The Missing Regulatory State: Monitoring Businesses in an Age of Surveillance

An irony of the information age is that the companies responsible for the most extensive surveillance of individuals in history-large platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google-have themselves remained unusually shielded from being monitored by government regulators. But the legal literature on state information acquisition is dominated by the privacy problems of excess collection from individuals, not businesses. There has been little sustained attention to the problem of insufficient information collection from businesses. This Article articulates the administrative state\u27s normative framework for monitoring businesses and shows how that framework is increasingly in tension with privacy concerns. One emerging complication is the perception that the state, through agencies such as the National Security Administration, deploys large technology companies to surveil individuals. As a result, any routine regulatory monitoring of platforms-even for the purpose of prosecuting those platforms-would implicate an overbearing state peering into our personal lives. Moreover, opponents of regulation have weaponized privacy arguments to shield other businesses from monitoring, such as banks. A sharper understanding of the institutional, legal, and informational differences between regulatory monitoring and personal surveillance is needed. Juxtaposing these two state tools reveals that the tension between regulation and privacy is largely illusory. Regulators today-most notably the Federal Trade Commission-have untapped power to monitor emerging risks in big technology and other sectors. They should not hesitate to use that power to pursue a more informed and collaborative path to achieving their missions

Radiation Hardness Assessment for Muon System Electronics Installed in the 2020 CMS Upgrade

Over the next few years, CERN is taking its LHC (Large Hadron Collider) particle accelerator into a series of long-term shutdowns, during which the devices rate of producing interesting particle interactions will be increased dramatically. At the moment, the CSC (Cathode Strip Chamber) trigger hardware and firmware at the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) has a near perfect efficiency in handling muon events in the CMS endcap, but considering the increase in luminosity (intensity) these systems will suffer a reduction in efficiency(3). Therefore new hardware and firmware are being devised to for high luminosity with the critical requirement that these components be tested to withstand the harsh radiation environment in the region of the CMS end-caps. The results of testing are detailed below, along with the relevant methods used to obtain said results. Building upon previous 2005 electronics equipment for the muon system, new digital components for the upgrade project will replace the copper connections within the CMS’s detectors with optical fiber connections. Some replacements for analog components which have become obsolete (regulators, oscillators, etc) will be upgraded as well

An investigation of the socio-economic, technical and appliance related factors affecting high electrical energy demand in UK homes

The amount of electricity used in individual UK homes varies considerably. Previous UK energy research has identified that high electricity consuming homes not only use more electricity, compared with others, but appear to be consuming even more electricity over time. Furthermore, there is additional evidence which shows that high consuming dwellings also have a greater potential to make energy savings than those who consume less. It has been suggested that future UK energy policy might focus on reducing the demand of high electricity consumers in order to reduce overall CO2 emissions. Therefore, understanding what drives high usage in domestic buildings is essential to support informed decisions. This thesis asserts that to improve knowledge and understanding of the factors affecting high electrical energy consumption in UK domestic buildings, it is necessary to combine an analysis of the occupants socio-economic characteristics, dwelling technical characteristics and appliance related aspects, with detailed monitoring of the ownership, power demand and occupants use of electrical appliances. Using a sample of 315 UK homes, the influence of socio-economic, technical and appliance related characteristics on the probability of a household being a high electrical energy consumer was investigated (Odds ratio analysis). Detailed appliance monitoring data was collected from 27 UK homes to establish the contributions of appliance ownership, power demand and use to high electrical energy demand (Appliance Electricity Use Survey). The current research found similar skewed electricity distributions towards high electricity consumers for both the 315 and 27 home cohorts. Conflicting results were however obtained from the two household samples with regard to whether high electricity consumers are increasing electrical energy demand over time. The results of the odds ratio analysis and Appliance Electricity Use Survey suggest that high electricity consumption in domestic buildings is related to a combination of the socio-economic characteristics of the building occupants, technical characteristics of the dwelling and the ownership, power demand and use of electrical appliances

Determinants of high electrical energy demand in UK homes: appliance ownership and use

This paper provides an analysis of the appliance ownership and use factors contributing to high electrical energy demand in UK homes. The data were collected during a large-scale, city-wide survey, carried out in Leicester, UK, in 2009-2010. Annual electricity consumption and appliance ownership and use were established for 183 dwellings and an odds ratio analysis used to identify the factors that led to high electricity consumption. Many of the appliance ownership and use factors have not previously been studied for the UK domestic sector. The results of this study should be of key interest to government policy makers and energy supply companies interested in the underlying drivers of the highly positively skewed distribution of UK domestic electricity use. The study identifies those appliances that could be targeted for technical improvements or subjected to campaigns to encourage more energy efficient use in order to reduce electricity consumption among high demand households. This paper builds on earlier work by the current authors which identified the households (socio-demographic and dwelling characteristics) most likely to be high electricity consumers. The current work provides the basis for advice and guidance to those households that would enable them to, over time, reduce their electricity use

Radiation Hardness Assessment for Muon System Electronics Installed in the 2020 CMS Upgrade

Over the next few years, CERN is taking its LHC (Large Hadron Collider) particle accelerator into a series of long-term shutdowns, during which the devices rate of producing interesting particle interactions will be increased dramatically. At the moment, the CSC (Cathode Strip Chamber) trigger hardware and firmware at the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) has a near perfect efficiency in handling muon events in the CMS endcap, but considering the increase in luminosity (intensity) these systems will suffer a reduction in efficiency(3). Therefore new hardware and firmware are being devised to for high luminosity with the critical requirement that these components be tested to withstand the harsh radiation environment in the region of the CMS end-caps. The results of testing are detailed below, along with the relevant methods used to obtain said results. Building upon previous 2005 electronics equipment for the muon system, new digital components for the upgrade project will replace the copper connections within the CMS’s detectors with optical fiber connections. Some replacements for analog components which have become obsolete (regulators, oscillators, etc) will be upgraded as well

Software engineering standards and guides for very small entities: implementation in two start-ups

Very small entities, enterprises, organizations, projects or departments with up to 25 people, are very important to the worldwide economy. However it has ben established that such entities often do not utilize existing standards and frameworks. To address the needs of Very Small Entities (VSEs), a set of international standards and guides known as ISO/IEC 29110 has been developed. In this paper we present the results of early trials of this standard in two IT start-ups VSEs. A Peruvian VSE was recently audited and issued an ISO/IEC 29110 certificate of conformity

18P. CMMI (SW, DEV, SVC) Compliance of SDLCs:

In this paper a high-level strategic conceptual assessment on the extent of compliance of the three main Software Development Lifecycles (SDLCs) - STD, RUP, and MSF-CMMI, with three of the main CMMI schemes (SW, DEV, and SVC) is reported. While that the SDLCs theme is a permanent and shared topic in information systems and software engineering research, however, the compliance of SDLCs with IT standards has been few explored. Our research goal is to establish an initial high-level strategic assessment on how the most usual SDLCs satisfy three of the main CMMI schemes. Compliance analysis is based on: (i) previous results reported in literature, (ii) a comparison of the CMMI specific goals of each process area versus the generic SDLCs core workflows descriptions, and (iii) joint academic and research expertise in SW standards from authors. This paper contributes an initial assessment which should be considered from a strategic view due to the coarse unit of analysis. A finer grain analysis in the level of SLDCs’ workflows and activities versus CMMI’s specific practices and typical work products is suggested

The socio-economic, dwelling and appliance related factors affecting electricity consumption in domestic buildings

This paper aims to investigate the socio-economic, dwelling and appliance related factors that have significant or non-significant effects on domestic electricity consumption. To achieve this aim, a comprehensive literature review of international research investigating these factors was undertaken. Although papers examining the factors affecting electricity demand are numerous, to the authors' knowledge, a comprehensive analysis taking stock of all previous findings has not previously been undertaken. The review establishes that no less than 62 factors potentially have an effect on domestic electricity use. This includes 13 socio-economic factors, 12 dwelling factors and 37 appliance factors. Of the 62 factors, four of the socio-economic factors, seven of the dwelling factors, and nine of the appliance related factors were found to unambiguously have a significant positive effect on electricity use. This paper contributes to a better understanding of those factors that certainly affect electricity consumption and those for which effects are unclear and require further research. Understanding the effects of factors can support both the implementation of effective energy policy and aid prediction of future electricity consumption in the domestic sector

Investigating hydrogen isotope variation during heating of n-Alkanes under limited oxygen conditions: implications for palaeoclimate reconstruction in archaeological settings

This paper reports on a series of heating experiments that focus on n-alkanes extracted from leaf, bark, and xylem tissues of the Celtis australis plant. These lipid biomarkers were analysed for their compound-specific hydrogen isotopic composition (δ2Hwax) under limited oxygen conditions at 150, 250, 350, and 450 °C. Our results reveal isotopic variations in wax lipids of different plant organs during short-term low-temperature combustion. We conclude that, in the absence of a detailed characterisation of the depositional environment in advance of sampling, δ2Hwax values in archaeological or otherwise highly anthropogenic environments should be interpreted cautiously. In addition, we observed that variation in δ2Hwax of leaves is minimal at temperatures ≤ 350 °C, highlighting the potential for δ2Hwax in thermally altered combustion substrates to yield palaeoclimate information, which could allow researchers to investigate links between archaeological and climatic records at a high spatial and temporal resolution.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An MADM risk-based evaluation-selection model of free-libre open source software tools

Free-Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) tools are free-cost license highly attractive to be implemented by organizations. However, not of all the FLOSS tools are mature, and failed implementations can occur. Thus, FLOSS evaluation-selection frameworks and FLOSS success-failure implementation factors studies have been conducted. In this research, we advance on such studies through an integrated FLOSS evaluation-selection model with a risk-based decision making approach. Our model was built upon the other two literatures, and it was structured as a Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) model which contains 12 variables grouped in four risk categories: financial, organizational, end-user and technical ones. We illustrated its utilization in the domain of Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) FLOSS tools. Hence, our model contributes to the FLOSS literature with the inclusion of the risk management approach and to the FLOSS evaluation-selection praxis with the provision of an innovative and essential risk-based model