From data subjects to data suspects: challenging e-proctoring systems as a university practice

E-proctoring is a set of software and tools to monitor students’ behaviour during online examinations. Many universities have implemented this type of invigilation in response to the lockdowns during the pandemic to guarantee the validity and the integrity of exams. However, the intrusiveness of such technology into the students’ personal environment along with major accuracy problems (e.g., in authenticating black students) has attracted the scrutiny of various European data protection authorities and, more recently, equality bodies. In this paper, we critically approach the European normative framework available in countering the risks and situations of harms generated by e-proctoring through the lenses of data protection and anti-discrimination law. This work, in particular, is one of the first to systematise and analyse the corpus of online proctoring-related decisions that have emerged in the EU over the past three years. After an overview of the technical aspects of such technology and an outline of the legal issues debated in the literature, the paper will reconstruct and discuss the convergences and divergences in how courts and independent authorities have assessed the lawfulness of online invigilation tools. In our analysis, we observe that such instruments were evaluated differently depending on the concrete features implemented. However, with some notable exceptions, the General Data Protection Regulation and the anti-discrimination framework have largely proven helpful to combat the most intrusive forms of e-proctoring deployment or to mitigate their risks. Nevertheless, to ensure a safer and fairer educational environment, we conclude that a few crucial issues—including the effectiveness of the collective enforcement of rights, discriminatory effects for people not covered by a protected ground, and the governance of edTech within the university—should be further taken into account

On chip interconnects for multiprocessor turbo decoding architectures

International audienc

Brachiopod-based oxygen-isotope thermometer: Update and review

In the early 1950\u2019s, McCrea and Epstein and co-workers laid the foundation for the oxygen isotope-based thermometers. Many variations of the thermometer have been since formulated based on synthetic and biogenic carbonates. Overall, the use and application of oxygen isotope thermometers must consider and be specific as to the mineralogy, and whether it is synthetic, abiogenic or biogenic carbonate. Here, we propose an updated and refined oxygen-isotope thermometer based on a large database of articulated brachiopods from high to low latitudes, cold to warm and shallow to deep-water regimes. In general, brachiopod-based oxygen isotopes are offset from abiogenic calcite precipitated in thermodynamic equilibrium by about -1 . They maintain this offset and that allows for the determination of robust ambient water temperatures over the full marine spectrum. Thus, the specific brachiopod-based oxygen-isotope thermometer applies, with few exceptions, to most modern articulated brachiopods, and potentially their ancient counterparts, and it is as follows: T\ub0C =17.3750 \u2013 4.2535 (\u3b4c-\u3b4w) + 0.1473 (\u3b4c-\u3b4w)2 (N=578, r2 = 0.980) Furthermore, it is imperative that mineralogy and taxa be considered for their appropriateness in the application of oxygen isotope thermometers on synthetic, abiogenic and biogenic marine carbonates. Articulated brachiopods are ideal recorders of oceanographic parameters due to their sessile nature, widespread distribution, high abundance in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, high resilience to most environmental stresses (e.g., climate change - global warming, ocean acidification), and the resistance of the calcite shell \u2013 the archive \u2013 to post-depositional diagenetic alteration

Experimental diagenesis: insights into aragonite to calcite transformation of Arctica islandica shells by hydrothermal treatment

Abstract. Biomineralised hard parts form the most important physical fossil record of past environmental conditions. However, living organisms are not in thermodynamic equilibrium with their environment and create local chemical compartments within their bodies where physiologic processes such as biomineralisation take place. In generating their mineralised hard parts, most marine invertebrates produce metastable aragonite rather than the stable polymorph of CaCO3, calcite. After death of the organism the physiological conditions, which were present during biomineralisation, are not sustained any further and the system moves toward inorganic equilibrium with the surrounding inorganic geological system. Thus, during diagenesis the original biogenic structure of aragonitic tissue disappears and is replaced by inorganic structural features

Arable plant communities as a surrogate of crop rhizosphere microbiota

Soil microbiota is a crucial component of agroecosystem biodiversity, enhancing plant growth and providing impor-tant services in agriculture. However, its characterization is demanding and relatively expensive. In this study, we eval-uated whether arable plant communities can be used as a surrogate of bacterial and fungal communities of therhizosphere of Elephant Garlic (Allium ampeloprasum L.), a traditional crop plant of central Italy. We sampled plant,bacterial, and fungal communities, i.e., the groups of such organisms co-existing in space and time, in 24 plots locatedin eight fields and four farms. At the plot level, no correlations in species richness emerged, while the composition ofplant communities was correlated with that of both bacterial and fungal communities. As regards plants and bacteria,such correlation was mainly driven by similar responses to geographic and environmental factors, while fungal com-munities seemed to be correlated in species composition with both plants and bacteria due to biotic interactions. Allthe correlations in species composition were unaffected by the number of fertilizer and herbicide applications,i.e., agricultural intensity. Besides correlations, we detected a predictive relationship of plant community compositiontowards fungal community composition. Our results highlight the potential of arable plant communities to be used as asurrogate of crop rhizosphere microbial communities in agroecosystems

Brachiopods from the Cisuralian–Guadalupian of Darvaz, Tajikistan and implications for Permian stratigraphic correlations

In this paper, we describe the upper Cisuralian Safetdara and Gundara formations of the Darvaz mountains, North Pamir, which were part ofthe Kunlun Arc, developed along the active Eurasian margin. The Safetdara Formation comprises massive limestones (mainly cyanobacterial,Tubiphytes and Archaeolithoporella boundstones) alternating with well-bedded bioclastic and oncoidal limestones and an interval of recessiveshales. The formation crops out above the Chelamchi Formation consisting of turbiditic siltstones and sandstones with bioclastic silty limestonesyielding massive limestone olistoliths. The Gundara Formation consists of fine sandstones at the base, followed by well-bedded marly bioclastic,oncoidal and microbial limestones, bearing a rich silicified brachiopod fauna in life-position. Two new taxa have been identified in this association:the cemented coralliform Gundaria insolita n. gen. n. sp. and the pedicle attached Hemileurus politus n. sp. The inferred environmental setting isthat of shoal deposits of warm, shallow, high energy, clear marine waters for the Safetdara Formation. The agglutinated microbial reefs to clusterreefs of the Gundara Formation were probably growing in a muddier, quieter and probably slightly deeper setting.The foraminifers of the Brevaxina Zone suggest a Bolorian age for the top of the Chelamchi Formation, the Safetdara Formation and the baseof the Gundara Formation. Kungurian conodonts have been found in the lower part of the Safetdara Formation. The biostratigraphic data from thesedimentary succession of North Pamir, integrated with those already obtained from Southeast Pamir, allow to refine the correlations between theTethyan regional scale and the International Time Scale. In particular, it seems now clear that the Bolorian and the lower part of the Kubergandiancorrelate to the Kungurian