Initial Conditions for Imperfect Dark Matter

We discuss initial conditions for the recently proposed Imperfect Dark Matter (Modified Dust). We show that they are adiabatic under fairly moderate assumptions about the cosmological evolution of the Universe at the relevant times.Comment: 16 pages; major revision, references added, conclusions unchange

A comprehensive meta-analysis of cryptographic security mechanisms for cloud computing

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The concept of cloud computing offers measurable computational or information resources as a service over the Internet. The major motivation behind the cloud setup is economic benefits, because it assures the reduction in expenditure for operational and infrastructural purposes. To transform it into a reality there are some impediments and hurdles which are required to be tackled, most profound of which are security, privacy and reliability issues. As the user data is revealed to the cloud, it departs the protection-sphere of the data owner. However, this brings partly new security and privacy concerns. This work focuses on these issues related to various cloud services and deployment models by spotlighting their major challenges. While the classical cryptography is an ancient discipline, modern cryptography, which has been mostly developed in the last few decades, is the subject of study which needs to be implemented so as to ensure strong security and privacy mechanisms in today’s real-world scenarios. The technological solutions, short and long term research goals of the cloud security will be described and addressed using various classical cryptographic mechanisms as well as modern ones. This work explores the new directions in cloud computing security, while highlighting the correct selection of these fundamental technologies from cryptographic point of view

GENDER AND PUBLIC SPENDING ON EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN: A CASE STUDY OF DISAGGREGATED BENEFIT INCIDENCE

To what extent has government education spending in Pakistan been effective in reducing gender gaps in enrollments? To answer this question, this article reviews the benefit incidence of government education spending. It finds that government subsidies directed towards primary education are pro poor in all four provinces of Pakistan. Moreover, females has disadvantage in access to primary education. However, government subsidies directed towards higher education poorly targeted and poorest income group receives less than the riches income group and indeed favor those who are better off. Similarly, the gender disparity in access to public subsidy is higher at tertiary level and lowest at primary level, which also reflects poor targeting. Improving targeting to the poor as well as better female participation involves not simply rearranging the public subsidies, but also addressing the constraints that prevent the poor and females from accessing these services.Gender, Public Expenditure on Education, Benefit Incidence

Gender and Public Spending on Education in Pakistan: A Case Study of Disaggregated Benefit Incidence

It is generally believed that education is one of the basic rights of every human being, irrespective of sex, age, creed, religion, etc. Moreover, the target of universal primary education cannot be achieved without female access to educational opportunities, which contains several external benefits. In addition, access to educational opportunities assumes prime importance for empowerment of women. However, inequalities in access to education between males and females can be found in many countries across the world including Pakistan. According to conventional wisdom, a combination of cultural, social, and economic factors are responsible for placing young girls and women at a serious disadvantage vis-a-vis access to school and the prospect of completing their education. This disadvantage can be altered through public policies including gender sensitive public spending on education. The above assertion about the role of public policy is based on the theory of public finance1, which demonstrates that public expenditure on education can affect the population in a number of ways, which has significant gender dimensions. For example, government spending on primary education is likely to generate more income for women than spending on universities, for the simple reason that there are relatively more women primary school teachers than women university lecturers. Moreover, these expenditures provide subsidized educational services, which is a form of “in kind transfers”. These “in-kind transfers” improve the current well-being of the recipients, and enhance their longer-run income-earning potential. They can be considered as both current and capital transfers to the recipients, and therefore can be termed as the “benefit incidence” of public spending. The main concern of this paper is to assess the gender dimension of the benefitincidence”. The tudy has two basic objectives. First and foremost, it aims to investigate which income group actually benefits from the government’s subsidized.