Flying Robots and Privacy in Canada

Drones have been a hot topic in recent years particularly when used in war and in domestic police operations. Drones have also attracted attention because of highprofile plans to use them for package delivery, among other things. While the glamourous and future uses of drones catch media attention, drones are already being used in the private sector for more mundane purposes including surveying, infrastructure inspection and real estate sales promotion. While the privacy threats of military and police drones are widely discussed, privacy concerns of private drones have attracted much less consideration. This paper looks at the privacy risks of private drones in Canada. It begins with an overview of the uses of private drones and their regulation in Canada. Regulation of drones in Canada is quite permissive and does not address the privacy risks. The paper then presents several privacy theories and a deeper discussion of two problems caused by technology such as drones: data aggregation and erosion of privacy in public. The paper then considers some theoretical and practical legal protections that might be used to protect against drone privacy invasion. The more theoretical include the torts of trespass and nuisance. The more practical include the tort of intrusion upon seclusion and the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act. The paper concludes that the dominant theories of privacy embedded in Canadian law are not fully prepared for the challenge of drones, though the tort of intrusion upon seclusion holds some promise for the future

RHEED characterisation of the near surface microstructure of Ti-O based biocompatible coatings

Mechanically polished, annealed, nitric acid treated and aged in boiling water after nitriding, commercially pure Ti substrates have been characterised using reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and secondary electron imaging, in terms of their naturally formed or ‘accelerated’ oxide layers. Annealing induced crystallisation and transformation of anatase to the rutile phase and led to increased roughness, with localised fracture and balling up of the surface oxide layer as the time and temperature of annealing were increased. Nitric acid modification produced no influence on the anatase to rutile transformation, whilst further aging in boiling water induced an acceleration of this transformation. RHEED data acquired at differing accelerating voltages have indicated a Ti-O phase gradation within annealed sol-gel derived V modified TiO2 layers deposited by spin coating onto Ti substrates

A new peat bog testate amoeba transfer function and quantitative palaeohydrological reconstructions from southern Patagonia

Testate amoebae have been extensively used as proxies for environmental change and palaeoclimate reconstructions in European and North American peatlands. The presence of these micro-organisms near the peat surface is generally significantly linked to the local water table depth (WTD) and therefore preservation of the amoeba shells downcore allows for water table reconstructions over millennia. In the last decades, attention for the palaeoecology of the southern Patagonian peat bogs has increased, partly because of the particular climatological setting under the influence of the southern westerlies. These atypical peat bogs are characterised by a wide range of water tables, from wet hollows to hummocks exceeding 100 cm above the water table, and a dominance of Sphagnum magellanicum on low lawns up to the highest hummocks. Here we present the first transfer function for this region that allows for reliable WTD reconstructions, along with 2k-year palaeorecords from local peat bogs.A modern dataset (155 samples) was sampled along transects from five bogs in 2012 and 2013. Measurements of WTD, pH and conductivity were taken for all samples. Transfer function model was based on the 2012 dataset while the 2013 samples served as an independent test set to validate the model. Besides the standard leave-one- out cross-validation we applied leave-one-site-out and leave-one transect-out cross-validation, which are effective means of verifying the degree of clustering in the dataset. To assure the environmental gradient had been evenly sampled we quantified the root-mean-squared error of prediction (RMSEP) individually for segments of this gradient.Ordinations showed a clear hydrological gradient in amoeba assemblages, with the dominant Assulina muscorum at the dry end and Amphitrema wrightianum and Difflugia globulosa at the wet end. Taxa as Nebela certesi and Nebela cockayni, possibly exclusive to the southern hemisphere, were identified and their optima and tolerances were determined. Canonical correspondence analysis showed that WTD was the most important environmental variable, accounting for 18% of the variance in amoeba assemblages. A weighted averaging-partial least squares model showed best performance in cross-validation and using the 2013 data as an independent test set. Any spatial autocorrelation was minimal although the model still appeared less effective in predicting WTD for sites not included in the training set. The segment-wise RMSEP showed that the WTD gradient was generally evenly sampled with RMSEP below 15 cm for most of the gradient, much lower than the standard deviation of the mean of all WTDs (26 cm).Preliminary results from peat cores sampled from the same peat bogs show surprisingly stable water tables over the last 2k years in Andorra bog but more variation in nearby Tierra Australis bog. Peat accumulation rates in Andorra bog are among the highest recorded in temperate bogs with around 4 m of peat accumulated during the last 2000 year

A geometric study of the dispersionless Boussinesq type equation

We discuss the dispersionless Boussinesq type equation, which is equivalent to the Benney-Lax equation, being a system of equations of hydrodynamical type. This equation was discussed in . The results include: a description of local and nonlocal Hamiltonian and symplectic structures, hierarchies of symmetries, hierarchies of conservation laws, recursion operators for symmetries and generating functions of conservation laws (cosymmetries). Highly interesting are the appearances of operators that send conservation laws and symmetries to each other but are neither Hamiltonian, nor symplectic. These operators give rise to a noncommutative infinite-dimensional algebra of recursion operators

Leatherbacks matching by automated image recognition

We describe a method that performs automated recognition of individual laetherback turtles within a large nesting population. With only minimal preprocessing required of the user, we prove able to produce unsupervised matching results. The matching is based on th

Сутність та особливості періодизації функціонування прокуратури України

У статті розглядаються суть та особливості періодизації функціонування прокуратури України як одного з основних методологічних аспектів наукового дослідження. Крім того, проведений аналіз різних підходів до періодизації функціонування прокуратури, як вітчизняних, так і деяких зарубіжних науковців. Ключові слова: прокуратура, періодизація розвитку прокуратури.В статье рассматриваются сущность и особенности периодизации функционирования прокуратуры Украины как одного из основных методологических аспектов научного исследования. Кроме того, проведен анализ различных подходов к периодизации функционирования прокуратуры, как отечественных, так и некоторых зарубежных ученых. Ключевые слова: прокуратура, периодизация развития прокуратуры.This article discusses the nature and features periodization of functioning Prosecutor of Ukraine as one of the main methodological aspects of research. In addition, analysis of different approaches to periodization functioning prosecutor's office, both domestic, and some foreign scholars. Key words: prosecutor's office, periodization development of prosecutor's office

Microstructural characterisation of biocompatible sol-gel derived vanadium doped TiO2 on Ti substrates

Sol-gel derived pure titania is compared with vanadium and / or aluminium modified titania deposited by spin coating on pure titanium substrates annealed at 300C and 650C. Reflection high-energy electron diffraction indicated the presence of anatase from the surface layers of samples annealed at 300C with a transition to rutile with increasing annealing temperature and addition of vanadium. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy indicated a gradation of Ti-O phases through the layer with the dominant presence of rutile. Aluminium was found to inhibit grain growth while vanadium promoted crystallisation

Internationalization Of Management Buyouts

Multivariate statistical analysis is utilized to explore the association between firm strategies, contributions made by venture capitalists and incentives for owners and employees and three exporting variables in a stratified random sample of 147 management buyouts and buyins. Firms focusing upon a diversified product/ service range and/or advertising were significantly more likely to be exporters. Firms focusing upon product/ service quality and financial efficiency and those with high proportions of employees receiving performance related pay were significantly less likely to be exporters. Manufacturing firms and firms focusing upon a diversified product/ service range and/or advertising were significantly more likely to report high percentages of sales exported. Variations in the proportion of sales exported over time were associated with strategies focused upon product/service quality and a diversified product/ service range

The Impact of Business Ownership Change on Employee Relations: Buy-outs in the UK and the Netherlands

A buy-out is a fundamental change in the structure of ownership that may affect the way employee relations develop within an organisation. Little is known about the impact of buyouts upon employee relations. This paper aims to address this gap. We focus on two main questions. First, what are the effects of a buy-out on employee relations in an organisation? Second, does the national institutional context affect the impact of buy-outs on employee relations? The paper reports changes to employee relations in buy-outs in the contrasting institutional environments of the UK and the Netherlands. Overall, we find that buy-outs positively affect HR practices with increases in training, employee involvement, the number of employees and pay levels. The positive effects appear to be significantly stronger in a less institutionalised environment like the UK than the more institutionalised environment of the Netherlands. Buy-outs raised HRM practices in the UK to a level closer although still below that of Dutch buy-outs