The Smart Grid in Massachusetts: A Proposal for a Consumer Data Privacy Policy

The advent of the smart grid—a way of incorporating digital technology into the electrical grid to enable two-way communication between utilities and customers—raises a number of data privacy concerns. This new infrastructure will generate incredible amounts of information about customer electricity usage, even enabling those with access to it to see how power is being used within the home in real time. Customers must be assured that their usage data will be protected from breach or sale to unapproved third parties, while they still retain the ability to allow approved vendors to analyze it for the customer’s benefit. To protect this information, Massachusetts should adopt new regulations building off its existing data privacy law and considering other states’ attempts at smart grid privacy policies, as well as the federal government’s recommendations. This will ensure that the Bay State is prepared for widespread implementation of smart grid technology

Survey of Admissions to Residential and Nursing Home Care: Final Report of the 42 Month follow-up

This report describes findings from the final follow-up of individuals included in the 1995 PSSRU Survey of Admissions to Residential and Nursing Homes, three and a half years after admission. The survey provides a unique perspective on what happens to publicly funded residents after admission, allowing us to relate characteristics on admission to subsequent events. The introductory chapter describes the structure of the report and details the methodology and development of the longitudinal database. It includes a description of the outcome of a special exercise with the Office for National Statistics to track mortality of people who had been lost to the survey

Kierkegaard on the Christian response to the God who establishes kinship with us in time

When reading through certain areas of Kierkegaard’s writings, there is room to misinterpret his vision of Christianity as being grounded solely in a person’s subjective commitment to her own idea of what Christianity is. In large part, this has contributed to the perception of Kierkegaard as an existentialist who disregards the objective reality of Christianity. In this essay, I contend that Kierkegaard understands the Christian faith as being grounded in a human response to the (mind-independent) reality of the living God who personally involves himself with persons, in history, and does so over against independent or predetermined human ideas of God. To do so, I begin with a close reading of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, in which I focus on the ways that Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, distinguishes Christianity from immanent forms of religiousness. Following a detailed exposition of Climacus’ argument, I then consider, albeit very briefly, two ways in which Kierkegaard employed this position in his own authorship, looking specifically at his understanding of sin-consciousness and repentance.PostprintPeer reviewe

A Kierkegaardian guide to reading scripture

Kierkegaard is well known for being critical of a scholarly reading of the bible. It is generally understood that his primary concern was that “objective” biblical scholarship was undermining the possibility of a reader’s subjective life being affected, challenged and provoked by its message. That is, it encourages an overly detached reading of Scripture that distracts persons from responding to its call to discipleship. It is indeed the case that Kierkegaard devoted himself to challenging the fact that the nominal Christians in Denmark were not actively responding Scripture. However, I shall argue that there is something much more fundamental to his critique of biblical scholarship. For Kierkegaard, the faithful reader is not primarily called to respond to the message of Scripture but to the living God who communicates to persons through Scripture. This paper will look at how Kierkegaard sought to remind Christians that Scripture is not an end in itself but a witness to the living God (who is the primary focus of the Christian life).PostprintPeer reviewe

On Gauss codes of virtual doodles

We discuss Gauss codes of virtual diagrams and virtual doodles. The notion of a left canonical Gauss code is introduced and it is shown that oriented virtual doodles are uniquely presented by left canonical Gauss codes

Supraglacial forcing of subglacial drainage in the ablation zone of the Greenland ice sheet

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