Publish (Tweets and Blogs) or Perish? Legal Academia in Times of Social Media

As President Trump reminds us every day, we live in the era of social media. While legal scholars are busy discussing, rethinking and opening fields of law to accommodate the societal changes triggered by the Internet, they have been rather slow in assessing its potential impact on their own communication and publishing practices. This is a blind spot, which this paper aims to explore. More precisely, this piece argues that blogs and social media are suitable communication means for legal scholarship and provides some pragmatic advice on how to use them. This paper first draws a general sketch of two key transformations in legal scholarship: the transnationalization of legal scholarship and the desacralization of the legal texts. It is argued that they are provoked by the rapid digitalization of our societies and are key drivers of a needed shift in scholarly communication. They constitute the wider backdrop for the analysis in the second and third sections of the function and practice of blogs and Twitter in legal scholarship

Exact reconstruction with directional wavelets on the sphere

A new formalism is derived for the analysis and exact reconstruction of band-limited signals on the sphere with directional wavelets. It represents an evolution of the wavelet formalism developed by Antoine & Vandergheynst (1999) and Wiaux et al. (2005). The translations of the wavelets at any point on the sphere and their proper rotations are still defined through the continuous three-dimensional rotations. The dilations of the wavelets are directly defined in harmonic space through a new kernel dilation, which is a modification of an existing harmonic dilation. A family of factorized steerable functions with compact harmonic support which are suitable for this kernel dilation is firstly identified. A scale discretized wavelet formalism is then derived, relying on this dilation. The discrete nature of the analysis scales allows the exact reconstruction of band-limited signals. A corresponding exact multi-resolution algorithm is finally described and an implementation is tested. The formalism is of interest notably for the denoising or the deconvolution of signals on the sphere with a sparse expansion in wavelets. In astrophysics, it finds a particular application for the identification of localized directional features in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, such as the imprint of topological defects, in particular cosmic strings, and for their reconstruction after separation from the other signal components.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figures. Version 2 matches version accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version 3 (identical to version 2) posted for code release announcement - "Steerable scale discretised wavelets on the sphere" - S2DW code available for download at http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~jdm57/software.htm

The Asser Report

This report concerns the provisions and practices on betting-related match fixing in sports within the 28 Member States. Carried out in late 2013/early 2014, respondents in each Member State reported on that state's gambling-related provisions in respect of football and tennis and (in each country) a third sport determined on the basis of either its popularity (in terms of participation or television viewing) or the existence of betting-related "scandals" in that sport within that particular jurisdiction. Those reports helped the authors to compare the Member States' regulatory and self-regulatory frameworks relating to risk assessment and conflict of interest management, with a view to indicating areas of best practice, identifying particularly good legislative frameworks and highlighting areas where change was either desirable or necessary. While some individual Member States have legislation which might provide templates that others could adapt for their own use, the authors were not convinced that "more law", whether at the national or European level, was desirable. Rather, more effective cooperation among the stakeholders was identified as being more likely to provide tangible benefits than would new legal frameworks

A portrait of self-reported health and distress in parents whose child died of cancer

Grieving a child following cancer is a substantially difficult task. The objectives of this research were: 1) to describe current quality of life (QoL), psychological distress and symptoms of grief of bereaved parents, and 2) to explore the role of possible contributors of QoL and psychological distress. Forty-six parents (32 mothers) of children who died of cancer were surveyed on their QoL, distress, and complicated grief. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Parents had a high frequency of grieving symptoms (58%). Mothers reported more retrospective grief symptoms than fathers when describing the year after child death. Current lower mental well-being was associated with experiencing higher retrospective grief symptoms, a shorter period since child death, and being a father. Hence, parents experienced disturbances even long after child death. Mothers and fathers may present specificities that should be considered when developing supportive activities for this vulnerable population

Promoting a Strategic Approach to EU Sport Diplomacy

Sports policy is somewhat of ‘a new kid on the block’ for the EU. It only acquired a competence in sport following the adoption of Lisbon Treaty in 2007, in force since 2009. This is not to say the EU lacks experience in sporting matters. For many years, the EU institutions have grappled with the issue of how to reconcile the specificity of sport with the demands of EU law. This debate is ongoing, but not the subject of our enquiry. Our focus is to assist the EU in considering the merits of adopting a sport diplomacy strategy, first mooted by a High-Level Group on Sport Diplomacy in 2016. Four members of that group form part of the research team for this study. EU action since that report indicates enthusiasm for sport diplomacy. However, to act effectively in this relatively new field of EU activity, the EU institutions and the Member States require an evidence-base. The aim of our project was to undertake primary research and stage a series of Multiplier Sport Events (MSE) to provide such evidence on the efficacy of sport as a diplomatic tool. During our six MSEs, we invited a wide range of actors to share their thoughts and experiences on the practice of sport diplomacy. These events reinforced our view of the value of sport in helping the EU achieve its external relations ambitions. In this study, we claim that now is the time for the EU to act more strategically in this field and adopt an EU Sport Diplomacy Strategy