University of Haifa

About: University of Haifa is a education organization based out in Haifa, Israel. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 7558 authors who have published 27141 publications receiving 711629 citations. The organization is also known as: Haifa University & Universiṭat Ḥefah.

From Responsiveness to Collaboration: Governance, Citizens, and the Next Generation of Public Administration

Abstract: The evolution of the New Public Management movement has increased pressure on state bureaucracies to become more responsive to citizens as clients. Without a doubt, this is an important advance in contemporary public administration, which finds itself struggling in an ultradynamic marketplace. However, together with such a welcome change in theory building and in practical culture reconstruction, modern societies still confront a growth in citizens’ passivism; they tend to favor the easy chair of the customer over the sweat and turmoil of participatory involvement. This article has two primary goals: First to establish a theoretically and empirically grounded criticism of the current state of new managerialism, which obscures the significance of citizen action and participation through overstressing the (important) idea of responsiveness. Second, the article proposes some guidelines for the future development of the discipline. This progress is toward enhanced collaboration and partnership among governance and public administration agencies, citizens, and other social players such as the media, academia, and the private and third sectors. The article concludes that, despite the fact that citizens are formal “owners” of the state, ownership will remain a symbolic banner for the governance and public administration–citizen relationship in a representative democracy. The alternative interaction of movement between responsiveness and collaboration is more realistic for the years ahead.

Moving in the Anthropocene : global reductions in terrestrial mammalian movements

Abstract: Animal movement is fundamental for ecosystem functioning and species survival, yet the effects of the anthropogenic footprint on animal movements have not been estimated across species. Using a unique GPS-tracking database of 803 individuals across 57 species, we found that movements of mammals in areas with a comparatively high human footprint were on average one-half to one-third the extent of their movements in areas with a low human footprint. We attribute this reduction to behavioral changes of individual animals and to the exclusion of species with long-range movements from areas with higher human impact. Global loss of vagility alters a key ecological trait of animals that affects not only population persistence but also ecosystem processes such as predator-prey interactions, nutrient cycling, and disease transmission.

The Rise of Anti-foreigner Sentiment in European Societies, 1988-2000

Abstract: The study examines change over time in sentiments toward out-group populations in European societies. For this purpose data were compiled from four waves of the Eurobarometer surveys for 12 countries that provided detailed and comparable information on attitudes toward foreigners between 1988 and 2000. A series of multilevel hierarchical linear models were estimated to examine change in the effects of individual- and country-level sources of threat on anti-foreigner sentiment. The analysis shows a substantial rise in antiforeigner sentiment between 1988 and 2000 in all 12 countries. The rise in anti-foreigner sentiment was steep in the early period (between 1988 and 1994), then leveled off after that. Although anti-foreigner sentiment tends to be more pronounced in places with a large proportion of foreign populations and where economic conditions are less prosperous, the effects of both factors on anti-foreigner sentiment have not changed over time. The analysis also shows that anti-foreigner sentiment i...

A Proof of Security of Yao’s Protocol for Two-Party Computation

Abstract: In the mid 1980s, Yao presented a constant-round protocol for securely computing any two-party functionality in the presence of semi-honest adversaries (FOCS 1986). In this paper, we provide a complete description of Yao’s protocol, along with a rigorous proof of security. Despite the importance of Yao’s protocol to the theory of cryptography and in particular to the field of secure computation, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that an explicit proof of security has been published.

Climate change and interconnected risks to sustainable development in the Mediterranean

Abstract: Recent accelerated climate change has exacerbated existing environmental problems in the Mediterranean Basin that are caused by the combination of changes in land use, increasing pollution and declining biodiversity. For five broad and interconnected impact domains (water, ecosystems, food, health and security), current change and future scenarios consistently point to significant and increasing risks during the coming decades. Policies for the sustainable development of Mediterranean countries need to mitigate these risks and consider adaptation options, but currently lack adequate information — particularly for the most vulnerable southern Mediterranean societies, where fewer systematic observations schemes and impact models are based. A dedicated effort to synthesize existing scientific knowledge across disciplines is underway and aims to provide a better understanding of the combined risks posed.