Robots Welcome? Ethical and Legal Considerations for Web Crawling and Scraping

Web crawlers are widely used software programs designed to automatically search the online universe to find and collect information. The data that crawlers provide help make sense of the vast and often chaotic nature of the Web. Crawlers find websites and content that power search engines and online marketplaces. As people and organizations put an ever-increasing amount of information online, tech companies and researchers deploy more advanced algorithms that feed on that data. Even governments and law enforcement now use crawlers to carry out their missions. Despite the ubiquity of crawlers, their use is ambiguously regulated largely by online social norms whereby webpage headers signal whether automated “robots” are welcome to crawl their sites. As courts take on the issues raised by web crawlers, user privacy hangs in the balance. In August 2017, the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction in such a case, deciding that LinkedIn’s website must be open to such crawlers. In March 2018, the District Court for the District of Columbia granted standing for an as-applied challenge to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to a group of academic researchers and a news organization. The Court allowed them to proceed with a case in which they now allege the law’s making a violation of website Terms of Service a crime effectively prohibits web crawling and infringes on their First Amendment Rights. In addition, news media is inundated with stories like Cambridge Analytica wherein web crawlers were used to scrape data from millions of Facebook accounts for political purposes. This paper discusses the history of web crawlers in courts as well as the uses of such programs by a wide array of actors. It addresses ethical and legal issues surrounding the crawling and scraping of data posted online for uses not intended by the original poster or by the website on which the information is hosted. The article further suggests that stronger rules are necessary to protect the users’ initial expectations about how their data would be used, as well as their privacy

Microsatellite primers for red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus)

In this note, we document polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) primer pairs for 101 nuclear-encoded microsatellites designed and developed from a genomic library for red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus). Details of the genomic library construction, the sequencing of positive clones, primer design, and PCR protocols may be found in Karlsson et al. (2008). The 101 microsatellites (GENBA NK Accession Numbers EU015882-EU015982) were amplified successfully and used to genotype 24 red drum obtained from Galveston Bay, Texas (Table 1). A total of 69 of the microsatellites had an uninterrupted (perfect) dinucleotide motif, and 30 had an imperfect dinucleotide motif; one microsatellite had an imperfect tetranucleotide motif, and one had an imperfect and compound motif (Table 1 ). Sizes of the cloned alleles ranged from 84 to 252 base pairs. A ‘blast’ search of the GENBANK database indicated that all of the primers and the cloned alleles were unique (i.e., not duplicated)

Population structure, long-term connectivity, and effective size of mutton snapper (Lutjanus analis) in the Caribbean Sea and Florida Keys

Genetic structure and average long-term connectivity and effective size of mutton snapper (Lutjanus analis) sampled from offshore localities in the U.S. Caribbean and the Florida Keys were assessed by using nuclear-encoded microsatellites and a fragment of mitochondrial DNA. No significant differences in allele, genotype (microsatellites), or haplotype (mtDNA) distributions were detected; tests of selective neutrality (mtDNA) were nonsignificant after Bonferroni correction. Heuristic estimates of average long-term rate of migration (proportion of migrant individuals/generation) between geographically adjacent localities varied from 0.0033 to 0.0054, indicating that local subpopulations could respond independently of environmental perturbations. Estimates of average longterm effective population sizes varied from 341 to 1066 and differed significantly among several of the localities. These results indicate that over time larval drift and interregional adult movement may not be sufficient to maintain population sustainability across the region and that there may be different demographic stocks at some of the localities studied. The estimate of long-term effective population size at the locality offshore of St. Croix was below the minimum threshold size considered necessary to maintain the equilibrium between the loss of adaptive genetic variance from genetic drift and its replacement by mutation. Genetic variability in mutton snapper likely is maintained at the intraregional level by aggregate spawning and random mating of local populations. This feature is perhaps ironic in that aggregate spawning also renders mutton snapper especially vulnerable to overexploitation

Genetic addiction risk and psychological profiling analyses for preaddiction severity index

Since 1990, when our laboratory published the association of th

Food addiction and psychosocial adversity: Biological embedding, contextual factors, and public health implications

The role of stress, trauma, and adversity particularly early in life has been identified as a contributing factor in both drug and food addictions. While links between traumatic stress and substance use disorders are well documented, the pathways to food addiction and obesity are less established. This review focuses on psychosocial and neurobiological factors that may increase risk for addiction-like behaviors and ultimately increase BMI over the lifespan. Early childhood and adolescent adversity can induce long-lasting alterations in the glucocorticoid and dopamine systems that lead to increased addiction vulnerability later in life. Allostatic load, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and emerging data on epigenetics in the context of biological embedding are highlighted. A conceptual model for food addiction is proposed, which integrates data on the biological embedding of adversity as well as upstream psychological, social, and environmental factors. Dietary restraint as a feature of disordered eating is discussed as an important contextual factor related to food addiction. Discussion of various public health and policy considerations are based on the concept that improved knowledge of biopsychosocial mechanisms contributing to food addiction may decrease stigma associated with obesity and disordered eating behavior

Future newborns with opioid-induced neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) could be assessed with the genetic addiction risk severity (GARS) test and potentially treated using precision amino-acid enkephalinase inhibition therapy (KB220) as a frontline modality instead of potent opioids

In this nonsystematic review and opinion, including articles primarily selected from PubMed, we examine the pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in order to craft a reasonable opinion to help forge a paradigm shift in the treatment and prevention of primarily opioid-induced NAS. Newborns of individuals who use illicit and licit substances during pregnancy are at risk for withdrawal, also known as NAS. In the US, the reported prevalence of NAS has increased from 4.0 per 1000 hospital births in 2010 to 7.3 per 1000 hospital births in 2017, which is an 82% increase. The management of NAS is varied and involves a combination of nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic therapy. The preferred first-line pharmacological treatment for NAS is opioid therapy, specifically morphine, and the goal is the short-term improvement in NAS symptomatology. Nonpharmacological therapies are individualized and typically focus on general care measures, the newborn-parent/caregiver relationship, the environment, and feeding. When used appropriately, nonpharmacologic therapies can help newborns with NAS avoid or reduce the amount of pharmacologic therapy required and the length of hospitalization. In addition, genetic polymorphisms of the catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) and mu-opioid receptor (OPRM1) genes appear to affect the length of stay and the need for pharmacotherapy in newborns with prenatal opioid exposure. Therefore, based on this extensive literature and additional research, this team of coauthors suggests that, in the future, in addition to the current nonpharmacological therapies, patients with opioid-induced NAS should undergo genetic assessment (i.e., the genetic addiction risk severity (GARS) test), which can subsequently be used to guide DNA-directed precision amino-acid enkephalinase inhibition (KB220) therapy as a frontline modality instead of potent opioids

Statistical validation of risk alleles in Genetic Addiction Risk Severity (GARS) test: Early identification of risk for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) in 74,566 case-control subjects

Since 1990, when our laboratory published the association of the DRD2 Taq A1 allele and severe alcoholism i

Allowing Overlapping Boundaries in Source Code using a Search Based Approach to Concept Binding

One approach to supporting program comprehension involves binding concepts to source code. Previously proposed approaches to concept binding have enforced nonoverlapping boundaries. However, real-world programs may contain overlapping concepts. This paper presents techniques to allow boundary overlap in the binding of concepts to source code. In order to allow boundaries to overlap, the concept binding problem is reformulated as a search problem. It is shown that the search space of overlapping concept bindings is exponentially large, indicating the suitability of sampling-based search algorithms. Hill climbing and genetic algorithms are introduced for sampling the space. The paper reports on experiments that apply these algorithms to 21 COBOL II programs taken from the commercial financial services sector. The results show that the genetic algorithm produces significantly better solutions than both the hill climber and random search