation division” protocol of [22] can all be expressed as “coupled sort protocols”