Are Cryptocurrency Transactions Private in the European Union? Examining the Effects of Regulation (EU) 2015/847’s Amendment, Proposed Regulation (EU) 2021/0241, and the General Data Protection Regulation

In July 2021, the European Union proposed Regulation (EU) 2021/0241 to regulate the rise of cryptocurrency within its member countries. Proposed Regulation (EU) 2021/0241 is an amendment to Regulation (EU) 2015/847, and its main purpose is to augment the current legal definition of “funds” to include cryptocurrency. Moreover, proposed Regulation (EU) 2021/0241 attempts to tackle criminal activity by forcing crypto wallets to divulge personal identifiable information to European Union financial regulators. This change, however, does not come without concern as it has potential ramifications for proposed Regulation (EU) 2021/0241 to work with the current General Data Protection Regulation. The General Data Protection Regulation’s main purpose is to provide privacy to individuals from third-party and governmental interests, which also includes their financial transactions. This note examines the effects of proposed Regulation (EU) 2021/0241 and highlights the current deficiencies where the regulation would fall short, mainly through the lens of the General Data Protection Regulation

Skills for sustainable development: transforming vocational education and training beyond 2015

There have been recent calls to transform VET and to transform development. This double call leads us to ask: how can skills development best support development that is sustainable for individuals, communities and the planet, whilst promoting social justice and poverty reduction? In considering this question we critique the idea of green skills for the green economy as being inadequate for achieving a transformed and transformative VET that shifts the target from economic growth to the well-being of individuals, and that enables vocational education to play a role in challenging and transforming society and work. Rather, we argue that we must see human development and sustainable development as inseparable, and plan and evaluate VET for its contribution to these. Such an approach must be grounded in a view of work, and hence skills for work, that is decent, life-enhancing, solidaristic, environmentally-sensitive and intergenerationally-aware. It must confront the reality that much current VET is complicit in preparing people for work that lacks some or all of these characteristics. It must be concerned with poverty, inequality and injustice and contribute to their eradication. It must be supportive of individuals’ agency, whilst also reflecting a careful reading of the structures that too often constrain them. In doing all this it must minimise the costs and risks of any transformation for the poor and seek to lock them into better individual and collective lives, not out of them. Finally, it must transform skills, work and the world in ways that are truly sustainable of the people of today but also those who are to inhabit the earth tomorrow

Moving the financial accounting research front forward: the UK contribution

The purpose of this paper is to review the recent UK contribution to the field of financial accounting research, set against the backdrop of the global (mainly US) research effort. A systematic overview of recent research in the field is presented, based upon an analysis of 261 articles published between 1998 and 2002 in seven general, non-US journals. These are the journals that UK academics publish in most frequently and 115 of the articles are UK-authored. It is found that the research areas of MBAR and disclosure currently dominate conventional financial accounting research. The comparison of findings across institutional settings offers fruitful lines of inquiry for research within these main areas (i.e. studies of value relevance, analysts' forecasts, voluntary disclosure and earnings management). While most research is seen to follow the highly quantitative, economics-based US tradition, a significant amount of UK research adopts a more qualitative approach, and distinctive UK contributions are evident in a number of areas (in particular, the disclosure process and corporate social reporting). There are signs that UK researchers are helping researchers in other countries contribute to the global body of scholarly knowledge

Towards Smart Incident Management Under Human Resource Constraints for an IoT-BPM Hybrid Architecture

International audienceThe Internet of Things (IoT) is exploding, and this new technology affects all the layers in any enterprise architecture, from infrastructure to business. To survive this new evolution and make the most out of this paradigm shift, a communication channel must be created between Business Process Management (BPM) domain and IoT domain in order to bridge the gap between the business layer and the IoT physical layer. The allocation of business process resources to IoT events is an important step towards an end-to-end IoT-BPM integration approach to assist organizations in their scheduling and incident management journey. In this paper, we propose a combination approach which is based on (i) unsupervised machine learning algorithms to generate clusters of priorities, used to estimate incoming events priority, and to ensure a learning feedback loop that feeds forward insight to continuously adjust decisions made at each layer, and (ii) genetic algorithm (GA) to guarantee the assignment of the most critical IoT generated event to the qualified human resource while respecting several constraints such as resource availability and reliability, and taking into consideration the priority of each event that launch process instances. A case study is presented and the obtained results from our experimentations demonstrate the benefit of our approach and allowed us to confirm the efficiency of our assumptions

Tropical limestone forest resilience during MIS-2: implications for Pleistocene foraging & modern conservation

In this paper we present a multi-proxy study of tropical limestone forest and its utilization by human groups during the major climatic and environmental upheavals of MIS-2 (29-11.7 ka BP). Our data are drawn from new field research within the Tràng An World Heritage property, on the edge of the Red River Delta, northern Vietnam. Key findings from this study include 1) that limestone forest formations were resilient to the large-scale landscape transformation and inundation of the Sunda continent at the end of the last glaciation; 2) that prehistoric human groups were probably present in this habitat through-out MIS-2; and 3) that the forested, almost insular, karst of Tràng An provided foragers with a stable resource-base in a wider changing landscape. These results have implications for our understanding of the prehistoric utilization of karst environments and resonance for conservation efforts in the face of climate and environmental change today

Early Cretaceous vegetation and climate change at high latitude: Palynological evidence from Isachsen Formation, Arctic Canada

Quantitative palynology of the marginal marine and deltaic-fluvial Isachsen Formation of the Sverdrup Basin, Canadian Arctic, provides insight into high latitude climate during much of the Early Cretaceous (Valanginian to early Aptian). Detrended Correspondence Analysis of main pollen and spore taxa is used to derive three ecological groupings influenced by moisture and disturbance based on the botanical affinities of palynomorphs: 1) a mixed coniferous assemblage containing both lowland and upland components; 2) a conifer-filicopsid community that likely grew in dynamic lowland habitats; and, 3) a mature dry lowland community composed of Cheirolepidiaceans. Stratigraphic changes in the relative abundance of pollen and spore taxa reflect climate variability in this polar region during the ~20 Mya history of the Isachsen Formation. The late Valanginian was relatively cool and moist and promoted lowland conifer-filicopsid communities. Warming in the Hauterivian resulted in the expansion coniferous communities in well-drained or arid hinterlands. A return to relatively cool and moist conditions in the Barremian resulted in the expansion of mixed lowland communities. This work demonstrates the utility of a multivariate statistical approach to palynology to provide insight into the composition and dynamics of ecosystems and climate of high latitude regions during the Early Cretaceous

First measurement of the Hubble Constant from a Dark Standard Siren using the Dark Energy Survey Galaxies and the LIGO/Virgo Binary–Black-hole Merger GW170814

International audienceWe present a multi-messenger measurement of the Hubble constant H 0 using the binary–black-hole merger GW170814 as a standard siren, combined with a photometric redshift catalog from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The luminosity distance is obtained from the gravitational wave signal detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) on 2017 August 14, and the redshift information is provided by the DES Year 3 data. Black hole mergers such as GW170814 are expected to lack bright electromagnetic emission to uniquely identify their host galaxies and build an object-by-object Hubble diagram. However, they are suitable for a statistical measurement, provided that a galaxy catalog of adequate depth and redshift completion is available. Here we present the first Hubble parameter measurement using a black hole merger. Our analysis results in , which is consistent with both SN Ia and cosmic microwave background measurements of the Hubble constant. The quoted 68% credible region comprises 60% of the uniform prior range [20, 140] km s−1 Mpc−1, and it depends on the assumed prior range. If we take a broader prior of [10, 220] km s−1 Mpc−1, we find (57% of the prior range). Although a weak constraint on the Hubble constant from a single event is expected using the dark siren method, a multifold increase in the LVC event rate is anticipated in the coming years and combinations of many sirens will lead to improved constraints on H 0