Access to justice in the community courts: a limited right?

This article examines access to the European Court of Justice under Art.230 EC, relating to judicial review, and submits that the approach to locus standi for natural and legal persons under that article is both inconsistent and inappropriate. It is argued that other avenues of redress are often limited, the European Court of Justice has contradicted its own jurisprudence from other areas, the judicial review process has the potential to reduce the Community's democratic deficit, the jurisprudence is out of step with that of Member States and the approach contravenes rights protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The article concludes with proposals for reform of Art.230 EC

Sports regulators and the potential for ‘breakaways’

The commercially lucrative aspect of sport presents regulators with the threat of breakaways by entities focused on profits, which may not be in the best interest of the sport. Simon Boyes, Director of the Centre for Sports Law at Nottingham Trent University, discusses the threat faced by sports regulators across different sports and asks whether rather than protecting traditional regulators the law may actually be providing a further obstacle to asserting any degree of control in preventing possible breakaways

Don't take away my break-away: balancing regulatory and commercial interests in sport

Sports governing bodies' capacity to control their respective sports has come under growing pressure in recent years. As sport has become increasingly globalised and its commercial value has swelled exponentially new challenges to the regulatory schemes of sports governing bodies have become manifest. Sports governing bodies may have de facto regulatory monopoly over their particular sport, but they have no formal de jure right to regulatory oversight and control. This leaves these bodies, and the sports they regulate, vulnerable to external threats to their regulatory autonomy, particularly from those who wish to exploit sport’s commercial potential. This article considers the various means by which the regulatory authority of sports governing bodies may fall subject to challenge, before moving to assess the legal approaches to such challenges. The article further reviews the protections available to sports regulators before concluding with proposals for a new approach

The interaction behavior patterns of college football coaches with their starting athletes and with their non-starting athletes

This investigation was conducted to determine if the behaviors of NCAA Division III college football coaches vary as they interact with athletes of different athletic abilities. [This is an excerpt from the abstract. For the complete abstract, please see the document.

The post-Brexit brain drain

With EU leaders agreeing in December to move to the critical second phase of Brexit negotiations, it is notable how few column inches have been devoted to the impact of a Brexit deal on the free movement of students to the UK

Validation of a brief stigma-by-association scale for use with HIV/AIDS-affected youth in South Africa

This study validated a brief stigma-by-association scale for use with South African youth (adapted from the HIV Stigma-by-Association Scale for Adolescents). Participants were 723 youth (364 male, 359 female) from poor urban communities around Cape Town. Youths completed the brief stigma-by-association scale and measures of bullying victimisation and peer-problems, as well as inventories measuring symptoms of depression and anxiety. Exploratory analyses revealed that the scale consists of two subscales: (1) experience of stigma-by-association and (2) consequences of stigma-by-association. This two factor structure was obtained in the full sample and both the HIV/AIDS-affected and unaffected subgroups. The full stigma-by-association scale showed excellent reliability (α = 0.89–0.90) and reliabilities for both subscales were also good (α = 0.78–0.87). As predicted, children living in HIV/AIDS-affected households obtained significantly higher stigma-by-association scores than children in non-affected households [F(1, 693) = 46.53, p<0.001, partial η 2=0.06] and hypothesized correlations between stigma-by-association, bullying, peer problems, depression and anxiety symptoms were observed. It is concluded that the brief stigma-by-association scale is a reliable and valid instrument for use with South African youth; however, further confirmatory research regarding the structure of the scale is required

Oil and gas infrastructure decommissioning in marine protected areas: System complexity, analysis and challenges

Many offshore oil and gas production facilities are nearing the end of their operational life, with decommissioning now becoming a global challenge. The compatibility of decommissioning operations to marine protected areas (MPAs) creates further challenges. The recently-developed DAPSI(W)R(M) problem structuring framework (covering Drivers, Activities, Pressures, State changes, Impacts (on Welfare) and Responses (as Measures)) was applied here to interrogate the complexity of decommissioning oil and gas infrastructure within MPAs, with outputs feeding into the development of a novel database tool for Screening Potential Impacts of Decommissioning Activities (SPIDA). In meeting the current requirements of the marine regulatory regime, SPIDA provides a more streamlined, evidence-based process which can be applied by industry, statutory nature conservation bodies and regulators for identifying and evaluating evidence that supports the implications of decommissioning alternatives on the condition of MPAs. SPIDA has been developed to be adapted for other activities and sectors, including offshore renewables

Word learning and verbal working memory in children with developmental language disorder

Background and aims: Previous research into word learning in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) indicates that the learning of word forms and meanings, rather than form-referent links, is problematic. This difficulty appears to arise with impaired encoding, while retention of word knowledge remains intact. Evidence also suggests that word learning skills may be related to verbal working memory. We aimed to substantiate these findings in the current study by exploring word learning over a series of days. Methods: Fifty children with DLD (mean age 6; 11, 72% male) and 54 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age 6; 10, 56% male) were taught eight novel words across a four-day word learning protocol. Day 1 measured encoding, Days 2 and 3 measured re-encoding, and Day 4 assessed retention. At each day, word learning success was evaluated using Naming, Recognition, Description, and Identification tasks. Results: Children with DLD showed comparable performance to the TD group on the Identification task, indicating an intact ability to learn the form-referent links. In contrast, children with DLD performed significantly worse for Naming and Recognition (signifying an impaired ability to learn novel word forms), and for Description, indicating problems establishing new word meanings. These deficits for the DLD group were apparent at Days 1, 2, and 3 of testing, indicating impairments with initial encoding and re-encoding; however, the DLD and TD groups demonstrated a similar rate of learning. All children found the retention assessments at Day 4 difficult, and there were no significant group differences. Finally, verbal working memory emerged as a significant moderator of performance on the Naming and Recognition tasks, such that children with DLD and poor verbal working memory had the lowest levels of accuracy. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that children with DLD struggle with learning novel word forms and meanings, but are unimpaired in their ability to establish new form-referent links. The findings suggest that the word learning deficit may be attributed to problems with encoding, rather than with retention, of new word knowledge; however, further exploration is required given the poor performance of both groups for retention testing. Furthermore, we found evidence that an impaired ability to learn word forms may only be apparent in children who have DLD and low levels of verbal working memory. Implications: When working with children with DLD, speech-language pathologists should assess word learning using tasks that evaluate the ability to learn word forms, meanings, and form-referent links to develop a profile of individual word learning strengths and weaknesses. Clinicians should also assess verbal working memory to identify children at particular risk of word learning deficits. Future research should explore the notion of optimal intervention intensity for facilitating word learning in children with poor language and verbal working memory