Direct Requests Research Articles

Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

Abstract This study investigates Chinese and Japanese requests in social media communication, focusing on the requests made between university students. The data consisted of 300 social media requests made by 30 Chinese university students and 304 social media requests made by 30 Japanese university students, respectively. The findings revealed that the Chinese and Japanese participants displayed more similarities than differences regarding the request strategy that they preferred to use among peers on social media. Both groups employed direct requests the most frequently, followed by conventionally indirect requests. Non-conventionally indirect requests were used the least frequently by both groups. The Japanese participants employed twice as many external modifiers as their Chinese counterparts. In contrast, the Chinese participants used considerably more lexical/phrasal internal modifiers than the Japanese participants. The findings are discussed in relation to factors such as social distance, living arrangements and new technologies.

Research on local governmental restrictions for ball play in block parks

This research aims to clarify the local governmental restrictions on ball play in urban parks and identify management problems. We sent 399 questionnaires to top 8 populated cities in each of 47 prefectures of Japan and 23 wards of Tokyo, 276 local governments responded. The result is as follows:1) 60% of responded local governments have restrictions on ball play, among them 40% in certain parks individually and 20% in all parks “unifiedly”. The bigger the city, the more restriction rate for ball play it has, and overall growth is provided by the increasing share of individual restrictions. In Tokyo, the unified restriction rate is significantly higher compared to other cities. 2)We identified two sources of the local governmental ball play restriction in urban parks: first - direct request from the neighborhood, second - inheritance of the restriction from the previous government. 80% of government do not know when the ball play was prohibited. 3) Once ball play is restricted, there is no case showing the change back to “non-restricted” state. About 90% of governments do not plan to change their current policy. 4) We identified that there is no clear method of decision-making regarding the ball play, including documentation.

How Families Give and Receive: A Cross-Class Qualitative Study of Familial Exchange.

Support of family members has been a long-standing interest of social scientists. Contemporary American families must provide support to members in a historical context wherein family inequality continues to rise. Based on the life course perspective, and utilizing qualitative, in-depth interviews with 50 multi-generational participants from the Family Exchanges Study, this article explores the mechanisms through which families across the socioeconomic spectrum engage in and perceive family support. We discuss both direct and indirect requests by family members for help and identify differences by family socioeconomic status. We also discuss how issues of reciprocity, views toward request propriety, and perceptions of appreciation guide family member responses to need. We argue that this cross-class comparison is particularly essential to further scholarly understands of family functioning and support amidst growing inequality in the United States.

The Rigor and Transparency Index Quality Metric for Assessing Biological and Medical Science Methods.

SummaryThe reproducibility crisis is a multifaceted problem involving ingrained practices within the scientific community. Fortunately, some causes are addressed by the author's adherence to rigor and reproducibility criteria, implemented via checklists at various journals. We developed an automated tool (SciScore) that evaluates research articles based on their adherence to key rigor criteria, including NIH criteria and RRIDs, at an unprecedented scale. We show that despite steady improvements, less than half of the scoring criteria, such as blinding or power analysis, are routinely addressed by authors; digging deeper, we examined the influence of specific checklists on average scores. The average score for a journal in a given year was named the Rigor and Transparency Index (RTI), a new journal quality metric. We compared the RTI with the Journal Impact Factor and found there was no correlation. The RTI can potentially serve as a proxy for methodological quality.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WEB SITE IN THE PREFERENCE OF TOURIST PRODUCTS

Tourism is also one of the important sectors where information and communication technologies are used extensively. Recent studies show that the internet has become one of the most important sources of travel information acquisition and travel decision making. The revolutionary development of information technology has dramatically changed the daily lives of society and people, including the search for information and vacation planning by tourists. Nowadays web sites have become an environment where businesses not only keep their products and services but also draw more customers by attracting more customers. It has become an environment where an important stakeholder in the tourism sector constitutes an important part of the tourism industry. site use is of great importance. Through its web sites, potential customers accommodation businesses that can meet their queries and requests and that fulfill their direct booking requests in the most appropriate, fastest and safest manner will increase the chances of competition in the market.

Requests and know-how questions: Initiating instruction in workplace interaction

While it is recognized that instruction between co-workers is a central component of everyday workplace interaction and learning, this study investigates the ways in which such instructional events are practically initiated in interaction. We analyse recordings of everyday work at a radio station, where journalists prepare and broadcast local news. In our data, a distinction can be made between two interactional contexts from which instructional interactions emerge: searches, where one party is looking for a suitable helper; and established interactions, where the initiation of instruction is prefigured by immediate prior interaction. A further finding is that these two contexts are associated with two different ways of initiating instruction. Direct requests are used in established interactions. In searches, we instead find questions regarding the other person’s procedural knowledge – what we term know-how questions. We finally discuss the ways in which instructional configurations are assembled without reference to institutionally defined instructor/instructed roles.

“A condom is compulsory”: A qualitative study of condom use and negotiation strategies among female sex workers in Nepal

ABSTRACT The objective of this qualitative study was to understand Nepali female sex workers’ (FSWs) condom negotiation strategies. In 2016, we conducted 30 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with street- and brothel-based FSWs residing in Kathmandu, Nepal. Participants reported that their first entry into sex work typically occurred between the ages of 17–32, and the average duration of women’s involvement with sex work was 8 years. FSWs reported high knowledge and awareness of condoms, and many women had used various sexual and reproductive health services. FSWs used three types of negotiation strategies: withholding or refusing sex, providing risk information, and direct request. While some FSWs believed that these strategies were useful and successful, we found that, for some women, condom negotiation strategies were difficult to implement due to fear of abuse and threats of violence by clients. Condom negotiation was further complicated by poverty and substance abuse, and several narratives revealed the influence of gender and social norms on safe sexual practices. The findings highlight the need for improved sexual health interventions that incorporate a range of negotiation strategies and techniques (e.g., nonverbal communication and reward strategies) and aim to mitigate harm and violence against FSWs.

Politeness Strategies Employed by Arab EFL And Malaysian ESL Students in Making Request

In communication, speakes tend to have a polite conversation using appropriate strategies, the aim of this study is to examine the politeness strategies used by Arab and Malaysian students in making request. Also, to reveal the similarities and differences of the request strategies employed by the students. The data of the study were collected qualitatively using interview as a data collection instrument. Six post-graduate students were interviewed, three Arab and three Malay living in Malaysia. The study adopted Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, (1989) as a theoretical framework to analyse the data. The results of the study showed that Malay respondents used more indirect strategies (hints, query preparatory, hedged performative). while Arabs respondents tend to use an explicit form and direct request strategies (want statements, hints). The students use of different strategies might be attributed to the different cultural backgrounds.

REQUEST STRATEGIES IN LITTLE BIG SHOTS UK

This study examined the speech act of request appeared in a television show, Little Big Shots UK. It was a descriptive qualitative study, which the data were utterances in the form of sentences, clauses or words in Little Big Shots UK. The data were collected through the observation and non-participatory technique and analyzed by using the pragmatic identity analysis. The objective of this study was to find out the types of request strategies applied by the speakers in the Little Big Shots UK using the theory of Trosborg (1995). From the collected data, researcher found 37 data of requesting speech act, which 13 (35,1%) data categorized as direct request (2 data using necessity/obligation strategy; 2 data using performative strategy; and 9 data using imperative strategy), 12 (32,4%) data categorized as hearer-oriented condition (8 data using ability/willingness strategy; 4 using suggestory formulae strategy), 11 (29,7%) data categorized as speaker-based condition (9 data using wishes/desire strategy; 2 data using needs/demands strategy), and 1 (2,7%) data categorized as indirect (mild hint strategy).

College EFL teachers’ beliefs in making requests

This study examined college EFL teachers’ beliefs in their making requests in the classrooms. In this study, the methods for data-collection included a questionnaire, classroom observation, and an in-depth interview. A pre-observation questionnaire was administrated for collecting the information on teacher belief in the use of request types, and why and when teachers made these requests. Five EFL teachers and one of their respective English classes at university in Taiwan were invited to participate in the present study. Over a 4-week period, a total of 40 sessions of teaching, 50 minutes each, were observed, video-taped, and audio-taped. Afterwards, an interview was conducted. The data collected were transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Findings showed that all teachers reported their uses of both direct and indirect requests. Also, all teachers made their requests for some specific reasons and at some specific point of time. It is suggested that teachers be aware of their uses of requests. Teachers’ awareness of their uses of different types of requests may help promote teacher-student interaction.

Exploring Searching as Evidence of Development in Interactional Competence

In order to identify the critical features of interactional competence (IC) constructs and discuss IC development, this paper describes and analyzes how L2 speakers at different proficiency levels perform searching during talk-in- interactions. Although all L2 participants, regardless of their proficiency, successfully manage problems to keep talk progressing, they display different features in the way they initiate and complete searching. More proficient L2 participants explicitly deploy substantial linguistic and interactional resources such as L1 or a direct request for help, clearly displaying that the searching action is underway. They also engage in searching not only to locate what is unavailable at the moment, but also to search for what is better suited to the context in order to proactively avert possible misinterpretations before they occur. This study suggests that one of the important features of IC is projecting ahead and dealing with potential problems so that speakers can tailor their talk to their recipients, and co-participants can share more interactionally and sequentially common ground as the interaction expands.

Exploring L2 learners’ request behavior in a multi-turn conversation with a fully automated agent

AbstractNew technology such as fully-automated interactive spoken dialogue systems (SDS), which allow learners to engage in multi-turn conversations with an automated agent, could provide a means for second and foreign language learners (L2) to practice form-function-context mappings in oral interaction. In this study, we investigated how learners interacted with an automated agent as they engaged in an SDS task that required them to make two requests. We examined the requests employed by 107 L2 learners, exploring in particular the request strategies and modifications used. We first transcribed verbatim all audio-recorded dialogues. Then, all turns were coded as to whether they contained a request or not. All turns that were identified as including requests were then coded for four categories adopted from Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns project: (1) Level of directness, (2) Request strategy, (3) External modifiers, and (4) Internal modifiers. Direct requests were most frequently used and learners’ preferred request strategies were want-statements and query preparatories. Additionally, they employed more internal than external modifications – a finding that seems contrary to most interlanguage studies on request realization. Moreover, we found distinct request realizations when comparing L1 Hungarian and L1 Japanese learners of English. We discuss the findings with regard to previous interlanguage studies on request realization, the potential impact of an automated agent, and ways automated spoken dialog systems might be used to implement individualized feedback to raise learners’ pragmatic awareness.

Clinical Outreach: Stepping Out of the Library

ABSTRACT Based on an Immersion Session from the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Chicago, May 2019, this panel of librarians traced the history of their experiences and offered pointers for success as librarians that stepped out of the library into the clinical arena to take direct information requests or more importantly perceive information needs to better educate the health care providers, improve patient care and aid in clinical research.

El patrimoni reial al País Valencià a inicis del segle XV

On n'a pas, jusqu'ici, dédié beaucoup de temps à l'étude du Patrimoine Royal Médiéval en Pays Valencien. Nous disposons de bien peu d'informations sur les villages que le formaient, sur le type de fiscalité royale qui s'y pratiquait, sur les biens possédés ou sur la valeur des impôts perçus ainsi que sur la gestion qu'y pratiquait l'administration royale. Ce travail a été réalisé dans le but de colmater ce vide. Il analyse en détail les sources existantes traitant de cette fiscalité royale ordinaire au Pays Valencien au début du XVeme siècle. L'existence d'un manuscrit du Bailli Général du Règne, portant la date de 1414 a 1416, probablement lié à la proclamation du nouveau monarque Ferran Iet, a permis, en s’ajoutant à la documentation des maires locaux, de reconstruire les composants exacts de la fiscalité royale appliquée dans chacune des villes du pays valencien pendant ce règne, ainsi que sa valeur économique et l'idencification assez importante du nombre et de la qualité des monopoles et droits régaliens que la couronne y conservait. Nous avons aussi intégré l'étude d'une douzaine de villes et villages sarrasins qui formaient ce que l'on appelait l'Ancien Patrimoine, c'est à dire, la seigneurie particulière de la couronne pendant cette décennie et en tant que tel, source de revenus pour elle. Dans ce cas précis nous avons réalisé les tableaux avec le type de revenus et leur valeur. Finalement on peut lire dans cet article quelques considérations générales sur les revenus de la monarchie, à cette époque, aux pays valenciens et quelques conclusions sur le peu de valeur réelle de cette fiscalité, comparée a la croisance de la fiscalité extraordinaire, tant à travers les demandes directes de la couronne, comme à travers les impôts commerciaux de la Généralité et les subsides des Cortes. Le travail conclue avec une carte du Patrimoine Royal au début du XVeme siècle, et des graphiques représentant les revenus, ville par ville, en pays valenciens.

P87 CCG biologics pathways: re-introduction of the postcode lottery by stealth

Abstract Background NICE guidance approves pathways for inflammatory arthritis biologic therapies. Locally, CCG's commission pathways based on their interpretation of NICE guidance. For patients to have equal access to biologics, CCG pathways in different areas must be uniform. We examined whether CCG biologics pathways complied with this standard. Methods Using Freedom of Information requests, direct requests and internet searches, we found 21 approved biologics pathways in England for rheumatoid arthritis, 12 for psoriatic arthritis and 11 for ankylosing spondylitis. This covered 22.8 million people in England for RA (2017 population estimates). CCG Pathways were compared to NICE guidance with respect to restrictions and number of therapies allowed before an Individual Funding Request (IFR) was needed. Results We studied NICE guidance and determined an 'ideal' pathway for patients requiring > 1 biologic. All CCG pathways followed NICE guidance for 1st line biologics but there was significant variation for biologic failures. 18/21 CCG RA pathways indicated the maximum number of drugs that the CCG would commission without the clinician needing IFR. 7/18 allowed 1-3 biologics serially, 10/18 allowed 4-6 and 1/18 was unrestricted. Rituximab is NICE approved in RA in inadequate responders/intolerance to DMARDs/anti-TNF-α. 17/21 RA pathways allowed rituximab 1stline for haematological or treated solid malignancies, 4/21 did not. 6/21 CCG’s allowed rituximab 5 years after solid organ malignancy, 5/21 after 10 years, 10/21 did not specify or allow this usage. NICE guidelines for RA approve 11 biologics. 14/21 RA pathways allowed all 11 biologics, 7/21 pathways excluded sarilumab, tofacitinib or baricitinib or all three. NICE guidelines for PsA recommend the least expensive drug used first of the injected biologics or JAK inhibitors. IFR was required after 3 drugs in 9/12 pathways with 1/12 allowing 4 lines of therapy. For AS, 5/11 allowed 2 lines of therapy, the remainder 3 or 4 lines. Again, many pathways pre-specified which biologics could be used and excluded other NICE approved drugs at specific stages. Conclusion NICE specify the least expensive drug should be used for injected biologics with variation for administration mode/dosage. CCG’ s commission variably restrictive pathways potentially against NICE guidance, both with number and type of therapies before IFR submission is required. Some pathways allowed little scope to use therapies from earlier pathway points without breaching CCG limits. The IFR process for NICE approved therapies can exhibit wide variation in our experience with different outcomes for similar cases, and is time consuming with CCG decision making being opaque, despite NICE approval being legally enforceable. CCG biologic pathways introduce wide regional variation and potential unfairness in their interpretation of NICE guidance. This may disadvantage the worst affected patients who fail several therapies and prevent access to life changing therapy depending on geographical location. Disclosures J. Mistry None. D. Hill None. A. Kaul None.

НЕКОТОРЫЕ АСПЕКТЫ ЗАЩИТЫ ГРАЖДАНСКИХ ПРАВ ТОВАРИЩЕСТВ СОБСТВЕННИКОВ НЕДВИЖИМОСТИ

Today, consideration of ways to protect the civil rights of various subjects of civil law relations is of particular importance in civilist studies. One of the results of the reform of civil legislation on legal entities in 2014 was the emergence of a new legal form of organization -partnership of property owners. Therefore, it is important to consider in detail the main ways to protect the civil rights of this legal entity. It is not possible to consider all ways of protecting civil rights in one article. In this con-nection, only some of the most common methods of protecting the civil rights of real estate partnerships have been investigated, namely: recognition of the right; restoration of the posi-tion that existed before the violation of the right and suppression of actions that violate the right or threaten to violate it; invalidation of the transaction and application of the consequences of its invalidity, application of the consequences of a void transaction. The method of protection, such as recognition of the right, is often used by real estate as-sociations. And in this method, both an application for recognition of a right to be present and an application for recognition of a right to be absent are possible. The question of the applica-bility of the statute of limitations to this method is a matter of discussion. It seems that in most cases it is possible to apply the statute of limitations to claims for recognition of a right. The general nature of this method was revealed by examining the restoration of the situa-tion that existed before the violation of the right and the prevention of actions that violate the right or threaten to violate it. Usually, when such demands are made, the courts ask to specify them. And only in rare cases where no other protective measures are applied, do the courts allow for the possibility of submitting a direct request to restore the situation that existed be-fore the violation of the right. The third way of protecting the civil rights of property associations was significantly changed in 2013. Thus, the rule of Article 168 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation on the nullity of a transaction that does not comply with the law has been fundamentally re-formed, unless the law establishes other consequences. Such a transaction is now considered void. The possibility of claims for invalidation of a void transaction has also been established by law. Previously, the courts allowed such claims, but in the doctrine the question of the possibility of such claims was debatable, since the Civil Code of the Russian Federation did not mention them.

Assessment of Antibiotic Dispensing Practice in Community Pharmacies of Tehran, for 2 Common Infectious Symptoms, Using Simulated Patient Method.

Resistance to antibiotics is a worldwide concern and community pharmacies can play a strategic role in controlling this issue through rationalizing antibiotic consumption. Considering that dispensing any type of antibiotics without a prescription is prohibited according to Iran’s regulations, this study was conducted to quantify the rate of antibiotic dispensing without a prescription by pharmacists in Tehran, Iran. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from September 2016 through May 2017. Two scenarios of common infectious symptoms including sore throat and dysuria were simulated by pharmacy student in three different regions of Tehran. Each scenario was performed in three levels of demand including requesting for any medicine, asking for a stronger medicine, and direct request for an antibiotic. A total of 388 pharmacy visits were acceptable including 195 and 193 pharmacies for dysuria and sore throat, respectively. Antibiotics were provided in 39.9% of dysuria (67.5% in the first level of demand) and in 52.3% of sore throat (49% in the first level of demand) simulations. The time devoted by the pharmacists to each case was less than 60 second in more than 90% of the cases. The completion of the course of antibiotic therapy was emphasized by pharmacists in only 18% of cases in both scenarios. Our findings revealed that antibiotic dispensing without a prescription is a routine practice in community pharmacies in Tehran, Iran. Unfortunately, patient assessment and evaluation of the symptoms are not performed properly by pharmacists as well.

Implementing Query Terms Linked to Virtual Databases by Metaheuristic Techniques

In general case, the database trigger may be quite applicable to signified queries to validate the database requests. Specifically, these may be essential to adopt search mechanisms to identify the query terms. In such cases it may also be required to eradicate ambiguities during updates by checking consistencies, durability. Many database systems support aggregate functions as it may be really linked to statistical analysis of large scale data. Again as per the requirement and schedule, multilevel aggregation may be thought of towards report generation and implementation of join predicates. In case of complexity, direct requests may be accessed to schedule the entire database operations. While optimizing the database queries, alternative query plans may be thought of implementing specific routines to eradicate the duplicity of query terms. It may be quite possible to containerize the query plans linked to several data servers exploring the inter operator parallelism. Also the assemblers linked to the query plans in the servers may steer the process accordingly. Considering the implementation mechanisms of database query plans inside a cloud storage system, the data may be automatically partitioned and replicated. The servers may change dynamically the existing load in response to the query plans. The queries as well as the transactions may be uncommon during optimization process and applications may be communicated following standard activity protocols linked to the database servers. Linking the query terms to the databases, it may also be required to incorporate metadata towards plan execution. Many times transactional database applications linked to relational cloud may have the provision of configuring and accessing the data and may face the challenges like scalability and privacy. To overcome these issues, the tasks may be relocated and rearranged linked to database servers by which better performance may be achieved dealing with complex transactions. Also the aggregation methods or techniques linked to data partitioning may enable the structured queries to yield better performance. In this paper it is intended to obtain query terms along with the threshold values linked to virtual databases.

Informal payments by patients in Croatia: benign custom or detrimental residue from socialism?

Abstract Almost three decades after the collapse of the socialist system, numerous informal practices inherited from that period have remained deeply entrenched in the Croatian economy and society. Faced with burdensome regulations and complicated procedures, many citizens and companies opt to resolve their problems using string-pulling, bribery and undeclared work. However, there are many other informal means of conduct, which have not been given adequate attention so far. One of them is the practice of giving gratuity and gifts to medical practitioners for services that are already covered by health insurance, whose roots and the exact function are still not sufficiently understood. To start filling the gap, this paper explores which groups of citizens give out-of-pocket payments to doctors and nurses, as well as what motivates them to do so. The logistic regression analysis applied on data from the Special Eurobarometer Survey No 470, which was conducted in October 2017 on a stratified sample of 1,038 Croatians, reveals that these payments by no means represent a benevolent custom of expressing gratitude for healing. Even though a certain portion of citizens exercises this practice out of choice, informal payments more commonly occur following a direct request by medical staff or simply because the patient feels a pressure to do so. As revealed by the analysis, the majority of such transactions in Croatia highly resemble standard forms of bribery. In line with this, it is recipients rather than donors of gifts and cash supplements who should be targeted in endeavours to eradicate the phenomenon.

Supply of codeine combination analgesics from Australian pharmacies in the context of voluntary real-time recording and regulatory change: A simulated patient study

BackgroundIn recent years there have been growing concerns regarding non-prescription codeine use in Australia. Efforts to mitigate risks associated with non-prescription codeine, such as addiction and toxicity, have been primarily through two initiatives; regulatory changes restricting their availability, and voluntary live-recording supply of non-prescription codeine combination analgesics (CCAs). This study sought to explore the supply of CCAs in the climate of regulatory change. MethodsEighty University of Sydney pharmacy students mystery-shopped 34 community pharmacies across metropolitan Sydney, Australia from August 2016 to November 2017, with scripted symptom-based (SBR) or direct product requests (DPR) for a CCA. Questions asked, staff involvement, regulatory compliance, voluntary recording, and product(s) supplied were recorded. ResultsOf 158 total visits, a non-prescription CCA was supplied in 101 instances. Sixty-one (60%) of these supplies complied with the legislative requirement for a pharmacist to supply the medicine. Voluntary recording was surmised to have been utilised 13 times (13% CCA supplies). CCAs were supplied less frequently in 2017 DPR scenarios compared to 2016 DPR scenarios (64% vs 86%; p = 0.024), and a greater proportion of 2017 DPR supplies were compliant with the legislative requirement of pharmacist supply (72% vs 46%; p = 0.041). No difference in proportion of sales surmised to have been voluntarily recorded was observed between the years. Interactions involving pharmacists resulted in less frequent supply of codeine than those without (58% vs 82%; p = 0.012). ConclusionMandatory legislative regulation of pharmacist supply of non-prescription codeine was more likely to be complied with than voluntary recording. Compliance with pharmacist supply for DPRs appeared to improve following the announcement of regulatory change to prescription-only, whereas voluntary recording of supply did not appear to change.