Impeaching Credibility through Evidence of Prior Convictions: Federal Rule of Evidence 609(a)

The question whether prior convictions of criminal offenses should be admitted as evidence to impeach the credibility of a witness has long been debated in the courts of the United States. An attempt was made by Congress to end the controversy with the adoption of rule 609(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which makes it clear that impeachment by evidence of prior convictions is permissible in some situations. But, two years after the rule became effective,3 the controversy continues, now centering on what kind of prior convictions can be used to impeach under the dishonesty or false statement clause of rule 609(a)(2). Rule 609(a) defines two categories of convictions which, when being used to impeach, receive differing treatments. First are convictions for crimes which are punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. These are crimes which, in most jurisdictions, would be considered felonies. The second category, crimes involving dishonesty or false statement, creates a problem for judges. Courts have reached differing decisions as to what crimes constitute dishonesty or false statement. As a result, in this particular instance, the Rules have failed to achieve their objective of uniform application of evidentiary rules in the federal court system. This comment will assess the impact of rule 609(a) from several perspectives. First, a thorough examination of Congressional records will be made to arrive at the Congressional intent behind the phrase dishonesty or false statement in rule 609(a)(2). Secondly, the case law which has developed in the first two years interpreting that clause will be reviewed. Thirdly, other problem areas in rule 609(a) will be discussed

Research focusing on plant performance in constructed wetlands and agronomic application of treated wastewater – A set of experimental studies in Sicily (Italy)

Constructed wetlands are sustainable technologies for the treatment of wastewater. These biological systems have been widely studied throughout the world for more than 30 years; however, most studies have focused on the effects of design and engineering on pollutant removal from wastewater. Undoubtedly, agro-technical aspects have been given too little consideration by research. This paper reports the main results of a set of experiments carried out on two pilot horizontal subsurface flow systems in Sicily (Italy). Festuca, Lolium and Pennisetum spp. in combination and three emergent macrophytes–Arundo donax L., Cyperus alternifolius L. and Typha latifolia L.–alone, were assessed. The aim of the study was to demonstrate that, under predetermined hydraulic and design conditions, the choice of plant species and the management of the vegetation can significantly affect the pollutant removal performance of constructed wetlands. In addition, wastewater (after treatment) can also be used for agricultural purposes leading to increased sustainability in agricultural systems. Arundo and Typha-planted units performed better than Cyperus-planted units in terms of chemical, physical and microbiological contaminant removal. All the species adapted extremely well to wetland conditions. Polyculture systems were found to be more efficient than monocultures in the removal of dissolved organic compounds. The reuse of treated wastewater for the irrigation of open fields and horticultural crops led to significant savings in the use of freshwater and fertilizers. The results of physical-energy characterization of A. donax above-ground plant residues and pellets highlighted the fact that a constructed wetland could also be a potential source of bioenergy

An agronomic evaluation of new safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) germplasm for seed and oil yields under Mediterraean climate conditions

Interest in oilseed crops for agro-industrial research and development projects has increased in the Mediterranean area, in recent years. Saffloower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is of potential interest for agriculture mainly due to fatty acid content variability in the seed oil. The aim of this study was to assess the agronomic performance of 16 new safflower accessions together with safflower variety Montola 2000, used as a reference, in a semi-arid environment. Research was carried out in Sicily (Italy) from 2013–2014. Hierarchical cluster analysis carried out on the fatty acid composition of safflower accessions resulted in their division into four main groups. Linoleic, oleic and palmitic acids were the main fatty acids present in the accessions. Seed yield was 1.11 t ha-1 on average and seed oil content was found to be approximately 35.01% of dry matter on average. Positive and significant relationships between seed/oil yield and other tested traits were found. The carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen content as a percentage of dry matter varied greatly both for the above- and belowground plant parts on average. This study confirms the interest of safflower for both food and non-food applications, offering interesting prospects in semi-arid regions

Pembuatan Progam Aplikasi Inventori Dan Penjualan Pada Toko Mitra Sambas

Toko Mitra Sambas is located in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. Toko Mitra Sambas is a store that sells a variety of food and some grocery. Toko Mitra Sambas still using manual systems that make store have a some trouble for selling, purchase and inventory system. This has led many businesses to react quickly in adopting computerized system in promoting their business and compete with their competitors. Particularly through the application program that is increasingly widespread among the public.Therefore, if businesses do not adopt the computerized system, sooner or later they will have a huge disadvantage in terms of profitability and efficiency. Business, like a conventional store that specializes in food and furniture, also need a new computerized system to handle with daily activities, such as sales, orders, and purchases, so that data is added, search, edit, and delete it becomes easier and more efficient in terms of time and cost. This computerized applications intended to address the difficulties faced by the user system. If this system will be implemented in the future, hopefully useful for Toko Mitra Sambas.The steps of the manufacturing program includes: data collection, data analysis design method with a structured design method includes diagrams context diagram, ERD implementation and testing program. Applications designed using SQL Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012. From the test results can take several conclusions, among which are: the application program can easily create reports accurately and sales transactions and inventory system regularly

Soft Concurrent Constraint Programming

Soft constraints extend classical constraints to represent multiple consistency levels, and thus provide a way to express preferences, fuzziness, and uncertainty. While there are many soft constraint solving formalisms, even distributed ones, by now there seems to be no concurrent programming framework where soft constraints can be handled. In this paper we show how the classical concurrent constraint (cc) programming framework can work with soft constraints, and we also propose an extension of cc languages which can use soft constraints to prune and direct the search for a solution. We believe that this new programming paradigm, called soft cc (scc), can be also very useful in many web-related scenarios. In fact, the language level allows web agents to express their interaction and negotiation protocols, and also to post their requests in terms of preferences, and the underlying soft constraint solver can find an agreement among the agents even if their requests are incompatible.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL), zipped file

quasiseparable

of recurrence relations via subclasses of (H, m)

Coupled spin-lattice fluctuations in a compound with orbital degrees of freedom: the Cr based dimer system Sr3Cr2O8

We report on an extended fluctuation regime in the spin dimer system Sr3Cr2O8 based on anomalies in Raman active phonons and magnetic scattering. The compound has two characteristic temperatures, TS = 275 K, related to a Jahn-Teller transition with structural distortions and orbital ordering and a second, T*= 150 K, which is due to further changes in the orbital sector. Below TS quasielastic scattering marks strong fluctuations and in addition phonon anomalies are observed. For temperatures below T* we observe an exponential decrease of one phonon linewidth and determine a gap of the orbital excitations. At low temperatures the observation of two- and three-magnon scattering allows the determination of the spin excitation gap.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl