Admissible Evidence: Who Needs It if They Have a Justifiable Use of Force Defense?

Can a criminal defendant offer evidence of justifiable use of force by offering a statement made out of court in lieu of testimony—in other words, does Montana’s justifiable use of force statute of necessity nullify some of the rules of evidence

Montana Cannabis Industry Association v. State of Montana and the Constitutionality of Medical Marijuana

Montana Cannabis Industry Association v. State of Montana and the Constitutionality of Medical Marijuan

Diffeomorphisms and orthonormal frames

There is a natural homomorphism of Lie pseudoalgebras from local vector fields to local rotations on a Riemannian manifold. We address the question whether this homomorphism is unique and give a positive answer in the perturbative regime around the flat metric.Comment: 11 pages LaTeX, title and abstract changed, published versio

Ancestral sex-role plasticity facilitates the evolution of same-sex sexual behavior

This study was supported by JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists CPD Grant 20J00660 (to N.M.), Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists 21K15168 (to N.M.), and Okanawa Institute of Science and Technology core funding. N.W.B. gratefully acknowledges funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/T000619/1).Recent attempts to explain the evolutionary prevalence of same-sex sexual behavior (SSB) have focused on the role of indiscriminate mating. However, in many cases, SSB may be more complex than simple mistaken identity, instead involving mutual interactions and successful pairing between partners who can detect each other?s sex. Behavioral plasticity is essential for the expression of SSB in such circumstances. To test behavioral plasticity?s role in the evolution of SSB, we used termites to study how females and males modify their behavior in same-sex versus heterosexual pairs. Male termites follow females in paired ?tandems? before mating, and movement patterns are sexually dimorphic. Previous studies observed that adaptive same-sex tandems also occur in both sexes. Here we found that stable same-sex tandems are achieved by behavioral plasticity when one partner adopts the other sex?s movements, resulting in behavioral dimorphism. Simulations based on empirically obtained parameters indicated that this socially cued plasticity contributes to pair maintenance, because dimorphic movements improve reunion success upon accidental separation. A systematic literature survey and phylogenetic comparative analysis suggest that the ancestors of modern termites lack consistent sex roles during pairing, indicating that plasticity is inherited from the ancestor. Socioenvironmental induction of ancestral behavioral potential may be of widespread importance to the expression of SSB. Our findings challenge recent arguments for a prominent role of indiscriminate mating behavior in the evolutionary origin and maintenance of SSB across diverse taxa.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The evolution of body size in termites

Termites are social cockroaches. Because non-termite cockroaches are larger than basal termite lineages, which themselves include large termite species, it has been proposed that termites experienced a unidirectional body size reduction since they evolved eusociality. However, the validity of this hypothesis remains untested in a phylogenetic framework. Here, we reconstructed termite body size evolution using head width measurements of 1638 modern and fossil termite species. We found that the unidirectional body size reduction model was only supported by analyses excluding fossil species. Analyses including fossil species suggested that body size diversified along with speciation events and estimated that the size of the common ancestor of modern termites was comparable to that of modern species. Our analyses further revealed that body size variability among species, but not body size reduction, is associated with features attributed to advanced termite societies. Our results suggest that miniaturization took place at the origin of termites, while subsequent complexification of termite societies did not lead to further body size reduction

Second Record and DNA Barcode of the Ant Tyrannomyrmex rex Fernández (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

Tyrannomyrmex is a rarely collected ant genus from Old World tropical forests comprising only three described species, all of them known from a single worker. Here we report the discovery of a second worker of Tyrannomyrmex rex from a selectively logged primary forest of Singapore, increasing the known distribution range of the species to nearly 250 km South-East. We also provide a DNA barcode for the species and a partial sequence of the wingless gene. Although insufficient evidence prevents us to draw any firm conclusion, the genus seems to be restricted to pristine or relatively undisturbed forests and, as a result, could be highly sensitive to habitat degradation

Salesforce responsive roles in turbulent times: case studies in agility selling

Purpose Salespeople are at the forefront of the external environment where they act as the first responders to critical events and their resulting business turbulence. How the salesforce responds to turbulence is, therefore, of great interest both theoretically and in practice. The paper aims to rekindle interest in agility selling, which is the most adequate behavioral sales model to exploit environmental uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach An organizational autoethnography complemented with data from in-depth interviews with key salespeople involved in turbulence resulted in the development of eight case studies. Findings Salespeople use agility selling through four possible responsive roles. They amplify, innovate, cooperate or mitigate turbulence to exploit its ensuing opportunity or minimize its negative effect for both the supplier and the customer. The article enhances the agility selling model by putting three core abilities in the forefront: (1) forecasting turbulence from critical events, (2) responding to changes quickly and adequately and (3) exploiting changes as opportunities. Research limitations/implications The article argues that critical events are the cause of the turbulence that the salesforce must deal with before it hits the dyad. Agility selling represents an untapped research opportunity in business-to-business sales, and sales management, as well as within the overall agile organization. Practical implications Sales organizations would greatly benefit in implementing training of agility selling’s core abilities because responsiveness is a valuable tool for salespeople in times of turbulence. Originality/value The study is the first to empirically demonstrate the existence of agility selling