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

A search for neutrino-antineutrino mass inequality by means of sterile neutrino oscillometry

The investigation of the oscillation pattern induced by the sterile neutrinos might determine the oscillation parameters, and at the same time, allow to probe CPT symmetry in the leptonic sector through neutrino-antineutrino mass inequality. We propose to use a large scintillation detector like JUNO or LENA to detect electron neutrinos and electron antineutrinos from MCi electron capture or beta decay sources. Our calculations indicate that such an experiment is realistic and could be performed in parallel to the current research plans for JUNO and RENO. Requiring at least 5$\sigma$ confidence level and assuming the values of the oscillation parameters indicated by the current global fit, we would be able to detect neutrino-antineutrino mass inequality of the order of 0.5% or larger, which would imply a signal of CPT anomalies.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Enabling seamless V2I communications towards developing cooperative automotive applications in VANET systems

Cooperative applications for VANET will require seamless communication between Vehicle to Infrastructure and Vehicle to Vehicle. IEEE 802.11p has been developed to facilitate this effort. However, in order to have seamless communication for these applications, it is necessary to look at handover as vehicles move between Road-side Units. Traditional models of handover used in normal mobile environments are unable to cope with the high velocity of the vehicle and the relatively small area of coverage with regard to vehicular environments. The YComm framework has yielded techniques to calculate the Time Before Vertical Handover and the Network Dwell Time for any given network topology. Furthermore, by knowing these two parameters, it is also possible to improve channel allocation and resource management in network infrastructure such as base-stations, relays, etc. In this article we explain our overall approach by describing the VANET Testbed and show that in Vehicular environments it is necessary to consider a new handover model which is based on a probabilistic rather than a fixed coverage approach. Finally, we show a new performance model for proactive handover which is then compared with traditional approaches

Entanglement Dynamics of Two Independent Cavity-Embedded Quantum Dots

We investigate the dynamical behavior of entanglement in a system made by two solid-state emitters, as two quantum dots, embedded in two separated micro-cavities. In these solid-state systems, in addition to the coupling with the cavity mode, the emitter is coupled to a continuum of leaky modes providing additional losses and it is also subject to a phonon-induced pure dephasing mechanism. We model this physical configuration as a multipartite system composed by two independent parts each containing a qubit embedded in a single-mode cavity, exposed to cavity losses, spontaneous emission and pure dephasing. We study the time evolution of entanglement of this multipartite open system finally applying this theoretical framework to the case of currently available solid-state quantum dots in micro-cavities.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Topical Issue of Physica Scripta on proceedings of CEWQO 201

Learning with multiple representations: An example of a revision lesson in mechanics

We describe an example of learning with multiple representations in an A-level revision lesson on mechanics. The context of the problem involved the motion of a ball thrown vertically upwards in air and studying how the associated physical quantities changed during its flight. Different groups of students were assigned to look at the ball's motion using various representations: motion diagrams, vector diagrams, free-body diagrams, verbal description, equations and graphs, drawn against time as well as against displacement. Overall, feedback from students about the lesson was positive. We further discuss the benefits of using computer simulation to support and extend student learning.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables http://iopscience.iop.org/0031-912

Standardisation of Environmental Enrichment for Laboratory Mice and Rats: Utilisation, Practicality and Variation in Experimental Results

Rats and mice are the most commonly used species as laboratory animal models of diseases in biomedical  research. Environmental factors such as cage size, number of cage mates and cage structure such as environmental  enrichment can affect the physiology and behavioural development of laboratory animals and  their well-being throughout their lives. Therefore compromising the animals’ well-being due to inadequate  environmental conditions would diminish the value of the research models. In order to improve laboratory  animals’ well-being and promote the quality of animal based biomedical research, it is fundamentally  important that the environment of the animals meets the animals’ species typical behavioural needs. Standardisation  of environmental enrichment for laboratory rats and mice therefore should provide possibilities  for the animals to engage in at least the essential behavioural needs such as social contact, nest building,  exploring and foraging. There is a wide variety of environmental enrichment items commercially available  for laboratory mice and rats. However, how these items are used by the animals, their practicality in the  laboratory and whether these enrichments might lead to increased variation in experimental results have  not been widely assessed. In this study, we implemented two standardised enrichment items (shelters, nesting  materials) for rats and mice at different animal units. We instructed the animal care staff in monitoring  the use of enrichment items by the animals by means of a daily score sheet system. The animal staff ’s  viewpoint on practicality of the standardised enrichment program was assessed with a monthly score sheet  survey. Also we assessed whether the enriched environment affected breeding results and contributed to an  increase in variation of experimental data from several participating current studies. Our results show that  the animals readily used the provided enrichment items. A slight increase in workload for the animal staff  was reported. However, the overall judgement was mainly reported as good. Breeding results and variation  in experimental data did not reveal differences as compared to data from previous housing and/or non enriched  housing conditions. Overall, the results indicate that standard environmental enrichment that is species  appropriate may enhance the animal’s well-being without undesirable side effects on the experimental  outcome and daily working routine of the animal care staff.

Estimating the Quality of Electroconvulsive Therapy Induced Seizures Using Decision Tree and Fuzzy Inference System Classifiers

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective and widely used treatment for major depressive disorder, in which a brief electric current is passed through the brain to trigger a brief seizure. This study aims to identify seizure quality rating by utilizing a set of seizure parameters. We used 750 ECT EEG recordings in this experiment. Four seizure related parameters, (time of slowing, regularity, stereotypy and post-ictal suppression) are used as inputs to two classifiers, decision tree and fuzzy inference system (FIS), to predict seizure quality ratings. The two classifiers produced encouraging results with error rate of 0.31 and 0.25 for FIS and decision tree, respectively. The classification results show that the four seizure parameters provide relevant information about the rating of seizure quality. Automatic scoring of seizure quality may be beneficial to clinicians working in this field

Entanglement in coined quantum walks on regular graphs

Published versio

A Self-learning Nonlinear Variable Gain Proportional Derivative (PD) Controller in Robot Manipulators

This paper proposes a nonlinear variable gain Proportional-Derivative (PD) controller that exhibits self-constructing and self-learning capabilities. In this method, the conventional linear PD controller is augmented with a nonlinear variable PD gain control signal using a dynamic structural network. The dynamic structural network known as Growing Multi-Experts etwork grows in time by placing hidden nodes in regions of the state space visited by the system during operation. This results in a network that is "economic" in terms of network sileo The proposed approach enhances the adaptability of conventional PD controller while preserving its' linear structure. Based on the simulation study on variable load and friction compensation, the fast adaptation is shown to be able to compensate the non-linearity and the uncertainty in the robotic system

Concave Plasmonic Particles: Broad-Band Geometrical Tunability in the Near Infra-Red

Optical resonances spanning the Near and Short Infra-Red spectral regime were exhibited experimentally by arrays of plasmonic nano-particles with concave cross-section. The concavity of the particle was shown to be the key ingredient for enabling the broad band tunability of the resonance frequency, even for particles with dimensional aspect ratios of order unity. The atypical flexibility of setting the resonance wavelength is shown to stem from a unique interplay of local geometry with surface charge distributions