Cloud computing – new ICO guidance

via Panopticon Blog by Anya Proops

Cloud computing is becoming an ever more pervasive feature of the technological world. Whether one is dabbling in social networking or purchasing goods online, the truth is that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, now have our heads in the virtual clouds. However, the use of cloud computing inevitably raises important information law issues, particularly in terms of the impact on privacy rights and also under the Data Protection Act 1998. So far as the DPA is concerned, issues which fall to be considered include:

• who actually controls the data which is being processed via the cloud (i.e. who is liable under the DPA if things go wrong in data protection terms)
• what steps a data controller may be required to take to safeguard against misuses of personal data within the cloud
• the security implications of processing personal data through cloud computing and, in particular, whether the processing of data via the cloud is compliant with the seventh data protection principle
• the legality of using clouds which operate transnationally and, hence, which may bring into play the application of the eighth data protection principle on cross-border data transfers

Importantly, the Information Commissioner has today [27 September] issued guidance which is designed to help organisations navigate their way through the potentially complex DPA issues which may arise in the context of cloud computing. You can find the guidance here.

Continue reading Anya’s post here

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10 stories and links I should have published yesterday

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Trying to unravel the secret of spider silk
via Education news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
View the video here [sorry, but I could not work out embedding from Real Player].
Five times tougher than steel, spider silk is virtually indestructible, but what spiders do naturally is a tough act to follow on a commercial scale.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
“What will survive of us is love”. Oprah? The Beatles? Hallmark? No, Philip Larkin. As soon as he wrote it, he had second thoughts... more

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Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” – Done Differently
via Reading Copy Book Blog by Beth Carswell
Ken Sanders, a long-time seller on AbeBooks, is now offering a rare and highly unusual edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland stories. Les Aventures d’Alice au pays des Merveilles at De l’autre cote du mirroir et de ce qu’Alice y trouva (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There) is illustrated by Dutch-born artist Pat Andrea. It was published in 2006 by Paris firm, Diane de Selliers.
Ken describes Andrea’s interpretation of Alice as having “an angrier and more disturbing edge than that of traditional Alice illustration, with dark glimmers of bondage, sexual hegemony, and voyeurism. A stunning addition to the visual Alice canon”.
I think Lewis Carroll would have a seizure if he saw this particular edition of Alice in Wonderland. Apparently, Andrea’s art is called magical realism. He was born in 1942 in Den Haag but lives and works in Paris and Buenos Aires.
The book comes in two hardcover volumes in a slipcase with a prospectus. The text is in French and English, and the price is £330.
A sample of the images the remainder of which you can view here. I don’t know about Lewis Carroll having a seizure I think many Alice fans will but it’s interesting all the same

(Images courtesy of Ken Sanders)

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Liquid
via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you will need a mix of patience, timing, and a touch of strategy in order to achieve victory in this physics puzzler.
Can you successfully control all of the liquid while moving it towards a victorious finish or will it all “go down the drain”?
You can follow Asian Angel’s walkthrough here or go it alone if you prefer.
Warning: this one is a lot harder than you might think.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The Origins of the Golden Rule. Long the stuff of theology and politics, morality is perhaps best understood as a feature of biology, not heart and soul... more

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A New Measure of Development: Well-being
via Big Think by Daniel Altman
What’s the best measure of progress in the global economy? Even economists aren’t satisfied with gross domestic product and incomes anymore. Now we also want to know how happy people are and how much they feel they can realize their potential. These are the right goals for economic policy, but pursuing them raises some difficult questions.
View entire story

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Toledo: 1908
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive - Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Toledo, Ohio, circa 1908
“Maumee River waterfront”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
P.G. Wodehouse’s stay in wartime Berlin might make him a fool. But when it came to fascism, the comic novelist was far from a naïf... more

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Stunning feathered dinosaur fossil
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

This gorgeous fossil is a 150-million-year-old squirrel-tailed, feathered dinosaur, named Sciurumimus albersdoerferi. Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian State Collections of Palaeontology and Geology says, “I was overwhelmed when I first saw it. Even apart from the preservation of feathers, this is certainly one of the most beautiful dinosaur fossils ever found.”
From National Geographic:

Previously, paleontologists have found feathers only on coelurosaurs – birdlike dinosaurs that evolved later than so-called megalosaurs such as Sciurumimus.
Because Sciurumimus is not closely related to coelurosaurs, the new fossil suggests feathered dinosaurs were the norm, not the exception, Rauhut said.
“Probably all dinosaurs were feathered,” he added, “and we should say goodbye to the familiar image of the overgrown lizards.”

“Beautiful” Squirrel-Tail Dinosaur Fossil Upends Feather Theory

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Calculating the Distance to a Lightning Strike
via Britannica Blog by Britannica Editors
A flash of lightning brightens the sky and is followed seven seconds later by the ominous roar of thunder. How far away was the lightning strike?

Cloud-to-ground lightning discharge in a field from a cumulonimbus cloud. Credit: © Hemera/Thinkstock
Continue reading

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10 non-work-related items that should have been published yesterday!

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Why Do We Say That Someone is “Hot”?
by Kai MacDonald in Scientific American via 3quarksdaily by Azra Raza

Our brains blur heat and greet
Image: iStock / Konstantin Yuganov
What do a chilly reception, a cold-blooded murder, and an icy stare have in common? Each plumbs the bulb of what could be called your social thermometer, exposing our reflexive tendency to conflate social judgements – estimations of another’s trust and intent – with the perception of temperature. Decades of fascinating cross-disciplinary studies have illuminated the surprising speed, pervasiveness and neurobiology of this unconscious mingling of the personal and the thermal.
Continue reading

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
English spelling: “the world’s most awesome mess” and “an insult to human intelligence“. How did this nonsensical system come together?... more

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Making Books in 1947: A How-to Video
via Reading Copy Book Blog by Beth Carswell

Boy, does this ever look labour intensive. All that type-setting, all those machines and fumes and people and copper and wax involved in the making of one book. But it sure is charming. And am I alone in missing the days when men used enough pomade in their hair to retain comb marks?

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How to make corn more sustainable? Grow less of it.
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker

Image via WATTAgNet
I wrote a story about the future of crop science that’s printed in the June issue of Popular Science. When I was doing the research, the big question I wanted to ask was this: “How can we take the most important agricultural crops and make them more sustainable and adapted to climate change?”
I suppose there are a lot of ways to define “most important”, but I went with the crops that feed the most people. Wheat, rice, and corn account for more than 50% of all the calories consumed on Earth. So those are the plants I looked at. And that’s where I ran into a surprise. Scientists had some really interesting, concrete suggestions for how to prepare wheat and rice for a changing world. But with corn, they took a different tack. Basically, the scientists said the best thing to do with corn was use less corn.
Continue reading here.
Read about the other suggestions for adapting major food crops to climate change.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Orhan Pamuk has built a museum, in effect, to himself. A colossal act of ego? Perhaps. But it’s also an ingenious work of art... more

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Open Sesame: 1907
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive - Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Chicago, Illinois, circa 1907
“Jackknife Bridge, Chicago River”
The Pueblo passing through the open span
Glass negative by Hans Behm
View original post

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101 books to read: a flowchart
via The Daily Buzz
Do you like contemporary fiction with a touch of mystery? Classic novels with relationship intrigue? Or a good biography? Whatever your taste, teach.com has put together this great flowchart to help you find the perfect book to bury your head in.

Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Joseph Brodsky brooded on the meaning of life and the place of art in it. The purpose of poetry, he concluded, is “to make the future more tolerable”... more

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Domino Dump Turns Into Van Gogh Painting
via How-To Geek by Jason Fitzpatrick

We’ve seen a lot of domino projects in our day, but this is the first one we’ve seen that turns into a piece of classic art when it’s done.
Courtesy of domino enthusiast FlippyCat:

I recreated Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” from just over 7,000 dominos. The second attempt took about 11 hours total to build.
The first attempt failed, when I dropped a screw from the camera rig onto it. I was able to improve the swirling clouds better in the second attempt as a result though. I do not know how long the first attempt took, but I did not have any accidents building like I did in the second attempt!

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More than you maybe needed to know about the echidna
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Echidnas are one of those weird Australian animals that seems to have been pieced together from leftover bits of other animals. Mammals that lay eggs, echidnas are covered in pointy hedgehog-like spines, but with a long snout and sticky tongue of an anteater.
Also, the males have a four-headed penis.
Not kidding. One shaft, four heads. Which is odd, because the female echidna reproductive tract only has two branches. Some of the stuff I’ve read this morning says that the male echidna mates using only two of his four heads at a time. Then, he’ll find another lady echidna and let the other two heads have a turn. Another option, presented by National Geographic: He mates twice with each lady echidna, using first two heads, and then the other two.
National Geographic has helpfully provided visual evidence of this four-headed penis. I’m putting the photo under a cut. Partly for comic effect, and partly because what is seen can never be unseen.

Read the rest of the National Geographic article on the lives and weird biology of the echidna. (That's the only penis shot. Promise.)

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This is Friday's miscellaneous stuff!!

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Show the poor: returning to the art of the Great Depression
an article by Alice Béja published in Eurozine
Abstract
When Roosevelt insisted that photographers and writers document the Great Depression, they produced lasting, iconic work that allowed America to doubt its myths but also to get back on track. So where, asks Alice Béja, are today’s Dorothea Langes and John Steinbecks?
Full article (HTML)

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Nations are rich or poor because of government and social institutions. But the decay rate of organic matter plays a part, too... more
I plead guilty to reading this one – all the way through!

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Fort Blaster – Ahoy There
via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you and your pirate crew luck out and find a series of forts full of treasure waiting for you to claim in a campaign of high seas terror. So hoist the colours, grab your favorite cannon, and get ready to blast your way to fame and fortune!
Follow Asian Angel’s walk-through here or take your chances and go straight to the game here.

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Bookcase that cunningly stores a table and chairs
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Orla Reynolds’s “As If From Nowhere” is a bookcase with four removable chairs and a dining table cunningly worked into its frame. It’s basically a storage unit for an extra table.
As if from nowhere (via Bookshelf)
Watch it through to the end and then tell me what is wrong with the music credit, please.
Oh dear, embed code took some finding and then needed tweaking!

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
By speeding the change in middle-class courtship from parlour to public dating, the automobile did women no favour in the 1920s...more

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Seeing Beyond the Human Eye: Video of beautiful scientific and artistic photography
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder


The latest installment of the “Off Book” series from PBS and Kornhaber Brown is called Seeing Beyond the Human Eye and features microphotography, astrophotography, slow-motion video, and time-lapse video. My favourite part is Cameron Michaels’ time-lapse scenes of Manhattan.

This piece explores the beautiful imagery that has been uncovered thanks to modern technology. Because of advancements made in photomicrography, astrophotography, high-speed and stop-motion photography, we’re now able to see the world (and galaxy) as we never have before.
It’s our curiosity and thirst for the unknown that has driven us to uncover the beauty of the universe. Technology has allowed us to overcome the boundaries of human perception and explore beyond the limits of the naked eye. Told through the voices of scientists and artists, this video illustrates how size and distance are no longer barriers, and how through innovation we see the universe, time, and humanity in a new light.

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The Athletes: 1897
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive - Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Circa 1897
“U.S.S. Oregon - the athletes”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative by Edward H. Hart, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Mixing perfumes, or “layering” them, as it’s said, is like going crazy with pizza toppings – you, of course, being the pizza...more

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Now *that’s* a “girls in science” video: “The Longest Time”, by the Barber Lab Quartet
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin

Miles O’Brien points me to this cute musical video written and performed by young female scientists at the Barber Lab. The video was discussed on a recent email thread of scientists debating the (lack of) merit of this EU PSA.
Commenters: before you say anything mean about the fact that their homemade Billy Joel cover ditty is a little off-key here and there, or the rhymes a little dorky... that’s the point. These women are actual researchers, who care passionately about the subject of their research, and they’re sharing that in an authentic way with the world.
Unlike this shit.

The Coral Triangle is one of the most threatened, yet understudied, ecosystems in the world. We are working to understand the processes creating and maintaining biological diversity in this region, while building the capacity of researchers and students to contribute to local conservation efforts. Terima kasih Pak Ngurah Mahardika dan Indonesia untuk menyambut kami! For more information please visit www.IBRCBali.org, or contact us at barberlabquartet@gmail.com.

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New Video Techniques for Monitoring Health
via The Scholarly Kitchen by Kent Anderson

A fascinating set of new video techniques being developed at MIT hint at how cameras might someday intervene in crib death, help diagnose heart disease, and more.

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Long-distance moves and labour market outcomes of dual-earner couples in the UK and Germany

a research paper by Philipp M. Lersch published in the SOEP papers series

Abstract

Chances are high that partners in dual-earner couples do not receive equal occupational returns from long-distance moves, because job opportunities are distributed heterogeneously in space.

Which partners are more likely to receive relatively higher returns after moves?

Recent research shows the stratification of returns by gender and highlights the importance of gender roles in mobility decisions.

I extend past literature in two ways.
First, while past research mostly examined partners separately, I directly test for gender differences in matched pairs of women and men in dual-earner couples and account for the non-independence of both careers.
Second, I compare evidence from the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany to shed light on the effects of institutional and normative contexts.

For my analysis, I draw longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (1991-2008).

My results show that women in dual-earner couples are temporarily adversely affected in their careers by long-distance moves in the UK and West Germany after controlling for various characteristics of both partners.

Women in East Germany are not affected by long-distance moves.

Moves do not change wage rates significantly for women and men that stay in employment in both countries.

Full text (PDF 45pp)

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Gender gaps in performance

an article (CEPCP379) by Ghazala Azmat (Queen Mary, University of London) and Rosa Ferrer (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) published in CentrePiece - The Magazine for Economic Performance (Autumn 2012)

Are differences in earnings between highly skilled men and women the result of differences in performance – and if so, what explains the gender gaps in performance? Ghazala Azmat and Rosa Ferrer explore these questions by analysing data on the careers of young American lawyers who graduated at the turn of the millennium.

Full article (PDF 2pp)

This article summarises Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers by Ghazala Azmat and Rosa Ferrer, CEP Discussion paper No.1136, March 2012
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1136.pdf (PDF 45pp)

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Are public sector employees overcompensated?

an article (CEPCP377) by Alexander Danzer and Peter Dolton published in CentrePiece - The Magazine for Economic Performance (Autumn 2012)

The UK’s coalition government has suggested that both pay and pensions in the public sector are too high relative to the private sector. Alexander Danzer and Peter Dolton use the concept of ‘total reward’ to evaluate this claim, comparing the lifetime compensation available to highly educated men working in the two sectors.

Full article (PDF 4pp delightfully illustrated with hares and tortoises)

This article summarises Total Reward and Pensions in the UK in the Public and Private Sectors by Alexander Danzer and Peter Dolton, Labour Economics 19(4): 584-594, August 2012 [about which I blogged in August here]

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