Literature Overview - Privacy in Online Social Networks

In recent years, Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become an important\ud part of daily life for many. Users build explicit networks to represent their\ud social relationships, either existing or new. Users also often upload and share a plethora of information related to their personal lives. The potential privacy risks of such behavior are often underestimated or ignored. For example, users often disclose personal information to a larger audience than intended. Users may even post information about others without their consent. A lack of experience and awareness in users, as well as proper tools and design of the OSNs, perpetuate the situation. This paper aims to provide insight into such privacy issues and looks at OSNs, their associated privacy risks, and existing research into solutions. The final goal is to help identify the research directions for the Kindred Spirits project

Measures of corporate earnings: what number is best?

Revelations of corporate fraud in 2002 shook the public's confidence in financial reporting and led to calls for reform. Without credible, transparent, and comparable financial information, investors, auditors, and others cannot make decisions that are essential to the efficient functioning of the economy. But while rules can be improved, it is not possible to achieve a rigid standard that applies uniformly to every company. This Economic Commentary explains why.Corporate profits

Electrically Guided DNA Immobilization and Multiplexed DNA Detection with Nanoporous Gold Electrodes.

Molecular diagnostics have significantly advanced the early detection of diseases, where the electrochemical sensing of biomarkers (e.g., DNA, RNA, proteins) using multiple electrode arrays (MEAs) has shown considerable promise. Nanostructuring the electrode surface results in higher surface coverage of capture probes and more favorable orientation, as well as transport phenomena unique to nanoscale, ultimately leading to enhanced sensor performance. The central goal of this study is to investigate the influence of electrode nanostructure on electrically-guided immobilization of DNA probes for nucleic acid detection in a multiplexed format. To that end, we used nanoporous gold (np-Au) electrodes that reduced the limit of detection (LOD) for DNA targets by two orders of magnitude compared to their planar counterparts, where the LOD was further improved by an additional order of magnitude after reducing the electrode diameter. The reduced electrode diameter also made it possible to create a np-Au MEA encapsulated in a microfluidic channel. The electro-grafting reduced the necessary incubation time to immobilize DNA probes into the porous electrodes down to 10 min (25-fold reduction compared to passive immobilization) and allowed for grafting a different DNA probe sequence onto each electrode in the array. The resulting platform was successfully used for the multiplexed detection of three different biomarker genes relevant to breast cancer diagnosis

Entrepreneural Personality Features of Business Ownerseffect On Entrepreneurship Trends

In addition to education and training, the environment in which he was born and raised, the educational status of his family and his family, his cultural structure and the talents and lifestyles of the people he modeled are effective in the development of human factor. In addition, one's innate character traits, lifestyle, imagination, self-sense and emotional structure also play an important role in gaining entrepreneurial personality traits. In this study, entrepreneurial personality traits and entrepreneurship tendencies of higher education students in Cyprus are investigated and the effect of entrepreneurial personality traits on entrepreneurship tendency is investigated. In addition, the effect of prominent demographic characteristics on these factors is being investigated. In this context, a survey was conducted for the students and the data were evaluated statistically. As a result of the statistical analysis of the obtained data, it was found that the variables of desire for success, innovation, uncertainty tolerance, locus of control, sensuality, family, gender affect the students' entrepreneurial tendency. The sample of the study consists of students studying at the Faculties of Business Administration of universities in Cyprus. &nbsp

Transaction Propagation on Permissionless Blockchains: Incentive and Routing Mechanisms

Existing permissionless blockchain solutions rely on peer-to-peer propagation mechanisms, where nodes in a network transfer transaction they received to their neighbors. Unfortunately, there is no explicit incentive for such transaction propagation. Therefore, existing propagation mechanisms will not be sustainable in a fully decentralized blockchain with rational nodes. In this work, we formally define the problem of incentivizing nodes for transaction propagation. We propose an incentive mechanism where each node involved in the propagation of a transaction receives a share of the transaction fee. We also show that our proposal is Sybil-proof. Furthermore, we combine the incentive mechanism with smart routing to reduce the communication and storage costs at the same time. The proposed routing mechanism reduces the redundant transaction propagation from the size of the network to a factor of average shortest path length. The routing mechanism is built upon a specific type of consensus protocol where the round leader who creates the transaction block is known in advance. Note that our routing mechanism is a generic one and can be adopted independently from the incentive mechanism.Comment: 2018 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technolog

A global optimal control methodology and its application to a mobile robot model

A global optimal control algorithm is developed and applied to an omni-directional mobile robot model. The aim is to search and find the most intense signal source among other signal sources in the operation region of the robot. In other words, the control problem is to find the global extremum point when there are local extremas. The locations of the signal sources are unknown and it is assumed that the signal magnitudes are maximum at the sources and their magnitudes are decreasing away from the sources. The distribution characteristics of the signals are unknown, i.e. the gradients of the signal distribution functions are unknown. The control algorithm also doesn't need any position measurement of the robot itself. Only the signal magnitude should be measured via a sensor mounted on the robot. The simulation study shows the performance of the controller.Publisher's Versio