Legal Implications of E-Commerce: Basic Issues, Initiatives and Experiences in Asia

This paper gives a short overview on the major issues that have to be taken into account when formulating e-commerce-related laws and regulations and introduces two model laws relating to e-commerce and e-signatures which were created by the United Nations Commission of International trade Law. The paper has a closer look at e-commerce developments in Asia and the Pacific and gives an overview of the state of implementation of e-commerce laws. In conclusion, it discusses the e-ASEAN Reference Framework for electronic commerce legal infrastructure as example of a regional initiative to harmonize the legal basis for e-commerce.legal infrastructure, e-commerce laws, Asia, e-signature, e-ASEAN Reference Framework

Direct EIT Reconstructions of Complex Admittivities on a Chest-Shaped Domain in 2-D

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a medical imaging technique in which current is applied on electrodes on the surface of the body, the resulting voltage is measured, and an inverse problem is solved to recover the conductivity and/or permittivity in the interior. Images are then formed from the reconstructed conductivity and permittivity distributions. In the 2-D geometry, EIT is clinically useful for chest imaging. In this work, an implementation of a D-bar method for complex admittivities on a general 2-D domain is presented. In particular, reconstructions are computed on a chest-shaped domain for several realistic phantoms including a simulated pneumothorax, hyperinflation, and pleural effusion. The method demonstrates robustness in the presence of noise. Reconstructions from trigonometric and pairwise current injection patterns are included

Incorporating a Spatial Prior into Nonlinear D-Bar EIT imaging for Complex Admittivities

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) aims to recover the internal conductivity and permittivity distributions of a body from electrical measurements taken on electrodes on the surface of the body. The reconstruction task is a severely ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem that is highly sensitive to measurement noise and modeling errors. Regularized D-bar methods have shown great promise in producing noise-robust algorithms by employing a low-pass filtering of nonlinear (nonphysical) Fourier transform data specific to the EIT problem. Including prior data with the approximate locations of major organ boundaries in the scattering transform provides a means of extending the radius of the low-pass filter to include higher frequency components in the reconstruction, in particular, features that are known with high confidence. This information is additionally included in the system of D-bar equations with an independent regularization parameter from that of the extended scattering transform. In this paper, this approach is used in the 2-D D-bar method for admittivity (conductivity as well as permittivity) EIT imaging. Noise-robust reconstructions are presented for simulated EIT data on chest-shaped phantoms with a simulated pneumothorax and pleural effusion. No assumption of the pathology is used in the construction of the prior, yet the method still produces significant enhancements of the underlying pathology (pneumothorax or pleural effusion) even in the presence of strong noise.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

People are people : Benefits of inclusive service

College institutions often emphasize the importance of service learning for their students. After research revealed a lack of volunteer opportunities for college aged individuals with disabilities, a pilot program was developed to examine the benefits of service for this population, as well as their peers without disabilities. The project involved college undergraduates and young adults with an intellectual or developmental disability. After a weeklong service trip together, benefits were discussed and evaluated. Benefits to the participants with disabilities included pride, skill development and generalization, empowerment, and increases in social interaction. Benefits to the participants without disabilities included positive attitude change, increased social interaction, and attainment of knowledge about social-justice issues

Effect of high water temperature on apoptosis in Zebrafish (Danio rerio) ovarian tissue

Elevated water temperature has significant effects on the biology of fishes, which raises major concerns about the impacts of climate change on the health of fish populations. High water temperature has been shown to induce apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in various tissues of fish. However, the effects of high water temperature on apoptosis in the ovaries of fish has been little-studied, despite its implications for the overall reproductive health of fishes. This study addresses the effects of high water temperature on apoptosis in the ovarian tissue of zebrafish. qPCR was used to quantify the expression of genes related to apoptosis in fish exposed to a control water temperature (23°C) and a high temperature (32°C) for two weeks. Initial results suggest that apoptosis may actually have been reduced in the high water temperature treatment, though the results were variable and more replications are needed

Incidence and treatment of adhesive bowel obstruction after gastroschisis closure

Background: Children with gastroschisis, especially when it is complicated by atresia or perforation, often suffer from severe long-term sequelae such as short-bowel syndrome and chronic dysmotility. These children are also susceptible to adhesive bowel obstruction later in life, which can alter their nutritional intake and may require repeated visits to the hospital. However, few long-term studies have attempted to determine the rate of occurrence of intestinal occlusion after gastroschisis. In this study we measured the incidence and management ofadhesive bowel obstruction in children with gastroschisis at one academic pediatric hospital.Methods: A retrospective chart review was carried out on patients with gastroschisis born between January 2000 and December 2007. A total of 74 patients who underwent closure of their gastroschisis during this period were identified.Results: Twelve of these 74 (16%) patients were readmitted to the hospital with at least one episode of adhesive bowel obstruction. Three of the 12 patients had gastroschisis complicated by atresia. Eight patients underwent immediate primary closure of their defect on the first day of life. Silos were installed on the remaining four (36%) and were kept in place for an average of 6.25 (range: 4–9) days. Five of the 12 children resolved their obstruction with nasogastric tube decompression alone. The remaining seven (58%) required lysis of adhesions after failure of decompression. The seven children who underwent surgical lysis of adhesions did not have additional episodes of occlusion after laparotomy.Conclusion: In this study, 16% of the patients born with gastroschisis within a 7-year period presented with a adhesive obstruction. Occurrence of obstruction was unrelated to the method of closure or the severity of the defect. Although conservative management with nasogastric tube decompression may be effective initially, over half of patients with occlusion will need eventual surgery for lysis of adhesions.Keywords: bowel obstruction, gastroschisis, lysis of adhesion

Dietary and Intraperitoneal Administration of Selenium Provide Comparable Protection in the 6-Hydroxydopamine Lesion Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease

Significant research implicates the involvement of free radicals in the manifestation of Parkinson's disease. The antioxidant, selenium is a vital dietary component for mammals. It is present in the active center of glutathione peroxidase, an antioxidant enzyme that scavenges peroxides and protects membrane lipids and macromolecules from oxidative insult. The purpose of this research was to determine an effective means of delivering selenium as well as an appropriate time frame for antioxidant administration that would elicit a protective response in rats challenged with an intranigral 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) lesion. In the first part of this study, Fischer 344 rats were placed into one of four groups: selenium enhanced diet, control diet, intraperitoneal injection of selenium as Na2SeO3 or intraperitoneal injection of distilled water. All treatments were delivered prior to an intranigral 6-OHDA lesion. Animals were euthanized two weeks post lesion and their brains processed for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) immunocytochemistry. Average dopamine neuron survival in the substantia nigra of control animals was less than 22%; whereas nigral dopamine neuron survival in the selenium fed group was 49.7% and 56.0% in the selenium injected group. Based on these results, a subsequent study was designed utilizing the selenium enhanced diet method of antioxidant administration. To examine the neuroprotective effect of long-term selenium treatment, pregnant Fischer 344 rats were exposed to either selenium enhanced or control rat chow. Their pups were treated with the same diet as their mothers and lesioned with 6-OHDA at two months of age. Animals were euthanized and their brains were processed for TH immunocytochemistry. Nigral dopamine neuron survival for the selenium treated animals was significantly protective (59%) when compared to the control chow fed animals (29.6%). However, when compared to the short-term exposure of selenium rat chow in the previous study, there was no significant increase in neuroprotection

Supporting victims of domestic violence at a distance during COVID-19: the impact of the pandemic on service providers in remote, rural and island communities in North-East Scotland and Orkney.

We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic-violence service providers in rural and island communities in North-East Scotland and Orkney. Domestic abuse and violence in rural areas is typically underestimated and might be more hidden due to stigma, a surveillance culture, and the practical difficulties of accessing services. The geographical challenges of rural and remote areas in relation to domestic violence are, to some extent, further amplified in small island locations, given population sizes, terrain and separation by sea. In such communities, visits to a service organisation's offices, or a visit by one of their staff, might publicly mark a service user out as a domestic-abuse survivor. This article focuses on the move to digital and telephone provision of support in areas where broadband Internet access is inconsistent and service users may live many miles from sources of support. At the same time, the move to online modes of communication was welcomed by staff in relation to offering opportunities for training and networking. There was also use of social and local media to raise awareness of the prevalence of domestic violence in these locations and to counter the myth of idyllic and abuse-free rural and island communities

Partnerships between police and GBV service providers in remote, rural and island communities in northern Scotland before and during COVID-19

COVID-19 exacerbated challenges that already existed in the policing of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in remote and rural northern Scotland. Victims' direct access to the police and third-sector organisations was impeded by social distancing while the pandemic exacerbated extant issues relating to staffing, particularly in relation to female police officers. On the positive side, the flexibility that already characterised rural and remote policing continued, and police officers and third-sector organisations worked together to support victims. The move to videoconferencing was hailed as a positive move in an area where travel to meetings or court can be difficult and expensive. A lack of training for officers with no specific GBV role was identified as particularly problematic during the pandemic when officers on the ground in rural and remote Scotland had to take over work usually undertaken by specialist task forces