Should consent for data processing be privileged in health research?

Several recent data protection laws appear to afford a privileged position to scientific research, including health research. Provisions that might otherwise apply to data subjects and data controllers, including rights exercisable by data subjects against controllers, are lifted or lessened.However, when it comes to considering whether consent should serve as the lawful basis for processing data in the health research context, a fair degree of policy and regulatory divergence emerges. This divergence seems to stem from a normative link that some draw between consent as a research ethics principle and consent as a lawful basis in data protection law.We look at the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and three national laws, either implementing the GDPR or inspired by it, to provide points of comparison: South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013, the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018, and Ireland’s Health Research Regulations 2018. We supplement this analysis by considering other relevant laws and regulations governing health research in these jurisdictions.We argue that there is merit in distinguishing research ethics consent from data processing consent, to avoid what we call ‘consent misconception’, and come to advocate a middle-ground approach in data protection law, ie one that does not mandate consent as the lawful basis for processing personal data in health research projects—but does encourage it. This approach, we argue, achieves the best balance for protecting data subject/research participant rights and interests and promoting socially valuable health research

To What Extent Does the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Apply to Citizen Scientist-Led Health Research with Mobile Devices?

In this article, we consider the possible application of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to “citizen scientist”-led health research with mobile devices. We argue that the GDPR likely does cover this activity, depending on the specific context and the territorial scope. Remaining open questions that result from our analysis lead us to call for lex specialis that would provide greater clarity and certainty regarding the processing of health data by for research purposes, including these non-traditional researchers

Modulation of Mitochondrial Bioenergetics in the Isolated Guinea Pig Beating Heart by Potassium and Lidocaine Cardioplegia: Implications for Cardioprotection

Mitochondria are damaged by cardiac ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury but can contribute to cardioprotection. We tested if hyperkalemic cardioplegia (CP) and lidocaine (LID) differently modulate mitochondrial (m) bioenergetics and protect hearts against I/R injury. Guinea pig hearts (n = 71) were perfused with Krebs Ringer\u27s solution before perfusion for 1 minute just before ischemia with either CP (16 mM K+) or LID (1 mM) or Krebs Ringer\u27s (control, 4 mM K+). The 1-minute perfusion period assured treatment during ischemia but not on reperfusion. Cardiac function, NADH, FAD, m[Ca2+], and superoxide (reactive oxygen species) were assessed at baseline, during the 1-minute perfusion, and continuously during I/R. During the brief perfusion before ischemia, CP and LID decreased reactive oxygen species and increased NADH without changing m[Ca2+]. Additionally, CP decreased FAD. During ischemia, NADH was higher and reactive oxygen species was lower after CP and LID, whereas m[Ca2+] was lower only after LID. On reperfusion, NADH and FAD were more normalized, and m[Ca2+] and reactive oxygen species remained lower after CP and LID. Better functional recovery and smaller infarct size after CP and LID were accompanied by better mitochondrial function. These results suggest that mitochondria may be implicated, directly or indirectly, in protection by CP and LID against I/R injury

Effect of Steaming on Some Physical and Chemical Properties of Black Walnut Heartwood

The influence of steaming time and temperature on some physical and chemical properties of black walnut heartwood was studied. One-inch cube sample blocks were steamed at two different temperatures and four different times, and the pH, surface tension, and color of the wood fluids, as well as the extractives and area of cell lumina, were determined.The pH and surface tension were not affected enough by steaming to be related to color changes of wood, swelling the wood beyond that normally expected in water at room temperature, or reducing drying defects. Prolonged and high temperature (above 100 C) steaming increased alcohol-benzene extractives of the steamed wood. Prolonged and high temperature steaming caused cell walls to swell beyond that in water at room temperature, especially in earlywood. Steaming temperature and time were highly effective in changing the color of wood fluids

Ceiling-fan-integrated air conditioning: Airflow and temperature characteristics of a sidewall-supply jet interacting with a ceiling fan

Ceiling-Fan-Integrated Air Conditioning (CFIAC) is a proposed system that can greatly increase buildings’ cooling efficiency. In it, terminal supply ducts and diffusers are replaced by vents/nozzles, jetting supply air toward ceiling fans that serve to mix and distribute it within the room. Because of the fans’ air movement, the system provides comfort at higher room temperatures than in conventional commercial/ institutional/retail HVAC. We have experimentally evaluated CFIAC in a test room. This paper covers the distributions of air-speed, temperature, and calculated comfort level throughout the room. Two subsequent papers report tests of human subject comfort and ventilation effectiveness in the same experimental conditions. The room’s supply air emerged from a high-sidewall vent directed toward a ceiling fan on the jet centerline; we also tested this same jet on a fan located off to the side of the jet. Primary variables are: ceiling fan flow volumes in downward and upward directions, supply air volume, and room-vs-supply temperature difference. Velocity, turbulence, and temperature distributions are presented for vertical and horizontal transects of the room. The occupied zone is then evaluated for velocity and temperature non-uniformity, and for comfort as predicted by the ASHRAE Standard 55 elevated air speed method. We show that temperatures are well-mixed and uniform across the room for all of the fan-on configurations, for fans both within or out of the supply jet centerline. The ceiling fan flow dominates the CFIAC airflow, and even though non-uniform is capable of providing comfortable conditions throughout the occupied area of the room

Combustion and Emission Characteristics of Sawdust-Coal Fine Pellets

Pellets made from wood and coal residues at various ratios (0, 25, 50, 75, and 100% wood, and 50% wood-plus-limestone) were burned at different underfire/overfire air mixtures (20, 40, 60, and 80%) in a laboratory stationary bed burner to determine the effects of wood/coal ratio and underfire/overfire air mixture on the combustion and emission characteristics of wood-coal pellets.The results indicated: 1) the oxygen depletion periods appeared to increase with increasing percentages of wood in the pellets and also to increase with increasing underfire air (UFA); 2) increasing wood percentages in pellets decreased flame temperature and total run time, and, thus increased the firing rate; 3) increasing percentages of wood in pellets reduced sulfur dioxide (SO2 emissions but increased carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) emissions; 4) increasing UFA increased the CO, CH4, and SO2 emissions; and 5) adding a small quantity of limestone to wood-coal pellets greatly increased the capture of sulfur in the bottom solids and thus reduced the SO2 emission substantially

LEND and Faster Algorithms for Constructing Minimal Perfect Hash Functions

The Large External object-oriented Network Database (LEND) system has been developed to provide efficient access to large collections of primitive or multimedia objects, semantic networks, thesauri, hypertexts, and information retrieval collections. An overview of LEND is given, emphasizing aspects that yield efficient operation. In particular, a new algorithm is described for quickly finding minimal perfect hash functions whose specification space is very close to the theoretical lower bound, i.e., around 2 bits per key. The various stages of processing are detailed, along with analytical and empirical results, including timing for a set of over 3.8 million keys that was processed on a NeXTstation in about 6 hours

Blue-Light-Emitting Color Centers in High-Quality Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Light emitters in wide band gap semiconductors are of great fundamental interest and have potential as optically addressable qubits. Here we describe the discovery of a new color center in high-quality hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) with a sharp emission line at 435 nm. The emitters are activated and deactivated by electron beam irradiation and have spectral and temporal characteristics consistent with atomic color centers weakly coupled to lattice vibrations. The emitters are conspicuously absent from commercially available h-BN and are only present in ultra-high-quality h-BN grown using a high-pressure, high-temperature Ba-B-N flux/solvent, suggesting that these emitters originate from impurities or related defects specific to this unique synthetic route. Our results imply that the light emission is activated and deactivated by electron beam manipulation of the charge state of an impurity-defect complex