The Impact of Privacy Laws on Online User Behavior

Policymakers worldwide draft privacy laws that require trading-off between safeguarding consumer privacy and preventing economic loss to companies that use consumer data. However, little empirical knowledge exists as to how privacy laws affect companies' performance. Accordingly, this paper empirically quantifies the effects of the enforcement of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on online user behavior over time, analyzing data from 6,286 websites spanning 24 industries during the 10 months before and 18 months after the GDPR's enforcement in 2018. A panel differences estimator, with a synthetic control group approach, isolates the short- and long-term effects of the GDPR on user behavior. The results show that, on average, the GDPR's effects on user quantity and usage intensity are negative; e.g., the numbers of total visits to a website decrease by 4.9% and 10% due to GDPR in respectively the short- and long-term. These effects could translate into average revenue losses of $7 million for e-commerce websites and almost$2.5 million for ad-based websites 18 months after GDPR. The GDPR's effects vary across websites, with some industries even benefiting from it; moreover, more-popular websites suffer less, suggesting that the GDPR increased market concentration

High-resolution soft x-ray spectrometry using the electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EM-CCD)

The Electron-Multiplying Charge-Coupled Device (EM-CCD) shares a similar structure to the CCD except for the inclusion of a gain register that multiplies signal before the addition of read-noise, offering sub-electron effective readnoise at high frame-rates. EM-CCDs were proposed for the dispersive spectrometer on the International X-ray Observatory (IXO) to bring sub-300 eV X-rays above the noise, increasing the science yield. The high-speed, low-noise performance of the EMCCD brought added advantages of reduced dark current and stray-light per frame, reducing cooling and filtering requirements. To increase grating efficiency, several diffracted spectral orders were co-located so the inherent energy resolution of the detector was required for order separation. Although the spectral resolution of the EM-CCD is degraded by the gain process, it was shown that the EM-CCD could achieve the required separation. The RIXS spectrometer at the Advanced Resonant Spectroscopy beamline (ADRESS) of the Swiss Light Source (SLS) at the Paul Scherrer Institute currently uses a CCD, with charge spreading between pixels limiting the spatial resolution to 24 μm (FWHM). Through improving the spatial resolution below 5 μm alongside upgrading the grating, a factor of two energy resolution improvement could theoretically be made. With the high-speed, low-noise performance of the EM-CCD, photon-counting modes could allow the use of centroiding techniques to improve the resolution. Using various centroiding techniques, a spatial resolution of 2 μm (FWHM) has been achieved experimentally, demonstrating the benefits of this detector technology for soft X-ray spectrometry. This paper summarises the use of EM-CCDs from our first investigations for IXO through to our latest developments in ground-based testing for synchrotron-research and looks beyond to future possibilities

In situ synchrotron radiation monitoring of phase transitions during microwave heating of Al-Cu-Fe alloys

The effect of rapid microwave heating has so far been evaluated mainly by comparing the state of materials before and after microwave exposure. Yet, further progress critically depends on the ability to follow the evolution of materials during ultrafast heating in real time. We describe the first in situ time-resolved monitoring of solid-state phase transitions during microwave heating of metallic powders using wide-angle synchrotron radiation diffraction. Single-phase Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystal powders were obtained by microwave heating of nanocrystalline alloy precursors at 650 °C in <20

Beruflich Qualifizierte - die neuen Studierenden der "Bologna-Ära"

Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den „neuen“ Studierenden der Bologna-Ära: den beruflich Qualifizierten – Studierende ohne schulische Hochschulzugangsberechtigung. Nach der Einordnung der Themenrelevanz für Deutschland werden zunächst die Randbedingungen für ein Studium nicht-traditionell Studierender diskutiert. Im Hauptteil des vorliegenden Beitrages werden die „neuen Studierenden“ der Weiterbildungsakademie der Hochschule Aalen beschrieben. Dargestellt wird das soziodemografische Profil der Studierenden, die Studienmotivation, die Erwartungen der beruflich Qualifizierten an das berufsbegleitende Studium und ihr Arbeitsumfeld. Abschließend werden die Besonderheiten der Zielgruppe herausgestellt, insbesondere die entscheidende Rolle der Arbeitgeber erläutert und offene Forschungsfragen dargestellt. 10.08.2011 | Alexandra Jürgens, Bernd Zinn & Ulrich Schmitt (Aalen