Pseudoclassical model for Weyl particle in 10 dimensions

A pseudoclassical model to describe Weyl particle in 10 dimensions is proposed. In course of quantization both the massless Dirac equation and the Weyl condition are reproduced automatically. The construction can be relevant to Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz strings where the Weyl reduction in the Ramond sector has to be made by hand.Comment: 5 page

The EU data protection reform and the challenges of big data: Tensions in the relations between technology and the law

In this article, we examine key features of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the light of implications of big data technologies. We will focus specifically on the original regulatory approaches introduced by the GDPR relying on risk assessment and management and on self-defense by Internet users, seeking to interpret them in view of a law-technology lag versus a law-technology driving perspective, meaning a legislative policy guided essentially by the intent to foster technological innovation and competitiveness in the Digital Single Market. Indeed, the current EU data protection reform seemingly fails to provide the appropriate caution that should be expected from a law designed to protect a fundamental human right. Notwithstanding the declared aspirations of the GDPR, the decision-making power on what and how to collect, store, and process personal data is leaning to the operators and data controllers to the disadvantage of data subjects and supervisory authorities. While technological conditions, namely the automatisation inherent to data mining and data analytics, render the effectiveness of key data protection principles harder to pursue, it is also true that the increasing suppleness of the regime is furthered by the Regulation’s own regulatory choices.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Between uncertainty and controversy: has the European Union actually responded to the challenges of GMO regulation?

DINÂMIA, Junho de 2008.The legal regime applicable to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the European Union is an important witness to the central position assumed by risk in European regulatory and institutional reform over the last years. At the European level, the GMO regime provides an archetypical response by the regulator to the challenges raised by scientific uncertainty, social controversy and the weakening of national frontiers. The need to act in situations where knowledge about relevant facts is insufficient or uncertain presents a test to the regulator and more generally to a legal system in which the verification or proof of the truth has traditionally been the requirement for both activating the law and for determining their possible violation. The precautionary principle provides the primary EU response to this challenge. Its inclusion in EU legislation on GMOs entails the recognition of the actual lack of conclusive evidence of harm which may be caused by the experimental use, the cultivation or industrial application of GMOs. At the same time, the extent of the public controversy surrounding this biotechnology led the EU to reconsider and possibly reinforce mechanisms for involving the civil society in the regulatory process. Yet, at the end of the day, the GMO regime structures the whole system for the assessment and management of the risk on the use of science and scientific opinions. This article seeks to examine this apparent paradox and the way in which the GMO regime attempts to resolve it. This analysis will lead us in the end to questioning whether by meeting the risk raised by the development and use of GMOs in the way it does, the EU is not generating a sort of regulatory failure.FC

No-horizon theorem for spacetimes with spacelike G1 isometry groups

We consider four-dimensional spacetimes $(M,{\mathbf g})$ which obey the Einstein equations ${\mathbf G}={\mathbf T}$, and admit a global spacelike $G_{1}={\mathbb R}$ isometry group. By means of dimensional reduction and local analyis on the reduced (2+1) spacetime, we obtain a sufficient condition on ${\mathbf T}$ which guarantees that $(M,{\mathbf g})$ cannot contain apparent horizons. Given any (3+1) spacetime with spacelike translational isometry, the no-horizon condition can be readily tested without the need for dimensional reduction. This provides thus a useful and encompassing apparent horizon test for $G_{1}$-symmetric spacetimes. We argue that this adds further evidence towards the validity of the hoop conjecture, and signals possible violations of strong cosmic censorship.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, uses IOP package; published in Class. Quantum Gra

Does the centrality of human values in the lisbon treaty promise more than it can actually offer? Biometrics law and policy as a case study

DINÂMIA'CET, Agosto de 2010The adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon and the granting to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the same legal force as the Treaty lent a new impulse to the consideration of fundamental human values by the European Union (EU). The question remains, however, of how this legal discourse centred on human values is actually shaping the EU regulatory framework in specific policy domains. The aim of this paper is to critically appraise the ways that certain values rendered explicit through the Charter’s rights and principles are being construed in the context of EU policy and law on biometrics, an ethically and morally sensitive security technology whose development and use are being actively promoted by the EU. We conclude that the interpretation of the pertinent Charter’s rights and principles as well as their balancing owes to a great deal to the goals of EU policies, shaped largely by political and economic considerations. In respect of biometrics, research priorities, combined with those of EU security policy, then tend to prevail over ethically or morally based legal claims.FC

Modeling the spectrum of gravitational waves in the primordial Universe

Recent observations from type Ia Supernovae and from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies have revealed that most of the matter of the Universe interacts in a repulsive manner, composing the so-called dark energy constituent of the Universe. The analysis of cosmic gravitational waves (GW) represents, besides the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies, an additional approach in the determination of parameters that may constrain the dark energy models and their consistence. In recent work, a generalized Chaplygin gas model was considered in a flat universe and the corresponding spectrum of gravitational waves was obtained. The present work adds a massless gas component to that model and the new spectrum is compared to the previous one. The Chaplygin gas is also used to simulate a $\Lambda$-CDM model by means of a particular combination of parameters so that the Chaplygin gas and the $\Lambda$-CDM models can be easily distinguished in the theoretical scenarios here established. The lack of direct observational data is partialy solved when the signature of the GW on the CMB spectra is determined.Comment: Proc. of the Conference on Magnetic Fields in the Universe: from laboratories and stars to primordial structures, AIP(NY), eds. E. M. de Gouveia Dal Pino, G. Lugones & A. Lazarian (2005), in press. (8 pages, 11 figures