MiFID II – A radical contribution to the development of data law?

Away from the hubbub about HFT (High Frequency Trading) a quiet storm is blowing in to the EU that will radically change securities trading in bonds, OTC derivatives and other asset classes. The rules, called MiFID II,² top off the alphabet soup of an extensive new rule book that, after the European Parliament's ‘Super Tuesday’ on 15 April 2014, is finally set to become law. Radical changes are afoot!     

Legal aspects of managing Big Data

Big Data is shorthand for the currently rapidly evolving techniques of gathering and analysing for competitive advantage vast unstructured and structured sets of digital data. Big Data is currently at an early stage of development, but many organisations will be embarking on Big Data projects in the next couple of years in order to be in a position to know more about their customers than their competitors. Central to the success of these projects will be four critical factors: (i) understanding the legal framework for Big Data and how it applies to the organisation concerned; (ii) effectively bringing together the organisation's IT and legal functions in the Big Data project; (iii) a clear understanding of the organisation's objectives for its Big Data operations; and (iv) a structured approach to the strategy, policy and process aspects of Big Data governance.     

Evaluating the Efficiency of Primer Extension Capture as a Method to Enrich DNA Extractions,

In this study, we sought to document the efficiency of primer extension capture (PEC) as a method to enrich DNA eluates of targeted DNA molecules and remove nontarget molecules from pools containing both. Efficiency of the method was estimated by comparing number of “copies in” to “copies out” by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. PEC retention of DNA targets ranging 109‐288 base pairs (bps) in length was 15.88–2.14% (i.e., loss of 84.12–97.86% of target molecules). Experimental modifications of the PEC method resulted in no significant improvements. However, the benefit of PEC was revealed in its ability to remove most nontarget DNA molecules (99.99%). We also discovered that many (56.69%) of the target molecules are “lost” prior to their immobilization on the streptavidin‐coated beads. These estimates of methodological efficiency are directly comparable to previous ones observed following “fishing” for DNA, an alternative method for DNA enrichment.     

Housing vouchers in the United States,great Britain,and the Netherlands: Current issues and future perspectives

Abstract

We compare the current U.S. housing voucher program with the British housing benefit and the Dutch housing allowance programs. After presenting the theory behind income‐related housing support, which underpins both the U.S. and European systems, we compare the three programs with respect to their scope (the budgeted versus the entitlement approach), the relationship between housing support and rent levels, the poverty trap, moral hazards, and administrative problems.

The United States can learn from Great Britain and the Netherlands that a full entitlement program can best promote equity, but given the present political and economic climate, it is unlikely that Congress will adopt such a program anytime soon. Great Britain and the Netherlands can learn from the United States how to design a more efficient tenant subsidy program, one that provides incentives to find less expensive units and promotes family self‐sufficiency through enhanced job‐seeking behavior.     

Deaths related to chemical burns

The authors present a series of 6 deaths due to the uncommon cause of chemical burns. Of the 6 deaths due to chemical burns, 4 deaths were due to ingestion of a chemical, 1 death was caused by chemical burns of the skin, and 1 death resulted from rectal insufflation of a chemical. Seven additional cases where chemical burns may have been a contributing factor to the death or an incidental finding are also presented. Four cases are related to an incident involving chemical exposure during an industrial explosion. Three cases involve motor fuel burns of the skin. Two cases concern a plane crash incident, and 1 case involved a vehicular collision. Cases are derived from the records of the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office and those of the authors' consultation practices. Each of the cases is presented, followed by a discussion of the various mechanisms of chemical injury.     

Heteroplasmy in hair: differences among hair and blood from the same individuals are still a matter of debate

The analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a useful tool in forensic cases when sample contents too little or degraded nuclear DNA to genotype by autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci, but it is especially useful when the only forensic evidence is a hair shaft. Several authors have related differences in mtDNA from different tissues within the same individual, with high frequency of heteroplasmic variants in hair, as also in some other tissues. Is still a matter of debate how the differences influence the interpretation forensic protocols. One difference between two samples supposed to be originated from the same individual are related to an inconclusive result, but depending on the tissue and the position of the difference it should have a different interpretation, based on mutation-rate heterogeneity of mtDNA. In order to investigate it differences in the mtDNA control region from hair shafts and blood in our population, sequences from the hypervariable regions 1 and 2 (HV1 and HV2) from 100 Brazilian unrelated individuals were compared. The frequency of point heteroplasmy observed in hair was 10.5% by sequencing. Our study confirms the results related by other authors that concluded that small differences within tissues should be interpreted with caution especially when analyzing hair samples.     

Legal aspects of cloud security

Enterprise (large organisation) computing workloads are moving from ‘on-prem’ to ‘in-cloud’ increasingly quickly, and the cloud is forecast to account for almost half of enterprise IT by 2026, up from 10% today. But the benefits of the enterprise cloud need to be weighed against increasingly burdensome duties around cloud and data security. This comment piece provides a checklist of the sources of enterprise cloud security duties and a checklist of best practices to manage them.