The Kids Aren\u27t Alright: Every Child Should Have an Attorney in Child Welfare Proceedings in Florida

This article is a continuation of a discussion as to why, as a matter of Florida constitutional law, public policy, and professional ethics, Florida\u27s children need independent attorneys from the inception of all dependency and termination of parental rights cases to their completion. It is based upon events which have occurred since the authors\u27 last article on this topic in the Nova Law Review, including the Barahona case, the resolution by the American Bar Association (ABA) in August 2011 at its Annual Convention in Toronto adopting the ABA Model Act Governing the Representation of Children in Abuse, Neglect, and Dependency Proceedings (Model Act), and a series of comments, pronouncements, and policy statements by Florida State officials and advocates

Plasma levels, protein binding, and elimination data of lidocaine and active metabolites in cardiac patients of various ages

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110103/1/cptclpt1983122.pd

Disagreeable Privacy Policies: Mismatches between Meaning and Users’ Understanding

Privacy policies are verbose, difficult to understand, take too long to read, and may be the least-read items on most websites even as users express growing concerns about information collection practices. For all their faults, though, privacy policies remain the single most important source of information for users to attempt to learn how companies collect, use, and share data. Likewise, these policies form the basis for the self-regulatory notice and choice framework that is designed and promoted as a replacement for regulation. The underlying value and legitimacy of notice and choice depends, however, on the ability of users to understand privacy policies. This paper investigates the differences in interpretation among expert, knowledgeable, and typical users and explores whether those groups can understand the practices described in privacy policies at a level sufficient to support rational decision-making. The paper seeks to fill an important gap in the understanding of privacy policies through primary research on user interpretation and to inform the development of technologies combining natural language processing, machine learning and crowdsourcing for policy interpretation and summarization. For this research, we recruited a group of law and public policy graduate students at Fordham University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh (“knowledgeable users”) and presented these law and policy researchers with a set of privacy policies from companies in the e-commerce and news & entertainment industries. We asked them nine basic questions about the policies’ statements regarding data collection, data use, and retention. We then presented the same set of policies to a group of privacy experts and to a group of non-expert users. The findings show areas of common understanding across all groups for certain data collection and deletion practices, but also demonstrate very important discrepancies in the interpretation of privacy policy language, particularly with respect to data sharing. The discordant interpretations arose both within groups and between the experts and the two other groups. The presence of these significant discrepancies has critical implications. First, the common understandings of some attributes of described data practices mean that semi-automated extraction of meaning from website privacy policies may be able to assist typical users and improve the effectiveness of notice by conveying the true meaning to users. However, the disagreements among experts and disagreement between experts and the other groups reflect that ambiguous wording in typical privacy policies undermines the ability of privacy policies to effectively convey notice of data practices to the general public. The results of this research will, consequently, have significant policy implications for the construction of the notice and choice framework and for the US reliance on this approach. The gap in interpretation indicates that privacy policies may be misleading the general public and that those policies could be considered legally unfair and deceptive. And, where websites are not effectively conveying privacy policies to consumers in a way that a “reasonable person” could, in fact, understand the policies, “notice and choice” fails as a framework. Such a failure has broad international implications since websites extend their reach beyond the United States

Information Privacy Law Scholars\u27 Brief in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins

This brief, submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States by 15 information privacy law scholars in the case of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (No 13-1339), argues that in enacting the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Congress crafted a bargain between aggressive, secretive data-aggregating businesses and the public: if those businesses limited disclosures and made reasonable efforts to adhere to practices ensuring “maximum possible accuracy,” they would enjoy a safe harbor from litigation under many other state and federal theories. The FCRA’s consumer transparency requirements and remedial provisions were designed to encourage steady improvement in consumer reporting practices and to relieve pressure on public enforcement authorities. The Petitioner’s claim that Respondents cannot pursue it for its violations of the FCRA would unravel that bargain, preserving consumer reporting agencies’ broad immunity from suit while diminishing incentives to handle data fairly. In an era in which employers increasingly practice “hiring by algorithm,” inaccurate consumer reports — even those that contain putatively favorable inaccuracies — can cause real economic injury to consumers. Such inaccuracies can lead employers to screen out prospective employees as overqualified or too well-paid. Alternatively, employers may suspect resume inflation and dishonesty if background checks reveal inconsistencies or unearned honors. More generally, lawmakers historically have recognized and responded to non-economic and dignity-based injuries by creating rights of action to remedy such wrongs in court. The FCRA follows that pattern. In enacting the FCRA, Congress did not create injury but rather recognized the injury worked by improper disclosure and mishandling of information. Petitioner’s argument to the contrary threatens to upset numerous privacy, consumer protection, and other laws

Introduction: Institutionalisation beyond the nation state: new paradigms? Transatlantic relations: data, privacy and trade law

The chapter explores how we should understand the development of institutionalisation beyond the Nation State. It focuses largely but not exclusively upon a possibly ‘hard case’ of global governance, EU-US relations, long understood to be a non-institutionalised space, in light of recent legal and political developments in trade and data law How should we reflect upon ‘progress’ as a narrative beyond the Nation State? What is the place of bottom-up led process? The lexicon and framework of institutionalisation is argued to be both important and a valuable one worthy of being developed out of the shadows of many disciplines. Institutionalisation may be the antithesis of the desired political outcome and simultaneously also the panacea for all harms. Contrariwise, it is a highly provocative lexicon in its own right for its capacity to provoke questions of sovereignty and sensitivity towards embedded institutionalised frameworks. Transatlantic relations provide a vivid multi-disciplinary example of the relationship between institutionalisation and private power and quest for new forms of institutionalisation across a range of subjects. Exploring ‘de-institutionalisation’ may not capture adequately developments taking place between the EU and US in trade and data privacy. A broader context of extreme volatility in the global legal order is arguably also difficult to capture and pin down as to its specific temporal or conceptual elements. Strong internationalised institutionalisation appears to constitute the outcome of the ‘trade’ case study whereas weak localised institutionalisation appears to constitute the outcome of the ‘data’ case study. Nonetheless, they both represent important evolving concepts of power, rights and authority beyond the State

Cetaceans have complex brains for complex cognition

MEDLINE® is the source for the citation and abstract of this record.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Sonar-induced pressure fields in a post-mortem common dolphin

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131 (2012): 1595-1604, doi:10.1121/1.3675005.Potential physical effects of sonar transmissions on marine mammals were investigated by measuring pressure fields induced in a 119-kg, 211-cm-long, young adult male common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) cadaver. The specimen was instrumented with tourmaline acoustic pressure gauges used as receiving sensors. Gauge implantation near critical tissues was guided by intraoperative, high-resolution, computerized tomography (CT) scanning. Instrumented structures included the melon, nares, ear, thoracic wall, lungs, epaxial muscle, and lower abdomen. The specimen was suspended from a frame equipped with a standard 50.8-mm-diameter spherical transducer used as the acoustic source and additional receiving sensors to monitor the transmitted and external, scattered field. Following immersion, the transducer transmitted pulsed sinusoidal signals at 5, 7, and 10 kHz. Quantitative internal pressure fields are reported for all cases except those in which the gauge failed or no received signal was detected. A full necropsy was performed immediately after the experiment to examine instrumented areas and all major organs. No lesions attributable to acoustic transmissions were found, consistent with the low source level and source-receiver distances.Work supported by NOPP through ONR Grant No. N000140710992. Work at CSI additionally supported by ONR Grant No. N000140811231

Explicating the challenges of providing novel media experiences driven by user personal data

The turn towards personal data to drive novel media experiences has resulted in a shift in the priorities and challenges associated with media creation and dissemination. This paper takes up the challenge of explicating this novel and dynamic scenario through an interview study of employees delivering diverse personal data driven media services within a large U.K. based media organisation. The results identify a need for better interactions in the user-data-service ecosystem where trust and value are prioritised and balanced. Being legally compliant and going beyond just the mandatory to further ensure social accountability and ethical responsibility as an organisation are unpacked as methods to achieve this balance in data centric interactions. The work also presents how technology is seen and used as a solution for overcoming challenges and realising priorities to provide value while preserving trust within the personal data ecosystem

Unconventional animal models for traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the main causes of death worldwide. It is a complex injury that influences cellular physiology, causes neuronal cell death, and affects molecular pathways in the brain. This in turn can result in sensory, motor, and behavioral alterations that deeply impact the quality of life. Repetitive mild TBI can progress into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative condition linked to severe behavioral changes. While current animal models of TBI and CTE such as rodents, are useful to explore affected pathways, clinical findings therein have rarely translated into clinical applications, possibly because of the many morphofunctional differences between the model animals and humans. It is therefore important to complement these studies with alternative animal models that may better replicate the individuality of human TBI. Comparative studies in animals with naturally evolved brain protection such as bighorn sheep, woodpeckers, and whales, may provide preventive applications in humans. The advantages of an in-depth study of these unconventional animals are threefold. First, to increase knowledge of the often-understudied species in question; second, to improve common animal models based on the study of their extreme counterparts; and finally, to tap into a source of biological inspiration for comparative studies and translational applications in humans