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The pulping industry generates vast amounts of bark residues and wastewater treatment sludges, which are combined and stored for varying periods in stacks, often in the open air, prior to utilization for energy via combustion. In order to optimize the storage strategy, the effects of incorporating sludge into bark on heating value and storage-related environmental impacts were investigated in laboratory and outdoor studies. Biological degradation activity was found to be higher in treatments containing 25% sludge (B75S25) and 50% sludge (B50S50) on a fresh mass basis, in comparison with pure bark (B100). Mean monthly dry mass loss was 2.1% (B100), 3.3% (B75S25), and 3.7% (B50S50) in the laboratory and 2.7%, 4.2%, and 4.8%, respectively, outdoors. Sludge addition was found to maintain degradation activity at low temperatures (+ 3°C). Co-storage of sludge and bark led to loss of energy, mainly due to increased loss of biomass and increased moisture content. Overall, biomass moisture content governed the heating value. Cumulative methane emissions over the storage period were higher from the sludge-containing treatments than from pure bark, but emissions of nitrogen-containing gases (N2O and NH3) were negligible throughout. Sludge addition roughly halved the cumulative chemical oxygen demand (COD) of leachate and minimized its concentration of phosphate-P. However, larger amounts of inorganic elements were released to the percolating water from the sludge-containing treatments. Overall, these results indicate that finding alternative uses for the sludge fraction would be beneficial.

Purpose Electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the most essential tools for detecting heart problems. Till today most of the ECG records are available in paper form. It can be challenging and time-consuming to manually assess the ECG paper records. Hence, automated diagnosis and analysis are possible if we digitize such paper ECG records. Methods The proposed work aims to convert ECG paper records into a 1-D signal and generate an accurate diagnosis of heart-related problems using deep learning. Camera-captured ECG images or scanned ECG paper records are used for the proposed work. Effective pre-processing techniques are used for the removal of shadow from the images. A deep learning model is used to get a threshold value that separates ECG signal from its background and after applying various image processing techniques threshold ECG image gets converted into digital ECG. These digitized 1-D ECG signals are then passed to another deep learning model for the automated diagnosis of heart diseases into different classes such as ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), Left Bundle Branch Block (LBBB), Right Bundle Branch Block (RBBB), and T-wave abnormality. Results The accuracy of deep learning-based binarization is 97%. Further deep learning-based diagnosis approach of such digitized paper ECG records was having an accuracy of 94.4%. Conclusions The digitized ECG signals can be useful to various research organizations because the trends in heart problems can be determined and diagnosed from preserved paper ECG records. This approach can be easily implemented in areas where such expertise is not available. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40846-021-00632-0.

The National Performance Benchmarking Project undertaken by Not-for-profits UWA personnel produced three annual sustainability reports analyzing service providers working in the Australian Disability Services Sector, each published in 2016, 2017 and 2019. This work also contributed to the National Disability Services Annual State of the Sector Reports.3 The data collected, and which continues to be collected, does not assist analysists in identifying prospective causes of service breakdown. However, the findings in these reports highlighted a number of areas which can be indicators of vulnerability in the context of the roll out of the NDIS — this document discusses these indicators and we have referred to them as “Proxies for Risk”. We consider them to be the first line of defense in the context of avoiding a breakdown in sustainability of service delivery as the NDIS rolls out and experimentation leads to learnings. The purpose of this Green Paper is to examine the proxies for risk identified out of the project and to provide a short-form analysis of the extent to which these proxies suggest that potential risks are being faced by service users in the NDIS. We also suggest that these proxies should be reviewed bi-annually or annually.

This White Paper provides a summary of the insights gathered at the Oxford Impact Roundtables (OIR) in 2018 and 2019 and proposes a structured frame for the evaluation of the most popular sustainability accounting, reporting and valuation approaches and their relation to one another. Through this we hope to identify synergies and complementarities of different frameworks and enable a better understanding of these by internal and external audiences. Specifically, this paper considers the following frameworks: Sustainability Reporting, Triple Bottom Line, Integrated Reporting, Impact Valuation, Integrated Profit and Loss accounting (Integrated P+L) and the Mutual Profit and Loss statement (Mutual P+L). Recognizing that a multitude of frameworks exist and are in use, we have focused our analysis on those that are most frequently used and relevant for the context of the OIR participants.

In April 2019, the U.K. released a white paper about Online Harms. The White Paper proposes to take Internet censorship to a new height, essentially unmatched by any other Western democracy. It’s a sign of how comprehensive censorship has moved beyond repressive regimes to become trendy even in leading republican democracies. To redress a wide range of anti-social online activity, the White Paper seeks to tightly circumscribe user-generated content — so tightly that only a small number Internet giants will be able to profitably publish user-generated content. Other Internet publishers will be pushed towards licensing professional content and cover those costs by charging subscriber fees to consumers. Thus, the White Paper will produce a reconfigured Internet 3.0 that will resemble the cable TV industry, not the current Internet we know and love. This essay addresses three main points. It first deconstructs the some of the “facts” the White Paper uses to justify its censorious ideas. Then it highlights some of the proposals’ worst policy aspects. The essay concludes by explaining how the White Paper will reshape the Internet and kill off most user-generated content.

Augmented Reality (AR) systems have seen a rapid adaptation in both training and in virtual assembly instructions. AR systems assist the operator by enhancing user perception of reality, reducing the defects, and lead-time. However, there is a significant lack in the existing literature to compare AR systems and conventional work instructions. The aim of this research is to provide an empirical evidence of comparing task completion time, number of errors, workload index and system usability of AR and conventional paper-based work instructions. For this purpose, we designed an experiment where participants use paper based instructions and AR instructions to assemble a planetary gearbox. The task was assessed using NASA-TLX and System Usability Scale (SUS) tests, which allowed further analysis using descriptive statistics. Moreover, the qualitative interview at the end of the experiment gave more insights about participant’s overall experience.

This White Paper summarises currently available empirical data about attitudes and opinions of citizens and state actors regarding cybersecurity. The data emerges from reports of EU projects, Eurobarometer surveys, policy documents of state actors and additional scientific papers. It describes what these stakeholders generally think, what they feel, and what they do about cyber threats and security (counter)measures. For citizens’ perspectives, three social spheres of particular interest are examined: 1) health, 2) business, 3) police and national security.

This White Paper outlines how the ethical discourse on cybersecurity has developed in the scientific literature, which ethical issues gained interest, which value conflicts are discussed, and where the “blind spots” in the current ethical discourse on cybersecurity are located. The White Paper is based on an extensive literature with a focus on three reference domains with unique types of value conflicts: health, business/finance and national security. For each domain, a systematic literature search has been performed and the identified papers have been analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods. An important observation is that the ethics of cybersecurity not an established subject. In all domains, cybersecurity is recognized as being an instrumental value, not an end in itself, which opens up the possibility of trade-offs with different values in different spheres. The most prominent common theme is the existence of trade-offs and even conflicts between reasonable goals, for example between usability and security, accessibility and security, privacy and convenience. Other prominent common themes are the importance of cybersecurity to sustain trust (in institutions), and the harmful effect of any loss of control over data.

This paper examines the transition towards renewable energy in the Swedish pulp and paper industry (PPI) during the 1970s and -80s. In the wake of the first Oil Crisis until the late 1980s, the use of fossil fuels was reduced by 70 percent in this sector. The lion’s share of the reduction was achieved by substituting oil by biofuels in terms of rest products from the pulp manufacturing process. The reduction was made possible also by efficiency improvements and increased internal production of electricity through back-pressure turbine power generation. Sweden was highly dependent on oil when the first Oil Crisis broke, and the run up in oil prices put pressure on the Swedish government and the energy intensive PPI to reduce dependency. Of central importance for the transition to be implemented was a highly collaborative strategy of the sector as well as between the sector and the corporatist Swedish state administration. The Swedish government chose a proactive strategy by emphasizing knowledge management and collaboration with industry along with the substitution of oil with biofuels. The transition was further fueled by the fact that focus was directed towards unutilized potentials in the sector, where a previous waste problem now could be transformed into energy savings, i.e., the strong version of the Porter hypothesis. Also energy taxes and fees played a major role as control agents in the Swedish energy policy of the 1970s and 80s. Thus, the study illustrates the central role of governments and their ability to push industries into new technological paths through a wide palette of interplaying policy instruments. The study further points at the importance of a more holistic understanding of the interplay between different policies and impacts in the longer run.

The publication was issued within the project ‘Transfer of Know-How for Small and Mid-size Businesses in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine’ which aims to assist SMEs in those countries by providing support to stakeholders in their efforts to develop analytical and policy advocacy capabilities and by opening new channels of communication between SMEs and NGOs in the Visegrad Four countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and the rest of the European Union.The objective of the study is to deliver the complete findings and outcomes of the project aimed at Ukraine. This White Paper serves as an authoritative document with action plans, budgets, and a tangible way for the beneficiary country stakeholders to move forward with the agenda of small and medium-sized business development.It presents an overview of the collected background information and contains basic data on the countries, including some key macroeconomic comparisons as well as rankings in major competitiveness reports (e.g. Doing Business report by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), identifies the project stakeholders and provides an overview of the situation of small and medium-sized enterprises in Ukraine. It also includes the findings of two surveys implemented by the Slovak-Ukrainian team.Based on the findings, the “Discussion and Recommendations” section presents various perspectives on the problems of SMEs in Ukraine using the experience of the accession process of Slovakia, specific examples of key initiatives that led to the resolution of the problems, as well as case studies from various industries. It stresses the involvement of all parties including the EU, local governments, civil society, business associations, and the SMEs themselves.The key outcome of the paper is a road map – a very specific plan of actions including schedules, budgets, and other details within the scope of this project that will help the beneficiary country to cope with problems regarding the agenda of small and middle business development using the expertise and experience of institutions and stakeholders accumulated throughout the Slovak EU accession process. It includes a wide range of activities including a discussion of the project results with various Ukrainian stakeholders, workshops aimed at increasing knowledge about EU markets, legislation and standards, as well as strategic and institutional moves.

The Australian Treasury has identified a number of challenges in FinTech, especially around Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). In this paper we examine four types of tokens within ICOs: pure utility tokens, security tokens, stored value tokens, and hybrid tokens. There is considerable confusion surrounding what each means and signifies, and how each should be treated by both consumers and regulators. We explore the differences, noting what promoters should do to avoid falling into regulatory traps, and the consequences for selecting particular types of token. Because of the confusion around ICO tokens, we suggest there should be a new asset class of token recognised in the Australian Corporations Act. It would have its own funding limits and regulatory framework. Finally, we outline a new code of conduct for ICOs.

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) has been an effective way to achieve higher security in detecting malicious activities for the past couple of years. Anomaly detection is an intrusion detection system. Current anomaly detection is often associated with high false alarm rates and only moderate accuracy and detection rates because it’s unable to detect all types of attacks correctly. An experiment is carried out to evaluate the performance of the different machine learning algorithms using KDD-99 Cup and NSL-KDD datasets. Results show which approach has performed better in term of accuracy, detection rate with reasonable false alarm rate.

This paper constitutes the European Company Law Experts' response to the European Commission's Green Paper "The EU Corporate Governance Framework". The paper contains responses to the individual questions put forward by the Commission as well as an introductory statement. In this statement we first set out briefly the rationale for having rules on corporate governance, whether those rules are determined at national or EU level and whether they are contained in hard or soft law. We then consider the rationale for taking action at EU level. Thirdly, we make a suggestion as to how the choice between hard and soft law should be made. Fourth, we consider the overall implications of the previous arguments for the division of rule-making between the EU and Member States.

This paper adds to the growing literature on the formation of online communities from an historical perspective by telling of the emergence and development of a service for speedy, online distribution of recent additions to the broad literatures on economics and related areas called NEP: New Economics Papers as well as the online community that grew around it. We provide details of the social and technological challenges for its construction as well as the evolution of its governance. The development of NEP provides an illustrative example for the kind of new business models that have emerged as the Internet has been used by creative minds to provide existing services in a new way.

Audit standard setters and regulators are increasingly focused on the management context within the audit firm that conducts the audit for that context’s effects on audit quality. We examine a key, but little understood facet of organizational life in audit firms, namely how audit staff who discover and report errors in audit files are routinely treated in response to reporting such errors. This construct, denoted as audit office error-management climate, can be characterized on a continuum from a relatively “blame-oriented” climate to a relatively more “open” climate. The former is one where errors are not tolerated and those committing errors are punished. In contrast, the latter characterizes error commitment as a normal, albeit unfortunate aspect of organizational life, where the error commitment and discovery is used as an opportunity for the organization to learn without sanctions on the originator if similar errors are not repeated by the auditor. We examine audit office error-management climate in the context of audit-specific factors that might affect the decision to report the discovered errors: audit error type (conceptual or mechanical) and who committed the error (the individual who discovered it or a peer). We find that an open error-management climate results in an increase in the reporting of mechanical (but not conceptual) errors and an increase in reporting peer errors (bringing them to the level of reporting of own errors) versus a blame climate. More directly our findings raise questions about how the implementation of an open error-management climate might be enhanced so as to promote greater reporting of own conceptual errors. Our post-hoc findings that auditors are significantly more willing to report their own mechanical errors than their own conceptual errors (while the difference between reporting willingness of peers’ mechanical and conceptual errors is insignificant) suggests that this obstacle for reporting conceptual errors particularly stems from auditors’ own impression management concerns. Our findings also suggest that audit firm management needs to understand that what may appear to be innocuous differences in management style at the individual audit office might affect audit quality at the client level through varying the individual auditor perceptions of the office error management climate. Further, our findings suggest that standard setters and regulators need to understand how their standards and inspections may impact the audit firm error-management climates and how the differences in such climates can affect audit quality by encouraging (or suppressing) the reporting by staff of errors in working paper files.A shorter version of this paper will appear in the January 2014 issue of The Accounting Review.This paper was previously circulated under the title “The Impact of Error-Management Climate, Error Type and Error Originator on Auditors’ Reporting Errors Discovered on Audit Working Papers."

This paper focuses on an important subset of the knowledge economy: the area of scientific research. Wide dissemination and accessibility of scientific information in the online environment are at the core of today's knowledge economy. To a large degree, scientific information is embedded within scholarly works, such as journal articles, which are subject to copyright protection. Limitations most relevant to scientific research provided for in Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (InfoSoc Directive) are important tools to ease access to relevant information for purposes of scientific research on the end-user level. They need to be preserved and, where possible, adequately extended. However, even if widely introduced in all Member States and made immune against technological protection measures, these limitations alone may not guarantee wide dissemination and accessibility. The more publications become available in electronic form only, the greater the risk that libraries and scientific end users will face a single-source situation, forcing them to pay unreasonable prices or accept unreasonable conditions for accessing (for the most part publicly financed) scholarly contents, or to desist from using the relevant contents at all. Contractual arrangements between rightholders and users - as addressed in the Green Paper - are likely to benefit rightholders more than users. Limitations allowed for in the InfoSoc Directive cannot cope with these problems since they only take effect at the user level, i.e. when the content has already been procured. Wide dissemination and accessibility may need to be addressed also on the level of the intermediaries, e.g. by securing the existence of multiple sources and fair competition among publishers and other intermediaries with respect to the individual piece of scholarly work, such as an individual journal article. In this paper, we suggest certain elements that should be considered in the course of a legislative reform on the EU level, following a two-tier approach: (1) At the end-user level, limitations most relevant to scientific research should be mandatory, immune towards contractual agreements and technological protection measures, and should be construed as providing a bottom line, which national legislation should not fall below. In return, original rightholders should receive adequate compensation. (2) At the level of intermediaries, it is strongly recommended to follow up closely the developments in the scientific publication market, in particular concerning the situation of (publicly funded) research institutions vis a vis publishing companies and database producers. If certain negative effects cannot be mitigated otherwise, additional legal measures may have to be considered, which may be based on copyright or competition law, or even combine elements of the two, as will be addressed in part 2 of this paper.

This paper is a reaction to the Commission's Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy. It discusses issues concerning the three step test model licenses, digitization and orphan works, disability discrimination and access to digital content, dissemination for teaching and research, dissemination through libraries and user created content.

Hosting mega-events has long been regarded as an opportunity for economic growth, creating long-lasting benefits and attaining international recognition. Recently, both the scientific community and the public opinion at large have turned much more skeptical about the impact of mega-events. Why is it that some events appear successful and other disasters? Why the perception of impacts has changed over time? To answer these (and other) questions, there is a need to go beyond the simple narratives and “stylized facts”, to undertake some serious scientific investigation, based on verifiable data and testable models. Despite the fact that most recent studies use the same modeling tool, namely some Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, results are sometimes contradictory, thereby hindering the trustiness of the economic analysis for policy guidance. In this paper, we show that results are different because assumptions are different and because the range of effects considered is different, even when the same model is employed. Furthermore, some critical hypotheses are not often clearly stated. We advocate some kind of standardization in the process of model building for the economic assessment of mega-events. Only a transparent and replicable model exercise can serve as a “litmus paper”, to ascertain whether hosting a mega-event is good or bad for an economy.

Widely known as the “Panama Papers,” the world’s largest whistleblower case to date consists of 11.5 million documents and involves a year-long effort by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to expose a global pattern of crime and corruption where millions of documents capture heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens. Involving the scrutiny by over 400 journalists worldwide, these documents reveal the offshore holdings of at least several hundred politicians and public officials, including the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the King of Saudi Arabia. More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in the leak, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories.Since these disclosures became public, national security implications already include abrupt regime change, and probable future political instability. It appears likely that important revelations obtained from these data will continue to be forthcoming for years to come. Presented here is Part 1 of what may ultimately constitute numerous-installment coverage of this important inquiry into the illicit wealth derived from bribery, corruption, and tax evasion. This article proceeds as follows. First, disclosures regarding the treasure trove of documents from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca are reviewed. Second, is a discussion of the impact and cost of bribery and corruption to the global community. Third, I define and briefly explore issues surrounding “tax evasion.” Fourth, the impact of social media and technological change on transparency is discussed. Next, a few thoughts about implications for future research are offered.

This paper was submitted to the Department of Finance, Canada during the public consultation regarding proposals to eliminate some tax planning advantages for private corporations. It supports the direction of introducing more fairness in the tax system by preventing income-shifting (such as dividend sprinkling), surplus stripping (converting dividends into capital gains) and tax deferral. It offers alternative measures to achieve the desired objectives.

The publication of the so-called “Panama Papers” has focused public interest on how elaborate corporate structures and offshore tax havens can be used by politicians, celebrities and other elites to conceal their beneficial ownership of companies and obscure their personal assets. Rather than taking the Panama Papers as an indication of the need for more and stricter disclosure and reporting rules, however, this paper advocates an alternative approach. We need to start by acknowledging that many companies are currently experiencing “disclosure and reporting fatigue”, in which the constant demand for “more” and “better” transparency and reporting is having the unintended effect of promoting indifference or evasiveness. Disclosure and reporting is widely perceived as an obligation to be fulfilled and not as an opportunity to add value to a firm.This is confirmed by the findings of an empirical study that examines how disclosure rules operate in practice across various jurisdictions. The key takeaway of this empirical study is that – even in those jurisdictions that have a robust disclosure regime – the majority of firms engage in “grudging” or “boilerplate” compliance in which ownership and control structures are not adequately revealed in an accessible way and – perhaps more importantly – the impact of these ownership and control structures on the governance of a company are obscured. Rather than focus on introducing more stringent and mandatory disclosure rules, the paper advocates an approach based on the current communication strategy of a minority of firms in our sample. Interestingly, a small number of firms engage in what we characterize as “open communication” in which information on control structures and its effect on governance are presented in a direct, accessible and highly personalized manner. Such firms seem to recognize the commercial and other strategic benefits to be gained from open communication, and the paper explores the implications of such an approach for both business and regulators.

This report documents the reasons for health justice partnerships, the literature, the methodology, the field research which used a participatory action research approach with a continuous learning and development framework. This Draft Working Paper sets out the summary of qualitative and quantitative data, the findings, conclusions lessons and recommendation emerging from this longitudinal study on the Bendigo Health Justice Partnership, in advance of the Full Final Research and Evaluation Report which will be released in 2017.ARC Justice (specifically one of its programs, the Loddon Campaspe Community Legal Centre (LCCLC)) and the Bendigo Community Health Service formed a partnership in 2013 to commence a Health Justice Partnership (HJP) in January 2014 to better reach those clients experiencing disadvantage.ANU (through the author Dr Liz Curran) was commissioned to conduct empirical research and an evaluation of the pilot project's impact on the social determinants of health, its outcomes and the effectiveness of Health Justice Partnerships in reaching clients who would otherwise not gain legal help with a range of problems capable of a legal solution.This Draft Working Paper is released, in advance of the Full Final Report, so that agencies, researchers and funders and policy makers developing or working in Health Justice Partnerships or multi-disciplinary practices can benefit and be informed by the research and evaluation given the wide range of issues emerging from the research canvasses while the Full Final Report is finalised.The Full Final Research & Evaluation Report will be released in 2017 but, in the interim, people using SSRN can utilise the research for their work. This responds to the numerous requests to share the research at the earliest opportunity so as to inform service delivery and funding applications which may occur before the release of the Final Report.

Hong Kong contributes to poor corporate governance on the Mainland. Could regulatory reform in Hong Kong help improve corporate governance standards/practices (and thus firm value) on the Mainland? In this paper, we discuss ways to incentivize Mainland firms to improve their corporate governance by adopting numerous market-value increasing reforms in Hong Kong. These include the limited extra-territorial application of corporate governance provisions, changes to the Listing Rules to ‘contract’ for better corporate governance, and incentives to collect better corporate governance data. Other reforms include increasing financial transparency (particularly about corporate ownership and control), reducing financial firms’ incentives to trade in shell corporations, regulating relationships with tax havens, and encouraging the redrafting of China’s 2002 Code of Corporate Governance. We provide 31 recommendations and estimate that these recommendations can increase market values on the Mainland by 7% (or in value of roughly $330 billion), while improving the value-added of Hong Kong’s own incorporation/corporate services companies.

The Programmable City is a European Research Council (ERC) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded social science research project under the directorship of the primary investigator (PI) Professor Rob Kitchin. The project is based at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA), National University of Ireland Maynooth. Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, is a post doctoral researcher and a member of the open data PBWG.Dr Lauriault solicited input from data experts at the AIRO, IQDA, Dublin Dashboard, NCG and the Programmable City to inform this response. These organizations rely on public data to inform research and public policy, they add value to these data by creating analytical products such as maps, charts, reports, papers and software. In addition, they collaborate with public bodies to disseminate their data, to transform data for re-use, and to make them tangible and accessible to the public. The NCG collect and manage their own data in addition to doing primary research with government data and developing open source software. The IQDA neither creates nor uses government data, but is a repository of primary date collected by social science researchers.The following briefly discusses how each of these 4 institutions and the Dublin Dashboard work with data and how intellectual property issues are addressed. This will be followed by responses to the Issues for Consideration in Section 4 of this submission.

Investments in agricultural research and extension have consistently demonstrated high rates of return in Asia and the Pacific. However, the recent global food crisis exposed the vulnerability of food supply systems and reversed many past achievements in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. It also demonstrated the need for continued innovation. In view of the emerging economic, climatic, and political scenarios in the region, this paper explores the role of applied research for development and extension services through the two-pronged approach of boosting food production and preventing losses. Priority areas for research emphasize attention to smallholder farming systems, practical business models, the integration of gender, and multidisciplinary research that is sensitive to nutritional outcomes. In addition, pioneering mechanisms to public-private partnerships are examined towards the strategic use of renewed stakeholder commitments to achieve food security and prevent future crisis. By learning from the past and looking into the future, this paper makes a case for sustained investments in research and extension to address the numerous challenges along the pathway from agriculture production and distribution to consumption and utilization.

My area of research on the Programmable City Project examines how digital data materially and discursively support and process cities and their citizens. This work falls within an emerging field called critical data studies. A recent working paper entitled Small Data, Data Infrastructures and Big Data, is an example of critically thinking about data, as is the forthcoming book The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences and my earlier work on data preservation, access, and data infrastructures. The new Big Data and Society journal also provides some theoretical orientation. Dublin and Boston, are the Programmable City’s formal study sites and I will add a little bit of Canada in that mix from time to time.The first part of my research consists of constructing ‘data landscapes’ for Dublin and Boston, by which I mean mapping out the different organisations involved in producing, analyzing, and selling data and analytic services, of which big data are an important component. A key element is reading a number of reports, papers, and consultations on the topic, as well as conducting interviews and attending industry and academic events, I will share questions and observations here in blog posts. At first, these will mainly be descriptive and comparative. However, this reading combined with empirical case studies will lead to a more critical examination of the data assemblages of big data, open data, indicators, maps and data infrastructures. I will be guided by two theoretical frameworks, Rob Kitchin’s ‘Data Assemblages’ and a modified Ian Hacking Making Up People and Spaces framework.

Miller and Sanjurjo (2015) suggest that many analyses of the hot hand and the gambler’s fallacies are subject to a bias. The purpose of this note is to describe our understanding of their main point in terms we hope are simpler and more accessible to non-mathematicians than is the original.

Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) is still largely rainfed. SSA also exhibits the lowest crop yields for major staples in the world, largely due to low use of irrigation and fertilizer. Rainfed agriculture poses growing production risks with increased climate variability and change. At the same time, smallholder irrigation in the region developed rapidly over the past decade, albeit starting from very low levels. In addition to largely demand-driven irrigation development by smallholders, there is a significant push by donors for large-scale irrigation development, as well as some push for smallholder irrigation. There has also been a long-standing debate about whether irrigation in SSA should be large scale or small scale to achieve its potential. However, given the potentially high rewards, but also high possibility of failure, the assessment of irrigation potential must go beyond large scale versus small scale to integrate concerns regarding environmental sustainability, resource use efficiency, nutrition and health impacts, and women’s empowerment. The hypothesis underlying this review paper is that how irrigation gets deployed in SSA will be decisive not only for environmental sustainability (such as deciding remaining forest cover in the region) and poverty reduction, but also for health, nutrition, and gender outcomes in the region. The focus of this paper is on the health, nutrition, and gender linkage. We find that to date, few studies have analyzed the impact of irrigation interventions on nutrition, health, and women’s empowerment, despite the large potential of irrigation to affect these important variables. Irrigation interventions may have differential effects on different members in the household and in the community, such as irrigators, non-irrigators, children, and women. Measuring and understanding such differences, followed by improving design and implementation to maximize gender, health, and nutrition outcomes, could transform irrigation programs from focusing solely on increased food production toward becoming an integral component of poverty-reduction strategies.

This report is a critique of the Centre for Health Economics Research Paper No. 81 (CHERP81), which estimates that the marginal cost of a QALY for the NHS in England in 2008/9 was £12,936. There is much to admire in the approach, detailed analysis, and reporting set out in CHERP81 and we recommend detailed reading of it. The focus of this OHE Occasional Paper is, however, on the points where we take issue with or have queries about the CHERP81 work. The magnitude of the marginal cost of a QALY in the NHS is important as it informs the cost effectiveness threshold used in health technology assessments (HTAs) by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Indeed this was the motivation for the commissioning of the study by the Medical Research Council (MRC) as part of a programme of methodological research relevant to NICE. Understanding the expected QALYs displaced in the NHS by a NICE recommendation is an important part of helping NICE make optimal decisions in relation to the approval of new technologies. The CHERP81 estimate for 2008/9 is lower than NICE’s announced threshold range for approving new products of £20,000 to £30,000 per QALY.

Over the years, banks have been introducing automation to their own respective cheque collection podecures. Particularily, interbank facilities and large institutions have developed automated systems using cutting age technology in which very little is done manually and at the branch level.

From 2003 to 2012, the ISMS Practice Prize/Award competition has documented 25 impactful projects, with associated papers appearing in the Marketing Science. This article reviews these papers and projects, examines their influence on the relevant organizations, and provides a perspective on the diffusion and impact of marketing science models within the organizations. We base our analysis on three sources of data — the articles, authors’ responses to a survey, and in-depth interviews with the authors. We draw some conclusions on how marketing science models can create more impact without losing academic rigor, while maintaining strong relevance to practice.We find that the application and diffusion of marketing science models are not restricted to the well-known choice models, conjoint analysis, mapping, and promotional analysis — there are very effective applications across a wide range of managerial problems using an array of marketing science techniques. There is no one successful approach and, while some factors are correlated with impactful marketing science models, there are a number of pathways by which a project can add value to its client organization. Simpler, easier-to-use models that offer robust and improved results can have stronger impact than academically sophisticated models. Organizational buy-in is critical and can be achieved through high-level champions, in-house presentations and dialogs, doing pilot assignments, involving multi department personnel, and speaking the same language as the influential executives. And we find that intermediaries often, but not always, play a key role in the transportability and diffusion of models across organizations.While these applications are impressive and reflect profitable academic-partnerships, changes in the knowledge base and reward systems for academics, intermediaries and practitioners are required for marketing science approaches to realize their potential impact on a much larger scale than the highly selective sample that we have been able to analyze.

Path dependence and critical junctures refer to decisive choices and events that prompt future trajectories, which are difficult to reverse because the progression of the political or institutional consequence involves entrenched behavior, anteceding determinations, and an elevated cost of altering course. This article contends that human rights abuses that followed from the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies were the product of a path dependent process. Namely, evidence from investigations indicates that the Bush Administration chose policies, based on a primal risk-averse assumption of dire harm from terror threats, and issued an effective “call for papers” to legal advisors to have them produce opinions to make no law applicable that would restrict detention and interrogation policies. The same inner-circle of four legal advisors issued critical memoranda and the White House classified the documents under national security so that other lawyers could not critique them prior to government actions being taken. Ultimately, if one discards the premises, signified by the reality that the first terrorist attack since 9/11 occurred at the 2013 Boston Marathon, that there has been virtually no other substantial evidence of plots near perpetration or of “sleeper cells,” and that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were unrelated to imminent and direct threats inside American borders, the initial overzealous perception of jeopardy ostensibly produced government orders that deprived human rights, undermined U.S. integrity, abused numerous innocent people in foreign countries, and violated international and domestic law. Moreover, the legal memoranda should not be perceived as an intervening variable to dilute responsibility or the chain of causation between the premise of threats and government directives that arguably cashiered international law violations, crimes, or torts.

This paper assesses Revolutionary and Napoleonic wartime economic policy. Suspension of gold convertibility in 1797 allowed the Bank of England to nurture British monetary orthodoxy. The Order of the Privy Council suspended gold payments on Bank of England notes and afforded simultaneous protection to the government and the Bank in pursuit of the conflicting goals of price stability and war finance. The government, the Bank of England and the commercial banks formed a loose alliance drawing on due political and legal processes and also paid close attention to public opinion. We suggest that the ongoing solvency of the Bank of England was facilitated by suspension and allowed the Bank to continue to make substantial profits throughout the Wars. It became acceptable for merchants to continue to trade with non-convertible Bank of England notes and for the government to finance the war effort, even with significant recourse to unfunded debt. These aspects combined to create a suspension of convertibility that did not undermine the currency. By contrast, the Assignats debacle had cost the French monetary system its reputation in the last decade of the 18th century and so Napoleonic finance had to evolve within a more rigid and limiting framework.

The main objective of this paper is to elaborate how defective fabric parts can be processed using Matlab with image processing techniques. In developing countries like India especially in Tamilnadu, Tirupur the Knitwear capital of the country in three decades yields a major income for the country. The city also employs either directly or indirectly more than 3 lakhs of people and earns almost an income of 12, 000 crores per annum for the country in past three decades [2]. To upgrade this process the fabrics when processed in textiles the fault present on the fabrics can be identified using Matlab with Image processing techniques. This image processing technique is done using Matlab 7.3 and for the taken image, Noise Filtering, Histogram and Thresholding techniques are applied for the image and the output is obtained in this paper. This research thus implements a textile defect detector with system vision methodology in image processing.

In this article, I survey the state of the mortgage loan transfer system, the legal rules that govern it, and the widening gap between those rules and the practices in the secondary mortgage market just prior to the 2008 crisis. The review includes some empirical assessment of the extent of errors and execution problems; the damage done by “robo-signing;” the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) and note delivery practices; and the extent to which courts will prevent or reverse foreclosure sales based on those errors and problems. I then examine why existing legal structures, for both paper-based and electronic transfers, are not working, and the extent to which they have failed, I also identify the key consumer and investor protection values and interests (finality, transparency, fraud protection, and so forth) that must be addressed by the law governing secondary market transfers of home loans. I conclude by outlining options for reforming the mortgage loan transfer system, including the use of a single document merging the note and mortgage, and a structure for the registration of a single authoritative electronic version of the mortgage/note and of all changes in parties to, and terms of, the transaction.

Paper was presented at the 29th Annual Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge, England. Regardless of our concern for privacy, real-time criminal activity information is being disseminated throughout cyberspace by the private sector. This information is growing very quickly while being archived for search and retrieval on a long term basis. This is inevitable and could not, nor should not, be stopped.Law enforcement and government policy makers should consider the risk of sharing with the risk of not sharing and allow the private sector to participate in the management of this risk in an informed way. The private sector has the right to be as well informed as law enforcement – they often have as much, if not more, to lose.Law enforcement should also not be afraid of true partnership with the private sector - meet with privacy experts within government and reconsider the level of secrecy attached to the criminal records and crime reports that have been carefully guarded for all of these years. Whenever and wherever possible, secrecy levels should be abandoned, particularly when one can make a reasonable argument for a 'duty to warn'. There is an opportunity to use valid substantiated information to clarify, correct and override some of the misinformation that is available openly on the Internet.Fully transparent reported crime along with fully transparent end-results (i.e. criminal records) could be a wondrous thing for the safety of our citizens. It is time that the private sector received more on their side of the private sector law enforcement partnerships. This would undoubtedly go a long ways in preventing much crime before it happens as more and more business people and safety-minded members of each community become better informed about who they are dealing with. The risks associated with being uninformed are very high.

This paper is a response, from a business perspective, to Halton Cheadle’s concept paper titled ‘Regulating flexibility: Revisiting the LRA and the BCEA’ (DPRU Working Paper 06/109). This paper seeks to respond to each of the issues raised by Cheadle, and to his reflections on each. As previously noted, the paper has been drafted to present a business perspective. This brief presents its own difficulties. The business community in South Africa is a broad church, and encompasses manifold shades of opinion on the appropriate nature and extent of labour market regulation. Organised business, represented by national employer organisations, professional organisations and chambers of commerce, has been a party to the negotiations preceding the enactment of the legislation under review. In this sense, organised business is also a party to the broad agreements reached by the social partners on the conceptual underpinnings of the legislative reforms introduced in 1995.However, business is equally cognisant that the concept of regulated flexibility, as Cheadle observes, inherently recognises the diverse and dynamic nature of the labour market, and requires that regulatory frameworks should be capable of adaptation to meet the demands of changing circumstances. What this paper attempts primarily is a review of the existing legislative and regulatory package, questioning where necessary the appropriateness of the continued application of the limits and mechanisms that are intended to promote regulated flexibility, and reviewing the balance that the existing legislation seeks to achieve. The paper does not purport to present the mandated views of organised business or any other component of the business constituency, rather than to raise for discussion general and specific issues that might be relevant to the debate initiated by Cheadle’s paper. • Counting the Cost of Red Tape for Business in South Africa by SBP (2005); • Measurement of Value Added Tax Act and Regional Services Councils Act-induced Administrative Burdens for South African Small Businesses by Upstart Business Strategies (2004), commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry (dti); and • SMME Facilitation Program (Report Version) by the South African Revenue Services (SARS) to be released in 2005. South African tax compliance costs cannot be judged in isolation. Available information on South African tax compliance costs and their impact on SMMEs are captured in the three reviewed studies. The SBP (2005) study estimates total regulatory compliance costs for formal firms in South Africa to have been approximately R79 billion in 2004, 6.5 per cent of GDP, and total tax compliance costs to have been roughly R20 billion in the same year. Due to the nature of the report, it makes no tax-specific recommendations and only focuses on broad regulatory compliance recommendations. The Upstart Business Strategies (2004) study focuses on two specific taxes, Value-Added Tax (VAT) and Regional Service Council Levies (not administered by SARS, but by regional service councils). The study employs Mistral®, a proprietary “bottom-up” technique to quantify tax compliance costs. The study finds that the average SMME spends approximately R6 027 on two compliance activities associated with VAT – recordkeeping and completion tax returns. The total VAT compliance cost for an average SMME is estimated to range between R6 000 and R8 000 annually. The recommendations of the study are of a broad practical nature and focused on reducing the time spent on specific tax compliance activities. It does not specify the how of its recommendations, for example, it suggests that the internal reliability of SARS logistics needs to be improved and that queing time spent at SARS needs to be reduced, but does not explain how these outcomes should be achieved. The SARS (2005) study does not generate its own empirical data. It reviews the empirical findings of the above two studies and findings of other studies broadly or specifically focused on SMMEs and the formal/informal economic divide. In addition, it draws on a number of qualitative insights gained during interaction with a range of individuals and organisations aware of small business concerns. A number of recommendations with regards to SARS structures (for example, creation of a Small Business Centre and Small Business help desks), SARS communication channels and SARS products (specifically VAT) are made. Rather than simply focusing on small “cosmetic” tax changes, what is required is intensive co-ordination of SMME policy across different government departments. The narrow focus of the reviewed studies, excluding the SARS report, strengthen the idea that relevant policy considerations do not extend beyond the implementation of technical changes to tax legislation. However, a strong case can be made for a number of other SMME policy-related issues to receive greater emphasis than tax compliance costs. Conclusions relative to tax compliance cost include the fact that a large component of tax compliance costs can be ascribed to firm-level inefficiencies. While a reduction in the tax compliance burden can help to create a more enabling environment for business, a special tax regime for small businesses might not be the best way to achieve lower compliance costs. Far more than simply tax changes will be required to unlock the South African SMME market.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an increasingly important issue for private and non-government businesses to consider when investing in countries. The paper specifically addresses transnational corporations and how they can negatively affect the development of countries when socially irresponsible and notes the increasing consumer awareness of corporate irresponsibility. It argues that better relationships between governments and corporations need to be established to reduce low living standards, exploitation, poverty, and unemployment, which would contribute to overall sustainable development. The paper recommends having CSR indicators for measurement, addresses why CSR should matter to business corporations, and gives insight into how the ILO can act and relate to CSR. This paper was written as an insight into the work of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization 2004 that aims to provide a fairer globalization for all.

Economists have long recognized that the time costs of using different forms of money can be significant and potentially affect the type of media of exchange used. But although there is theoretical research and anecdotal evidence that suggest time is an important element in determining the use of media of exchange, there is little empirical work documenting the magnitude of this effect. To fill this gap, this paper uses scanner data from grocery store transactions to examine time costs associated with media of exchange. Scanner data is an ideal medium for examining time costs associated with media of exchange, as these data represent actual market exchanges, grocery store retailers spend much time and effort in minimizing the length of time for checkout transactions, and everyone goes grocery shopping - this type of exchange is arguably one of the more frequent that a typical consumer makes. Using check and debit card transactions only to control for the effects of availability of different payment instruments, census tract information to proxy for demographic characteristics, and econometric procedures to control for the endogeneity of the choice of payment instrument and the realized length of time of the transaction, the results indicate that check transactions are, on average, predicted to be approximately 40 seconds longer than debit card transactions. Interestingly, the results suggest that debit card users are, on an absolute basis, more time sensitive than check users, and in particular, these sensitivities vary by the demographics of the local market. Overall, the results in this paper support the theoretical literature on media of exchange and the empirical literature using survey data.

I review two papers, addressing the issue of competition and quality determination in the market for Internet access services (Cremer, Rey, and Tirole (2000), Foros and Hansen (2001)). These two works come to seemingly opposite conclusions. After having summarized the two papers, I try to highlight what lies behind the differences in the results.

Over the past several years, the emergence and adoption of electronic payment instruments have acutely affected check usage. This transition has been especially evident at the point of sale as debit and credit cards have become pervasive. Today, the rapid growth of online bill payment looks to threaten checks' last redoubt. However, bill payment technology is still in its adolescence; the interplay of many stakeholders in the industry, including technology firms, banks, billers, payment cards, and customers, has led to rapid, unscripted innovation in just a few years. This paper quantifies some of the trends in the industry while addressing the interests and impact of the market's prime movers in an effort to determine to what extent the displacement of checks will continue.

The present paper seeks to explain how ethics and values in public policy can be result of different historical contingencies. Specifically, it explains the accomplishment of petroleum resource management in Norway. The main argument is that the success of this policy is an understanding of the ethics behind harvesting the resource rent of this non-renewable natural resource. To support the argument, the paper firstly describes a model of Recardian resource rent. Secondly, it investigates the set of values that were in place before the petroleum production started in the 1970s, as described in the influential white paper, “The role of petroleum activities in the Norwegian Society,” published in 1974. In the white paper, the government discussed the future opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities associated with the oil industry and how this would transform society. An important part of the white paper revealed the main ethical vision of the government, i.e., to build a “qualitatively better society” for the benefit of the people. Thirdly, the paper traces the historical roots of these values.

The value in 2018 of vehicles and equipment for consumer and business customers in Canada financed by the asset-based finance (ABF) industry was an estimated $416 billion. The ABF industry supports a broad network of dealers, manufacturers, distributors, vendors and brokers, and their customers throughout the country. ABF is offered by banks, credit unions, insurance companies, government financial institutions, manufacturer finance companies, and independent finance companies. Several of these entities are regulated with consequent access to existing Bank of Canada programs for emergency lending. This paper focuses on those entities – both regulated and unregulated – that may not have such access, and yet are critical to the functioning of the economy. ABF entities ran into deep trouble during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and required an emergency liquidity program from the federal government that took months to devise and implement. The primary source of funding of the ABF sector was, and is, the asset-backed commercial paper and securitization markets, often with bank back-up or standby lines, purchased by private pools of investment capital – insurance companies, pension plans, hedge funds, banks and others. The 2008-2009 experience revealed that a complete loss of liquidity could occur within a few weeks, even days. Government was needed to step into the shoes of absent private-sector investors. Given the ABF industry’s relative success and low delinquencies, this Commentary recommends that, during periods of extraordinary financial market turmoil, the federal government activate a large-scale securitization program that would fund ABF intermediaries who finance customers based on real assets. The government would purchase asset-backed securities backed by a pool of assets and their receivables, receiving the same protection and profit that a privatesector investor would receive. Once liquidity is restored and private investor confidence returned, the commercial markets would again resume their normal functioning and government could withdraw its scaled-up temporary emergency funding program. The 2009 Federal Budget established the Canadian Secured Credit Facility, a $12 billion fund administered by The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to purchase term asset-based securities (ABS) backed by loans and leases on vehicles and equipment. Since then, under successor programs, the BDC has continued to purchase ABS albeit on a smaller scale. With more than 10 years of experience, the BDC understands the policies and rules for such funding. Existing BDC programs could, therefore, be scaled up in a severe downturn, with experienced people in place for effective, prudent and efficient funding. In a profoundly disrupted market, the policy objective should be to restore liquidity to allow the financial services sector to continue offering financing to credit-worthy consumers and businesses in support of the Canadian economy, and that must include the ABF industry.

Adoption of disruptive technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, is more and more raising citizens’ suspiciousness based on (i) lack of trusted information, (ii) perception of intrusiveness on privacy and human rights, (iii) disrespect of legal obligations (including GDPR), and (iv) misalignment and lack of cross-fertilization between technology and legal experts. This paper aims at demonstrating how the technology is not a per se issue, as it can be used to create an ecosystem which can deliver a significant and measurable value to citizens and customers and the whole community. In this perspective, this paper describes the legal framework, the method and the results that are behind the compliance analysis of the Blockchain-based platform developed within the context of the PoSeID-on project. The paper, in order to identify the ethics and legal requirements used to perform the assessment of the PoSeID-on technology, introduces the ethics and regulatory framework on human rights, privacy, and data protection. The procedure for the assessment of the technology is described as well. An overview of the Poseidon project and its implemented Blockchain-based platform allows the reader to fully understand the objectives of the project, as well as the peculiarity of the specific implemented technology that has been designed to overcome many obstacles (e.g. regulation compliancy, individuals and organizations trust, investment size). Consequently, the paper describes the results of the compliance assessment performed on the PoSeID-on Blockchain-based platform. The paper concludes by showing that important aspects such as trustworthiness and sustainability can definitely contribute to improve the social acceptance of disruptive technologies, such as the PoSeID-on one, and consequently their wide adoption.

The origins of this White Paper can be traced to a discussion started in mid-2019 between a number of scholarly publishers and the Publisher Coordinator for Research4Life. These interlocutors voiced concern that while the publishing and research communities in the developed world were making steady and positive progress towards universal Open Access based on a ‘pay to publish’ model, those same communities in the less developed lower and middle-income countries (often referred to as the “Global South”) were being excluded from these discussions. An informal Task Force of publishers and other interested parties was set up to explore ways in which a transition to Open Access could be made more equitable, avoiding a situation in which the new model would simply shift the barrier from one place to another. The Task Force agreed that the first step towards addressing these challenges was to gather evidence about the progress already made towards Open Access in less advantaged regions, using the Research4Life country list as a proxy, and about the obstacles preventing it from progressing more rapidly. The International Centre for the Study of Research at Elsevier offered to carry out this analysis and to make the result widely available as a basis for further discussion and analysis. This paper presents those results and captures the conclusions from a workshop held at the 2020 Researcher to Reader Conference, at which the data formed the basis for debate over how to make an Open Access publishing system more equitable. The Chinese language version is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3914547

This paper investigates the effects of automation and offshoring on the dynamics of the occupational distribution of employment with a focus on Western Europe between 2000 and 2016. I use a general equilibrium model with three regions, three types of workers, ICT capital, trade in final goods and endogenous offshoring. Fed with exogenous measures of ICT-capital prices and trade costs, the model replicates key features of the data. It matches the observed dynamics of offshoring to Eastern Europe and Asian countries. It also reproduces accurately the observed polarization of the labor market: abstract and manual labor increase while routine labor falls. A counterfactual experiment reveals that automation is the main driver of polarization. Since it is also the only factor that drives individuals to become abstract (highskill) workers, it is welfare enhancing. The effects of falling trade costs on labor polarization are smaller, but imply welfare gains.

With only ten years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), development organizations rapidly need to innovate their approach to decision making and problem solving. New lessons and understandings, born from emerging uses of technology, can enable these innovations. This position paper uses the new paradigm of intelligence — which includes data intelligence, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, and embodied intelligence — to provide development practitioners, policymakers, and decision-makers with an overview of the benefits and risks associated with various emerging uses of technologies. These assessments are illustrated where possible with examples from the field. It recommends the creation of a decision-making framework to help practitioners determine whether to invest in emerging technologies and how such technologies can effectively support development objectives. This early framework iteration focuses on carefully defining the relevant development objectives while taking into account the prevailing environment before addressing the solution by assessing the maturity, challenges, cost implications and risks of the technology’s use as well as the presence of enablers or disablers that could determine its impact and appropriateness.

This paper discusses some developments in industry governance of food safety. People in the food industry have come to realize that is not enough to just follow the rules. November 2018, the Global Food Safety Initiative, a transnational organization of the food industry, published a position paper ‘a culture of food safety’. A food safety culture is supposed to contribute to business compliance with food safety regulations. However, we could argue that what really matters is not compliance with the rules, but how people within an organization deal with the rules and with the underlying objective of the rules (safe food). Many rules do not have a stable, determinant meaning independent of the context of their use. This applies more particularly to general obligations and principle based rules. Investigating how business organizations take public interest into account in how they to do their job is often preferable to investigating compliance and noncompliance. The paper concludes with some critical comments on the concept of compliance and on the food safety culture approach.

This report is the eighth in an annual series of publications, dating back to 2012, designed to share the latest stories, trends and research in social media usage from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Using a wide variety of academic, industry and media sources, this White Paper identifies important insights from social media’s development over the previous year. Of particular note in 2019 is the continued, growing, importance of social media in the lives of Arab Youth, outside of Saudi Arabia and Turkey the declining usage of Twitter (once the poster child social network for the Arab Spring,) as well as greater scrutiny of social media usage by platform owners and governments alike. Last year’s report highlighted the increasing weaponization of social networks, a trend which continued in 2019. Facebook, Twitter and Telegram each closed hundreds of accounts due to inappropriate use by state sponsored actors and terrorist groups. Social networks were also the target of governments across MENA, in the midst of protests in many countries throughout the region. Meanwhile, the importance of social video and visually-led social networks, continued to grow from strength to strength. Snapchat introduced new advertising formats to the region and other exclusive functionality, Google highlighted the importance of YouTube in supporting parents and parenting, and in major markets such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Twitter has emerged as a leading platform for online video consumption. The year ahead is likely to result in a continuation of many of the trends outlined in this report, as social media becomes increasingly engrained across the lives of businesses, governments and residents across the MENA region.