provided x is sufficiently large. An asymptotic formula of type (1) Df (x; q, a) = (1 +O((log x)))Df (x; q) , in which the error term is smaller than the main term by a suitable power of log x, is good enough for basic applications. More important than the size of the error term is the range where (1) holds uniformly with respect to the modulus q. In this paper we consider the problem for the d...

In this paper, we present some guidelines for implementing various financial instruments for the purposes of credit and payment, including protocols for commercial transactions, dispute resolution, and establishing credit reputation. We strive to employ only widely used, standardized cryptography and keep the proposed procedures as simple as possible on the conceptual level. Also, we want all t...

Ende März 2001, just während der Tage, in denen sich die IT-Welt zur CeBIT in Hannover traf, machte die Nachricht über eine Attacke auf das verbreitete Verschlüsselungsprogramm PGP Schlagzeilen. Die Computerzeitschrift c’t stellte sogar vorübergehend die alljährlich angebotene Zertifizierung von PGP-Schlüsseln auf ihrem Messestand ein. Glücklicherweise erwiesen sich nach ersten Analysen der kur...

The dilution of academic standards and poor quality publications have become a global concern. Recently, in an editorial of Current Science, SC Lakhotia, an eminent scientist from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has raised a very important issue regarding predatory journals and academic pollution. This problem is presently worrying almost every conscientious academician. [1] Substantial efforts ...

The relative status of women is poor in the developing world, compared to developed countries. Increases in per capita income lead to improvements in different measures of gender equality, suggesting that there may be market failures hindering investment in girls in developing countries, and that these are typically overcome as development proceeds. Gender inequality in education and health can...

When starting a new collaborative endeavor, it pays to establish upfront how strongly your partner commits to the common goal and what compensation can be expected in case the collaboration is violated. Diverse examples in biological and social contexts have demonstrated the pervasiveness of making prior agreements on posterior compensations, suggesting that this behavior could have been shaped...

Consider the following heuristic for planar Euclidean instances of the traveling salesman problem (TSP): select a subset of the edges which induces a planar graph, and solve either the TSP or its graphical relaxation on that graph. In this paper, we give several motivations for considering this heuristic, along with extensive computational results. It turns out that the Delaunay and greedy tria...

In order to ensure the quality of their software development, companies incorporate best practices from recognized repositories or from their own experiences. These best practices are often described in software quality manuals which does not guarantee their implementation. In this paper, we propose a framework for the implementation of best practices concerning the design of the software archi...

The demand for evidence-based health informatics and benchmarking of 'good' information systems in health care gives an opportunity to continue reporting on recent papers in the German journal GMS Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (MIBE) here. The publications in focus deal with a comparison of benchmarking initiatives in German-speaking countries, use of communication standards in...