Equality of Arms in the Digital Age

Electronic commerce is important, and perhaps, inevitable. Thus to consider the legal implications of the growth and development of electronic commerce is essential. However, the lack of suitable dispute resolution mechanisms in cyberspace will constitute a serious obstacle to the further development of electronic commerce. Bearing this in mind, this paper argues that when Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) moves to cyberspace, particularly arbitration and mediation as the main types of ADR, the form of online alternative dispute resolution (OADR) can maximise the growth of e-commerce

The experiences of early childhood development home visitors in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa

BACKGROUND This article examines the development of early childhood development (ECD) home-visiting services in South Africa. AIM To examine the factors that could support the success of home-visiting programmes as well as to explore the experiences of bachelor’s-level home visitors rendering such services. SETTING This study was conducted in the Eastern Cape, a highly impoverished area of South Africa. METHODS It begins with a discussion of the emergence of home-visiting as a strategy for the delivery of ECD services in South Africa and a review of the literature on ECD home-visiting, particularly with highly vulnerable, impoverished families. Next a focus group conducted with a small sample of home visitors as part of a multi-faceted community assessment is described. The results are examined within the context of challenges facing this particular part of South Africa and the nation as a whole. RESULTS Four themes emerged as most prominent: (1) encountering the effects of extreme family poverty, (2) identifying high rates and multiple aspects of child maltreatment, (3) encountering scarce resources in high-need areas and (4) finding rewards and maintaining a desire to continue serving challenging populations. CONCLUSION This study provides a unique window on the challenges that ECD home visitors are likely to encounter when working with families living in extreme poverty, the resourcefulness that home visitors often demonstrate and the rewards to be found in this work.Published versio

A Guide to the Supreme Court's Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law

Presents the parties involved in, issues raised by, and lower federal appellate courts' decisions on cases before the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act

Collaborative multidisciplinary learning : quantity surveying students’ perspectives

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of QS programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multi-disciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multi-disciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire which was developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas where a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a project contributor or as a project leader) despite the need for change instigated by the multi-disciplinary (BIM) education revolution. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students’ technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery

The foreign direct investments in Romania – contradictories trends

Romania attracted large inflows of foreign direct investments (FDI), thanks to an improved business environment and still-low labor costs. Romania offers to the foreign investors many major reasons to invest in Romania: great market potential, strategic location, significant natural resources, high skilled labor force, high potential for economic growth, new EU member, infrastructure growing steadily, friendly business environment, access to European funds, competitive taxation. But still there are possible many contradictories evolutions generated both by Romanian government decisions and by the influence of the external factors. Virtually, the size on the above potential shows the countries with low FDI potential but strong FDI performance. The same time, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) matrix considers that Romanian economy has less advantages than the Romanian Agency for Foreign Investment (ARIS) offers. Therefore, Romania is below potential wanted by foreign investors. Therefore many challenges must be addressed to enhance competitiveness and to attract additional FDI. The Foreign Investors Council (the FIC) from Romania believes that Romania must still improve the enforcement of new laws and regulations; tackle major social reforms, including reform of the labor market; increase its competitiveness and improve its infrastructure.foreign direct investments, trends, contradictions, South-East Europe, Romania.

Institutional governance barriers for the development and implementation of climate adaptation strategies

Abstract In this paper we summarise the main social barriers to adaptation presented in climate literature – the inherent uncertainty of climate change, fragmentation, institutional voids, short term horizon of politicians and policies, and the motives and willingness to start adapting. We have linked these topics to theories in public administration to explore if there is interesting overlap that could be beneficial for our understanding of institutional governance barriers for developing and implementing adaptation strategies. We conclude that there are strong interdependencies between what has been signalled in adaptation literature as barriers to adaptation and what has been theorised in public administration literature. However, barriers in the development of adaptation have been hardly discussed in climate adaptation literature. Therefore we argue that in order to understand factors that stagnate the development and implementation of adaptation policy strategies, existing theories of public administration could prove very valuable. Keywords; barriers; adaptation strategies; institutions; governance