What is the "Q" for?

This paper is based on the Law Teacher of the Year keynote speech delivered at the Association of Law Teachers’ Annual Conference in April 2011 in Cardiff, Wales. Some refinement of the ideas expressed then took place and a further presentation formed my inaugural Readership seminar at Nottingham Law School in June 2011. The essence of the speeches was to seek to address the fitness for purpose of the Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) in the context of contemporary legal education, but more recently has focused the need for the requirements of the QLD better to reflect and promote what is best about law and legal education. Thus, rather than skills being incidental to academic legal study, I suggest that certain discipline-specific cognitive professional skills should replace the foundation subjects in the QLD. This paper concludes with some sample programmes designed to meet legal intellectual professional skills that meet the needs of the law student in the early 21st century whilst respecting institutional autonomy in legal curriculum design

Sampling Technique for Larvae of the Alfalfa Snout Beetle, \u3ci\u3eOtiorhynchus Ligustici\u3c/i\u3e (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

This paper presents a sampling procedure for estimating larval populations of the alfalfa snout beetle, Otiorhynchus ligustici. The method is based on counts of the larvae taken in 16 x 16 cm quadrats of soil during early fall when the grubs are in their final two instars and feeding just below the crowns of the plant. Analysis of sampling variability showed that 200 quadrats per field are necessary to obtain adequate precision for intensive population studies but that 50 quadrats are sufficient for survey work. The pattern of counts was overdispersed but conformed to the negative binomial distribution

Is That Your Final Decision? Multi-Stage Profiling, Selective Effects, and Article 22 of the GDPR

Provisions in many data protection laws require a legal basis, or at the very least safeguards, for significant, solely automated decisions; Article 22 of the GDPR is the most notable. - Little attention has been paid to Article 22 in light of decision-making processes with multiple stages, potentially both manual and automated, and which together might impact upon decision subjects in different ways. - Using stylised examples grounded in real-world systems, we raise five distinct complications relating to interpreting Article 22 in the context of such multi-stage profiling systems. - These are: the potential for selective automation on subsets of data subjects despite generally adequate human input; the ambiguity around where to locate the decision itself; whether 'significance' should be interpreted in terms of any potential effects or only selectively in terms of realised effects; the potential for upstream automation processes to foreclose downstream outcomes despite human input; and that a focus on the final step may distract from the status and importance of upstream processes. - We argue that the nature of these challenges will make it difficult for courts or regulators to distil a set of clear, fair and consistent interpretations for many realistic contexts

Germination responses of a dry sclerophyll forest soil-stored seedbank to fire related cues

Fire is an integral component of many ecosystems worldwide. Many plant species require fire-related cues, primarily heat and smoke, to trigger germination. Despite the importance of this process, the responses of many Australian species to these cues are unknown. Without this knowledge fire management strategies may be developed that are inappropriate for individual species and vegetation communities. In this study we examined the responses of a dry sclerophyll forest seed bank to heat and smoke germination cues. Analysis was possible for 48 taxa within the soil seedbank with 34 of these showing a response to one or both of the germination cues. 10 species responded to the heat treatment, 11 species responded to the smoke treatment and 13 species responded to both the heat and smoke treatments. Germination cues acted independently for all species considered. Results in this study were consistent with published reports for most species, although some differences were seen at the species and genus level. The study highlights the importance of fire-related cues in enhancing germination of a large proportion of the species occurring in dry sclerophyll forests

Putting theory into practice: designing a curriculum according to self-determination theory

Building on existing research into the affective domain in legal education, volition and self-determination theory (SDT), we explain how to categorise student motivation types and design a curriculum which meets and supports, or at least does not undermine or damage, students' intrinsic or extrinsic motivations. This categorisation process allows the curriculum designer to obtain a fresh insight into student engagement, particularly by appreciating how to enhance the active forms of extrinsic student motivation, which leads students to internalize their goals, take over the responsibility for their learning and develop a strong sense of value for their choices. That insight, coupled with an appreciation of SDT's identification of the three human motivational needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness), allows the curriculum designer consciously to address learning, teaching and assessment at a macro- and micro-design level. As one method of approaching curriculum design, we show how to change the learning culture; the environment enables a stronger understanding of students’ behaviours, volition and motivation, creating new ways for the students to internalise their extrinsic motivation (own their learning), leading to fully self-determined actions