Autocracies and policy accumulation

The tendency of vote-seeking politicians to produce ever-more policies in response to the citizens’ demands has been identified as a central driver of the process of “policy accumulation.” If we accept this premise, policy accumulation should be a central feature of modern democracies but overall be less pronounced in autocracies. Due to its highly ambivalent nature, policy accumulation and its implications may thus constitute an important but so far neglected facets of the new system competition between democracies and autocracies. In this article, we test this argument in the context of the authoritarian regime of Singapore. Singapore is one of the very few autocracies that display elements of political competition and has a level of socio-economic development that is comparable to advanced democracies. Singapore thus constitutes a least-likely case for low levels of policy accumulation. By studying changes in Singapore’s environmental policy over a period of more than four decades (1976 to 2020) and by contrasting the patterns observed with the policy developments in 21 OECD democracies, we find that autocratic regimes do indeed tend to accumulate less than democratic regimes. More precisely, we find that Singapore (1) has only produced about one-fourth of the environmental policy measures of an “average” democracy and (2) is constantly the country with the lowest level of policy accumulation in our sample. These findings hold even when controlling for alternative explanations, such as the effectiveness of the administration and the government’s ability to opt for stricter and more hierarchical forms of intervention

Antiangiogenic Activity and in Silico Cereblon Binding Analysis of Novel Thalidomide Analogs

Funding: This research was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute (ZIA SC006538); in part with Federal funds from the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, National Institutes of Health, under contract HHSN261200800001E; the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health; and a Wellcome Trust-NIH PhD Studentship to SB, WDF, and NV (Grant number 098252/Z/12/Z). Acknowledgments: The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products or organizations imply endorsement by the US Government.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Intrusion detection systems for IP telephony networks

Intrusion detection systems (IDS) provide security for network systems. They are used in computer networks to detect violations against security policies or unusual events that could lead towards a security thread. Telephone networks based on the internet protocol (IP) called IP telephony (IPT) are a recent development in network usage and will become a common application in the next years as they can provide integrated services based on telephony communications. We identify IPT security demands as well as risks and analyze the possibility of adding IDS concepts to IPT systems. Digital audio watermarking is a technology able to provide different security aspects in this context. The combination of classic IDS and audio watermarking leads to new and promising way of user and data authentication and monitoring of calls

Wie lässt sich eine Manipulation von Dokumenten und Bildern erkennen?

Digitale Daten können mit verbreiteten und leicht bedienbaren Programmen manipuliert werden. Zugleich nimmt die Bedeutung digitaler Informationen in vielen Geschäftsprozessen zu. Daher ist es wichtiger denn je, die Integrität und Authentizität der Informationen sicherzustellen. Je nach Szenario können aktive Maßnahmen wie digitale Signaturen oder digitale Wasserzeichen zum Schutz der Daten eingesetzt werden, aber oft sind passive, forensische Methoden nötig, um Manipulationen nachträglich aufzuspüren. Wir geben in diesem Artikel einen Überblick über Erkennungsmethoden, die für Texte, Bilder, hybride Dokumente und strukturierte Daten zur Verfügung stehen

Performance Indicators for Subsea Lifting Operations - Report of 1st Marine Operations Forum

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Spin-and Charge-Density Excitations in Quantum Dots: A Raman Study

In this article we review our recent experimental and theoretical investigations of electronic excitations in GaAs–AlGaAs quantum dots. In the experimental structures we have observed collective spin- (SDE) and charge-density excitations (CDE), and, under conditions of extreme resonance, excitations which can be attributed to nearly unrenormalized single-particle-like transitions (SPE). We compare our experimental results to a theory based on the time-dependent local-density approximation (TDLDA) concerning (i) parity selection rules and (ii) conditions when SPE occur in the spectra. This shows that only a theory which takes into account the resonance enhancements mediated by the valence band states can qualitatively reproduce the experimental findings. To get a deeper understanding of the character of the SPE, we present an intriguing comparison of Kohn–Sham calculations with results of an exact treatment by numerical diagonalization. We demonstrate that even for six electrons per quantum dot, SPE can be expected

Single-particle-like states in few-electron quantum dots

We investigate theoretically Raman spectra of few-electron quantum dots. Spectra obtained by an exact many-body treatment and by a time-dependent local-density approximation are compared. We show that single-particle-like excitations can be expected for systems with only six electrons. The energies of these excitations are close to the Kohn-Sham level spacings

Fast Indexing Strategies for Robust Image Hashes

Similarity preserving hashing can aid forensic investigations by providing means to recognize known content and modified versions of known content. However, this raises the need for efficient indexing strategies which support the similarity search. We present and evaluate two indexing strategies for robust image hashes created by the ForBild tool. These strategies are based on generic indexing approaches for Hamming spaces, i.e. spaces of bit vectors equipped with the Hamming distance. Our first strategy uses a vantage point tree, and the second strategy uses locality-sensitive hashing (LSH). Although the calculation of Hamming distances is inexpensive and hence challenging for indexing strategies, we improve the speed for identifying similar items by a factor of about 30 with the tree-based index, and a factor of more than 100 with the LSH index. While the tree-based index retrieves all approximate matches, the speed of LSH is paid with a small rate of false negatives

Automated System for Fleet Benchmarking and Assessment of Technical Condition

On-board Energy systems in vessels have to use fuel efficiently to maintain ship speed at lowest possible costs. This paper describes how to use ship operational data to improve and maintain efficiency of the vessel’s power production with respect to the condition and performance of equipment. The paper describes an overview of an automated Technical Operations Performance (TOP) Monitoring service. TOP monitors the performance of marine main and auxiliary diesel engines by use of the information collected onboard vessels at regular intervals. Performance data are stored in xml-reports sent as email attachments from ship to shore. This communication is reliable and cost efficient for merchant ships that are on-line only for shorter periods. Load, ISO and environmental corrections make results valid for benchmarking and trending. The service aggregates the hierarchical information obtained from different sources by transferring measurement readings into unified indicators, the Technical Condition Index (TCI) [1]. Experts manually check the automatically generated performance reports and add additional guidance on options to improve power production and machinery conditions analyzing the available data with respect to different targets, such as low engine degradation and high fuel efficiency. The performance reports then influence business processes indicating possible causes for loss of performance in equipment and possible erroneous instrumentation, and the need for maintenance actions. The obtained TCI values show the performance of individual units, or for a fleet/class of equipment and vessels.acceptedVersio