Action Requests Research Articles

The Application of the Likelihood Ratio Test and the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel Test to Discrimination Cases

In practice, the ultimate outcome of many important discrimination cases, for example, the Wal-Mart, Nike and Goldman-Sachs equal pay cases, is determined at the stage when the plaintiffs request that the case be certified as a class action. The primary statistical issue at this time is whether the employment practice in question leads to a common pattern of outcomes disadvantaging most plaintiffs. However, there are no formal procedures or government guidelines for checking whether an employment practice results in a common pattern of disparity. This article proposes using the slightly modified likelihood ratio test and the one-sided Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) test to examine data relevant to deciding whether this commonality requirement is satisfied. Data considered at the class certification stage from several actual cases are analyzed by the proposed procedures. The results often show that the employment practice at issue created a common pattern of disparity, however, based on the evidence presented to the courts, the class action requests were denied.

Trajectory Prediction Using Graph-Based Deep Learning for Longitudinal Control of Autonomous Vehicles: A Proactive Approach for Autonomous Driving in Urban Dynamic Traffic Environments

This article presents a method for the trajectory prediction of surrounding vehicles and proactive longitudinal control of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in an urban road environment. A long short-term memory (LSTM)-based deep learning model is designed for the surrounding vehicles’ trajectory prediction. In our model, the historical evolution of the relation between a target vehicle and lanes is considered to learn the driver’s behavior in a lane-aware manner. Interaction among adjacent vehicles is captured based on a graph convolutional network (GCN), which uses a self-attention mechanism. Compared to other approaches, our prediction model utilizes environment information that is acquirable in AVs with local sensors. A model predictive control (MPC) is designed to derive the control inputs of acceleration for AVs. The proposed control method utilizes the prediction results of the target vehicle to give action requests to AV in a proactive manner considering both safety and ride quality. The results of comparative studies indicate that the proposed prediction model achieves improved accuracy compared to baselines. The control results provided by automated driving tests show that the proposed control algorithm applied by the LSTM-based prediction model enables AVs to achieve safety with respect to surrounding vehicles and provide ride comfort to passengers.

Action Selection and Execution in Everyday Activities: A Cognitive Robotics and Situation Model Perspective.

We examine the mechanisms required to handle everyday activities from the standpoint of cognitive robotics, distinguishing activities on the basis of complexity and transparency. Task complexity (simple or complex) reflects the intrinsic nature of a task, while task transparency (easy or difficult) reflects an agent's ability to identify a solution strategy in a given task. We show how the CRAM cognitive architecture allows a robot to carry out simple and complex activities such as laying a table for a meal and loading a dishwasher afterward. It achieves this by using generalized action plans that exploit reasoning with modular, composable knowledge chunks representing general knowledge to transform underdetermined everyday action requests into motion plans that successfully accomplish the required task. Noting that CRAM does not yet have the ability to deal with difficult activities, we leverage insights from the situation model perspective on the cognitive mechanisms underlying flexible context-sensitive behavior with a view to extending CRAM to overcome thisdeficit.

A Rule-Based Data Quality Assessment System for Electronic Health Record Data.

Rule-based data quality assessment in health care facilities was explored through compilation, implementation, and evaluation of 63,397 data quality rules in a single-center case study to assess the ability of rules-based data quality assessment to identify data errors of importance to physicians and system owners. We applied a design science framework to design, demonstrate, test, and evaluate a scalable framework with which data quality rules can be managed and used in health care facilities for data quality assessment and monitoring. We identified 63,397 rules partitioned into 28 logic templates. A total of 819,683 discrepancies were identified by 4.5% of the rules. Nine out of 11 participating clinical and operational leaders indicated that the rules identified data quality problems and articulated next steps that they wanted to take based on the reported information. The combined rule template and knowledge table approach makes governance and maintenance of otherwise large rule sets manageable. Identified challenges to rule-based data quality monitoring included the lack of curated and maintained knowledge sources relevant to data error detection and lack of organizational resources to support clinical and operational leaders with investigation and characterization of data errors and pursuit of corrective and preventative actions. Limitations of our study included implementation within a single center and dependence of the results on the implemented rule set. This study demonstrates a scalable framework (up to 63,397 rules) with which data quality rules can be implemented and managed in health care facilities to identify data errors. The data quality problems identified at the implementation site were important enough to prompt action requests from clinical and operational leaders.

Development of a manual for rubber plantation owners and rubber wood consumers in Thailand for obtaining international forest management certification

Currently, the export situation of rubber wood products in Thailand is at a high risk of price and market competition. All relevant organizations in Thailand hope to solve these problems sustainably. One of the important ways is to increase the value of rubber wood products and marketing channels for exporting to more countries besides China. However, Thailand still faces a significant obstacle to the export of rubber wood products, that is, most of the rubber plantations have not yet been certified for international forest management. Forest certification is one mechanism to prevent and manage global environmental problems including air, soil, water, biodiversity and the reduction of forest areas. Previous research [1] indicated that most rubber plantation owners and rubber wood consumers in Thailand did not fully understand the principles, criteria, and indicators of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and that in Forest Management (FM) certification auditors need to process a request for Corrective Action Requests (CARs) or suspend certificates in some cases. Therefore, this research aimed to develop an appropriate manual for rubber plantation owners and rubber wood consumers in Thailand for obtaining the FSC standards. Secondary data of the forest management certification system at the international level, including organizations, certification process, and FSC certification standards, were analysed and related to data at the national level (i.e., laws, regulations and status of rubber plantations in economic, social and environmental dimensions). The consistency and limitations of FSC principles, criteria, and indicators in certificates issued in Thailand were also analysed. A manual, with recommendations for compliance with FSC standard, was developed. It consists of five chapters: 1) FSC definition; 2) FSC scoping; 3) FSC evaluation and surveillance; 4) FSC scoping assessment; and 5) implementations in accordance with FSC standards. This knowledge had been shared through workshops with the rubber plantation owners, rubber wood consumers, staff of the Rubber Authority of Thailand, and other organizations. In total, over 150 people attended the workshops in the following locations: Songkla, Surat Thani, Rayong, and Bangkok. The workshops aimed to develop the participant skills to request for FSC: FM certification.

Consideraţii critice referitoare la Decizia nr. 12/2020, pronunţată de Înalta Curte de Casaţie şi Justiţie – Completul pentru soluţionarea recursului în interesul legii

"The authors analyzed the decision of the Supreme Court by an appeal in the interest of the law, regarding the possibility of the party fined according to art. 187 parag. (1) pt. 1 let. a) Code of Civil Procedure, for the introduction, in bad faith, of a civil action, accessory, additional or incidental requests, as well as for the exercise of some appeals, obviously unfounded, by the same decision by which these requests were solved, to submit in the appeal filed to the superior court, criticisms concerning the judicial fine. In the opinion of the authors, the correct interpretation is that these criticisms can be formulated in the appeal filed to the superior court, together with all the other criticisms regarding the solution of the lower court, when the fine was applied by the same decision by which those requests were solved."

Twenty years of forest management certification in the tropics: Major trends through time and among continents

For over 20 years, forest management certification—particularly that of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)—has been promoted as a way to manage tropical natural forests responsibly. To shed light on the current and historical trends of this market-driven, forest governance intervention, we obtained information from the public summaries of evaluation reports belonging to 543 forest management units (FMUs) located in the tropics and covering 20 years of certification, from 1995 until 2016. Additionally, we analyzed 4621 corrective action requests (CARs) issued by third-party auditors during the initial certification attempts of companies and groups managing tropical natural forests to increase our understanding of the nature of problematic management issues and their evolution across different regions. By the end of 2016, most of the certified forest area was located in Africa, followed by the Americas and Asia. The tropics experienced a period of stagnation regarding certified area growth during the last decade, partly as a consequence of a pantropical wave of certificate terminations that started in 2008, having a severe impact in the Americas and a moderate one in Asia and Africa. Our results suggest that FMUs that remain certified for relatively more extended periods are more resilient against external economic pressures. One implication is that managers and policymakers should develop mechanisms to encourage long-term certification, particularly among small-holders as the amount of certified area managed by groups (i.e., communities and groups of small companies) has decreased throughout the last decade. We highlight the importance of looking into the temporal and regional dynamics to get a broader perspective of FSC certification at the tropical level.

Analysis of corrective action requests from Forest Stewardship Council audits of natural forest management in Indonesia

We used corrective action requests (CARs) issued by conformity assessment bodies (CABs) working under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification in Indonesia to explore differences among audited natural forest management units (FMUs). Specifically, we evaluate how FMU characteristics influenced the classes of CARs issued and the time elapsed before their closure. We analyzed 933 CARs from 22 FSC-certified FMUs reported by six CABs in 99 public summaries. The average number of CARs issued did not vary with type of audit or CAB, most focused on social and environmental issues, and most represented minor infractions that were rectified with procedural changes (i.e., improvements in planning, record keeping, and reporting). None of the measured characteristics of Indonesian FMUs helped explain the foci of assigned CARs. The elapsed time before CAR closure differed among CABs and type of audit, but decreased over time. Large FMUs established before 1998 that employed many workers and subcontracted logging took longer to close CARs than FMUs with the opposite characteristics. Finally, conclusions based on this analysis should be made in light of the limitations of analyses based on reports from auditors rather than on direct observations.

Take Action Now: Motivational Framing and Action Requests in Climate Advocacy

ABSTRACTThis article explores similarities and differences between Internet-mediated climate change advocacy organizations and their legacy counterparts. It relies on a content analysis of advocacy emails produced by Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, League of Conservation Voters, Climate Reality Project, 1Sky, and 350.org. The study finds differences and similarities in strategic Internet use, including greater emphasis by climate groups on high threshold, offline actions; greater emphasis by legacy groups on low threshold, online actions; and high reliance by both framings that demand accountability from political elites. Implications for Internet-mediated and climate advocacy are discussed.

Assessing audit impact and thoroughness of VCS forest carbon offset projects

Voluntary markets transacted over $66 million USD of forest carbon offsets in 2016, according to Forest Trends, and over 99% of those offset projects were audited to a standard, primarily the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). We provide a table characterizing all 70 validated and verified forest carbon projects employing the VCS version 3.0 currently-in-use (December 2011–July 2017). We also examine two separate aspects of the audit process––impact and thoroughness––to assess the effectiveness of the costly audit process, which can consume up to one-third of offset revenue. Audit impact we measure in terms of reduction in the number of offsets from ex ante estimated to ex post approved. Audit thoroughness we measure both directly in terms of the number of auditor hours worked per project and also indirectly in terms of the total number of Corrective Action Requests (CARs)/Non-Conformity Reports (NCRs) auditors prescribe. In terms of impact, we find that Afforestation/Reforestation/Restoration (A/R/R) and Improved Forest Management (IFM) projects, though only constituting 5% of total verified offsets, demonstrate significant (p<=0.05) reductions from ex ante estimated to ex post approved offsets, likely because auditors can easily scrutinize carbon stocks/emission factors for the commercial tree species involved in these project types. In terms of thoroughness, we find that higher ex ante estimates correlate with more total auditor hours worked and total CARs/NCRs prescribed for three of four project activity types, likely because auditors perceive larger ex ante projects as higher risk. We conclude with recommendations for the VCS to empower auditors to scrutinize carbon stocks/emissions factors from avoided deforestation projects, and also to continue to flag high ex ante projects as higher risk.

Does forest certification in developing countries have environmental benefits? Insights from Mexican corrective action requests

Among other objectives, certification aims to improve environmental outcomes in developing country forests. Yet little is known about whether and how it actually generates such benefits. To shed light on these questions, an analysis was conducted of 1 162 corrective action requests (CARs) issued after third-party inspections of 35 forests in Mexico certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. CARs detail the changes in procedures and on-the-ground conditions that forest managers must make to obtain or retain certification. Based mainly on simple summary statistics, the findings are mixed. On one hand, most forest managers quickly complied with CARs and received fewer over time— results suggesting that certification generated environmental benefits. But most CARs addressed minor procedural issues and focused on social, economic and legal issues rather than on-the-ground environmental changes—results indicating the opposite. Follow-on research comparing the environmental performance of certified and similar uncertified forests would help resolve this uncertainty.

Striatal Neuropeptides Enhance Selection and Rejection of Sequential Actions.

The striatum is the primary input nucleus for the basal ganglia, and receives glutamatergic afferents from the cortex. Under the hypothesis that basal ganglia perform action selection, these cortical afferents encode potential “action requests.” Previous studies have suggested the striatum may utilize a mutually inhibitory network of medium spiny neurons (MSNs) to filter these requests so that only those of high salience are selected. However, the mechanisms enabling the striatum to perform clean, rapid switching between distinct actions that form part of a learned action sequence are still poorly understood. Substance P (SP) and enkephalin are neuropeptides co-released with GABA in MSNs preferentially expressing D1 or D2 dopamine receptors respectively. SP has a facilitatory effect on subsequent glutamatergic inputs to target MSNs, while enkephalin has an inhibitory effect. Blocking the action of SP in the striatum is also known to affect behavioral transitions. We constructed phenomenological models of the effects of SP and enkephalin, and integrated these into a hybrid model of basal ganglia comprising a spiking striatal microcircuit and rate–coded populations representing other major structures. We demonstrated that diffuse neuropeptide connectivity enhanced the selection of unordered action requests, and that for true action sequences, where action semantics define a fixed structure, a patterning of the SP connectivity reflecting this ordering enhanced selection of actions presented in the correct sequential order and suppressed incorrect ordering. We also showed that selective pruning of SP connections allowed context–sensitive inhibition of specific undesirable requests that otherwise interfered with selection of an action group. Our model suggests that the interaction of SP and enkephalin enhances the contrast between selection and rejection of action requests, and that patterned SP connectivity in the striatum allows the “chunking” of actions and improves selection of sequences. Efficient execution of action sequences may therefore result from a combination of ordered cortical inputs and patterned neuropeptide connectivity within striatum.

What do forest audits say? The Indonesian mandatory forest certification Que disent les audits forestiers? La certification forestière obligatoire en Indonésie ¿Qué nos dicen las auditorías forestales? La certificación forestal obligatoria de Indonesia

Since its emergence largely as a nonstate, market-driven governance system, certification has grown into a complex field in which states also use it as a regulatory instrument. Our research aimed to analyse the impacts of certification initiatives implemented under government control as a mandatory requirement, which remains understudied to date. The Indonesian mandatory forest certification, Pengelolaan Hutan Produksi Lestari (PHPL), was used as a case study. We employed an adapted corrective action requests (CAR) approach based on audit reports. Seventy-eight concessions were audited until December 2015; most of them were eventually granted a PHPL certificate. They scored better on the production aspects than on the main preconditions, social and ecological aspects. Further analysis of the changes in the grades over time showed that the grades across indicators varied, either improving or worsening. Social and ecology-related forest practices appear to be the most challenging aspects in Indonesia, as we found that the grades declined over time despite the fact that the concessions were able to maintain their certification.

Target-distractor synchrony affects performance in a novel motor task for studying action selection.

The study of action selection in humans can present challenges of task design since our actions are usually defined by many degrees of freedom and therefore occupy a large action-space. While saccadic eye-movement offers a more constrained paradigm for investigating action selection, the study of reach-and-grasp in upper limbs has often been defined by more complex scenarios, not easily interpretable in terms of such selection. Here we present a novel motor behaviour task which addresses this by limiting the action space to a single degree of freedom in which subjects have to track (using a stylus) a vertical coloured target line displayed on a tablet computer, whilst ignoring a similarly oriented distractor line in a different colour. We ran this task with 55 subjects and showed that, in agreement with previous studies, the presence of the distractor generally increases the movement latency and directional error rate. Further, we used two distractor conditions according to whether the distractor’s location changes asynchronously or synchronously with the location of the target. We found that the asynchronous distractor yielded poorer performance than its synchronous counterpart, with significantly higher movement latencies and higher error rates. We interpret these results in an action selection framework with two actions (move left or right) and competing ‘action requests’ offered by the target and distractor. As such, the results provide insights into action selection performance in humans and supply data for directly constraining future computational models therein.

From “Hypercritics” to “Happy Campers”: Who Complains the Most in Fine Dining Restaurants?

ABSTRACTThis article describes a cluster analysis of the complaining behavior of customers in fine dining restaurants using past visit frequency, public actions against the restaurants, recovery action requests, negative marketing actions, and satisfaction from previous experiences as the criteria variables. Four customer groups were recognized, termed hypercritics, silent killers, friendly complainers, and happy campers. Characteristics of the customer groups based on all criteria variables differed according to service delivery failure reactions. Overall, hypercritics and friendly complainers informed a restaurant and gave it the opportunity to make corrective actions; silent killers resorted to negative marketing actions rather than complaining on site; and happy campers did not complain. The analysis indicates several ways to turn silent killers into more favorable consumer groups. The results suggest that service stages should be treated uniquely while designing the best recovery response strategies for different customer groups.

Trends in Evaluations of Sustainable Green Ecosystem Council (SGEC) Certified Forests in Japan

The number of Sustainable Green Ecosystem Council (SGEC) certified forests in Japan has increased in recent years. As such it is important to understand forest management certification within the context of corrective action requests (CARs) to assess sustainable forest management. This study analyzes trends in CARs issued through evaluations of SGEC certified forests in Japan as a function of certification body, forest zone, size of forest holdings, and forest ownership type. This study examined 86 certified forests in Japan using data from summary evaluations published by SGEC certification bodies in 2014. Forests in the northern zone tend to have more CARs assigned, as did larger forests and communally owned forests. For managers interested in maintaining sustainable forests, the findings suggest that they should focus on improving the following indicators: “training and instruction, such as the safety for forestry workers” (indicator 5.3), “to evaluate forest practices against the original plan and to assess their impacts, with proper monitoring” (indicator 7.1), “explicit and management policy of the important elements in the conservation of biological diversity”(indicator 2.2) and “protection of threatened species” (indicator 2.3). The results from this study suggest that certification bodies have different priorities in their certification assessments, as indicated by the varying number and types of CARs assigned. However, the findings also indicate that the factors affecting the assessment results may not be only the certification body issuing the assessments but also the forest zone, forest ownership type, and size of forest holdings.

Does Forest Certification in Developing Countries Have Environmental Benefits? Insights from Mexican Corrective Action Requests

Certification is intended to improve management of and environmental outcomes in developing country forests. Yet we know little about whether and how it actually generates such benefits. To address that question, we analyze 1,162 corrective action requests (CARs) issued after third-party inspections of a diverse set of 35 forests in Mexico certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). CARs detail the changes in procedures and on-the-ground conditions that forest managers must make to either obtain or retain certification. Our analysis indicates that a relatively small proportion of CARs required major changes in on-the-ground environmental conditions. The majority focused on social and legal issues, and the vast majority called for only minor procedural changes. In general, forest managers complied with CARs expeditiously, and the number of CARs they received declined over time. We hypothesize that these findings were at least partly driven by the tendency of FSC certification to attract already-sustainably managed forests and by the governance challenges of community forestry in developing countries. One implication is that policymakers using FSC certification to generate environmental benefits may want to target forests with less-than-stellar management — particularly in the case of reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) initiatives that emphasize improvement beyond business-as-usual — and to build the community and legal institutions needed for sustainable forestry.

Risk assessment by quantifying and prioritizing 5S activities for semiconductor manufacturing

5S practice follows structured 5S activities from structurize, systematize, sanitize, standardize, and self-discipline to deal with scene management in shop floor control, and it is regarded as the most troublesome aspect with respect to environmental safety and health for a semiconductor manufacturing fabrication. The improved action items for 5S activities can amount to thousands from messy paper filing to untightened chemical piping. However, there is no clear key performance indicator to evaluate how good (safe) the fab is and how to be good (safe) for 5S practice. Failure modes and effects analysis is an effective and efficient way to deal with risk assessment for 5S activities and to prioritize the action requests from the improved result of continuous improvement. However, when failure modes and effects analysis is applied to the risk assessment of 5S audit, the conventional risk priority number lacks of all comprehensive information and misleads to a bias for not considering weights of severity ( S), occurrence ( O), and detectability ( D). In order to improve the method of risk priority number evaluation, this article combining 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representation model and weighted geometric averaging operators to quantify 5S audit findings is proposed to eliminate the bias from different 5S auditors. This is the first approach for the numerous 5S action items to be quantified and prioritized with resource constraints to sustain 5S practice robust. A case study in a fab was demonstrated to show how the model was implemented to approve its validity.

Recursos de informática na terapia fonoaudiológica de crianças do espectro autístico

The use of computerized technology in language therapy with children of the autistic spectrum. To assess the interference of using computers and specific programs during language therapy in the functional communicative profile and socio-cognitive performance of children of the autistic spectrum. 23 children with ages ranging between 3 and 12 years were individually video recorded prior to and after a set of 10 regular language therapy sessions (i.e. a total of two video samples per subject) using computerized games according to the child's choice. The following expressions were used by the therapists to describe the children's performance during the use of computers: more attentive, more communicative initiatives, more eye contact, more interactive, more verbalizations, more attention and more action requests. Qualitative and quantitative progresses were identified, although without statistical significance. Those progresses were observed after a time period that is smaller than the usually applied to this kind of comparison and it seems to be a promising result. More controlled associations and comparisons were not possible due to the groups' heterogeneity and therefore more consistent conclusions are not possible. It was clear that the subjects presented different reactions to the use of computerized resources during language therapy.

Building common ground in global teamwork through re-representation

We explore in this paper the relation between activities, communication channels and media, and common ground building in global teams. We define re-representation as a sequence of representations of the same concept using different communication channels and media. We identified the re-representation technique to build common ground that is used by team members during multimodal and multimedia communicative events in cross-disciplinary, geographically distributed settings. Our hypotheses are as follows: (1) Significant sources of information behind decisions and request for actions are embedded within the fabric of communicative events in which participants use both informal and formal media to express their ideas. Capturing these information sources can facilitate common ground building and accelerate the execution of action requests. (2) Re-representations of concepts, i.e., sequences of representations using diverse media and communication channels, mediate and accelerate common ground building. (3) The use of intra- or interdisciplinary re-representations correlates with high team performance, i.e., effective team process and high product quality. We used AEC Global Teamwork course offered in 2008–2009 as the testbed for our study to validate our hypothesis.