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The dominant recent legal discourse concerning Bitcoin and later virtual currencies has been focused on regulatory issues such as anti-money laundering and financial and securities regulation. By contrast, scant attention has been given to the intersection between the uses of Bitcoin and commercial law even as its popularity has grown as both an asset class and as a means of payment for goods and services. In determining the commercial law consequences of transactions involving Bitcoin, the likely cross-border nature of Bitcoin-related transactions will give rise to choice of law issues which may have a determinative effect on a given dispute. Commercial disputes involving virtual currencies have already made their way into common law courts. This paper examines one of the most significant choice of law problems that arises – the law applicable to determine disputes concerning property in Bitcoins (and determining the situs of Bitcoins) through the lens of English conflict of laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the effect of removing the bank lending rate floor in 2013 on the market for loans in China. Given the backdrop of gradual liberalization of financial markets, we analyze data from 2008 to 2018 to gauge whether the interest rate on securities of different maturities have been materially affected by this act of partial liberalization. We find that this action has affected short-term repo (repurchase agreements) interest rates but not long-term interest rates. There is also evidence that the efficiency of lending markets has improved, but the health of the banking sector overall seems to have deteriorated, with lower capital but higher nonperforming loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constitutes the first in-depth study of press censorship in British Hong Kong during the first century of colonial rule. By revealing how the press, the Chinese press in particular, was continuously and systematically monitored and pervasively censored through the collaborative efforts of executive actions, legislative provisions and judicial decisions, this article further posits that the common law system practiced in British Hong Kong during the period under study was complicit in the imposition of an authoritarian form of law and order, and was more interested in preserving the British Empire's overseas territorial and economic possessions and managing the power equation in the region than in safeguarding individual liberties in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is often praised for its rule-of-law colonial legacy, but this article argues that such narrative does not stand up to the scrutiny of archival study. The English law in Hong Kong history, rather than constituting a lens through which one can witness Hong Kong's quest for modernity, is more akin to a mirror reflecting an ongoing cycle of coercion and resistance through law. Drawing on unexplored archival sources, the article first discusses how the colonial government used libel lawsuits to punish the press for criticism of the government in the 19th century, before turning to describing in detail the daily mandatory vetting of Chinese newspapers by colonial censors under the office of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and related prosecution cases in the early 20th century. The paper concludes with an exploration of the tension between the notion of a free press and the governance fears of the British Empire in the Far East revealed by this history of silencing the press in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we study an eigenvalue problem for even order tensors. Using the matrix unfolding of even order tensors, we can establish the relationship between a tensor eigenvalue problem and a multilevel matrix eigenvalue problem. By considering a higher order singular value decomposition of a tensor, we show that higher order singular values are the square root of the eigenvalues of the product of the tensor and its conjugate transpose. This result is similar to that in matrix case. Also we study an eigenvalue problem for Toeplitz/circulant tensors, and give the lower and upper bounds of eigenvalues of Toeplitz tensors. An application in image restoration is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, drawing on a wide range of archived materials, and using one of the earliest sets of English business law imported to Hong Kong – the Bankruptcy Ordinance of 1864 – as a case study, argues that the transplantation of the English bankruptcy regime into early colonial Hong Kong was contrary to the business interests of both the European and Chinese communities and wrongfully displaced the traditional Chinese business norms and practices that had contributed to the health of the colonial economy prior to the regime's introduction. This article constitutes one of the first empirical studies to place English business law and its widely acknowledged contribution to the economy of early colonial Hong Kong under scrutiny. From the perspective of the relationship between English law and former British colonies’ development of business modernity, the findings presented herein contradict the readily accepted notion that English business law provided a solid legal infrastructure upon which colonial Hong Kong's prosperity and economic growth were built and call for more nuanced studies of the positive role of Chinese legal traditions in Hong Kong's development of business modernity in its early colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports an empirical study of the use of simulated clients to assess (facilitate the learning of) interviewing skills and communicative competence of law students at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) from February 2013 to April 2014. In this period, about 400 HKU Postgraduate Certificate in Laws students participated in interviewing exercises with simulated clients, who are lay persons trained to portray clients in a realistic manner and to assess communicative competence by standardized rubrics designed in Scotland since 2006. HKU Faculty of Law is the first law school in Asia to adopt this standardized client program to assess law students’ interviewing skills. The paper will present the data analysis of assessment results of the students and their evaluation of this experiential learning program. Our analysis confirms the reliability and validity of using standardized clients as assessors of interviewing skills. It also reveals the necessity of modification of the original design of standardized client program, particularly in relation to the assessment aspect of it, according to specific cultural and commercial needs in an Asian business city like Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduction. To evaluate survival and engraftment of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) in vivo, it is necessary to track implanted cells non-invasively with a method, which does not influence cellular ultrastructure and functional characteristics. Iron-oxide particles have been applied for cell tracking for years, but knowledge regarding possible cytotoxic ultrastructural changes subsequent to iron-oxide particle labeling is limited. Hence, the purpose of this study was to label MSCs with dextran-coated ultrasmall super-paramagnetic iron-oxide (USPIO) particles conjugated with the transduction sequence of trans-activator of transcription (TAT) (IODEX-TAT) and evaluate the effect of labeling on ultrastructure, viability, phenotype and proliferative capacity of the cells. Materials and methods. MSCs were labeled with 5 and 10 µg IODEX-TAT/105 cells for 2, 6 and 21 hours. IODEX-TAT uptake and cellular ultrastructure were determined by electron microscopy. Cell viability was determined by propidium iodide staining and cell proliferation capacity by 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation. Maintenance of stem cell surface markers was determined by flow cytometry. Results. IODEX-TAT labeling for 2, 6 and 21 h did not influence cellular ultrastructure or viability. Moreover, neither stem cell surface markers nor cell proliferation capacity was affected by labeling with IODEX-TAT. Conclusion. Our results demonstrate that labeling of MSCs for 21 h with a clinically relevant dose of 10 µg IODEXTAT/105 cells is feasible and does not affect MSC ultrastructure, viability, phenotype or proliferation capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]