Forget Me, Forget Me Not: Elements of Erasure to Determine the Sufficiency of a GDPR Article 17 Request

The data subject’s (or the individual to whom the data relates) right to erasure under the new EU’s data protection law is likely to cause tensions with the right to freedom of expression. Using Article 17(1)(d)-(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation as a nexus to trigger and apply the right to privacy in EU law to the right to erasure, this Note presents a balancing test of four factors that can be used to consistently determine whether individual cases that request a right to erasure for published material are entitled to privacy protections. The proposed balancing test “Elements of Erasure” asks the following questions regarding the published information: whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, whether there was a reasonable expectation of a duty of confidence, how the information was collected, and whether an individual is personally identifiable using the disclosed information

A multi-tenant database framework for software and cloud computing applications

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Cloud Computing is a new computing paradigm that transforms accessing computing resources from internal data centres to external service providers. This approach is rapidly becoming a standard for offering cost effective and elastic computing services that are used over the internet. Software as a service (SaaS) is one of the Cloud Computing service models that exploits economies of scale for SaaS service providers by offering the same software and computing environment for multiple tenants. This contemporary multi-tenant service requires a multi-tenant database design that can accommodate data for multiple tenants in one single database schema. Due to multi-tenant database resource sharing in this service, the multi-tenant schema should be highly secured, optimized, configurable, and extendable during runtime execution to fulfil the applications’ requirements of different tenants. However, traditional Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) do not support such multi-tenant database schema capabilities, and it is a significant challenge to enable RDBMS to support these capabilities. Therefore, one solution is using an intermediate software layer that mediates multi-tenant applications and RDBMS, to convert multi-tenant queries into regular database queries, and to execute them in a RDBMS. Developing such a multi-tenant software layer to manage and access tenants’ data is a hard and complex problem to solve and has significant complexities that involve longer development lifecycle. There are two main contributions of this thesis. Firstly, a proposal for a novel multi-tenant schema technique called Elastic Extension Tables (EET). Secondly, a proposal for a multi-tenant database framework prototype to implement EET schema in a RDBMS. This approach can be used to develop a software layer that mediates software applications and a RDBMS. This software layer aims to facilitate the development of software applications, and multi-tenant SaaS and Big Data applications for both cloud service providers and their tenants. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of EET multi-tenant database schema by comparing it with Universal Table Schema Mapping (UTSM), which is commercially used. Significant performance improvements obtained using EET when compared to UTSM, makes the EET schema a good candidate for implementing multi-tenant databases and multi-tenant applications. Furthermore, the prototype of the EET framework was developed, and several experiments were performed to verify the practicability and the effectiveness of using this framework that based on EET multi-tenant database schema. The results of the experiments indicate that the EET framework is suitable for the development of software applications in general, and multi-tenant SaaS and Big Data applications in particular

Construction and screening of plant genomic libraries

A library of pea (Pisum sativum L) genomic DNA in bacteriophage EMBL3 was screened for seed storage protein genes of the legumin and vicilin families. Three genomic clones were isolated. One of the clones was found to contain a gene in the Leg A sub-family which was designated Leg E. The nucleotide and predicted amino acid sequence of Leg E were compared to those of Leg A. The coding sequences of both genes are strongly homologous with only 9 bases difference out of 1560 bases. A second genomic clone contained two genes from the Leg J subfamily. Leg J and Leg K. The clone was shown to overlap with a genomic clone isolated previously, JC5 (Gatehouse et al. 1988). Strong homology was found between the Leg K and Leg J sequences. The Leg K gene is predicted to be pseudogene, due to the conversion of the ATG methionine start codon to a GTG valine codon and the presence of a stop codon in the 5' end of the coding sequence in the reading frame predicted by the first subsequent start codon. A genomic library was constructed for Arabidopsis thaliana, using EMBL3 as a vector to sub-clone Sau3AI partially digested Arabidopsis genomic DNA. About 8 x 10(^4) random clones were obtained when the ligated vector DNA and insert were in vitro packaged. The Arabidopsis gene library was screened for clones containing sequences encoding the cell wall protein extensin, using a rape (Brassica napus L extensin cDNA as a probe. Six clones were isolated, two of which were restriction mapped. One of them was partially sequenced. This clone did not contain an extensin gene homologous to the probe sequence, and only contained a short extensin-like sequence which was responsible for the observed hybridisation. The putative gene may represent another type of protein, since it was expressed in the root of Arabidopsis and Brassica napus L, as shown by "Northern" blots which were probed with labelled DNA from the clone

Pricing ASICs for Cryptocurrency Mining

Cryptocurrencies that are based on Proof-of-Work often rely on special purpose hardware (ASICs) to perform mining operations that secure the system. We argue that ASICs have been mispriced by miners and sellers that only consider their expected returns, and that in fact mining hardware should be treated as a bundle of \emph{financial options}, that when exercised, convert electricity to virtual coins. We provide a method of pricing ASICs based on this insight, and compare the prices we derive to actual market prices. Contrary to the widespread belief that ASICs are worth less if the cryptocurrency is highly volatile, we show the opposite effect: volatility significantly increases value. Thus, if a coin's volatility decreases, some miners may leave, affecting security. To prevent this, we suggest a new reward mechanism. Finally we construct a portfolio of coins and bonds that provides returns imitating an ASIC, and evaluate its behavior: historically, realized revenues of such portfolios have significantly outperformed ASICs, showing that indeed there is a mispricing of hardware, and offering an alternative investment route for would-be miners.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

Electrical Nanoprobing of Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes using an Atomic Force Microscope

We use an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) tip to locally probe the electronic properties of semiconducting carbon nanotube transistors. A gold-coated AFM tip serves as a voltage or current probe in three-probe measurement setup. Using the tip as a movable current probe, we investigate the scaling of the device properties with channel length. Using the tip as a voltage probe, we study the properties of the contacts. We find that Au makes an excellent contact in the p-region, with no Schottky barrier. In the n-region large contact resistances were found which dominate the transport properties.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Norms or rationality? : The rescue of jews, electoral participation, and educational decisions

In sociology it has been much debated whether the normativist-culturalist or the rational choice perspective better explains social phenomena. Since each has received considerable empirical support, an integrated account of norms and rationality is much needed. The Model of Frame Selection offers such an integration. In this model, cost-benefit calculus is replaced by unconditional norm conformity if norms are strongly internalized. We test this proposition in three fields of application: the rescue of Jews in WWII, electoral participation, and the decision among secondary school tracks. In line with the predictions of the Model of Frame Selection we find that strong helping norms, intense norms of civic duty, and high educational aspirations lead actors to disregard the risk of helping Jews, the incentive to express political preferences, and the prospects to complete school tracks

Does the Pandemic Affect Inequality Within Families? The Case of Dual-Earner Couples in Israel

This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whether time constraints drive the unequal division of unpaid labor between dual-earner couples in Israel. Using the first wave of longitudinal household data that was collected in Israel since the outbreak of the pandemic, we focused on 325 dual-earner couples who stayed employed during the first lockdown. By employing OLS regressions, we examined the association between changes in employment hours and changes in unpaid labor for partnered men and women. Strong evidence was found for a gendered translation of the time constraints mechanism: A decrease in hours of paid work is related to an increase in hours of care for children among men and women, but time devoted to housework increased only among women. We conclude that time constraints that resulted from the dramatic effect of the first lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Israel did not significantly change the gender division of unpaid housework but did change the distribution of childcare. The theoretical implications of this conclusion for future research are discussed