Data Subject Rights as a Tool for Platform Worker Resistance:Lessons from the <i>Uber/Ola</i> Judgments

Data subject rights have been increasingly used to challenge power asymmetries in different contexts, including work. This chapter looks at how platform workers have harnessed their data subject rights in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the wider context of platform worker resistance. The strategic litigation cases against Uber and Ola, brought forth by App Drivers Workers Union (ADCU) and Worker Info Exchange (WIE) before the Amsterdam District Court (ADC), represent a prime example of data subject rights being leveraged by workers in an unconventional and potentially complicated manner. While this is not the first time that data subject rights have been interpreted before courts, these judgments have implications that merit attention from both labour protection and data protection communities. These rulings showcase how data subject rights are operationalised and envisioned as a tool of resistance, contrasting with how these rights are designed by legislators. These rulings also reveal barriers to the effective exercise of these rights in practice, which should be urgently addressed via an update on the guidelines or via more radical reform. This chapter evaluates the ADC’s rulings through the lens of data protection and shows glitches, mismatches and erroneous views in need of revision in the appeal. It is argued that courts are in a distinctive and critical position vis-a-vis data protection authorities to make these rights work. While there are inherent limitations on these rights (the right of access in particular), courts play an indispensable role in removing procedural barriers and establishing avenues for balancing competing values. At the juncture where the regulatory landscape for platform work is being radically re-configured, data subject rights still, we argue, offer potential for platform workers as a tool of resistance

Vascular changes in diabetic retinopathy-a longitudinal study in the Nile rat.

Diabetic retinopathy is the most common microvascular complication of diabetes and is a major cause of blindness, but an understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease has been hampered by a lack of accurate animal models. Here, we explore the dynamics of retinal cellular changes in the Nile rat (Arvicanthis niloticus), a carbohydrate-sensitive model for type 2 diabetes. The early retinal changes in diabetic Nile rats included increased acellular capillaries and loss of pericytes that correlated linearly with the duration of diabetes. These vascular changes occurred in the presence of microglial infiltration but in the absence of retinal ganglion cell loss. After a prolonged duration of diabetes, the Nile rat also exhibits a spectrum of retinal lesions commonly seen in the human condition including vascular leakage, capillary non-perfusion, and neovascularization. Our longitudinal study documents a range and progression of retinal lesions in the diabetic Nile rat remarkably similar to those observed in human diabetic retinopathy, and suggests that this model will be valuable in identifying new therapeutic strategies

An Exploratory Study of Lecturers' Views of Out-of-class Academic Collaboration Among Students

This article reports an exploratory study of lecturers' perceptions of out-of-class academic collaboration (OCAC) among students at a large Singapore university. Two types of OCAC were investigated: collaboration initiated by students, e.g., groups decide on their own to meet to prepare for exams, and collaboration required by teachers, e.g., teachers assign students to do projects in groups. Data were collected via one-on-one interviews with 18 faculty members from four faculties at the university. Findings suggest that OCAC, especially of a teacher-required kind, is fairly common at the university. Faculty members' views on factors affecting the success of OCAC are discussed for the light they might shed on practices to enhance the effectiveness of OCAC

Novel components of the Toxoplasma inner membrane complex revealed by BioID.

UNLABELLED:The inner membrane complex (IMC) of Toxoplasma gondii is a peripheral membrane system that is composed of flattened alveolar sacs that underlie the plasma membrane, coupled to a supporting cytoskeletal network. The IMC plays important roles in parasite replication, motility, and host cell invasion. Despite these central roles in the biology of the parasite, the proteins that constitute the IMC are largely unknown. In this study, we have adapted a technique named proximity-dependent biotin identification (BioID) for use in T.&nbsp;gondii to identify novel components of the IMC. Using IMC proteins in both the alveoli and the cytoskeletal network as bait, we have uncovered a total of 19 new IMC proteins in both of these suborganellar compartments, two of which we functionally evaluate by gene knockout. Importantly, labeling of IMC proteins using this approach has revealed a group of proteins that localize to the sutures of the alveolar sacs that have been seen in their entirety in Toxoplasma species only by freeze fracture electron microscopy. Collectively, our study greatly expands the repertoire of known proteins in the IMC and experimentally validates BioID as a strategy for discovering novel constituents of specific cellular compartments of T.&nbsp;gondii. IMPORTANCE:The identification of binding partners is critical for determining protein function within cellular compartments. However, discovery of protein-protein interactions within membrane or cytoskeletal compartments is challenging, particularly for transient or unstable interactions that are often disrupted by experimental manipulation of these compartments. To circumvent these problems, we adapted an in vivo biotinylation technique called BioID for Toxoplasma species to identify binding partners and proximal proteins within native cellular environments. We used BioID to identify 19 novel proteins in the parasite IMC, an organelle consisting of fused membrane sacs and an underlying cytoskeleton, whose protein composition is largely unknown. We also demonstrate the power of BioID for targeted discovery of proteins within specific compartments, such as the IMC cytoskeleton. In addition, we uncovered a new group of proteins localizing to the alveolar sutures of the IMC. BioID promises to reveal new insights on protein constituents and interactions within cellular compartments of Toxoplasma

A Simple Model for Anisotropic Step Growth

We consider a simple model for the growth of isolated steps on a vicinal crystal surface. It incorporates diffusion and drift of adatoms on the terrace, and strong step and kink edge barriers. Using a combination of analytic methods and Monte Carlo simulations, we study the morphology of growing steps in detail. In particular, under typical Molecular Beam Epitaxy conditions the step morphology is linearly unstable in the model and develops fingers separated by deep cracks. The vertical roughness of the step grows linearly in time, while horizontally the fingers coarsen proportional to $t^{0.33}$. We develop scaling arguments to study the saturation of the ledge morphology for a finite width and length of the terrace.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures; [email protected]

Antibiotics and oral contraceptive failure - a case-crossover study

Background: Evidence on the association between antibiotic use and combined oral contraceptive (COC) failure is controversial. We examined the effect of concomitant antibiotic treatment on the risk of breakthrough pregnancy among COC users. Study Designs: We performed a case-crossover study of 1330 COC failure cases among 17,721 women from the Slone Epidemiology Center Birth Defects Study (1997-2008) and among 25,941 women from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (NBDPS, 1997-2005). Self-matched odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated by comparing antibiotic use between the 4 weeks before conception ("case period") and the 4-8 weeks before conception ("control period") using conditional logistic regression. A case time-control analysis was conducted using nonusers of COCs with unplanned pregnancies as controls. Results: For the combined data, the self-matched OR was 1.08 (95% CI: 0.63-1.84) and the case time-control OR was 1.12 (0.63-1.98) for antibiotics overall. The results did not appreciably differ when adjusted for characteristics that might vary between the case and control period. However, among COC failure cases from the NBDPS, allowing a 1-month gap between the case and control period resulted in a self-matched OR of 1.45 (0.85-2.50) and a case time-control OR of 1.55 (0.86-2.79) for antibiotics overall. Conclusions: We did not find an association between concomitant antibiotic use and the risk of breakthrough pregnancy among COC users. However, due to limited power and potential carryover effects, findings from this study cannot rule out an elevated risk of COC failure among antibiotic users. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Solitary waves of nonlinear nonintegrable equations

Our goal is to find closed form analytic expressions for the solitary waves of nonlinear nonintegrable partial differential equations. The suitable methods, which can only be nonperturbative, are classified in two classes. In the first class, which includes the well known so-called truncation methods, one \textit{a priori} assumes a given class of expressions (polynomials, etc) for the unknown solution; the involved work can easily be done by hand but all solutions outside the given class are surely missed. In the second class, instead of searching an expression for the solution, one builds an intermediate, equivalent information, namely the \textit{first order} autonomous ODE satisfied by the solitary wave; in principle, no solution can be missed, but the involved work requires computer algebra. We present the application to the cubic and quintic complex one-dimensional Ginzburg-Landau equations, and to the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation.Comment: 28 pages, chapter in book "Dissipative solitons", ed. Akhmediev, to appea

Sharper and Simpler Nonlinear Interpolants for Program Verification

Interpolation of jointly infeasible predicates plays important roles in various program verification techniques such as invariant synthesis and CEGAR. Intrigued by the recent result by Dai et al.\ that combines real algebraic geometry and SDP optimization in synthesis of polynomial interpolants, the current paper contributes its enhancement that yields sharper and simpler interpolants. The enhancement is made possible by: theoretical observations in real algebraic geometry; and our continued fraction-based algorithm that rounds off (potentially erroneous) numerical solutions of SDP solvers. Experiment results support our tool's effectiveness; we also demonstrate the benefit of sharp and simple interpolants in program verification examples