Shared Consensus Research Articles

Q methodologist views on the future of Q: a study of a research community

It has been almost 90 years since William Stephenson’s 1935 letter to Nature that opened the door for Q methodology [Q]. Criticisms and excitement ensued and continue into the present within and outside of the Q research community. Yet, any research community contains researchers with different positionalities about the methodology’s philosophical framework, and best practices regarding data collection and/or data analysis. A relatively recent Q study indicated differences of opinion among Q methodologists when it comes to data analysis and its philosophical framework. Twenty years ago, Hurd and Brown uncovered four divergent viewpoints about the Q community’s view of the future of Q. Thus, especially with Q’s growing popularity, it seemed time to repeat that study with some change to the subjective statements used within the data collection phase, as many changes have occurred especially regarding technological advances for data collection and data analysis. Two viewpoints were uncovered, Tradition and Community, with a focus on the theoretical framework provided by Stephenson and the welcoming nature of the Q community, and Unorthodox with Expansion of Q, with a yearning to expand Q both physically and theoretically including a willingness to move beyond Stephenson’s vision. The discussion and conclusion focus on the implications of these perspectives and their shared consensus for the future of Q methodology as well as implications for other research methodologies. In other words, this study provides a demonstration of complementarity for understanding the behavior of all types of research communities.

Market integration, empire and industry in the colonial economic development of the Buenos Aires meat industry (1770s–1800s)

ABSTRACT Building on recent literature on the history of political economy and Spanish imperial history, the article reconstructs the ideas that supported the colonial development of the meat industry in the Río de la Plata. Archival and printed sources are employed to illustrate the different arguments revolving around colonial economic development and imperial rule, in the words and practices of merchants, explorers, administrators and ministers. This way, it is possible to disclose the multiple imperial visions circulating in the Spanish Atlantic. The analysis suggests that economic reformism was not only a European intellectual and political movement but was shared and appropriated by Spanish Americans. They employed arguments in political economy to foster their agenda, namely the economic improvement of their territory in the broader context of the Spanish commercial empire. If a shared consensus around imperial political economy between Spanish and Spanish American vassals provided arguments supporting this colonial industry, the diverging economic interests, imperial rivalries, and the different geographical spaces of enunciation determined a variable dialectic between projects for the expansion of salted meat production and their realisation.

The Application of Qiang Ethnic Culture in Strengthening the Consciousness of the Chinese National Community

The consciousness of the Chinese national community is a shared value consensus among various ethnic groups condensed from historical cultural memory and contemporary cultural forms, playing a role in cohesion and unity among members of the Chinese national community. Taking the Qiang ethnic group as an example, by deeply exploring the historical traces of the consciousness of the Chinese national community and combining the spiritual values of traditional cultural resources, the key symbols of Qiang ethnic culture are reasonably developed and utilized. Starting from reality, the close connection between “cultivating the consciousness of the Chinese national community” and “daily life” is explored, ultimately achieving the application of Qiang culture in strengthening the consciousness of the Chinese national community.

Multidimensional mental representations of natural environment among Chinese preadolescents via draw‐and‐write mapping

Abstract The mental associations that children have with the natural environment can be referred to as their natural representations. These representations encompass a blend of shared consensus and individual differences, playing a pivotal role in shaping human relationships with nature and influencing attitudes and behaviours. However, comprehending children's natural representations, particularly among preadolescents with limited verbal narrative abilities, remains a challenge. To address this challenge, we conducted a study employing a draw‐and‐write task and a questionnaire survey. Our investigation aimed to understand how the level of nature experiences and demographic variables affects the multidimensional representations of nature among preadolescents (aged 9–12) in China. Specifically, we examined the impacts of direct, indirect and vicarious nature experiences on their natural representations. These representations included dimensions such as the level of wildness, cognitive complexity, extent of elaboration, expression of emotion and representation style. These dimensions were based on literature review and supported by empirical data collected from children's drawings. Our findings showed that children's drawings of nature not only share similarities but also display significant variations. Most of their drawings include natural components, such as living and non‐living elements, while a notable proportion of drawings depicts human activities. Interestingly, we observed notable differences in the level of wildness, elaboration and representation style among preadolescents from different regions. Additionally, we found that vicarious nature experiences have a significant positive impact on the cognitive complexity, extent of elaboration and positive emotional expression in children's drawings, while direct nature experiences also have a weaker but still significant positive effect on the elaboration. Moreover, female students exhibit greater proficiency in these three aspects compared to their male counterparts. The study highlights the significance of the surrounding environment and nature experiences, especially vicarious nature experience, in shaping the natural representations of preadolescents. Using draw‐and‐write mapping is recommended as a valuable approach to understanding the children's mental representations of the natural environment. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Accelerating language emergence by functional pressures

In language emergence, neural agents acquire communication skills by interacting with one another and the environment. Through these interactions, agents learn to connect or ground their observations to the messages they utter, forming a shared consensus about the meaning of the messages. Such connections form what we refer to as a grounding map. However, these maps can often be complicated, unstructured, and contain redundant connections. In this paper, we introduce two novel functional pressures, modeled as differentiable auxiliary losses, to simplify and structure the grounding maps. The first pressure enforces compositionality via topological similarity, which has been previously discussed but has not been modeled or utilized as a differentiable auxiliary loss. The second functional pressure, which is conceptually novel, imposes sparsity in the grounding map by pruning weaker connections while strengthening the stronger ones. We conduct experiments in multiple value-attribute environments with varying communication channels. Our methods achieve improved out-of-domain regularization and rapid convergence over baseline approaches. Furthermore, introduced functional pressures are robust to the changes in experimental conditions and able to operate with minimum training data. We note that functional pressures cause simpler and more structured emergent languages showing distinct characteristics depending on the functional pressure employed. Enhancing grounding map sparsity yields the best performance and the languages with the most compressible grammar. In summary, our novel functional pressures, focusing on compositionality and sparse groundings, expedite the development of simpler, more structured languages while enhancing their generalization capabilities. Exploring alternative types of functional pressures and combining them in agent training may be beneficial in the ongoing quest for improved emergent languages.

Capacity Of Magelang Regency In Protecting The Historical Site Of Mendut Temple From Mount Merapi Eruption

Mount Merapi is one of the most active volcanoes in Indonesia, which is administratively located on the western side of the mountain in Magelang Regency. There is a historical site, namely the Mendut Temple in Magelang Regency which was affected by the eruption of Mount Merapi. To reduce the impact of the eruption of Mount Merapi on the historical site of Mendut Temple, capacity and cooperation from stakeholders in the Magelang Regency area are needed. The purpose of this study was to analyze the capacity of Magelang Regency in protecting the historical site of Mendut Temple from Mount Merapi Eruption. This research method uses a qualitative approach with the locus of research conducted in the Magelang Regency area. Data collection techniques through interviews, observation and documentation. As for data checking by triangulation and data analysis techniques using interactive analysis models. The results of the study show that mitigation focuses on structural aspects, especially post-disaster activities by covering tarpaulins while non-structural ones are not optimal due to gaps in coordination, communication and cooperation between agencies. The Mount Merapi disaster risk assessment in increasing the capacity of Magelang Regency through strategic efforts ranging from study procedures or SOPs to well-prepared scenarios and alternatives such as several evacuation signs and symbols. Aspects of innovation and knowledge have been carried out by Magelang Regency through the sister village program to provide information on evacuation with a mutual cooperation system. The Magelang Regency disaster risk factor in the aspect of the policy plan refers to existing regulations and has prepared land for settlements for eruption disaster victims with a grant system from the Magelang Regency Government. Institutional capacity needs to be understood together by collaborating and establishing a shared consensus on the policies to be built.

Surgeons' practice and preferences for the anal fissure treatment: results from an international survey.

The best nonoperative or operative anal fissure (AF) treatment is not yet established, and several options have been proposed. Aim is to report the surgeons' practice for the AF treatment. Thirty-four multiple-choice questions were developed. Seven questions were about to participants' demographics and, 27 questions about their clinical practice. Based on the specialty (general surgeon and colorectal surgeon), obtained data were divided and compared between two groups. Five-hundred surgeons were included (321 general and 179 colorectal surgeons). For both groups, duration of symptoms for at least 6weeks is the most important factor for AF diagnosis (30.6%). Type of AF (acute vs chronic) is the most important factor which guide the therapeutic plan (44.4%). The first treatment of choice for acute AF is ointment application for both groups (59.6%). For the treatment of chronic AF, this data is confirmed by colorectal surgeons (57%), but not by the general surgeons who prefer the lateral internal sphincterotomy (LIS) (31.8%) (p = 0.0001). Botulin toxin injection is most performed by colorectal surgeons (58.7%) in comparison to general surgeons (20.9%) (p = 0.0001). Anal flap is mostly performed by colorectal surgeons (37.4%) in comparison to general surgeons (28.3%) (p = 0.0001). Fissurectomy alone is statistically significantly most performed by general surgeons in comparison to colorectal surgeons (57.9% and 43.6%, respectively) (p = 0.0020). This analysis provides useful information about the clinical practice for the management of a debated topic such as AF treatment. Shared guidelines and consensus especially focused on operative management are required to standardize the treatment and to improve postoperative results.

The Process of Assembling A Prognosis in Nicu

The uncertainty of prognosis and the importance of prognosis are in tension with one another, especially in modern neonatal intensive care units (NICU). Prognosis, along with diagnosis, forms the cornerstone of making decisions. Reaching a shared consensus often happens without the participants being fully aware of the process. Child psychiatrists can be helpful in a team to make explicit where the team, the family and the outside specialist teams are up to in arriving at consensus and how they might move beyond times of impasse. Child psychiatrists have not traditionally had a large role in NICU except in relation to the adult mental health. This paper emerged from two child psychiatrists, both pediatric neuropsychiatrists, quietly “observing” and describing the everyday business of a NICU. It elucidates the process of how NICU clinicians in one children’s hospital, and the families they care for, arrive at a consensus despite the uncertainties and the complexities. What is extraordinary is that this process is usually managed without complication.

Co-construction of performance indicators for a circular city and its relation to a local action net

PurposeThis study examines how circular economy (CE) performance indicators are constructed in an urban context characterised by a multitude of conflicting interests and visions of urban development. It explores the process of constructing a shared consensus about the performance indicators in conditions of low contractibility, where intervention objectives and outcomes are not easily quantifiable because the object is ambiguous and cannot be fully specified in advance.Design/methodology/approachThe construction of performance indicators at the urban level is examined through the lens of an action net. Using group interviews, observations and documentary analysis, this study investigates the case of a CE initiative in the city of Milan.FindingsThe study demonstrates that in cases of low contractibility, the development of CE solutions requires actions that span across organisational boundaries, organised in an action net. As the action net unfolds, it is closely knotted with the construction of performance indicators, indicating a co-constitutive relationship between the two processes.Originality/valueThis interdisciplinary study contributes to the public sector accounting literature by exploring the complexity of performance indicator construction at the urban level. It further recognises performance measurement in cities as a dynamic and flexible process, in which the interconnected actions and involvement of multiple actants shape the composition of the indicators.

Multi-view Ensemble Clustering via Low-rank and Sparse Decomposition: From Matrix to Tensor

As a significant extension of classical clustering methods, ensemble clustering first generates multiple basic clusterings and then fuses them into one consensus partition by solving a problem concerning graph partition with respect to the co-association matrix. Although the collaborative cluster structure among basic clusterings can be well discovered by ensemble clustering, most advanced ensemble clustering utilizes the self-representation strategy with the constraint of low-rank to explore a shared consensus representation matrix in multiple views. However, they still encounter two challenges: (1) high computational cost caused by both the matrix inversion operation and singular value decomposition of large-scale square matrices; (2) less considerable attention on high-order correlation attributed to the pursue of the two-dimensional pair-wise relationship matrix. In this article, based on low-rank and sparse decomposition from both matrix and tensor perspectives, we propose two novel multi-view ensemble clustering methods, which tangibly decrease computational complexity. Specifically, our first method utilizes low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition to learn one common co-association matrix, while our last method constructs all co-association matrices into one third-order tensor to investigate the high-order correlation among multiple views by low-rank and sparse tensor decomposition. We adopt the alternating direction method of multipliers to solve two convex models by dividing them into several subproblems with closed-form solution. Experimental results on ten real-world datasets prove the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed two multi-view ensemble clustering methods by comparing them with other advanced ensemble clustering methods.

A scoping review of cognitive assessment tools and domains for chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairments in cancer survivors.

Cancer survivors suffer from specific symptoms known as chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairments (CICIs). CICIs are difficult to capture with existing assessments such as the brief screening test for dementia. Although recommended neuropsychological tests (NPTs) exist, international consensus and shared cognitive domains of assessment tools are unknown. The aim of this scoping review was as follows: (1) to identify studies that assess CICIs in cancer survivors; (2) to identify shared cognitive assessment tools and domains by mapping the domains reported in studies using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework. The study followed the recommendations made by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. We searched the following three databases through October 2021: PubMed, CINAHL, and Web of Science. Prospective longitudinal or cross-sectional studies were selected to determine CICI-specific assessment tools for adult cancer survivors. Sixty-four prospective studies (36 longitudinal studies and 28 cross-sectional studies) were included after checking for eligibility. The NPTs were divided into seven main cognitive domains. The specific mental functions were often used in the order of memory, attention, higher-level cognitive functions, and psychomotor functions. Perceptual functions were used less frequently. In some ICF domains, shared NPTs were not clearly identified. In some different domains, the same NPTs were used, such as the trail making test and the verbal fluency test. When the association between the publishing year and the amount of NPT use was examined, it was found that the amount of tool use tended to decline over the publication years. The Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Cognitive function (FACT-Cog) was a shared consensus tool among the patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairments are currently gaining interest. Shared ICF domains such as memory and attention were identified for NPTs. There was a gap between the publicly recommended tools and the tools actually used in the studies. For PROs, a clearly shared tool, FACT-Cog, was identified. Mapping the domains reported in studies using the ICF can help in the process of reviewing consensus on which NPTs may be used to target cognitive domains. https://center6.umin.ac.jp/cgi-open-bin/ctr/ctr_view.cgi?recptno=R000053710, identifier UMIN000047104.

Methods for the metrological characterization of wearable devices for the measurement of physiological signals: state of the art and future challenges

Wearable devices are rapidly spreading in many different application fields and with diverse measurement accuracy targets. However, data on their metrological characterization are very often missing or obtained with non-standardized methods, hence resulting in barely comparable results. The aim of this review paper is to discuss the existing methods for the metrological characterization of wearable sensors exploited for the measurement of physiological signals, highlighting the room for research still available in this field. Furthermore, as a case study, the authors report a customized method they have tuned for the validation of wireless electrocardiographic monitors. The literature provides a plethora of test/validation procedures, but there is no shared consensus on test parameters (e.g. test population size, test protocol, output parameters of validation procedure, etc.); on the other hand, manufacturers rarely provide measurement accuracy values and, even when they do, the test protocol and data processing pipelines are generally not disclosed. Given the increasing interest and demand of wearable sensors also for medical and diagnostic purposes, the metrological performance of such devices should be always considered, to be able to adequately interpret the results and always deliver them associated with the related measurement accuracy.•The sensor metrological performance should be always properly considered.•There are no standard methods for wearable sensors metrological characterization.•It is important to define rigorous test protocols, easily tunable for specific target applications.

Research on Local Characteristic Industry Construction in Characteristic Towns under Public-Private Partnership Development Mode

In recent years, there’s been a global trend of emphasizing the role of local characteristics in steering economic growth. To foster the advancement of local characteristic industries in characteristic towns, the public-private partnership (PPP) model is being adopted. This strategy leverages social resources and governmental incentives to drive both urban and rural progress, thus becoming a silver bullet to bolster the growth of characteristic towns. However, achieving “town-industry integration” and “sustainable development” necessitates shared consensus and understanding among all stakeholders. Given the intricate nature of the PPP mechanism, a comprehensive theoretical framework tailored to Chinese local characteristics is essential. This study scrutinizes the integration of the PPP model into characteristic industries within small Chinese towns. It follows a framework encompassing theoretical characteristics, feasibility analysis, existing problems, countermeasures, and recommendations, as well as future trends. The study employs both inductive reasoning and comparison. The research findings serve to establish a theoretical consensus for the PPP model’s integration with characteristic industries in these towns, benefiting all involved parties.

Limits of and Alternatives to Conventional Medicine in the Context of Terminal Illness (e.g., Palliative Care)

This paper aims at analysing the evolution of palliative care in the international context and their role in the path of care for the patient and the family. Method: born in 1967 by Cicely Saunder, palliative care were aimed at assisting the terminally ill, accommodating both the needs of the patient and the family. Not only to be cured or healed, but to be taken care of. The paper examines the definitions of palliative care provided by the World Helth Organization. We observe that palliative care is not only an effective and timely response to the clinical, psychological, social and spiritual needs of the sick person and their family in an advanced and terminal stage, but an integrated care to support specialist treatment in the presence of an advanced disease picture; a space for in-depth study for the sick person and the family so that the sick person can consciously and freely choose the available treatment proposals, their limits and their consequences. A treatment path in which the transparency of the proposals is a condition for building a shared consensus with the patient and adequate communication with the family. Palliative care has acquired its own identity, its own role in the path of care for the patient and the family, pursuing the proportionality of therapeutic options and the support of the patient and the family without discrimination, with equity and equality.

A participative methodology for prioritising intervention logic in the design of the Italian CAP Strategic Plan

The new CAP implementation model requires each Member State to design a CAP Strategic Plan (CSP) to deliver operational actions under the two CAP pillars. Each CSP must be built from an evidence-based needs assessment that undergoes rigorous prioritisation to plan comprehensive and achievable interventions. In Italy, the institutional context requires all the Regions and Autonomous Provinces to express their preferences and to discuss the CSP collectively, both as regards identifying territorial needs and their prioritisation. In this framework, it became pertinent to introduce a specific instrument to facilitate participation in this process. The Italian Ministry, in collaboration with the National Rural Network, developed a participatory route to assess the prioritisation of the identified needs, to support the decision-making process in CSP drafting process. The process is primarily based on a voting aggregation technique called the Constrained Cumulative Voting method. The process identified makes it possible, on the one hand, to formulate a shared consensus on the level of importance of each need; on the other one, via the definition of natural breaks, to determine homogeneous groups of needs by importance of intervention. This process is in line with the European Commission’s legislative proposals requiring a sound and well-founded logic of intervention.

Methodism’s History of Rejection of General Conference Actions on Issues Other than Homosexuality

ABSTRACT Proponents of the negative and restrictive language regarding homosexuality in the United Methodist Discipline have protested that the legislation is ignored or violated by many within the denomination. Such resistance has a long history. This article highlights historical examples from United Methodism and its predecessor bodies when clergy, laity, bishops, and conferences rejected, through their actions, legislation passed by the General Conference. Issues include rebaptism, women’s lay rights, women’s clergy rights, clergy performing marriages for divorced persons, clergy smoking, and alcohol. The point of the illustrations is not that General Conference actions are meaningless. Some violations are inconsequential and properly ignored. Other actions strike at the heart of who we are and are rightfully enforced. But the rejections here remind us that legislation must rest on a shared consensus that the rules are necessary, right, and consistent with John Wesley’s passion that all come to know the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Validity of Comparative Judgment Scores: How Assessors Evaluate Aspects of Text Quality When Comparing Argumentative Texts

The advantage of comparative judgment is that it is particularly suited to assess multidimensional and complex constructs as text quality. This is because assessors are asked to compare texts holistically and to make a quality judgment for each text in a pairwise comparison based upon on the most salient and critical differences. Also, the resulted rank order is based on the judgment of all assessors, representing the shared consensus. In order to be able to select the right number of assessors, the question is to what extent the conceptualization of assessors prevails in the aspects they base their judgment on, or whether comparative judgment minimizes the differences between assessors. In other words, can we detect types of assessors who tend to consider certain aspects of text quality more often than others? A total of 64 assessors compared argumentative texts, after which they provided decision statements on what aspects of text quality had informed their judgment. These decision statements were coded on six overarching themes of text quality: argumentation, organization, language use, language conventions, source use, references, and layout. Using a multilevel-latent class analysis, four different types of assessors could be distinguished: narrowly focused, broadly focused, source-focused, and language-focused. However, the analysis also showed that all assessor types mainly focused on argumentation and organization, and that assessor types only partly explained whether the aspect of text quality was mentioned in a decision statement. We conclude that comparative judgment is a strong method for comparing complex constructs like text quality. First, because the rank order combines different views on text quality, but foremost because the method of comparative judgment minimizes differences between assessors.

Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction by David Riddle Watson

Reviewed by: Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction by David Riddle Watson Clare Rolens David Riddle Watson, Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 235 pp. Detective fiction criticism often views a detective's ability to absolutely solve the mystery as problematic or banal. The Hercule Poirots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is argued, provide closure that reinforces a dominant order, and serve as a foil in studies of more dynamic, subversive detectives. The scholar of detective fiction tends to be wary of a mystery tied up in a neat little package. David Riddle Watson, in Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction, begs to differ. Outlining the merits of closure and restoration of order, Watson's argument betrays a nostalgia not for the particular order that Victorian and Golden Age detectives restored, but for any order at all. Whereas Poe's Dupin and Conan Doyle's Holmes lived in a world where detective, sidekick, police, and suspects could agree on a stable sense of truth, contemporary America is fractured into competing versions of reality without a shared consensus on what is true, or even what is truth. We need to be better detectives, the aptly named Watson suggests. Watson is worried not just about consensus concerning the philosophical nature of truth as a theoretical exercise, but about the survival of our democracy. The book investigates the concept of truth from the first modern detective stories in the 1840s to the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building in 2021. The remarkable preface begins with the author enduring a long stay in the hospital. With little to do but watch the news, worry about the state of the nation, and contemplate the dissertation that he wasn't sure he'd ever get to finish, it came to him: "I would use detective novels as a way to discuss … the assumptions that were being made about truth throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. In this way, the texts were picked as a means to explore a philosophical argument about the truth that I want to make" (ix). This last point is important; the book's focus is narrative representations of the search for truth that can help us understand how we have moved into a post-truth mind-set. Indeed, American detective "fiction" named in the title also misses one of the strengths of the book, that is, compelling interpretation of fictional and non-fictional detection as connected. The impressively ambitious project provides a short history of truth according to major philosophers. Watson connects this history to elements of arguably the first modern detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and especially those starring C. Auguste Dupin. "Detectives model the search for truth" (2), and we can see how ideas have changed throughout literary periods "moving from one end of the spectrum where truth is conceived of as a certainty, to the other end, where truth is considered [End Page 501] relative to the interpreter's desires" (23) in the contemporary era. There is overlap; postmodern ideas show up in the margins of modernism, and vice versa. But a common understanding of truth allows the non-postmodern Dupin to access "the interior lives of others" to reach a solution, continuing to a lesser degree even up to the hard-boiled school in the 1930s. Moving to the 1950s, Watson argues that two particular elements of the early Cold War, namely, "the compartmentalization of knowledge along with the classification of state secrets," fueled a growing distrust in government, whose "every statement must be interpreted ironically, as every potential signal, could in fact be noise" (47). This culture of doubt and suspicion is evident in the anti-Communist Mickey Spillane, as well as in the more recent work of journalistic detection, Nicholson Baker's Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. In the 1960s we find emphasis on the role of language in postmodern narratives of detection, or more often, anti-detection. In the hands of Thomas Pynchon, "truth itself is no longer a thing that is found or discovered...

CloudChain: A Cloud Blockchain Using Shared Memory Consensus and RDMA

Blockchain technologies can enable secure computing environments among mistrusting parties. Permissioned blockchains are particularly enlightened by companies, enterprises, and government agencies due to their efficiency, customizability, and governance-friendly features. Obviously, seamlessly fusing blockchain and cloud computing can significantly benefit permissioned blockchains; nevertheless, most blockchains implemented on clouds are originally designed for loosely-coupled networks where nodes communicate asynchronously, failing to take advantages of the closely-coupled nature of cloud servers. In this paper, we propose an innovative cloud-oriented blockchain -- CloudChain, which is a modularized three-layer system composed of the network layer, consensus layer, and blockchain layer. CloudChain is based on a shared-memory model where nodes communicate synchronously by direct memory accesses. We realize the shared-memory model with the Remote Direct Memory Access technology, based on which we propose a shared-memory consensus algorithm to ensure presistence and liveness, the two crucial blockchain security properties countering Byzantine nodes. We also implement a CloudChain prototype based on a RoCEv2-based testbed to experimentally validate our design, and the results verify the feasibility and efficiency of CloudChain.

Achieving a Shared Consensus: the Delors Committee and the Relaunch of the EMU Process

The Madrid European Council of 26-27 June 1989, where the twelve heads of state of the EEC officially approved the Delors Report and formally launched the EMU process, marked the emergence of a new consensus towards European institutional innovations. This paper, based mainly on previously unseen documents from the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa personal archives held at the Historical Archives of the European Union, analyses the two-years path that brought to this result. In early 1988, a French and Italian challenge to the European monetary system in place, through the publication of two memorandums, launched an international debate alimented by both national and supranational actors that led to the creation of the Delors Committee in June 1988. Developed from September 1988 to April 1989, its activity made it possible for the EC members to identify and define the fundamental elements of a monetary union and to outline a three-stage path for its realisation.