Cloud Computing in the EU Policy Sphere

Cloud computing is a new development that is based on the premise that data and applications are stored centrally and can be accessed through the Internet. Our Article sets up a broad analysis of how the emergence of clouds relates to European law. We single out European competition law, network regulation, and electronic commerce regulation, which we relate to the main challenges for the further development of cloud services in Europe: interoperability and data portability between clouds; issues relating to vertical integration between clouds and Internet Service Providers; and potential problems for clouds to operate on the European Internal Market. We find that these issues are not adequately addressed across the legal frameworks that we analyze, and argue for further research into how to better facilitate innovative convergent services such as cloud computing through European policy- especially in light of the ambitious digital agenda that the European Commission has set out.

From divergence to convergence: re-evaluating the history behind China’s economic boom

China’s long-term economic dynamics pose a formidable challenge to economic historians. The Qing Empire (1644-1911), the world’s largest national economy prior to the 19th century, experienced a tripling of population during the 17th and 18th centuries with no signs of diminishing per capita income. In some regions, the standard of living may have matched levels recorded in advanced regions of Western Europe. However, with the Industrial Revolution a vast gap emerged between newly rich industrial nations and China’s lagging economy. Only with an unprecedented growth spurt beginning in the late 1970s has the gap separating China from the global leaders been substantially diminished, and China regained its former standing among the world’s largest economies. This essay develops an integrated framework for understanding this entire history, including both the long period of divergence and the more recent convergent trend. The analysis sets out to explain how deeply embedded political and economic institutions that had contributed to a long process of extensive growth subsequently prevented China from capturing the benefits associated with new technologies and information arising from the Industrial Revolution. During the 20th century, the gradual erosion of these historic constraints and of new obstacles created by socialist planning eventually opened the door to China’s current boom. Our analysis links China’s recent economic development to important elements of its past, while using the success of the last three decades to provide fresh perspectives on the critical obstacles undermining earlier modernization efforts, and their removal over the last century and a half

Signature morphoelectric properties of diverse GABAergic interneurons in the human neocortex

Human cortex transcriptomic studies have revealed a hierarchical organization of γ-aminobutyric acid-producing (GABAergic) neurons from subclasses to a high diversity of more granular types. Rapid GABAergic neuron viral genetic labeling plus Patch-seq (patch-clamp electrophysiology plus single-cell RNA sequencing) sampling in human brain slices was used to reliably target and analyze GABAergic neuron subclasses and individual transcriptomic types. This characterization elucidated transitions between PVALB and SST subclasses, revealed morphological heterogeneity within an abundant transcriptomic type, identified multiple spatially distinct types of the primate-specialized double bouquet cells (DBCs), and shed light on cellular differences between homologous mouse and human neocortical GABAergic neuron types. These results highlight the importance of multimodal phenotypic characterization for refinement of emerging transcriptomic cell type taxonomies and for understanding conserved and specialized cellular properties of human brain cell types.</p