Deforestation, leakage and avoided deforestation policies: a spatial analysis

This paper analyses the impact of several avoided deforestation policies within a patchy forested landscape. Central is the idea that deforestation choices in one area influence deforestation decisions in nearby patches. We explore the interplay between forest landscapes comprising heterogeneous patches, localised spatial displacement, and avoided deforestation policies. Avoided deforestation policies at a landscape level are respectively: two Payments for Environmental Services (PES) policies, one focused on deforestation hotspots, the second being equally available to all agents; a conservation area; and, an agglomeration bonus. We demonstrate how the "best" policy, in terms of reduced leakage, depends on landscape heterogeneity. Agglomeration bonuses are shown to be more effective where there is less landscape heterogeneity, whilst conservation areas are most effective where there is more spatial heterogeneity.

Housing Policies in Latin America: overview of the four largest economies

The aim of this paper is to examine the differences and similarities in housing policies in the four Latin American countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia. The article uses the welfare regime approach, modified by a recognition of path dependence, to identify a number of phases that each country has passed through. However, attention is drawn to the substantial differences in the circumstances in each country and the extent and duration of the different phases. It is concluded that it can be beneficial to use the concept of a Latin American housing regime, but that this general picture has to be used with an understanding of the path dependence caused by the different context in the individual countries.

Understanding consumer evaluations of personalised nutrition services in terms of the privacy calculus: a qualitative study

Background: Personalised nutrition (PN) may provide major health benefits to consumers. A potential barrier to the uptake of PN is consumers’ reluctance to disclose sensitive information upon which PN is based. This study adopts the privacy calculus to explore how PN service attributes contribute to consumers’ privacy risk and personalisation benefit perceptions. Methods: Sixteen focus groups (n = 124) were held in 8 EU countries and discussed 9 PN services that differed in terms of personal information, communication channel, service provider, advice justification, scope, frequency, and customer lock-in. Transcripts were content analysed. Results: The personal information that underpinned PN contributed to both privacy risk perception and personalisation benefit perception. Disclosing information face-to-face mitigated the perception of privacy risk and amplified the perception of personalisation benefit. PN provided by a qualified expert and justified by scientific evidence increased participants’ value perception. Enhancing convenience, offering regular face-to face support, and employing customer lock-in strategies were perceived as beneficial. Conclusion: This study suggests that to encourage consumer adoption, PN has to account for face-to-face communication, expert advice providers, support, a lifestyle-change focus, and customised offers. The results provide an initial insight into service attributes that influence consumer adoption of PN.

Search engine liability for autocomplete suggestions: personality, privacy and the power of the algorithm

This article is concerned with the liability of search engines for algorithmically produced search suggestions, such as through Google’s ‘autocomplete’ function. Liability in this context may arise when automatically generated associations have an offensive or defamatory meaning, or may even induce infringement of intellectual property rights. The increasing number of cases that have been brought before courts all over the world puts forward questions on the conflict of fundamental freedoms of speech and access to information on the one hand, and personality rights of individuals— under a broader right of informational self-determination—on the other. In the light of the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) in Google Spain v AEPD, this article concludes that many requests for removal of suggestions including private individuals’ information will be successful on the basis of EU data protection law, even absent prejudice to the person concerned.

Research data management and openness: the role of data sharing in developing institutional policies and practices

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between research data management (RDM) and data sharing in the formulation of RDM policies and development of practices in higher education institutions (HEIs). Design/methodology/approach: Two strands of work were undertaken sequentially: firstly, content analysis of 37 RDM policies from UK HEIs; secondly, two detailed case studies of institutions with different approaches to RDM based on semi-structured interviews with staff involved in the development of RDM policy and services. The data are interpreted using insights from Actor Network Theory. Findings: RDM policy formation and service development has created a complex set of networks within and beyond institutions involving different professional groups with widely varying priorities shaping activities. Data sharing is considered an important activity in the policies and services of HEIs studied, but its prominence can in most cases be attributed to the positions adopted by large research funders. Research limitations/implications: The case studies, as research based on qualitative data, cannot be assumed to be universally applicable but do illustrate a variety of issues and challenges experienced more generally, particularly in the UK. Practical implications: The research may help to inform development of policy and practice in RDM in HEIs and funder organisations. Originality/value: This paper makes an early contribution to the RDM literature on the specific topic of the relationship between RDM policy and services, and openness – a topic which to date has received limited attention.

Transformation through translation: translation policies at Amnesty International

International non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are powerful political players who aim to influence global society. In order to be effective on a global scale, they must communicate their goals and achievements in different languages. Translation and translation policy play an essential role here. Despite NGOs’ important position in politics and society, not much is known about how these organisations, who often have limited funds available, organise their translation work. This study aims to contribute to Translation Studies, and more specifically to investigating institutional translation, by exploring translation policies at Amnesty International, one of the most successful and powerful human rights NGOs around the world. Translation policy is understood as comprising three components: translation management, translation practices, and translation beliefs, based on Spolsky’s study of language policy (2004). The thesis investigates how translation is organised and what kind of policies different Amnesty offices have in place, and how this is reflected in their translation products. The thesis thus also pursues how translation and translation policy impact on the organisation’s message and voice as it is spread around the world. An ethnographic approach is used for the analysis of various data sets that were collected during fieldwork. These include policy documents, guidelines on writing and translation, recorded interviews, e-mail correspondence, and fieldnotes. The thesis at first explores Amnesty’s global translation policy, and then presents the results of a comparative analysis of local translation policies at two concrete institutions: Amnesty International Language Resource Centre in Paris (AILRC-FR) and Amnesty International Vlaanderen (AIVL). A corpus of English source texts and Dutch (AIVL) and French (AILRC-FR) target texts are analysed. The findings of the analysis of translation policies and of the translation products are then combined to illustrate how translation impacts on Amnesty’s message and voice. The research results show that there are large differences in how translation is organised depending on the local office and the language(s), and that this also influences the way in which Amnesty’s message and voice are represented. For Dutch and French specifically, translation policies and translation products differ considerably. The thesis describes how these differences are often the result of different beliefs and assumptions relating to translation, and that staff members within Amnesty are not aware of the different conceptions of translation that exist within Amnesty International as a formal institution. Organising opportunities where translation can be discussed (meetings, workshops, online platforms) can help in reducing such differences. The thesis concludes by suggesting that an increased awareness of these issues will enable Amnesty to make more effective use of translation in its fight against human rights violations.

An annotation-free method for evaluating privacy protection techniques in videos

While several privacy protection techniques are pre- sented in the literature, they are not complemented with an established objective evaluation method for their assess- ment and comparison. This paper proposes an annotation- free evaluation method that assesses the two key aspects of privacy protection that are privacy and utility. Unlike some existing methods, the proposed method does not rely on the use of subjective judgements and does not assume a spe- cific target type in the image data. The privacy aspect is quantified as an appearance similarity and the utility aspect is measured as a structural similarity between the original raw image data and the privacy-protected image data. We performed an extensive experimentation using six challeng- ing datasets (including two new ones) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the evaluation method by providing a per- formance comparison of four state-of-the-art privacy pro- tection techniques.

Students’ perception of privacy risks in using social networking sites for learning: a study of Uganda Christian University

Although social networking sites (SNSs) present a great deal of opportunities to support learning, the privacy risk is perceived by learners as a friction point that affects their full use for learning. Privacy risks in SNSs can be divided into risks that are posed by the SNS provider itself and risks that result from user’s social interactions. Using an online survey questionnaire, this study explored the students’ perception of the benefits in using social networking sites for learning purposes and their perceived privacy risks. A sample of 214 students from Uganda Christian University in Africa was studied. The results show that although 88 % of participants indicated the usefulness of SNSs for learning, they are also aware of the risks associated with these sites. Most of the participants are concerned with privacy risks such as identity theft, cyber bullying, and impersonation that might influence their online learning participation in SNSs.

A multi level analysis on pollination-related policies

The paper explores pollination from a multi level policy perspective and analyses the institutional fit and inter play of multi-faceted pollination-related policies. First, it asks what the major policies are that frame pollination at the EU level. Second, it explores the relationship between the EU policies and localised ways of understanding pollination. Addressed third is how the concept of ecosystem services can aid in under- standing the various ways of framing and governing the situation. The results show that the policy systems affecting pollination are abundant and that these systems create different kinds of pressure on stakeholders, at several levels of society. The local-level concerns are more about the loss of pollination services than about loss of pollinators. This points to the problem of fit between local activity driven by economic reasoning and biodiversity-driven EU policies. Here we see the concept of ecosystem services having some potential, since its operationalisation can combine economic and environmental considerations. Further- more, the analysis shows how, instead of formal institutions, it seems that social norms, habits, and motivation are the key to understanding and developing effective and attractive governance measures.

Distributed access control and privacy for the internet of me

This article presents an experimental scalable message driven IoT and its security architecture based on Decentralized Information Flow Control. The system uses a gateway that exports SoA (REST) interfaces to the internet simplifying external applications whereas uses DIFC and asynchronous messaging within the home environment.