Between constancy and change : legal practice and legal education in the age of technology

In legal practice, as in other professions, the increasing use of technologies is not new. However, it is generally agreed that the latest round of new technological development, such as AI and big data, has presented, and will continue to present, challenges to the legal profession in a much more profound way. If the legal profession must adapt to technological changes, so must legal education. Technologies in legal education present us with three sets of considerations: the adoption and adaptation of technologies to teaching and learning; the study and research of disruptions and other impacts of technologies in society to assist in formulating legal responses to them; and the preparation of future lawyers.This paper first examines the impact of different technologies on legal practice and responses from the profession. Upon examining the opportunities and challenges brought about by new technologies, the paper will further discuss how legal education, especially its curricula, might respond to changes and challenges. It is argued that, like the way they adapted to globalisation, legal education and legal practice will meet new technological challenges and, as such, there is no reason to believe that there is not a bright future for legal education and the legal profession

The impact of China's regulatory regime on foreign franchisors' entry and expansion strategies

Since the Open Door reforms adopted by China in 1978 ended 30 years of isolation, introduced massive economic and legal reforms, encouraged foreign investment and resurrected private enterprise, China has become the world's third largest and fastest growing economy. Under the influence of China's WTO accession commitments, China's markets are increasingly open for foreign investment. These developments, and China's 1.3 billion population and stable political environment, have led to China becoming an increasingly attractive market for foreign franchise systems. In China, as in other countries, the law has played a significant role in improving the environment for franchising. But in China, a country where franchising as a business concept was virtually unknown until the 1990s, the law has had a more fundamental role through creating the environment in which franchising was possible. Until the 1997 Interim Franchise Measures recognised franchising as a legitimate method of domestic business operation, franchising was not possible. Until WTO accession commitments led to market liberalisation reforms in 2004 the development of a franchise network by a foreign franchisor was of doubtful validity. Until the 2007 Franchise Regulation provided a unified regulatory regime for domestic and foreign franchisors under which contractual and proprietary rights arc recognised and protected the franchising option has been seriously curtailed. This thesis examines the impact of the law, and law reform primarily WTO induced, on the development of franchising in China from the perspective of the foreign franchisor. It concludes that foreign franchisors' entry and expansion strategies in China reflect not only cultural, commercial and other environmental considerations which influence any international franchising decision, but also a regulatory regime which has both created and constrained opportunities. The thesis traces the development of the regulatory regime for foreign franchisors and makes recommendations for its further refinement including legislative clarity as to the validity of cross border franchising into China through master franchising and area development agreements

People's Republic of China : legal response to Covid 19

Covid-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, with the first mass outbreak starting there in January 2020. According to media reports, the earliest cases (though not ‘Patient Zero’) could be traced to as early as 17 November 2019. A historically unprecedented lockdown of an entire city of 11 million people and, slightly later, an entire province was imposed on 23 January 2020. The lockdown measures were so severe and strict that they were described by the World Health Organization’s country representative to China, Dr Gauden Galee, as ‘new to science’ that ‘has not been tried before as a public health measure.’ Various restrictions were also imposed nationwide from January to April 2020. Through these lockdown measures, China seemed to have controlled the ‘first wave’ of the pandemic by early April 2020 when Wuhan began lifting its strictest lockdown measures including the blockage of outbound traffic. On 7 April 2020, the Central Leading Group for the Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic and the State Council Joint Mechanism for the Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic each released its guidelines on resumption of work in China. By June 2020, China had declared a ‘decisive victory’ over the pandemic and a return to normality, albeit with ongoing prevention and control

Energy-Efficient β

As the first priority of query processing in wireless sensor networks is to save the limited energy of sensor nodes and in many sensing applications a part of skyline result is enough for the user’s requirement, calculating the exact skyline is not energy-efficient relatively. Therefore, a new approximate skyline query, β-approximate skyline query which is limited by a guaranteed error bound, is proposed in this paper. With an objective to reduce the communication cost in evaluating β-approximate skyline queries, we also propose an energy-efficient processing algorithm using mapping and filtering strategies, named Actual Approximate Skyline (AAS). And more than that, an extended algorithm named Hypothetical Approximate Skyline (HAS) which replaces the real tuples with the hypothetical ones is proposed to further reduce the communication cost. Extensive experiments on synthetic data have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed approaches with various experimental settings

Reverse Skyline Computation over Sliding Windows

Reverse skyline queries have been used in many real-world applications such as business planning, market analysis, and environmental monitoring. In this paper, we investigated how to efficiently evaluate continuous reverse skyline queries over sliding windows. We first theoretically analyzed the inherent properties of reverse skyline on data streams and proposed a novel pruning technique to reduce the number of data points preserved for processing continuous reverse skyline queries. Then, an efficient approach, called Semidominance Based Reverse Skyline (SDRS), was proposed to process continuous reverse skyline queries. Moreover, an extension was also proposed to handle n-of-N and (n1,n2)-of-N reverse skyline queries. Our extensive experimental studies have demonstrated the efficiency as well as effectiveness of the proposed approach with various experimental settings

Windowed Eigen-Decomposition Algorithm for Motion Artifact Reduction in Optical Coherence Tomography-Based Angiography

Optical coherence tomography-based angiography (OCTA) has attracted attention in clinical applications as a non-invasive and high-resolution imaging modality. Motion artifacts are the most seen artifact in OCTA. Eigen-decomposition (ED) algorithms are popular choices for OCTA reconstruction, but have limitations in the reduction of motion artifacts. The OCTA data do not meet one of the requirements of ED, which is that the data should be normally distributed. To overcome this drawback, we propose an easy-to-deploy development of ED, windowed-ED (wED). wED applies a moving window to the input data, which can contrast the blood-flow signals with significantly reduced motion artifacts. To evaluate our wED algorithm, pre-acquired dorsal wound healing data in a murine model were used. The ideal window size was optimized by fitting the data distribution with the normal distribution. Lastly, the cross-sectional and en face results were compared among several OCTA reconstruction algorithms, Speckle Variance, A-scan ED (aED), B-scan ED, and wED. wED could reduce the background noise intensity by 18% and improve PSNR by 4.6%, compared to the second best-performed algorithm, aED. This study can serve as a guide for utilizing wED to reconstruct OCTA images with an optimized window size

At-home disposal practices of used insulin needles among patients with diabetes in China: A single-center, cross-sectional study

BackgroundMost insulin injections for people with diabetes are administered at home, thus generating many used needles. Unsafe disposal of these at-home needles can lead to needle stick injuries, blood-borne disease transmission, and environmental contamination. Previous studies have shown varying results on the prevalence of and factors associated with safe sharps disposal practices of people with diabetes.ObjectiveTo assess the prevalence of and the factors associated with the safe disposal of used insulin needles among patients with diabetes.MethodsWe collected data from 271 insulin-using patients at a tertiary care hospital in China. A self-designed instrument was used to assess sociodemographic data, disease- and treatment-related characteristics, sharps disposal practices, education on diabetes self-management and sharps disposal, and awareness of the potential risks associated with unsafe sharps disposal. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to explore factors associated with safe sharps disposal practices.ResultsOnly 10.3% (28/271) of participants disposed of used at-home insulin needles in a safe manner, and 14.8% (45/271) of participants had received previous instruction on sharps disposal. Previous sharps disposal instruction (AOR = 4.143, 95% CI = 1.642–10.450) and awareness of the risk of blood-borne pathogen transmission (AOR = 3.064, 95% CI = 1.332–7.046) were associated with safe disposal of used insulin needles.ConclusionIn our study, the prevalence of safe sharps disposal practices was low, and a minority of respondents had received previous instruction on sharps disposal. Participants who had previously received instruction and were aware of the risk of blood-borne pathogen transmission were more likely to handle sharps safely. Our study findings suggest that health care professionals should pay attention to sharps disposal practices of patients with diabetes and conduct diabetes education programs that include information on safe sharps disposal methods and potential hazards of unsafe sharps disposal

(The development of commercial franchise law in China : legal transplant and innovation)

With implementation of the Franchise Measures by the then Ministry of Internal Trade in 1997, China become one of the few countries with a franchise specific regulation. Although China has adopted the franchise concept from America successfully, it did not take America’s franchise law. In terms of commercial environment, Chinese market in 1990s was similar to US when its first franchise law was implemented. However, the commercial law environment and the understanding of franchise concept by general public were at a very different level. China’s 1997 Franchise Measures was criticized for being vague and unprofessional, however, it has facilitated the development of franchise in China. From the 2005 Franchise Measure by the Ministry of Commerce to the 2007 Franchise Regulation by the State Council, Chinese franchise law has developed through borrowing from experiences of international community and innovation. Based on traditional legal research methods combined with comparative methodology, historical methodology and critical theory, this paper analyses the adoption of legal transplant and innovation by Chinese authorities in developing franchise law in China. It also examines the strength and weakness of the franchise law in China in line with the development of franchise sector and commercial environment in China generally