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Comprehending why an artificial intelligence–based agent makes certain predictions is often discussed as one of the central issues that needs to be solved in the near future to make such agents ubiquitously deployable. However, many common black-box machine learning models are hard to analyse. Recently, we proposed a new machine learning algorithm to construct concise sets of rules. This algorithm, SupRB, creates compact, interpretable and transparent models. One key feature that differentiates it from many similar previously proposed systems is that it optimizes the model selection tasks concerning rule discovery and rule set composition separately. Therefore, users can tailor a model's structure more easily towards fulfilling use-case specific explainability requirements. Keeping the model selection tasks separate during optimization allows for more clearly defined goals when compared to state-of-the-art systems and – importantly – facilitates independent rule fitnesses, making the training process easier to explain and the models easier to analyse post-hoc. In this paper, we extend previous benchmarking of SupRB, where it was compared with XCSF, a prominent rule set learning system, to also include Decision Trees (DTs) and Random Forests (RFs) in our analysis. We find that – as expected – SupRB performs comparable to XCSF, while allowing easier control of model structure and showing a substantially smaller sensitivity to random seeds and data splits, and it performs slightly worse than RFs, and better than DTs. Importantly, the overall model size was substantially smaller with SupRB, making it the easiest to interpret system while not falling significantly short in terms of prediction errors. • Detailed the presentation of SupRB, an interpretable machine learning algorithm. • SupRB performs competitively on errors with generally smaller models. • Analysing a rule is easy to do even for non-experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relation of social media to civil discovery procedures. Topics include the amount of data stored by the social media firm Facebook Inc. and the search engine firm Google Inc., the relation of the Idaho Rules of Civil Procedure to discovery in light of the Idaho court case Jackson v. Crow, and the balance between privacy rights and discovery.

We present a logic, $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ , for the discovery of deterministic causal regularities starting from empirical data. Our approach is inspired by Mackie's theory of causes as INUS-conditions, and implements a more recent adjustment to Mackie's theory according to which the left-hand side of causal regularities is required to be a minimal disjunction of minimal conjunctions. To derive such regularities from a given set of data, we make use of the adaptive logics framework. Our knowledge of deterministic causal regularities is, as Mackie noted, most often gappy or elliptical. The adaptive logics framework is well-suited to explicate both the internal and the external dynamics of the discovery of such gappy regularities. After presenting $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ , we first discuss these forms of dynamics in more detail. Next, we consider some criticisms of the INUS-account and show how our approach avoids them, and we compare $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ with the CNA algorithm that was recently proposed by Michael Baumgartner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ninety-seven percent of federal defendants plead guilty,1 and they rely on prosecutors for much of the information about the government's case on which the decision to plead is based. Although federal prosecutors routinely turn over most necessary discovery to the defense, the law does not generally require them to turn over any discovery before the guilty plea. This can lead to innocent defendants pleading guilty and to guilty defendants pleading guilty without information that could have affected the agreed-upon sentence. This Article argues that the lack of a judicially enforceable pre-plea discovery regime flouts structural protections that due process is supposed to provide. Defendants who plead not guilty and go to trial get a jury to adjudicate guilt and a judge to preside over the proceedings and pronounce sentence. The judge and jury hear an adversarial presentation of the evidence, and the judge at sentencing can consider an even broader spectrum of information about the defendant and the crime. But defendants who plead guilty effectively act as their own judge and jury. Unfortunately, because prosecutors are not required to provide any pre-plea discovery, the defendant who pleads guilty may not have nearly as much information as the judge and jury would have had at trial and sentencing. The Supreme Court has employed a balancing test to determine whether a particular procedure comports with due process. This Article proposes tailoring that test to the pre-plea discovery context. The proposed test would ask (1) whether the defense is getting sufficient information before the guilty plea to promote accurate sorting of the innocent from the guilty and reasonably informed and consistent sentencing; (2) whether there are clear rules that allow judges, before a guilty plea, to regulate prosecutors' decisions not to disclose; and (3) whether the production of pre-plea discovery in a given case imposes undue costs on society. One hopeful development is that several district courts, pursuant to congressionally-granted authority, have promulgated local rules for pre-plea discovery. I argue that these time-tested local rule innovations should be incorporated into the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to give clear standards to prosecutors and authority to judges to enforce expansive pre-plea discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs on reporting requirements to a spouse refusing to comply with the discovery process in a divorce proceeding, and corporate ownership inherent in offshore planning in the U.S. It informs on willfulness standard required for imposing tax penalties and that noncompliant spouses should be ineligible for voluntary disclosure programs that allow taxpayers to avoid criminal prosecution and penalties. It also informs on the regulation of tax evasion under the Internal Revenue Code.

This Article reports the findings of the largest and most comprehensive study to date of the role qualified immunity plays in constitutional litigation. Qualified immunity shields government officials from constitutional claims for money damages so long as the officials did not violate clearly established law. The Supreme Court has described the doctrine as incredibly strong--protecting "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law." Legal scholars and commentators describe qualified immunity in equally stark terms, often criticizing the doctrine for closing the courthouse doors to plaintiffs whose rights have been violated. The Court has repeatedly explained that qualified immunity must be as powerful as it is to protect government officials from burdens associated with participating in discovery and trial. Yet the Supreme Court has relied on no empirical evidence to support its assertion that qualified immunity doctrine shields government officials from these assumed burdens. This Article is the first to test this foundational assumption underlying the Supreme Court's qualified immunity decisions. I reviewed the dockets of 1,183 Section 1983 cases filed against state and local law enforcement defendants in five federal court districts over a two-year period and measured the frequency with which qualified immunity motions were brought by defendants, granted by courts, and dispositive before discovery and trial. I found that qualified immunity rarely served its intended role as a shield from discovery and trial in these cases. Across the five districts in my study, just thirty-eight (3.9%) of the 979 cases in which qualified immunity could be raised were dismissed on qualified immunity grounds. And when one considers all the Section 1983 cases brought against law enforcement defendants--each of which could expose law enforcement officials to burdens associated with discovery and trial--just seven (0.6%) were dismissed at the motion to dismiss stage and thirty-one (2.6%) were dismissed at summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. My findings enrich our understanding of qualified immunity's role in constitutional litigation, belie expectations about the policy interests served by qualified immunity, and show that qualified immunity doctrine should be modified to reflect its actual role in constitutional litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on interpretation and application Rule 26(b)(4)(E)(i) of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and promulgation and purpose, with emphasis on the history of Rule 26 and subdivision. It mentions federal appellate court opinions, and how that adversely affects parties in litigation and include deposition preparation time. It also mentions practical concerns warrant a narrow reading of the statute to include only time spent in depositions.

The article looks at Chapter 467 of California Code of Civil Procedure which proposes three changes to civil procedure. It mentions that proposed changes focuses on procedural aspects of expert witness file discovery and making postmortem images more easily accessible for deceased individuals' family members. It mentions that rules regarding discovery of expert witness files are enacted through California Civil Discovery Act of 1986.

The article discusses the legal issues of discovery and evidentiary significance of an opposing party's legal fees and billing records as examined in the Florida Supreme Court Case Paton v. Geico General Insurance Co., the case's reliance the cases HCA Health Services of Florida Inc. v. Hillman, and Estilien v. Dyda, in addition to proposing a rule that incorporates the Florida Supreme Court decision and case law.

Transmissibility is a significant factor in parasite fitness. The rate and magnitude of parasite transmission affect prevalence and infection intensity in individual hosts and are influenced by environmental factors. In this context, the objectives of this study were: (i) to experimentally assess Opisthorchis viverrini miracidia survival and infectivity over time and across temperatures; and (ii) to combine these experimental results with environmental data to build a key component of a transmission model, identifying seasonal windows of transmission risk in hyper-endemic northeastern Thailand. Five replicates of 50 O. viverrini eggs were randomly distributed and maintained under four temperature conditions (25 °C, 30 °C, 35 °C, 40 °C). Microscopic observations were performed on all experimental units over a period of 3 months to record miracidia motility and mortality trends. Six infection trials were also conducted to assess infectivity of miracidia over time and across temperatures, using observations of egg hatching success and infection rates. Upon completion of experiments, data were integrated into a transmission model to create a transmission risk index and to simulate seasonal transmission risk. Miracidia survival rate and motility decreased steadily with 50% mortality observed after 2 weeks. Hatching and infection success also decreased significantly after 3 weeks. Temperatures over 30 °C were associated with increased mortality and decreased infectivity. When incorporating local environmental parameters into our model, we observed low transmission risk during the dry season and increasing transmission risk at the onset of the rainy season, culminating with the highest risk in September. We believe that our results provide the first estimates of O. viverrini miracidia survival and transmission potential under variable temperature conditions and suggest that high temperature treatment (>40 °C) of fecal waste could be an efficient control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on challenges of achieving discovery from third party, non-retained experts in the U.S. It informs on 1991 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and why the general rules regarding experts do not address this situation. It also inform on need for the defendant's attorney to acquire the information used by the independent researcher.

The article focuses on Georgia's legal malpractice statute of limitations, the occurrence rule and statutes of limitations that other states have adopted to address those pitfalls. It mentions decision of Texas Supreme Court in the case Willis v. Maverick regarding relationship of trust and confidence between attorney and client and adopt the discovery rule for legal malpractice actions in Texas. It also mentions standards of professionalism and competence for attorneys.

In this paper, we study the discovery of unknown dynamical systems with observed noisy data of the dynamics by neural networks. It is well-known that the performance of the neural network approach is degraded when observed data is noisy, even if the noise level is small. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a new network-based formulation for the dynamics discovery using numerical quadrature rules and to employ a self-supervision network to denoise observed data from the underlying dynamics. Our experimental results show that the performance of the proposed approach is better than that of existing dynamical discovery methods. • Design a neural network method for the discovery of unknown and noisy dynamical systems. • Propose a new quadrature rule. • Consider self-supervised denoising scheme in the network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the marketing implications of procedural and legal developments. The article discusses United States v. The General Tire and Rubber Co., Aerojet-General Corp., A.M. Byers Co., and RKO General, Inc. as it relates to the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of reciprocity, industrial trade relations, and mutual dealings. Additionally, Fisher & Porter Co. v. James F. Haskett and Capital Controls Co., Inc. is cited as it relates to the validity of a patent, and antitrust violations as a counterclaim. The issue of how much information should be shared with a defendant in a motion for a bill of particulars is discussed in relation to United States v. Fuel Oil Dealers' Division of the Central Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.

The article presents information on the marketing implications of procedural and legal developments. the author cites the case of United States v. Montana State Food Distributors Assn. Inc. and Ray Ormesher, in which a district court found that a conspiracy indictment against a non-profit organization involving antitrust activities was lawful. Also noted are a number of the United States Federal Trade Commission's revised rules of practice concerning discovery in federal courts. The author notes the case of U.S. v. The Concentrated Phosphate Export Association Inc. involving antitrust exemption given to export associations.