Criminal Procedure - Waiver of Right to Counsel

The United States Supreme Court\u27s landmark decision Miranda v. Arizona spawned countless cases interpreting the Court\u27s construction of standards for the admissibility of criminal defendants\u27 statements made during custodial interrogations. While earlier cases addressed the issue of waiver of right to counsel in a trial context, Miranda represented the Court\u27s first consideration of waiver of right to counsel in a pretrial context. Chief Justice Warren, writing for a majority of five, explained that the Court intended to further explore some facets of the problem, thus exposed, of applying the privilege against self-incrimination to \u27incustody interrogations, and to give concrete constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and courts to follow. The continuing efforts of both bar and bench to extract concrete standards from Miranda indicate Warren may have pursued an elusive dream. Questions of what constitutes custodial interrogation, what form the Miranda warnings must take and how an accused may waive his rights presently plague state and federal courts. Prior to North Carolina v. Butler, the North Carolina Supreme Court had prescribed a rigid rule for waiver based on a close and literal reading of Miranda: an explicit statement of waiver, either oral or written, was necessary to support a finding that defendant effectively waived his right to counsel. The United States Supreme Court rejected that rigid rule and adopted a more flexible approach which takes into account the realities of criminal investigations. Now, in at least some cases, waiver may be inferred from the defendant\u27s words and actions

Criminal Procedure - Waiver of Right to Counsel

The United States Supreme Court\u27s landmark decision Miranda v. Arizona spawned countless cases interpreting the Court\u27s construction of standards for the admissibility of criminal defendants\u27 statements made during custodial interrogations. While earlier cases addressed the issue of waiver of right to counsel in a trial context, Miranda represented the Court\u27s first consideration of waiver of right to counsel in a pretrial context. Chief Justice Warren, writing for a majority of five, explained that the Court intended to further explore some facets of the problem, thus exposed, of applying the privilege against self-incrimination to \u27incustody interrogations, and to give concrete constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and courts to follow. The continuing efforts of both bar and bench to extract concrete standards from Miranda indicate Warren may have pursued an elusive dream. Questions of what constitutes custodial interrogation, what form the Miranda warnings must take and how an accused may waive his rights presently plague state and federal courts. Prior to North Carolina v. Butler, the North Carolina Supreme Court had prescribed a rigid rule for waiver based on a close and literal reading of Miranda: an explicit statement of waiver, either oral or written, was necessary to support a finding that defendant effectively waived his right to counsel. The United States Supreme Court rejected that rigid rule and adopted a more flexible approach which takes into account the realities of criminal investigations. Now, in at least some cases, waiver may be inferred from the defendant\u27s words and actions

Statutory Waiver of Municipal Immunity upon Purchase of Liability Insurance in North Carolina and the Municipal Liability Crisis

This article will focus on ... what has been termed the liability crisis in local government. More particularly, this article examines the doctrine of municipal sovereign immunity in North Carolina, the statutory waiver of that immunity upon purchase of liability insurance, the emergence of the municipal liability crisis and the existence of at least partial solutions to the crisis through a proposed statute and competent risk management

Statutory Waiver of Municipal Immunity upon Purchase of Liability Insurance in North Carolina and the Municipal Liability Crisis

This article will focus on ... what has been termed the liability crisis in local government. More particularly, this article examines the doctrine of municipal sovereign immunity in North Carolina, the statutory waiver of that immunity upon purchase of liability insurance, the emergence of the municipal liability crisis and the existence of at least partial solutions to the crisis through a proposed statute and competent risk management

Evolution Reinforces Cooperation with the Emergence of Self-Recognition Mechanisms: an empirical study of the Moran process for the iterated Prisoner's dilemma

We present insights and empirical results from an extensive numerical study of the evolutionary dynamics of the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Fixation probabilities for Moran processes are obtained for all pairs of 164 different strategies including classics such as TitForTat, zero determinant strategies, and many more sophisticated strategies. Players with long memories and sophisticated behaviours outperform many strategies that perform well in a two player setting. Moreover we introduce several strategies trained with evolutionary algorithms to excel at the Moran process. These strategies are excellent invaders and resistors of invasion and in some cases naturally evolve handshaking mechanisms to resist invasion. The best invaders were those trained to maximize total payoff while the best resistors invoke handshake mechanisms. This suggests that while maximizing individual payoff can lead to the evolution of cooperation through invasion, the relatively weak invasion resistance of payoff maximizing strategies are not as evolutionarily stable as strategies employing handshake mechanisms

Reinforcement Learning Produces Dominant Strategies for the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

We present tournament results and several powerful strategies for the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma created using reinforcement learning techniques (evolutionary and particle swarm algorithms). These strategies are trained to perform well against a corpus of over 170 distinct opponents, including many well-known and classic strategies. All the trained strategies win standard tournaments against the total collection of other opponents. The trained strategies and one particular human made designed strategy are the top performers in noisy tournaments also

A randomized phase III study comparing dacarbazine, BCNU, cisplatin and tamoxifen with dacarbazine and interferon in advanced melanoma

The purpose of this study was to compare the response rate, overall and 1-year survival in patients with advanced melanoma treated with a standard therapy, dacarbazine and interferon-alpha (DTIC/IFN), or combination chemotherapy, consisting of dacarbazine, BCNU, cisplatin and tamoxifen (DBCT). Treatment toxicity and time spent in hospital were secondary end points. One hundred and five patients (of whom 100 were eligible) were randomized to receive either DTIC/IFN or DBCT. The trial was designed to detect a 25% absolute difference in response rate or in 1-year survival with 80% power. There was no significant difference in response rate: this was 17.3% with DTIC/IFN and 26.4% with DBCT. Median overall survival was similar at 199 and 202 days respectively. One-year survival rate favoured standard treatment (30.6 vs 22.6%), but did not differ significantly between arms. DBCT was associated with significantly greater haematological toxicity, and a greater need for time spent in hospital (5.75 days/treatment cycle vs 2.29 with dacarbazine and interferon). DBCT combination therapy cannot be recommended as standard treatment for advanced melanoma. Dacarbazine remains the standard chemotherapy for this condition. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig

Probiotics: current landscape and future horizons

In recent years there has been a rapid rise in interest for the application of probiotic supplements to act as mediators in health and disease. This appeal is predominantly due to ever-increasing evidence of the interaction of the microbiota and pathophysiological processes of disease within the human host. This narrative review considers the current landscape of the probiotic industry and its research, and discusses current pitfalls in the lack of translation from laboratory science to clinical application. Future considerations into how industry and academia must adapt probiotic research to maximize success are suggested, including more targeted application of probiotic strains dependent on individual capabilities as well as application of multiple advanced analytical technologies to further understand and accelerate microbiome science. Lay abstract: The global market for probiotic supplements is continually expanding. Despite the public perception of benefits provided by probiotics, the evidence to conclusively link probiotic strains to improved characteristics of health or disease is lacking. This is owing, in part, to the lack of large-scale research trials, but also to the insufficient understanding of the interactions occurring within the human system following supplementation. More in-depth research into individual probiotic strains, combined with the application of multiple advanced measurement techniques will provide a future direction for probiotic research and, in turn, aim to provide useful data to translate into routine healthcare practice

Observations on the behaviour of the northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) in a translocated population

The natural distribution of the critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) is confined to Epping Forest National Park, Queensland; however, a small number of animals have been translocated to establish an insurance population at Richard Underwood Nature Refuge (RUNR), Queensland. Northern hairy-nosed wombat behaviour is poorly understood, mostly due to its cryptic behaviour. Thirty-two wildlife cameras set up at burrow mouths at RUNR were used to capture social and solitary behaviour. Over a six month period between December 2016 and May 2017, 0.3% (21 videos of 6607) of recordings captured social behaviour, suggesting that the northern hairy-nosed wombat actively avoids social interactions at the burrow mouth. Vocalisation was only observed during social interaction. The results were similar to data from Epping Forest National Park and studies on other wombat species. In this respect the translocated population appeared to behave in a manner typical of the wild population

Herbicide-Resistant Weed Seeds Contaminate Grain Sown in the Western Australian Grainbelt

Preventing the introduction of weeds into the farming system through sowing of clean seeds is an essential component of weed management. The weed seed contamination of cleaned grain and herbicide resistance levels of the recovered weed seeds were examined in a study conducted across 74 farms in the Western Australian grainbelt. Most farmers grew and conserved their own crop seed. The majority of cleaned samples had some level of seed contamination from 11 foreign weed and volunteer crop species, with an average of 62 seeds 10 kg−1 grain, substantially higher than the 28 seeds 10 kg−1 grain expected by farmers. The most common weed contaminants across all samples were rigid ryegrass, wild radish, brome, and wild oat.When categorized by crop type, rigid ryegrass was the most frequent contaminant of cereal crops (barley and wheat), however wild radish was the most frequent contaminant of lupin crops. Uncleaned crop seed samples had almost 25 times more contamination than cleaned crop seed. Herbicide resistance was highly prevalent within rigid ryegrass populations recovered from cleaned grain except for glyphosate, which controlled all populations tested. Some resistance was also found in wild radish and wild oat populations; however, brome was susceptible to fluazifop. This study has shown that farmers are unknowingly introducing weed seeds into their farming systems during crop seeding, many of which have herbicide resistance