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Certain advances in election technology, such as online voting, promise to reduce the administrative overhead of running an election. This has breathed new life into the idea of direct democracy, where voters play a more active role in setting legislation. However it is anticipated that a steady stream of referendums would generate voter fatigue. To combat this fatigue, voters could be allowed to delegate their votes to other (more knowledgeable) voters. This idea is old but has been recently reinvented under the name liquid democracy. In this paper, we consider how ballot secrecy should be defined for liquid democracy. We first show that a natural definition of full secrecy leads to several undesirable outcomes. We then show that these are very difficult to address without enabling voter coercion and vote buying. The purpose of the paper is not to affirm liquid democracy; rather, it is to raise awareness of unseen complexity hiding under our initial presumption that liquid democracy could effortlessly support a secret ballot.

We provide a UTXO model of blockchain transactions that is able to represent both credit and debt on the same blockchain. Ordinarily, the UTXO model is solely used to represent credit and the representation of credit and debit together is achieved using the account model because of its support for balances. However, the UTXO model provides superior privacy, safety, and scalability when compared to the account model. In this work, we introduce a UTXO model that has the flexibility of balances with the usual benefits of the UTXO model. This model extends the conventional UTXO model, which represents credits as unmatched outputs, by representing debts as unmatched inputs. We apply our model to solving the problem of transparency in reverse mortgage markets, in which some transparency is necessary for a healthy market but complete transparency leads to adverse outcomes. Here the pseudonymous properties of the UTXO model protect the privacy of loan recipients while still allowing an aggregate view of the loan market. We present a prototype of our implementation in Tendermint and discuss the design and its benefits.

This case study examines the European Transport White Paper of 2011 as an example of a planning domain application. The European Union is an economic and political union of some 28 states in Europe. Some of the key premises of the European Union have been to open up markets to free trade within the region and to seek to harmonise technical standards, laws, and processes to facilitate the free movement of people and goods. It is interesting that sustainability is also emphasized as an overarching goal for all areas of European policy making. The European Union employs a wide range of assessment and monitoring mechanisms to track progress on the implementation and performance of policies in the transport area, which is seen as a keystone for the so-called Single European Market. These mechanisms clearly reflect tensions between the different goals and pose challenges for the interpretation of indicators on transportation trends. Also the sheer size and complexity of the Union raises challenges for the effective application of indicator based evidence. The chapter will place the indicator- and application rich example of the ex ante assessment of the European Transport Policy White Paper in the wider context European Union policy making.

Presenting your paper at a meeting is an important part of sharing your research with the orthopaedic community. Presentations are generally short and sharp, and careful preparation is key to ensure that the premise, findings, and relevance of your work are successfully conveyed. For most conference papers, the structure will mirror that of a scientific manuscript, with an introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusions. Anticipation of potential questions will help to clarify your research for the audience.

Critical evaluation of each section of a paper is needed in order to properly assess the purpose and quality of the paper and to understand the degree to which the results can influence clinical practice. Reviewing a paper is a skill that is best honed by practice, but there is no real formal training during medical school or residency on what to evaluate during a review and what the review process involves for a journal. Thus, this chapter will highlight the major points to review in each section of a paper and will provide a guide for young investigators to use while interpreting the findings of a paper. Additionally, the components of a review submission to a journal will be outlined.

Meta-analyses represent an unbiased way of summarising the evidence on a specific topic. A meta-analysis is a formal process for gathering and evaluating literature to answer a specific question, using statistics to combine the data from randomised controlled trials. However, their use is controversial, as there are several critical conditions and methodological considerations that could produce misleading conclusions. A wide and extensive systematic search, clear-cut inclusion criteria and appropriate data extraction are mandatory when it comes to obtaining all the evidence relating to the investigated topic. Statistical analyses should be performed carefully and all sources of heterogeneity should be explored to avoid dangerous bias. The design and the quality of the included studies should be clearly presented to show the reader the overall quality of the evidence that is presented in the meta-analysis. Finally, the results should be interpreted critically from both a clinical and a statistical point of view.

This contribution deals with the ability or not of the European Union (EU) to act in situations of serious systemic violations of the rule of law in a Member State. It does this by looking at the different available mechanisms including Article 7 in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the new Rule of Law Framework and excluding infringement procedures before the Court of Justice of the EU. The contribution also discusses whether as a result of a serious breach of the TEU a Member State could be expelled from the organisation. The TEU contains no provision on expulsion, but the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties potentially does. In conclusion, the contribution finds that neither mechanism can be likened to a weapon, nor are they probably dissuasive, but they might be persuasive thanks to a persistent and protracted dialogue. The EU has no realistic choice but to be a gentle civiliser of Member States.

The first white paper—Human Rights in China was released by the Chinese government in 1991. This white paper regarded full implementation of human rights as a great ideal and loft goal that human beings have been pursuing. The release of this white paper broke the forbidden area of human rights research, and it exhibited great achievements of human rights protection in China by clarifying the attitudes and principles of the Chinese government to human rights. It maintained the international image of China and laid a foundation for human rights protection career in China. The white paper has become a milestone in the history of Chinese human rights development.

This article elaborates processes of the production and development of ink deckle-edged paper-cutting animation and summarizes its artistic style. The overall style of ink deckle-edged paper-cutting animation has the unique beauty of artistic conception of Chinese traditional arts, modeling of character is featured on fine and delicate, and has characteristic of shading in Chinese ink painting. Its theme is refined and rich in philosophy. At the same time, this article also explores problems existed and future development of ink deckle-edged paper-cutting animation.

Various e-paper devices also have been released (e.g. Amazon's Kindle DXTM), and their features include paper-like display and low power consumption. In our previous studies, in high light conditions, readability of the backlight LCD dropped significantly, because of the glare of the surrounding background. On the other hand, the readability of the electronic paper is increased, it was easy to read than backlit LCD. The e-paper that have low contrast ratio, evaluation of readability was low. In low light, the evaluation of the readability of the backlit LCD was high. The aim of this experiment was to verify the minimum illumination for comfortable reading with e-paper in low illumination (300 or less lx).

In this paper, Moran index of spatial statistics, the spatial lag and spatial error model of spatial econometric economics, combined with Griliches & Jaffe knowledge production function(Knowledge Production Function, KPF), were used in spatial econometric analysis on China’s provincial paper manufacturing RD also find that China’s 31 provincial contribution of green innovation in paper manufacturing sector was mainly achieved by enterprises R&D investment, while the combination of university and enterprise did not show significant effect on green innovation spillovers. The results show effect of knowledge spillovers are exist, but not significant. In the end, according to the conclusions, we draw some advices.

Chinese folk paper-cut is the most representative of artistic form in Chinese folk, which is the basis of folk art and the maternal art, providing good learning and reference for modern graphic design has played. This paper focuses on an in-depth analysis of how the traditional Chinese folk paper-cut art to make combination and fusion in modern graphic design.

We describe a multilayer perceptron model to predict the laboratory measurements of paper quality using the instantaneous state of the papermaking production process. Actual industrial data from a pilot paper machine was used. The final model met its goal accuracy 95.7% of the time at best (tensile index quality) and 66.7% at worst (beta formation). We anticipate usage possibilities in lowering machine prototyping expenses, and possibly in quality control at production sites.

Almost everyone agrees on the central role that simulation plays in the understanding of complex systems such as the 3D network formed by stacking millions of fibers on top of each other in a paper sheet. Clearly, the computational implementation of the few models which describe the microstructure of paper is far from trivial. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, there is no description in the literature of the methodology used for programming these algorithms. As a contribution towards overcoming this gap, the present article explains the software implementation of key features of a 3D random fiber deposition model into a high-level MATLAB computer code.

While reading documents, people commonly make annotations: they underline or highlight text and write comments in the margin. Making annotations during reading activities has been shown to be an efficient method for aiding understanding and interpretation. In this paper we present a comparison of paper-based and online annotations in the workplace. Online annotations were collected in a laboratory study, making use of the Web-based annotation tool SpreadCrumbs. A field study was out to gather paper-based annotations. The results validate the benefits of Web annotations. A comparison of the online annotations with paper-based annotations provides several insights in user needs for enhanced online annotation tools, from which design guidelines can be drawn.

The user view of the quality of IT-supported health care processes is very important for a successful performance of these processes. Current ap- proaches to process quality do not capture this point of view explicitly. This po- sition paper provides a first collection of indicators for this view. Classification: Process quality, Workflow management, Process optimization, Compliance, Process modelling.

Most electronic payment systems for applications, such as eTicketing and eToll, involve a single entity acting as both merchant and bank. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy-preserving post-payment eCash system suitable for this particular use case that we refer to, afterwards, as private eCash. To this end, we introduce a new partially blind signature scheme based on a recent Algebraic MAC scheme due to Chase et al. Unlike previous constructions, it allows multiple presentations of the same signature in an unlinkable way. Using it, our system is the first versatile private eCash system where users must only hold a sole reusable token (i.e. a reusable coin spendable to a unique merchant). It also enables identity and token revocations as well as flexible payments. Indeed, our payment tokens are updated in a partially blinded way to collect refunds without invading user’s privacy. By implementing it on a Global Platform compliant SIM card, we show its efficiency and suitability for real-world use cases, even for delay-sensitive applications and on constrained devices as a transaction can be performed in only 205 ms.

Producing culture, which should be a wide-ranging, pervasive policy goal, which can be achieved by using a high rate of creativity, developing productive structures such as those of cultural clusters or districts, valorizing traditional culture, attracting talent and improving the production of human capital. But to achieve a goal of this significance a plan for using available knowledge is needed. This is why the conclusions ask for the elaboration of a White Book on Creativity, which would determine both short and long-term priorities.

Though computing environments are developed very rapidly, people use paper documents as ever. In this paper, we propose the Advanced Paper Document (APD), which expands the function of paper documents, based on the Augmented Desk system. To incorporate physical paper documents with digital documents in a projection display system without being required to use additional sensors, we use a gesture recognition method. The APD has advantages of paper and digital documents, and provides a user with a natural and intuitive environment. As shown by experimental results, the proposed the APD is applicable to provide an interactive computing environment.

The methods of applying Rasch Model in the analysis of test paper quality are as follows: Wright Map which shows the reader a general knowledge of the whole survey, Multidimensionality Investigations which is used to examine whether test paper measures the latent trait (reading dimension of subjects), Item Fit Order, Bubble Diagram, and so on. Analysis result shows that the reading literacy pilot test paper for Grades 5–6 students in Guangxi meets the requirement generally. Specifically speaking, with covering different ability students and making up reasonably difficulty items, the test items reach the expected test effect. For better and higher application efficiency, the suggestion for usage is that the choice of Rasch Model function and result analysis methods be based on different test goals.

This chapter includes complementary reading material as detailed background information to specific topics which can be used for an in-depth analysis by instructors and students. Reference to these articles is given at the end of each corresponding chapter.

The future users of a system under development are not necessarily good at talking about the quality they require of that system if they cannot yet experience it. We therefore propose to support them by a simulation of the system under development thus allowing them to experience and validate system quality. Requirements are supposed to be expressed in a user-centered glossary-based semantic model.

Due to new data collection techniques, more data storage and more computing power, we can make and visualize 3D models of the world. However, the quality and interaction capabilities of these reconstructions are limited. It may be only a matter of time until high-quality visualizations with walkthrough and other interactive possibilities are developed. Some of the applications that can benefit from 3D geo-visualization include city architecture, landscape planning, soil analysis, geology, groundwater analysis, and meteorology.

Software architecture (SA) evaluation is a quality assurance technique that is increasingly attracting significant research and commercial interests. A number of SA evaluation methods have been developed. Most of these methods are scenario-based, which relies on the quality of the scenarios used for the evaluation. Most of the existing techniques for developing scenarios use stakeholders and requirements documents as main sources of collecting scenarios. Recently, architectures of large software systems are usually composed of patterns and styles. One of the purposes of using patterns is to develop systems with predictable quality attributes. Since patterns are documented in a format that requires the inclusion of problem, solution and quality consequences, we observed that scenarios are, though as informal text, pervasive in patterns description, which can be extracted and documented for the SA evaluation. Thus, we claim that the patterns can be another source of collecting quality attributes sensitive scenarios. This position paper presents arguments and examples to support our claim.

The successful integration and acceptance of many multi-agent systems into daily lives crucially depends on the ability to develop effective policies for adjustable autonomy. Adjustable autonomy encompasses the strategies by which an agent selects the appropriate entity (itself, a human user, or another agent) to make a decision at key moments when an action is required. We present two formulations that address this issue: user-based and agent-based autonomy. Furthermore, we discuss the current and future implications on systems composed of personal assistant agents, where autonomy issues are of vital interest.

In the current post-genomic era, various aspects of gene function are being uncovered by a large number of experiments producing huge amounts of heterogeneous data at an accelerating pace. Putting all this data together, while taking into account existing knowledge has become a pressing need for developing environments able to explore and simulate biological entities at a system level.

Up to the twenty-first century, paper is still widely adopted for recording and reading. However, paper-based materials are fully capable of presenting abstract concepts and complicated knowledge with static text and figures. Learners usually need timely and adequate supports when encountering difficulties during learning. With a consideration of applying technologies, the learning tool must have a certain mobility and accessibility for acquiring facilitative resources. Using the networking capability of smartphone to access digital content from the Internet to enrich conventional paper-based learning activities is worth investigating. This chapter introduces an augmentation-enhanced learning context with an integration of digital content into paper-based materials in order to facilitate learning. Constructive feedback, scaffolding questioning, and procedural scaffolding are three strategies applied into the instructional designs and learning system. Quasi-experiments for personal learning and collaborative learning were also conducted to evaluate the effects on learning performance. The results suggest that the three instructional designs had significantly positive effects on individual’s learning performance. Team’s learning performance and team’s discourse levels were promoted as well. This chapter lays out a strong foundation for researchers to further explore how to better design different learning strategies for different learning subjects in the augmentation-enhanced learning context using smartphones. It is hoped that educational practitioners are able to obtain concrete ideas and solutions on how to better leverage the benefits of both paper-based content and digital learning materials in a real blended learning environment.

Wikis and tools like Apache Subversion are wide-spread and used in various application areas. This paper presents a concept based on DokuWiki and Apache Subversion SVN to create and manage software-related seminar papers. While DokuWiki presents the content of the seminar paper, SVN manages referenced source code from the DokuWiki pages. The paper presents also experiences on applying this concept to a student seminar. It concludes the advantages and drawbacks of this concept in practice, based on student and advisor evaluations. The outcome is a well-working combination of Wiki and SVN, which in advance requires agreements on some usage-guidelines.

Business Process Management (BPM) (Dumas et al. 2013) investigates how organizations function and can be improved on the basis of their business processes. The starting point for BPM is that organizational performance is a function of process performance. Thus, BPM proposes a set of methods, techniques and tools to discover, analyze, implement, monitor and control business processes, with the ultimate goal of improving these processes. Most importantly, BPM is not just an organizational management discipline. BPM also studies how technology, and particularly information technology, can effectively support the process improvement effort. In the past two decades the field of BPM has been the focus of extensive research, which spans an increasingly growing scope and advances technology in various directions. The main international forum for state-of-the-art research in this field is the International Conference on Business Process Management, or “BPM” for short—an annual meeting of the aca ...

This study compares the performances of paper and electronic media during a reading task that includes frequent page turning. In the experiment, 18 subjects read multi-page documents aloud while referring to endnotes using paper, a large display, and a small display. Results revealed that reading from paper was 6.8% faster than reading from a large electronic display and 11.4% faster than reading from a small electronic display. No difference was found between scores of recognition tests of important words of documents among the three conditions, which indicates that paper is the most effective medium for people to read text speedily without reducing comprehension. Detailed analyses of the reading process show that, in the Paper condition, people perform both text reading and page-turning simultaneously. However, when using computer displays, reading and turning pages were divided completely and performed separately.

Objective: By the bibliometrics of high-quality biomedical engineering (BME) papers from mainland China based on JCR journals in the last 3 years..we try to provide references of formulating the policies of the science & technology development of BME. Methods: We retrieved the papers from web of knowledge and use the TDA and Excel to analyze. Results: from 1992 to 2011, the papers in the fields of medical imaging and biomaterials were increasing rapidly. The main funding agencies in China included the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation. The impact factor, average times cited per paper, average times cited per paper from 2008 to 2010 in the three fields were separately 2.832, 30.1, 3.81; 3.499, 25.2, 6.71; 6.573, 28.56, 6.11. Conclusions: The Chinese government’s financial support plays an important role in the study of Biomedical Engineering. The study of biomedical engineering in Mainland China was active and the quality of BME papers published by the researchers from mainland China had been improved. The tech-focuses in medical imaging, biomaterials, cell & tissue engineering were mainly separately radiotherapy, image comparison and image fusion; silicon, mg alloys, drug and gene delivery systems and carriers; mesenchymal stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.

Over the last 25 years advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have led to significant changes in the way that computers are used within an educational context. As schools in many ways reflect a microcosm of society, one consequence for the school community is that the relationship between the computers and the computer users has become increasingly complex. There has been a blurring of the traditional clearly defined boundaries, not only between home and school computer use, but also within schools in the way that teaching and learning are carried out. This blurring may be attributed to many factors, but the continuing miniaturisation, portability and ubiquity of the computer itself is probably the most important. For many students the computer, as well as being an obligatory fashion accessory, is seen as indispensable. The thought of having to function without a computer is something for many students is hard to envisage. The only certainty for students, teachers and school managers is the continuous evolution of computers will lead to a constantly changing digital landscape.

Folk paper cutting art is the folk carrier of Chinese nation deposited for thousands of years, contains the elite of national culture and art, which is one of the important representatives of excellent Chinese traditional culture. The introduction of folk paper cutting art to the curriculum system of college art education can make up for the shortages of higher education, pass on and protect national art, uphold patriotic passion, enhance folk culture and art education, improve the humanistic attainments of students in colleges and universities, restrain corrosive influence of adverse culture, shape physical and psychological health of college students, learn the elite of folk art creation and improve aesthetic level.

When reading a research paper, not only to understand its contents but also to obtain related knowledge is essential. Since knowledge of each student is different, they can acquire related knowledge through discussion with others. However, discussion sometimes falls into the specific topics and students are unable to acquire various knowledge. Our objective is to construct a collaborative discussion support system for promoting effective discussion by visualizing the diversity of discussed topics. If they can notice the discussion situation timely, they may be able to derive different topics. To effectively evaluate a paper, participants should discuss each research aspects. In our research, topics are extracted and discriminated according to the stages by their targets in the paper. In addition, the topics are evaluated from the viewpoints of the similarities between a topic and the paper, and among topics. For expressing the discussion situation, our system visualizes topics (topic nodes) around the core of the circle (section node) which represents stages in the paper. The similarity between a topic and its target section is represented by the distance between topic and section nodes. The similarity among topics is represented by the distance among topic nodes. By organizing topics around the section node, participants can intuitively understand the discussion situation and are encouraged to voluntarily discuss diverse topics. Based on an experimental result, our system can allocate topics appropriately. In addition, participants were able to grasp the discussion situation by observing the discussion visualization.

For the existing problems in which the link of traditional manual generating paper in the education system, based on J2EE technology, an open, multi-level intelligent automatic generating papers function was designed and implemented, by improving the algorithms of commonly used automatic generating paper. A breakthrough in the aspect of the design structure’ randomness of computer generating papers was produced, and the problem of lacking the intelligent generating paper in the traditional manual generating paper methods was solved. This not only providing a great convenience for teachers, but also achieving information management between item pool and papers and the sharing of teaching resources. As a part and parcel of the process of the education informatization, it accelerated the pace marching towards information education.

We present Icecite, a new fully web-based research paper management system (RPMS). Icecite facilitates the following otherwise laborious and time-consuming steps typically involved in literature research: automatic metadata and reference extraction, on-click reference downloading, shared annotations, offline availability, and full-featured search in metadata, full texts, and annotations. None of the many existing RPMSs provides this feature set. For the metadata and reference extraction, we use a rule-based approach combined with an index-based approximate search on a given reference database. An extensive quality evaluation, using DBLP and PubMed as reference databases, shows extraction accuracies of above 95%. We also provide a small user study, comparing Icecite to the state-of-the-art RPMS Mendeley as well as to an RPMS-free baseline.

Genetic Algorithm has the dynamic performance and the auto adaptability. The algorithm can search the solution glibly and include the operation of coding, selection, intercross, mutation of the chromosome. The search starts from an initial cluster and reduces the probability of falling in local optima. In the test paper auto-generation, it can satisfy the requirement of the test paper generation system, improve the quality and efficiency of extracting the subjects from the test bank.

This paper, we come up a new improved genetic algorithm (GA) which suitable to the issue of test paper composition after analyzing the common algorithm of test paper composition. Focuses on the design and realization of test paper composition model established, chromosome encoding method of test paper composition, adaptability function and genetic operator. Experimental results show that this improved genetic algorithm is a practical and effective test paper composition algorithm with high-performance and high-efficiency.

Executable scientific papers contain not just layouted text for reading. They contain, or link to, machine-comprehensible representations of the scientific findings or experiments they describe. Client-side players can thus enable readers to "check, manipulate and explore the result space" [1]. We have realized executable papers in the STEM domain with the Planetary system. Semantic annotations associate the papers with a content commons holding the background ontology, the annotations are exposed as Linked Data, and a frontend player application hooks modular interactive services into the semantic annotations.

Our objective is to construct a collaborative discussion support system for understanding the research paper in the research group by visualizing the contents of the discussion. When reading a research paper, it is essential not only to understand the contents of the paper but also to obtain the related knowledge. Our system evaluates topics in discussion from the viewpoints of similarity between a topic and the paper and that between topics. Then, the system visualizes topics as circles around chapter nodes whose distances from their target chapter nodes and other topic nodes represent the similarities. By observing the visualized topics, to derive topics from various perspectives is encouraged.

It is important for researchers/investigators to read and understand scientific papers effectually and effectively. However, it takes much time and many efforts to read and understand many papers related directly to their researches, even if they could refer to necessary papers timely. In this paper, we address a function for supporting the scientific paper understanding process successfully. We focus on figures which can usually explain the important topics along a series of successive paragraphs, and develop an intellectual tool which collects the mutually related sentences, attended interdependently to the focused figure, and supports a paper understanding ability through the focused figure. In this paper, we introduce the propagation mechanism of important words over the corresponding sentences. This propagation mechanism can select candidate sentences appropriate to explain the focused figure.

To adequately equip surgeons with the required skills necessary to successfully read a paper, one needs not only time and energy but also a core level of experience. This chapter aims to classify the components that make up a scientific paper with the goal of presenting the audience to some of the analytical concepts that will enable the successful reading of a surgical paper.

Writing, reviewing and editing are the essential steps in publishing a scientific paper. The format and most important rules for writing are briefly summarized. The reviewer’s role is to assess the scientific essence and relevance of the paper and by his experience and expertise to support the author in the revision of the manuscript. The editor by his decision on the acceptance of a manuscript for publication has to ensure that the paper meets the requirements of the journal, such as the thematic spectrum and the level of excellence to attract the reader. Author, reviewer and editor act according to standards evolutionary developed in the scientific community. Any failures and deficiencies occurring when processing the manuscript bear risks of delay in publication, wasting efforts and time of the involved people and at least of harming the scientific level and the economic basis of the journal. In conclusion, disseminating research results presents challenges to good publishing practice.

For improving teaching quality of basic computer teaching, the random samples of 190 students of 2008 in the final exam papers were taken and analyzed in detail, we find drawbacks in basic computer teaching; so we explored the teaching mode and method for different professional by research and referencing successful experiments of other college and university. The mode and method was applied to students of 2009 and 2010, it is proved to be effective.

This paper overviews some of the lower bounds on the complexity of implementing software transactional memory, and explains their underlying assumptions. It discusses how these lower bounds align with experimental results and design choices made in existing implementations to indicate that the transactional approach for concurrent programming must compromise either programming simplicity or scalability. There are several contemporary research avenues that address the challenge of concurrent programming. For example, optimizing coarse-grained techniques, and concurrent programming with mini-transactions--simple atomic operations on a small number of locations.

Janken, which is a very simple game and it is usually used as a coin-toss in Japan, originated in China, and many variants are seen throughout the world. A variant of janken can be represented by a tournament, where a vertex corresponds a sign and an arc x,y means sign x defeats sign y. However, not all tournaments define useful janken variants, i.e., some janken variants may include a useless sign, which is strictly inferior than another sign in any case. We first shows that for any positive integer n except 2 and 4, we can construct a janken variant with n signs without useless signs. Next we introduces a measure of amusement of janken variants by using the variation of the difference of out-degree and in-degree. Under this measure, we show that a janken variant has the best amusement among ones with n signs if and only if it corresponds to one of the tournaments defined by J.i??W.i??Moon in 1993. Following these results, we present a janken variant "King-fles-janken," which is the best amusing janken variant among ones with five signs.

Internet voting will probably be one of the most significant achievements of the future information society. It will have an enormous impact on the election process making it fast, reliable and inexpensive. Nonetheless, so far the problem of providing security of remote voting is considered to be very difficult, as one has to take into account susceptibility of the voter's PC to various cyber-attacks. As a result, most of the research effort is put into developing protocols and machines for poll-site electronic voting. Although these solutions yield promising results, most of them cannot be directly applied to Internet voting because of the secure platform problem. However, the cryptographic components they utilize may be very useful in the context of remote voting, too. This paper presents a scheme based on combination of mixnets and homomorphic encryption borrowed from robust poll-site voting, along with techniques recommended for remote voting --- code sheets and test ballots. The protocol tries to minimize the trust put in voter's PC by employing paper ballots distributed before elections. The voter uses the ballot to submit an encrypted vote, which is illegible for the potentially corrupt PC. The creation of paper ballots, as well as the decryption of votes, is performed by a group of cooperating trusted servers. As a result, the scheme is characterized by strong asymmetry --- all computations are carried out on the server side. Hence, it does not require any additional hardware on the voter's side. Furthermore, the scheme offers distributed trust, receipt-freeness and verifiability.

In this paper, we develop methods for constructing vote-buying/coercion attacks on end-to-end voting systems, and describe vote-buying/coercion attacks on three proposed end-to-end voting systems: Punchscan, Pret-a-voter, and ThreeBallot. We also demonstrate a different attack on Punchscan, which could permit corrupt election officials to change votes without detection in some cases. Additionally, we consider some generic attacks on end-to-end voting systems.

Dynamic assessment (DA) has been advocated as an interactive approach to conducting assessments to students in the learning systems Sternberg and others proposed to give students tests to see how much assistance it takes a student to learn a topic; and to use as a measure of their learning gain To researchers in the ITS community, it comes as no surprise that measuring how much assistance a student needs to complete a task successfully is probably a good indicator of this lack of knowledge However, a cautionary note is that conducting DA takes more time than simply administering regular test items to students In this paper, we report a study analyzing 40-minutes data of totally 1,392 students from two school years The result suggests that for the purpose of assessing student performance, it is more efficient for students to take DA than just having practice items.

The aim of this paper is to explore new metaphors for interaction design on tabletop system. Tabletop systems are shared horizontal surface for co-located collaboration, which leads to original problems when designing interactions. We propose two metaphors based on the paper: the peeling metaphor, and the slot metaphor, and then suggest a way of using them to design new interactions for solving some of the problems of tabletop systems: documents organization, documents transmission and documents duplication.