From Blockchain to Internet-based Voting

Blockchain has been one of the hottest topics among the state-of-the-art technologies. As the enabling technology for Bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency, blockchain is an append-only distributed ledger that is virtually impossible to attack. Hence, blockchain holds great promises as the fundamental technology to enable Internet-based electronic voting. However, Internet-based voting has additional requirements than what monetary transactions such as Bitcoin have to offer. In this thesis, we discuss the key differences of a blockchain-based voting system with digital currencies. In this context we also highlight the requirements, review existing proposed solutions, and outline possible improvements. Specifically, we propose several schemes on how to tackle various issues such as authentication, privacy, transparency, scalability, safety, as well as several other practical aspects of the platform. Most importantly, a blockchain-based voting system needs to ensure that the prospect of tampering with the election result is to a large extent eliminated. At the same time, the voting platform should have proper performance characteristics, i.e. sufficient throughput, for a voting of large magnitude such as a presidential election. Being heavily linked together, security and performance should be investigated in a unified framework to capture the interaction effects between the two. To address this concern, for the first time, we will study the performance and security implications of the blockchain voting system in a quantitative manner, using a blockchain simulator developed by researchers at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. In our analysis, we will specifically investigate the stale block rate and relative mining share of the dishonest network, as the central security measures, as a function of important network parameters that determine the throughput of the network, i.e. block size and block interval. Ultimately, we focus on selfish mining and eclipse attacks as the most critical threats to the integrity of the blockchain voting in order to find the optimal network parameters

From Blockchain to Internet-based Voting

Blockchain has been one of the hottest topics among the state-of-the-art technologies. As the enabling technology for Bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency, blockchain is an append-only distributed ledger that is virtually impossible to attack. Hence, blockchain holds great promises as the fundamental technology to enable Internet-based electronic voting. However, Internet-based voting has additional requirements than what monetary transactions such as Bitcoin have to offer. In this thesis, we discuss the key differences of a blockchain-based voting system with digital currencies. In this context we also highlight the requirements, review existing proposed solutions, and outline possible improvements. Specifically, we propose several schemes on how to tackle various issues such as authentication, privacy, transparency, scalability, safety, as well as several other practical aspects of the platform. Most importantly, a blockchain-based voting system needs to ensure that the prospect of tampering with the election result is to a large extent eliminated. At the same time, the voting platform should have proper performance characteristics, i.e. sufficient throughput, for a voting of large magnitude such as a presidential election. Being heavily linked together, security and performance should be investigated in a unified framework to capture the interaction effects between the two. To address this concern, for the first time, we will study the performance and security implications of the blockchain voting system in a quantitative manner, using a blockchain simulator developed by researchers at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. In our analysis, we will specifically investigate the stale block rate and relative mining share of the dishonest network, as the central security measures, as a function of important network parameters that determine the throughput of the network, i.e. block size and block interval. Ultimately, we focus on selfish mining and eclipse attacks as the most critical threats to the integrity of the blockchain voting in order to find the optimal network parameters

Designing the Business Model of Herbal Pharmaceutical Knowledge based Companies

Today, research has indicated Knowledge based companies as a potential area in promoting knowledge economy, and due to the substantial added-value they make in the knowledge economy of the countries, these companies play a pivotal role in producing national income. Considering the novelty of the field of designing business models for herbal pharmaceutical Knowledge based companies and the importance of these companies among Knowledge based companies on the one hand, and the lack of academic research on exploring these companies on the other hand, the need for a comprehensive business model to help understand the components of herbal pharmaceutical Knowledge based companies seems urgent. This study aimed at identifying and prioritizing the components of business models and also structuring a business model of herbal pharmaceutical Knowledge based companies around these components. The Friedman test was used to prioritize the importance of the components of Knowledge based companies' business models. The statements of the present study's questionnaire were collected from the literature and the experts' opinions, too. Out of the 130 distributed questionnaires, 119 were collected which were analyzed by employing the Cochran test of the SPSS Statistics software. The components of key activities with the mean ranking of 6.76, cost structure with 6.09, and key resources with 6.06 were the most important components and customer relationships with 5.67, value propositions with 5.45, key partnerships with 4.10, distribution channels with 4.04, customer segment with 3.60, and revenue streams with 3.24 were the least important ones. Research paper Keywords: Business model, Knowledge based companies, Herbs, Friedman’s test Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Asadnezhad, M., Hejazi, R., Akbari, M. & Hadizadeh, E. (2017). Designing the Business Model of Herbal Pharmaceutical Knowledge based Companies, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, 5(2), 47–63

A Linguistic Analysis of Errors in News Agencies and Websites of Iran

In this research, we analyzed the common errors of three highly visited news websites of Iran within three syntactic, morphological and typographic-orthographic level to scrutinize the pitfalls of news websites. The data was gathered from three news websites of ALEF, ASRE-IRAN AND TABNAK which are listed among the most visited news websites in Iran based on Alexa ranking site. The findings showed that in studying the syntactic level of the materials on the news sites, one can face with a breach in the unmarked constituent order of Persian language and asymmetrical verbs deletion. Furthermore, the writing errors in the news are more of the typographical errors, and lack of using punctuations in the news and the commonest linguistic errors in morphological level in news sites are lexical redundancy

Peer Feedback in Learning a Foreign Language in Facebook

Feedback can have different forms and functions depending on its objectives as well as its provider teacher feedback student feedback peer feedback written feedback oral feedback etc One of the most constructive forms of feedback may be peer feedback since it involves group learning Van Gennip Segers and Tillema 2010 According to Topping 1998 p 250 peer feedback is an agreement in which individuals consider the amount level value worth quality or success of the products or outcomes of learning of peers of similar status Cunningham 1992 argues that the interaction and communication that result fromthe production of feedback get more important in online instructional courses than in face to face courses because in his view nothing can bring about learning more than the dialogue among the community members Hewitt 2000 and Tuzi 2004 also emphasize the importance of peer feedback in online environments and point out that in such environments peer feedback can influence the students outcomes more than in face-to-face environments because of the ease of communication as well as the absence of affective factors Thus researchers believe that deep learning can take place in online settings in which students give and receive feedback from one another in a calm stress-free and individualized environment What do we know about feedback from previous researc

Designing the Business Model of Herbal Pharmaceutical Knowledge based Companies

Today, research has indicated Knowledge based companies as a potential area in promoting knowledge economy, and due to the substantial added-value they make in the knowledge economy of the countries, these companies play a pivotal role in producing national income. Considering the novelty of the field of designing business models for herbal pharmaceutical Knowledge based companies and the importance of these companies among Knowledge based companies on the one hand, and the lack of academic research on exploring these companies on the other hand, the need for a comprehensive business model to help understand the components of herbal pharmaceutical Knowledge based companies seems urgent. This study aimed at identifying and prioritizing the components of business models and also structuring a business model of herbal pharmaceutical Knowledge based companies around these components. The Friedman test was used to prioritize the importance of the components of Knowledge based companies' business models. The statements of the present study's questionnaire were collected from the literature and the experts' opinions, too. Out of the 130 distributed questionnaires, 119 were collected which were analyzed by employing the Cochran test of the SPSS Statistics software. The components of key activities with the mean ranking of 6.76, cost structure with 6.09, and key resources with 6.06 were the most important components and customer relationships with 5.67, value propositions with 5.45, key partnerships with 4.10, distribution channels with 4.04, customer segment with 3.60, and revenue streams with 3.24 were the least important ones. Research paper Keywords: Business model, Knowledge based companies, Herbs, Friedman’s test Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Asadnezhad, M., Hejazi, R., Akbari, M. & Hadizadeh, E. (2017). Designing the Business Model of Herbal Pharmaceutical Knowledge based Companies, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, 5(2), 47–63

Efficient OLAP Operations For RDF Analytics

International audienceRDF is the leading data model for the Semantic Web, and dedicated query languages such as SPARQL 1.1, featuring in particular aggregation, allow extracting information from RDF graphs. A framework for analytical processing of RDF data was introduced in [1], where analytical schemas and analytical queries (cubes) are fully redesigned for heterogeneous, semantic-rich RDF graphs. In this novel analytical setting, we consider the following optimization problem: how to reuse the materialized result of a given RDF analytical query (cube) in order to compute the answer to another cube. We provide view-based rewriting algorithms for these cube transformations, and demonstrate experimentally their practical interest