FCC Cross-Ownership Proposals – Is U.S. Media Plurality Threatened?

UK media plurality advocates have been trying to place limits on media ownership, due in large part to the perceived abuse of press power that prompted the phone hacking scandal. But the US, as LSE’s Paul Moura shows, appears to be making moves in the opposite direction

Data Portability Series: Capitalising on the Market for Interoperability

In the next post in the Data Portability Series curated by our colleagues at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT (ICRI) of the KU Leuven – University of Leuven, LSE Alum and lawyer Paul Moura argues that a focus on interoperability is key to ensuring data portability inspires innovation rather than resistance

Editorial Reaction to Leveson: Kudos to Lord Leveson, but not to ‘statutory regulation’

As our previous analysis showed, the press had largely abstained from pronouncing its verdict on Leveson during the year-long inquiry, but now that the Lord Judge has finally released his report, initial feedback from newspapers indicate that they do show some degree of support for his findings—but not for his key proposal. The Media Policy Project, which has been examining papers’ editorials on the Inquiry since it began in September last year, came to this conclusion after analysing the 12 staff-written opinion pieces that were printed on 30 November, the day after the report was published

Mechanical characterisation and strain rate sensitivity of rubber shockpad in 3G artificial turf

Artificial turf systems are increasingly prolific, and are typically comprised of multi-components. Their responses to interactions with users and equipment can be relatively complex under different loading conditions as they tend to be polymeric and elastomeric and hence can exhibit non-linear and strain rate dependent behaviour. To further study and better understand the behaviour of these systems, the development of a numerical model to accurately predict individual layers' behaviour as well as the overall system's response under different loading conditions is necessary. Such a model can be used to better optimise surface design such as material choices and layer thickness, also possibly reducing construction costs. The purpose of this study was to model the mechanical behaviour of the rubber shockpad layer used in 3G artificial turfs using finite element (FE) analyses. Shockpad layers in artificial turf play a vital role in the shock absorption and ball interactions, and affect user safety. The rubber shockpad used in this study was an elastic prefabricated mat comprised of recycled rubber shreds approximately 2 to 8 mm in size bonded with polyurethane. A series of 3D finite element dynamic analyses were carried out using ABAQUS applying compressive cyclic loading to simulate the shockpad behaviour under different loading frequencies. The frequencies were based on biomechanical data for an athlete walking, running and sprinting. Arruda-Boyce hyperelastic constitutive model was employed to best describe the stress-strain response of the rubber shockpad under compressive loading. A series of uniaxial compression tests were conducted and the results were employed to characterise the mechanical behaviour of the material. The best Arruda-Boyce's coefficients, for different strain rates were obtained using initial estimation (IEM) method and trial-and-error approach. The FE results showed the best-fit hyperelastic material model which can describe and predict the material behaviour under various strain rates. Finally, using finite element results a series of models were proposed to accurately predict the stress-strain behaviour of the material in different loading frequencies relevant to athlete

Non-minimal Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory and the composite Fermion model

The magnetic field redefinition in Jain's composite fermion model for the fractional quantum Hall effect is shown to be effectively described by a mean-field approximation of a model containing a Maxwell-Chern-Simons gauge field non-minimally coupled to matter. Also an explicit non-relativistic limit of the non-minimal (2+1)D Dirac equation is derived.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Characterizing Result Errors in Internet Desktop Grids

Desktop grids use the free resources in Intranet and Internet environments for large-scale computation and storage. While desktop grids offer a high return on investment, one critical issue is the validation of results returned by participating hosts. Several mechanisms for result validation have been previously proposed. However, the characterization of errors is poorly understood. To study error rates, we implemented and deployed a desktop grid application across several thousand hosts distributed over the Internet. We then analyzed the results to give quantitative, empirical characterization of errors rates. We find that in practice, error rates are widespread across hosts but occur relatively infrequently. Moreover, we find that error rates tend to not be stationary over time nor correlated between hosts. In light of these characterization results, we evaluated state-of-the-art error detection mechanisms and describe the trade-offs for using each mechanism. Finally, based on our empirical results, we conduct a benefit analysis of a recently proposed mechanism for error detection tailored for long-running applications. This mechanism is based on using the digest of intermediate checkpoints, and we show in theory and simulation that the relative benefit of this method compared to the state-of-the-art is as high as 45\%

ID-Care: a Model for Sharing Wide Healthcare Data

All over the world, there is a lot of patient health data in different locations such as hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, and other organizations. In this sense, global identification of the patient has emerged as an everyday healthcare challenge. Governments and institutions have to prioritize satisfactory, quick, and integrated decision-making in a wide, dispersed, and global environment because of unexpected challenges like pandemics or threats. In the current scientific literature, some of the existing challenges include support for a standard global unique identification that considers privacy issues, the combination of multiple technological biometry implementations, and personal documents. Thus, we propose a decentralized software model based on blockchain and smart contracts that includes privacy, global unique person identification supporting multiple combinations of documents, and biometric data using the Global Standards 1 - GS1 healthcare industry standard. Furthermore, we defined a methodology to evaluate a hypothetical use case of this model where an integrated and standard global health data sharing personal identification is crucial. For this, we implemented the proposed model in a global-wide continent location through cloud machines, fog computing, and blockchain considering the unique patient data identification and evaluate a use case scenario based on the top 5 most globally visited tourist destinations (France, Spain, the United States of America, China, and Italy), with an approach based on this model. The results show that using a model for a global id for healthcare can help reduce costs, time, and efforts, especially in the context of health threats, where agility and financial support must be prioritized.N/

Effect of pH on the thermostability and redox properties of cytochrome c552 from Wolinella succinogenes

Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the Biolab for the acquisition of CD and DSC data, and Hugo Santos and the BIOSCOPE group for determining the molecular mass by LC-ESI-MS of the isolated Ws cytochromeCytochrome c552 from Wolinella succinogenes is one of the few examples of a low reduction potential class I c-type cytochrome with a mixture of high/low spin state populations observed in its visible spectrum. Analysis of its structural model suggests that the heme is Met/His coordinated and highly solvent-exposed. This supports the hypothesis that it is the solvent accessibility of the propionate groups that controls the reduction potential of small c-type cytochromes. The visible spectra obtained at different pH values reveal the presence of a protonable group with a pKa of 7.3, which also influences the reduction potential of this small cytochrome c552 (Em 0' of 97 ± 5 mV, pH 7.0) and can be either an H2O/OH -group distantly coordinating the heme iron, or one of the propionate groups. The thermostability of cytochrome c552 has been studied by circular dichroism and differential scanning calorimetry, indicating a highly stable protein at pH 5-7 (90 ºC to 77 ºC).publishersversionpublishe

Forget How We Got Here? Newspaper Coverage of the Royal Charter Deal

When Leveson published his Report at the end of November our research showed that the press presented the story as one mainly about freedom of the press and the struggle by hacking victims for vindication and protection in the future. Slightly less prominent but also present was a narrative of the politico-media complex or ties between big media and politicians. Our latest study of newspaper coverage before and after the Royal Charter agreement for implementing Leveson’s recommendations showed that the struggle of the victims of press wrongdoings has all but disappeared from the story

examples of high-impact discoveries from an international chemistry network

CNPq 303355/2018-2 CAPES-Cofecub (88887.130198/2017-01) EP/F034210/1 EP/P030572/1 UIDB/50006/2020 CNPq (308383/2018-4 Universal 403866/2016-2 PDE 204177/2018-9 I 421703/2017-2 .During the last 150 years or more, society has witnessed many key scientific discoveries and inventions, which have dramatically improved not only our quality of life, but our lifespan. However, the motivation of scientists to provide scientific advances has generally not been the achievement of these goals, but mainly driven by research curiosity. Fundamental scientific studies, also known as basic science, have paved the way to a society of knowledge by means of continuously evolving education systems, and have led to applied science and technological breakthroughs changing the World. However, without basic science such life-changing advances would not happen, which is poorly understood by the society. Having this in mind, chemists and biochemists working in a chemistry network highlight here examples of how basic science has played a crucial role and led to major breakthroughs. In seven short stories, the authors describe cases and historical events where basic research discoveries have advanced science, and opened avenues for future achievements. Investment in basic science is crucial for a nation’s health and wealth. The support of scientists driven by curiosity ultimately can benefit the whole of society, not only in innovative products, but also in the improvement of the understanding of our own lives.publishersversionpublishe