Sixth Amendment; Right of Confrontation; Unavailalbe Witness; State v. Roberts

THE SIXTH AMENDMENT to the Constitution states that [iln all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him .... . This seems simple and absolute, but case law has proven it to be neither; almost every phrase has been dissected and interpreted by courts and commentators. In fact, there may be more law review articles on this subject than there are cases.1 Some of the questions that could be asked are: What is meant by all criminal prosecutions? Does this require confrontation in preliminary hearings? Does shall enjoy the right give only a privilege that may be waived? Is to be confronted synonymous with cross-examination? Are [t]he witnesses against any persons whose testimony is utilized by the prosecution at trial or any persons whose testimony might be so used

Public Process and Ohio Supreme Court Rulemaking

While court created rules, in terms of their impact on society, are often as important as judicial decisions or legislative acts, they are relatively unknown to the general public. Further, there is often no public input prior to their adoption. Rather, court rules are often promulgated with no opportunity for general public discussion. Judge Jack B. Weinstein recently called attention to such a lack of public process in federal court rulemaking and expressed the hope that others will speak out so that the matter can be thoroughly debated. On the state level this factor is absent from most rulemaking promulgated by the Ohio Supreme Court, and this article will speak out on the need for injecting public process into the exercise of judicial rulemaking authority by that body

Public Process and Ohio Supreme Court Rulemaking

While court created rules, in terms of their impact on society, are often as important as judicial decisions or legislative acts, they are relatively unknown to the general public. Further, there is often no public input prior to their adoption. Rather, court rules are often promulgated with no opportunity for general public discussion. Judge Jack B. Weinstein recently called attention to such a lack of public process in federal court rulemaking and expressed the hope that others will speak out so that the matter can be thoroughly debated. On the state level this factor is absent from most rulemaking promulgated by the Ohio Supreme Court, and this article will speak out on the need for injecting public process into the exercise of judicial rulemaking authority by that body

Teaching intercultural communication skills in healthcare to improve care for culturally and linguistically diverse patients

Objective: To provide recommendations for adequately training healthcare providers in intercultural communication skills. Discussion: We discuss three main recommendations concerning intercultural communication skills training. First, we give an overview of the fundamental skills in which healthcare providers should receive training, such as self-awareness and adaptability. Second, we briefly discuss how such training should be delivered, and focus on different language support methods, including those that work with different types of interpreters and digital tools. Third, we discuss how within-group differences can be taken into account to prevent stereotyping. To illustrate these recommendations, we provide certain examples of existing good practices and interventions. Conclusion: In today's superdiverse societies, delivering culturally and linguistically sensitive healthcare tailored to the needs, values, and preferences of individual patients is a prerequisite for good quality healthcare communication. To achieve this goal, there is a need for clearer recommendations for affirmative action, guidelines, policy, and support for the topic of diversity sensitivity in healthcare, such as evidence-based interventions, than is currently the case. That is, structural changes on a system level are urgently needed to support healthcare providers to implement diversity sensitivity in their daily clinical work

Multiple sequence alignment based on set covers

We introduce a new heuristic for the multiple alignment of a set of sequences. The heuristic is based on a set cover of the residue alphabet of the sequences, and also on the determination of a significant set of blocks comprising subsequences of the sequences to be aligned. These blocks are obtained with the aid of a new data structure, called a suffix-set tree, which is constructed from the input sequences with the guidance of the residue-alphabet set cover and generalizes the well-known suffix tree of the sequence set. We provide performance results on selected BAliBASE amino-acid sequences and compare them with those yielded by some prominent approaches

Wireless recording of the calls of Rousettus aegyptiacus and their reproduction using electrostatic transducers

Bats are capable of imaging their surroundings in great detail using echolocation. To apply similar methods to human engineering systems requires the capability to measure and recreate the signals used, and to understand the processing applied to returning echoes. In this work, the emitted and reflected echolocation signals of Rousettus aegyptiacus are recorded while the bat is in flight, using a wireless sensor mounted on the bat. The sensor is designed to replicate the acoustic gain control which bats are known to use, applying a gain to returning echoes that is dependent on the incurred time delay. Employing this technique allows emitted and reflected echolocation calls, which have a wide dynamic range, to be recorded. The recorded echoes demonstrate the complexity of environment reconstruction using echolocation. The sensor is also used to make accurate recordings of the emitted calls, and these calls are recreated in the laboratory using custom-built wideband electrostatic transducers, allied with a spectral equalization technique. This technique is further demonstrated by recreating multi-harmonic bioinspired FM chirps. The ability to record and accurately synthesize echolocation calls enables the exploitation of biological signals in human engineering systems for sonar, materials characterization and imaging

Qualitätsvergleich von Regenbogenforellen aus konventioneller und ökologisch zertifizierter Aufzucht als Voraussetzung für eine Verbesserung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Bioforellen

Die Studie umfasste die Untersuchung der Aufzuchtsbedingungen sowie Futterversuche und vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Produktqualität. Es wurden 2 ökologisch zertifizierte und 3 konventionelle Forellenzuchtbetriebe verglichen. Tagesgänge verschiedener wasserchemischer Parameter an Zu- und Ablauf der Teiche umfassten die Bestimmung von Temperatur, Sauerstoff, pH-Wert, Ammonium-, Nitrit-, Gesamt- und ortho-Phosphatgehalt sowie CSB- und Feststoffgehalt. In zwei Futterversuchen wurden Ökofutter für Forellen mit konventionellen Futtern hinsichtlich Wachstum, Futterverwertung und Proteinausnutzung verglichen. Die zwei untersuchten ökologischen Futtermittel zeigten im Vergleich ein schlechteres Protein-/Energieverhältnis, das sich in niedrigeren Rohfettgehalten ausdrückte. Zusätzlich wurden futterbedingte Stickstoffexkretionsmuster von Forellen im Tagesgang untersucht. Im Ergebnis zeigte sich, dass die Ökofutter im Vergleich zu den konventionellen Futtern zu einer stärkeren Umweltbelastung und einem geringerem Wachstum bei schlechterer Futterverwertung führten. Die Qualitätsuntersuchungen der Forellen beinhalteten die Erfassung der biologischen Para-meter, die mikrobiologische und sensorische Beurteilung der Ware, Farb- und Texturmessun-gen, die Bestimmung der chemischen Zusammensetzung einschließlich der Rückstände sowie bildverarbeitende Methoden und die Aufnahme des Aromaprofils. Insgesamt waren die Produktqualität und der mikrobiologische Status aller untersuchten Forellen sehr gut. In ihrer chemischen Zusammensetzung unterschieden sich die Fische vor allem im Fettgehalt. Alle ermittelten Rückstandsgehalte lagen weit unter den zulässigen Höchstwerten. Ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Aufzuchtsform und der Qualität konnte nicht festgestellt werden. Bei den Projektergebnissen handelt es sich um eine Abschätzung der Situation ausgewählter Forellenzuchtbetriebe, repräsentative Aussagen können aus den Ergebnissen nicht abgeleitet werden

Random Shortest Paths: {Non-Euclidean} Instances for Metric Optimization Problems

Probabilistic analysis for metric optimization problems has mostly been conducted on random Euclidean instances, but little is known about metric instances drawn from distributions other than the Euclidean. This motivates our study of random metric instances for optimization problems obtained as follows: Every edge of a complete graph gets a weight drawn independently at random. The distance between two nodes is then the length of a shortest path (with respect to the weights drawn) that connects these nodes. We prove structural properties of the random shortest path metrics generated in this way. Our main structural contribution is the construction of a good clustering. Then we apply these findings to analyze the approximation ratios of heuristics for matching, the traveling salesman problem (TSP), and the k-median problem, as well as the running-time of the 2-opt heuristic for the TSP. The bounds that we obtain are considerably better than the respective worst-case bounds. This suggests that random shortest path metrics are easy instances, similar to random Euclidean instances, albeit for completely different structural reasons