How the World\u27s Largest Economies Regulate Data Privacy: Drawbacks, Benefits, & Proposed Solutions

National data privacy regimes are quickly gaining traction and ubiquity around the globe. Moving forward, countries will face a range of difficult decisions surrounding how best to engage internationally in cross border data flow, particularly in the context of personal information (PI). This article takes a bird\u27s-eye view of the current state of data privacy regimes in the world\u27s four highest GDP regions. In part, this article hopes to provide a succinct analysis of these data privacy regimes, with a focus on the balance they strike between granting individuals rights in their data and placing responsibilities on businesses that deal with PI. Analyzing the world\u27s most economically active countries provides an opportunity to highlight the substantial benefits that data privacy regimes can provide the world\u27s citizens while balancing these benefits against the potential negative economic impact of data privacy regimes. This proposition motivated this article\u27s choice of regions to survey. Section I provides an overview of the current state of data privacy legislation and regulation in the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union. Section II outlines the drawbacks to some of the common themes that emerge from these surprisingly similar regulatory frameworks. Section III explores the benefits data privacy regimes offer to individuals. Section IV proposes potential solutions to this emerging global governance conundrum

What do the value-at-risk measure and the respective legislative framework really offer to financial stability? Critical views and pro-cyclicality

© 2020 The Author. In this paper, we examine how value at risk (VaR) contributes to the financial market’s stability. We apply the Guidelines on Risk Measurement and the Calculation of Global Exposure and Counterparty Risk for UCITS of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR 2010) to the main indices of the 12 stock markets of the countries that have used the euro as their official currency since its initial circulation. We show that gaps in the legislative framework give incentives to investment funds to adopt conventional models for the VaR estimation in order to avoid the increased costs that the advanced models involve. For this reason, we apply the commonly used historical simulation VaR (HVaR) model, which is: (i) taught at most finance classes; (ii) widely applied in the financial industry; and (iii) accepted by CESR (2010). The empirical evidence shows the HVaR does not really contribute to financial stability, and the legislative framework does not offer the appropriate guidance. The HVaR model is not representative of the real financial risk, and does not give any signal for trends in the near future. The HVaR is absolutely backward-looking and this increases the stock market’s overreaction. The fact that the suggested confidence level in CESR (2010) is set at 99 percent leads to hidden pro-cyclicality. Scholars and researchers should focus on issues such as the abovementioned, otherwise the VaR estimations will become, sooner or later, just a formality, and such conventional statistical measures rarely contribute to financial stability

The effect of perceived speaker age on the perception of PIN and PEN vowels in Houston, Texas

In a study of native listeners\u27 implicit knowledge of the social distribution of a phonological variable we found that the perceived distribution does not completely match the findings of production surveys of the same variable in the same community. This presents an interesting challenge to models of linguistic variation based exclusively on production data, and questions how the distribution of sociolinguistic variables is best defined. The linguistic phenomenon we are investigating is the \u27unmerger\u27 of pre-nasal /i/ and /e/ among Anglo Houstonians. This long-standing feature of Southern American English is increasingly losing ground in large metropolitan centers of the South (e.g. Tillery and Bailey 2004). We conducted a speech perception experiment to measure the degree to which Houstonians expect Anglo speakers of three different age groups to participate in the merger. The experiment was conducted using a head-mounted eye-tracker, which monitored the participants\u27 eye movements as they selected on a computer screen the lexical items which they heard (Tanenhaus et al. 2000). Of particular interest were participants\u27 eye fixations on /eN/ and /iN/ competitors, i.e. words which are temporarily ambiguous with the target word in a merged production system. We interpret a greater amount of looks to the competitor as an indicator of the listener\u27s readiness to assume that the speaker may have a merged system. The results show that, as predicted, listeners are more likely to assume a merged system when listening to an old speaker than when listening to a middle-aged speaker. However, we find no significant difference between the perception of a middle-aged and a young speaker. These results generally corroborate our recent production surveys in Houston (Gentry 2006; Pantos 2006), which show the merger to be positively correlated with age. However, there is a discrepancy between our participants’ perception and the actual production of Houstonians in the middle-aged group. Although, in production terms, native Houstonians in this group pattern with old speakers in participating in the merger, listeners expect a middle-aged speaker to pattern with a young speaker in being less merged. We suggest that this mismatch is due to recent demographic changes in Houston, with large numbers of non-Southern Anglo speakers moving into the Houston metropolitan area in the course of the Sunbelt migration (Thomas 1997; Klineberg 2006). Native listeners who are exposed to this linguistically mixed population apparently associate merged vowels specifically only with the oldest speakers, even though some younger speakers are also merged. Our study adds to previous research on the perception of vowel merger, including near-merger (Di Paolo and Faber 1990, Labov et al. 1991, inter alia) by providing additional evidence for the role of perceived speaker dialect as a potentially disambiguating factor in speech perception (Hay et al. 2006). Our findings have broad implications for the study of language variation as they challenge sociolinguists to consider whether the variation we seek to describe resides in the “objective” production of speakers native to a community, or rather in the “subjective” experience of its native listeners

Measuring implicit and explicit attitudes toward foreign-accented speech

The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of listeners' attitudes toward foreign-accented speech and the manner in which those attitudes are formed. This study measured 165 participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward US- and foreign-accented audio stimuli. Implicit attitudes were measured with an audio Implicit Association Test. The use of audio stimuli as repeated tokens for their phonological attributes represents an innovation in IAT methodology. Explicit attitudes were elicited through self-report. The explicit task was contextualized as a fictional medical malpractice trial; participants heard the recorded audio testimony of two actors (one US-accented and one Korean-accented) portraying opposing expert witnesses. Four test conditions counterbalanced across participants were created from the recordings. Participants rated the experts on fourteen dependent variables ('traits'): believability, credibility, judgment, knowledge, competence, trustworthiness, likeability, friendliness, expertise, intelligence, warmth, persuasiveness, presentation style, and clarity of presentation. Participants were also asked for their attitudes toward the speakers relative to each other (i.e., Which doctor would you side with in this dispute?). The question of speaker preference was posed as a binary choice, an 11- point slider scale measure, and two confirmation questions asking participants to state how fair they thought an outcome for each party would be. This study's hypothesis that participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward the same speech would diverge was confirmed. The IAT results indicated an implicit bias [ D =.33, p∠.05] in favor of the US-accented speaker, while the self-report results indicated an explicit bias [ F (2,121)=3.969, p=.021, η 2 =.062] in favor of the foreign-accented speaker in the slider scale and confirmation questions [ F (2,121)=3.708, p=.027, η 2 =.058, and F (2,121)=3.563, p=.031, η 2 =.056]. While the binary choice question showed a trend toward favoring the foreign-accented speaker, the result was not significant. No discernable pattern was found to exist in attitudes toward the speaker by trait. This study's findings argue for the recognition of both implicit and explicit attitude constructs and the integration of implicit attitudes measurement methodologies into future language attitudes research. Additional theoretical implications of these findings for future language attitudes research are also discussed, including implications for selecting an appropriate cognitive processing model

Characterization of the in vitro growth and differentiation capabilities of human adipose-derived mesenchymal progenitor cells

BACKGROUND: Human mesenchymal progenitor cells are multipotent cells that can be harvested from various adult and fetal tissues. They exhibit the potential to differentiate into several cell lineages, most notably osteogenic, chondrogenic, and adipogenic lineages. Conditions such as osteoporosis, metabolic disease, and arthritis are examples of dysfunction of tissues formed by the mesenchyme. The inability of these conditions to be healed by the body’s own mechanisms has raised considerable interest in the potential of using mesenchymal progenitor cells as a therapeutic intervention. This concept opens the possibility of harvesting mesenchymal progenitor cells from an individual, growing them into the desired tissue, and implanting them back into the individual. Treatment of this nature is much less invasive than current methods, overcomes rejection by the immune system, and could potentially demonstrate better outcomes in individuals suffering from degenerative disease of the mesenchyme. AIMS/OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to determine and to characterize the differentiation of human adipose-derived mesenchymal progenitor cells into osteocytes, chondrocytes, and adipocytes. The differentiation capacity of the mesenchymal progenitor cells was evaluated through cell staining, immunofluorescence, and RNA sequencing. METHODS: Subcutaneous adipose tissue was collected from patients undergoing elective panniculectomies. The abdominal panniculus was liposuctioned, and small explants of fat were embedded in Matrigel. Mesenchymal progenitor cells were extracted from the explants and plated for differentiation into osteogenic, chondrogenic, and adipogenic lineages. Control cells were grown in parallel in basal media to confirm differentiation. Dye staining for differentiation was performed with Alizarin Red S, Alcian Blue, and Oil Red O, and immunofluorescence staining was performed to indicate lineage-specific markers for differentiation. RNA sequencing was also completed on the different cell lineages. RESULTS: Human adipose-derived mesenchymal progenitor cells displayed the capacity to differentiate into osteogenic, chondrogenic, and adipogenic lineages as evidenced by dye staining. Osteogenic differentiation was confirmed with Alizarin Red S staining of calcium deposits in the differentiated cells, whereas staining in the control resulted in no calcium deposits. Alcian Blue staining confirmed chondrogenic differentiation as glycoproteins secreted by the differentiated cells were evident and different in morphology compared with the control cells. Oil Red O staining indicated adipogenic differentiation by showing lipid droplets in the differentiated cells and no lipid droplets in the control. RNA sequencing provided support that lineage differentiation was successful. Immunofluorescence staining further proved that differentiated cells expressed lineage-specific proteins and demonstrated morphological differences. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that mesenchymal progenitor cells harvested from human adipose tissue have the potential to differentiate into adipogenic, chondrogenic, and osteogenic cell lineages when induced with differentiation media. The differentiation of these cells can be assessed with dye staining, RNA sequencing, and immunofluorescence staining methods. Further studies should be done to investigate the potential of mesenchymal progenitor cells for therapeutic interventions in the treatment of various illnesses related to the mesenchyme