Bottom-up data Trusts: Disturbing the ‘one size fits all’ approach to data governance

Key Points The current lack of legal mechanisms that may plausibly empower us, data subjects to ‘take the reins’ of our personal data leaves us vulnerable. Recent regulatory endeavours to curb contractual freedom acknowledge this vulnerability but cannot, by themselves, remedy it—nor can data ownership. The latter is both unlikely and inadequate as an answer to the problems at stake. We argue that the power that stems from aggregated data should be returned to individuals through the legal mechanism of Trusts. Bound by a fiduciary obligation of undivided loyalty, the data trustees would exercise the data rights conferred by the GDPR (or other topdown regulation) on behalf of the Trust’s beneficiaries. The data trustees would hence be placed in a position where they can negotiate data use in conformity with the Trust’s terms, thus introducing an independent intermediary between data subjects and data collectors. Unlike the current ‘one size fits all’ approach to data governance, there should be a plurality of Trusts, allowing data subjects to choose a Trust that reflects their aspirations, and to switch Trusts when needed. Data Trusts may arise out of publicly or privately funded initiatives. By potentially facilitating access to ‘pre-authorized’, aggregated data (consent would be negotiated on a collective basis), our data Trust proposal may remove key obstacles to the realization of the potential underlying large datasets

From Constitutional words to Statehood? The Palestinian case

A lot of dreams have been invested in the Palestinian constitution. Its ambitious provisions promise a socially progressive, inclusive and tolerant State. Yet, today, these drafts have lost the semantic ambiguity that typically characterises constitutions in the making. It is all too easy to decide that those constitutional words have lost any hint of their politically-induced performative force. It may be tempting to imagine what things may be like had the Oslo Agreements led to a successful constitutional draft; or what could have happened had Arafat not believed that he could somehow artificially turn back the legal clock to a pre-1967 legal patchwork. It is equally tempting to imagine what could – still – happen if, instead of being merely tolerated, perduring customary laws were encouraged to lend their full gravity to a burgeoning civic movement. The sovereignty deficit that plagues the Palestinian constitution-making effort may turn out to be an asset if, by standing in the way of establishing a constitutional democracy from the top down, it has allowed customary practices to flourish

To robotize chemistry laboratories. An example of organic synthesis: 2-Boc-amino-N-hydroxy-3-phenyl-propionamide

The paper describes the development of periodic modules used for the peptide synthesis of hydroxamic acid. A powder conveyor using the principle of positive weighing distribution is described. Purification is provided using automatic filtration and a liquid— liquid extraction module separation device. Device quality is improved using failure mode and effects analysis

The Optimal Gravitational Lens Telescope

Given an observed gravitational lens mirage produced by a foreground deflector (cf. galaxy, quasar, cluster,...), it is possible via numerical lens inversion to retrieve the real source image, taking full advantage of the magnifying power of the cosmic lens. This has been achieved in the past for several remarkable gravitational lens systems. Instead, we propose here to invert an observed multiply imaged source directly at the telescope using an ad-hoc optical instrument which is described in the present paper. Compared to the previous method, this should allow one to detect fainter source features as well as to use such an optimal gravitational lens telescope to explore even fainter objects located behind and near the lens. Laboratory and numerical experiments illustrate this new approach

Need an L-band coronagraph with a small Inner Working Angle on a 10-m class telescope

n/

Trained laser-patterned carbon as high-performance mechanical sensors

We describe the mechanical properties of turbostratically graphitized carbon films obtained by carbon laser-patterning (CLaP) and their application as bending or mechanical pressure sensors. Stable conductive carbonized films were imprinted on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by laser-induced carbonization. After initial gentle bending, i.e. training, these sponge-like porous films show a quantitative and reversible change in resistance upon bending or application of pressure in normal loading direction. Maximum response values of ΔR/R0 = 388% upon positive bending (tensile stress) and −22.9% upon negative bending (compression) are implicit for their high sensitivity towards mechanical deformation. Normal mechanical loading in a range between 0 and 500 kPa causes a response between ΔR/R0 = 0 and −15%. The reversible increase or decrease in resistance is attributed to compression or tension of the turbostratically graphitized domains, respectively. This mechanism is supported by a detailed microstructural and chemical high-resolution transmission electron microscopic analysis of the cross-section of the laser-patterned carbon

Optimization of control parameters of a hot cold controller by means of Simplex type methods

This paper describes a hot/cold controller for regulating crystallization operations. The system was identified with a common method (the Broida method) and the parameters were obtained by the Ziegler-Nichols method. The paper shows that this empirical method will only allow a qualitative approach to regulation and that, in some instances, the parameters obtained are unreliable and therefore cannot be used to cancel variations between the set point and the actual values. Optimization methods were used to determine the regulation parameters and solve this identcation problem. It was found that the weighted centroid method was the best one