A Safety Net In The E-Marketplace: The Safe Harbor Principles Offer Comprehensive Privacy Protection Without Stopping Data Flow

In May of 2000, the FTC, under Chairman Robert Pitofsky, concluded that industry self-regulation was not effective in protecting consumer privacy and in a report to Congress the FTC expressed the view that legislation [was] necessary to ensure further implementation of consumer data protection devices

THE EFFECT OF A GREEK TRADITIONAL DANCE PROGRAM ON THE MOTOR COMPETENCE OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

It is usual for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to demonstrate deficits in motor behavior. Participation in movement programs has been suggested to elicit improvements in their motor competence (MC) level. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of a Greek traditional dance (GTD) program on the MC of 6-14-year-old children with ASD. The study design included eight participants (two girls, six boys), who were randomly allocated into two equal-sized groups, group A (its members participated only in the regular Physical Education lessons provided by their school) and group B (its members additionally followed an 8-week GTD program of two 40-min sessions per week). Children’s MC was assessed prior and immediately after the completion of the GTD program by the Bruininks- Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOT-2 SF). Due to study’s small sample size and participants’ heterogenous ASD characteristics, the results will be interpreted as outcomes of multiple single case studies. Overall, it was observed that the MC of all participants was considerably poor; however, members of group B made greater improvements in both the total BOT-2 point score and most item raw scores compared to those of group A, with balance and body coordination skills presenting the greater improvements. Even though the results of this study stress the positive effect of GTD on the MC of children with ASD, future studies employing wider sample sizes and/or implementing longer programs are required to further confirm its merit. Article visualizations

Towards a Functional Approach to the Assessment of Daily Life Physical Activity in Children: Are the PAQ-C and Fitbit Flex-2 Technically Adequate?

Considering the need for functional physical activity (PA) measures in PA settings, this study sought to determine the technical adequacy of the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children (PAQ-C) and the Fitbit Flex-2, two instruments with promising features for wide use, using the Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometer as the criterion reference. A total of 218 Greek children (94 boys, 124 girls; mean age = 10.99 ± 1.52 years) volunteered to join in. Participants wore the PA trackers for seven days and completed the PAQ-C. Moreover, a sub-group (n = 60) recompleted the PAQ-C after a week. Results revealed acceptable internal consistency and excellent test–retest reliability for the PAQ-C. Regarding concurrent validity, weak to moderate correlations with PA parameters recorded by the GT3X+ were revealed for the total PAQ-C and were excellent for the Flex-2, while a Bland–Altman plot indicated good agreement. Finally, in alignment with relevant literature, significant gender, but no age, differences were found in participants’ PA records in all the tools applied. The above results support the use of the PAQ-C and the Fitbit Flex-2 in children. Considering that they shed light into different parameters of children’s habitual PA, their combined utilisation, providing comprehensive information, is strongly recommended.This research was supported by the European Union’s HORIZON 2020 Programme (2014–2020) under ID n 777082, and by the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation through Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (RNP) under Ocariot

Searching for tidal tails - investigating galaxy harassment

Galaxy harassment has been proposed as a physical process that morphologically transforms low surface density disc galaxies into dwarf elliptical galaxies in clusters. It has been used to link the observed very different morphology of distant cluster galaxies (relatively more blue galaxies with 'disturbed' morphologies) with the relatively large numbers of dwarf elliptical galaxies found in nearby clusters. One prediction of the harassment model is that the remnant galaxies should lie on low surface brightness tidal streams or arcs. We demonstrate in this paper that we have an analysis method that is sensitive to the detection of arcs down to a surface brightness of 29 B mag/arcsec^2 and then use this method to search for arcs around 46 Virgo cluster dwarf elliptical galaxies. We find no evidence for tidal streams or arcs and consequently no evidence for galaxy harassment as a viable explanation for the relatively large numbers of dwarf galaxies found in the Virgo cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Faint dwarf spheroidals in the Fornax Cluster: A flat luminosity function

We have discovered about 70 very faint dwarf galaxies in the Fornax Cluster. These dSphs candidates follow the same magnitude-surface brightness relation as their counterparts in the Local Group, and even extend it to fainter limits. The faintest dSph candidate in our sample has an absolute magnitude of M_V = -8.8 mag and a central surface brightness of mu_V = 27 mag/arcsec^2. There exists a tight color-magnitude relation for the early-type galaxies in Fornax that extends from the giant to the dwarf regime. The faint-end slope of the luminosity function of the early-type dwarfs is flat (alpha = -1.1+/-0.1), contrary to the results obtained by Kambas et al. (2000).Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Letters

Potential of the Surface Brightness Fluctuations method to measure distances to dwarf elliptical galaxies in nearby clusters

The potential of the Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) method to determine the membership of dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs) in nearby galaxy clusters is investigated. Extensive simulations for SBF measurements on dEs in the I-band for various combinations of distance modulus, seeing and integration time are presented, based on average VLT FORS1 and FORS2 zero points. These show that for distances up to 20 Mpc (Fornax or Virgo cluster distance), reliable membership determination of dEs can be obtained down to very faint magnitudes -10<M_V<-12 mag (25 mag / arcsec^2) within integration times of the order of 1 hour and with good seeing. Comparing the limiting magnitudes of the method for the different simulated observing conditions we derive some simple rules to calculate integration time and seeing needed to reach a determined limiting magnitude at a given distance modulus for observing conditions different to the ones adopted in the simulations. Our simulations show a small offset of the order of 0.15 mag towards measuring too faint SBF. It is shown that this is due to loss of fluctuation signal when recovering pixel-to-pixel fluctuations from a seeing convolved image. To check whether our simulations represent well the behaviour of real data, SBF measurements for a real and simulated sample of bright Centaurus Cluster dEs are presented. They show that our simulations are in good agreement with the achievable S/N of SBF measurements on real galaxies.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted by A&A, replaced by version with non-abridged bottom page limi

Multicolor Photometry Study of the Galaxy Cluster A2589: Dynamics, Luminosity Function and Star Formation History

In this paper we present a multicolor photometry for A2589 ($z=0.0414$) with 15 intermediate bands in the Beijing-Arizona-Taiwan-Connecticut (BATC) system which covers an optical wavelength range from 3000 \AA\ to 10000 \AA. The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for more than 5000 sources are achieved down to {\it V} $\sim$ 20 mag in about 1 deg$^{2}$ field. A2589 has been also covered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in photometric mode only. A cross-identification of the BATC-detected galaxies with the SDSS photometric catalog achieves 1199 galaxies brighter than $i=19.5$ mag, among which 68 member galaxies with known spectroscopic redshifts are found. After combining the SDSS five-band photometric data and the BATC SEDs, the technique of photometric redshift is applied to these galaxies for selecting faint member galaxies. The color-magnitude relation is taken as a further restriction of early-type cluster galaxies. As a result, 106 galaxies are newly selected as member galaxies. Spatial distribution of member galaxies shows a north-south elongation which agrees with the X-ray brightness profile and the orientation of central cD galaxy, NGC 7647. No substructures are detected on the basis of positions and radial velocities of cluster galaxies, indicating that A2589 is a well-relaxed system. The luminosity function of A2589 exhibits a peak at $M_{R} \sim -20$ mag and a dip at $M_{R} \sim -19$ mag. The low-density outer regions are the preferred habitat of faint galaxies. With the evolutionary population synthesis model, PEGASE, the environmental effect on the star formation properties for 68 spectroscopically confirmed member galaxies is studied. The outlier faint galaxies tend to have longer time scales of star formation, shorter mean stellar ages, and lower metallicities of interstellar medium, which can be interpreted in the context of hierarchical cosmological scenario.Comment: 2011 Accepted to A

The Low Surface Brightness Extent of the Fornax Cluster

We have used a large format CCD camera to survey the nearby Fornax cluster and its immediate environment for low luminosity low surface brightness galaxies. Recent observations indicate that these are the most dark matter dominated galaxies known and so they are likely to be a good tracer of the dark matter in clusters. We have identified large numbers of these galaxies consistent with a steep faint end slope of the luminosity function (alpha~ -2) down to MB ~ -12. These galaxies contribute almost the same amount to the total cluster light as the brighter galaxies and they have a spatial extent that is some four times larger. They satisfy two of the important predictions of N-body hierarchical simulations of structure formation using dark halos. The luminosity (mass ?) function is steep and the mass distribution is more extended than that defined by the brighter galaxies. We also find a large concentration of low surface brightness galaxies around the nearby galaxy NGC1291.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure