Four-step Framework Research Articles

APPLYING MACHINE LEARNING IN THE U.S. POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: FORECASTING, POLLING, AND THE DOMESTIC SUPPLY CHAIN

There are areas of the current U.S. political system that are fit for the implementation of machine learning capabilities. Some of these areas include election forecasting, polling, and vote-by-mail services. The introduction of machine learning tools to the components of the U.S. political system can result in increases in efficiency and accessibility throughout the sector. By doing so, there would be an assumed decrease in necessary labor. This research analyzed the specified areas of U.S. politics by establishing a four-step framework based on a previous exploratory case study into the application of machine learning to operations management and adjusted said framework to fit the needs of the nature of U.S. politics. This framework was utilized to determine the objectives to which machine learning would be applied within this sector. As well, it serves to guide the technology or strategies necessary to achieve those objectives, illustrate the effect on performance and on stakeholders. This analysis introduces valuable insights for any decision makers as well as providing an accessible and informative review of some of the potential applications of machine learning in the existing U.S. political system.

The Use of Lidar and Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for Detection and Size Estimation of Potholes

Road potholes have a well-known impact on driving quality and safety. Therefore, timely mitigation of potholes is critical for the safety of road users. However, efficient and timely maintenance relies on the presence of an effective process for pothole detection. Currently, transportation agencies primarily rely on manual inspection and road user reporting. These methods are subjective, prone to inaccuracy, and some are also laborious and time-consuming. An ideal pothole detection system would be accurate, objective, automated, and relatively inexpensive. In this context, accuracy encompasses three distinct performance areas: detection, localization, and size estimation. This study explores the potential of utilizing a mobile light detection and ranging (LiDAR) for accurate detection and size estimation, along with a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver for localization, to develop an effective pothole surveillance system. To achieve this objective, the study proposes a four-step framework. Firstly, the LiDAR data are processed to generate ring-wise cross-sectional images. Secondly, a deep learning object detection network is trained to predict the presence and size of potholes. Thirdly, the ring-wise inferences are aggregated to produce a final decision. Lastly, the aggregated inferences are synchronized with GNSS locations to generate inspection maps. The system’s performance was validated using multiple road strips, never seen by the model, containing potholes of different sizes and shapes. The results demonstrated the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed system. Overall, this research contributes to the research on LiDAR-based pothole inspection by proposing a novel four-step framework and incorporating it into an end-to-end pothole detection system, which can greatly improve the efficiency of pothole maintenance and enhance the safety of road users.

Implementation of Blue Ocean Strategy in Facing Business Competition: A Startup Case Study of Lapangbola.Com

Research aims: This study discusses the specific blue ocean strategy employed by lapangbola.com to emerge successful in the business competition.Design/Methodology/Approach: This study employed a descriptive qualitative methodology, utilizing interviews with relevant individuals (Operations and Marketing managers) from lapangbola.com. The analysis was conducted using the Blue Ocean Strategy, employing a strategy canvas, a four-step framework, and a six-step framework for data gathering.Research findings: A business competition strategy employs a blue ocean strategy approach that originates from business innovation, encompassing product development, operational enhancements, and the utilization of efficient digital marketing channels.Theoretical Contribution/Originality: This research serves as valuable information for decision-makers, particularly in startup firms, seeking to enhance their business growth by adopting a blue ocean strategy approach. The successful implementation of this technique by lapangbola.com, a startup business in the sports industry, further exemplifies its effectiveness.Practitioners/Policy Implications: Startup companies or businesses in the digital industry might employ a blue ocean strategy, characterized by a rigorous, flexible, and inventive approach, to analyze the market and formulate an effective formula for company development.Research Limitations/Implications: The limitations of this research are found in the secondary data (literature studies) used, this is because not many businesses have consciously implemented blue ocean strategy simultaneously using canvas strategies, 4-step frameworks and 6-step frameworks. More in-depth analysis is needed on the implementation of the blue ocean business strategy that will be carried out at each startup.

ROI for a Fall Prevention Intervention: Invest a Little, Save a Lot.

Patient falls within the hospital setting continue to be a significant challenge globally with almost one million hospital falls occurring in the U.S. annually. Recent calculations showed that the average total cost of a hospitalized patient fall was $62,521. One evidenced-based tool that has been shown to be effective is a colorful laminated poster, Fall TIPS poster, that was designed to engage and involve the patient in their fall prevention. One academic medical center utilized this implementation showing a successful return on investment (ROI). This project used a pre-post implementation design. After a successful pilot using the poster on one unit, the implementation was spread to all Adult Acute Care units (n = 10) within the institution. The outcome measures were fall and fall with injury counts and rates. The process measure was the completion of the fall prevention poster measured via audits. The calculation of ROI was completed using a four-step framework. The outcome data of fall and fall with injury showed a decrease from the pre-intervention months with both the fall count and rate decreasing by 23% and the fall with injury count and rate decreasing by 40%. The overall ROI calculation estimated an ROI of $982,700. The successful results from this project support the evidence that shows this program and the use of the Fall TIPS poster helps reduce patient falls within the hospital and yields a favorable ROI.

A framework to forestall systemic police misconduct: Applying DOJ’S pattern or practice findings to municipal police

Abstract The 1994 crime bill authorized the DOJ to investigate and initiate reform against law enforcement agencies for patterns or practices of systemic misconduct and unconstitutional policing. Among the 78 investigations conducted under this authority, 35 involve municipal police agencies with DOJ issued “findings letters” detailing policy, procedural, and operational deficiencies within the subject agency. These DOJ-issued documents were analyzed for consistent thematic insufficiencies across investigations, and tested for association with police organizational and environmental variables. From this analysis, a four-step framework was developed to offer police leadership the knowledge, tools, timing, and insight to forestall patterns or practices of systemic misconduct and unconstitutional policing within their agency.

Looking beyond individual failures: A system-wide assessment of water infrastructure resilience to extreme events

Water infrastructure systems throughout the United States face compounding challenges due to aging infrastructure and increasingly extreme and more frequent weather events. Identifying vulnerabilities and assessing systems’ ability to withstand and recover from such events is a critical component of water infrastructure planning and management. Pipe failures and system structure can substantially impact water infrastructure resilience, but these two factors are often assessed separately. Here, we present a holistic assessment of system performance that considers pipe failures, active water storage, and system structure utilizing data collected during normal and emergency operating conditions. The four-step framework evaluates pipe failures spatially and temporally to assess overall system performance, as measured by active storage, and identifies targeted areas for improvements. Employing control charts, resilience curves, and spatial clustering analysis, our results simultaneously reveal an agreement between trends in pipe failures during normal and emergency operating conditions as well as unexpected discrepancies between pipe failures and system performance due to the water system structure. Our results offer insights to utilities seeking to assess system vulnerabilities to increase water infrastructure resilience to extreme events.

Analysis Business Model Of SMEs Craft Industry In The North Sumatra Province

The aim of this research is to determine and analyze the SWOT formulation of the shell industry business in Provinsi Sumatera Utara. The data processing and analysis methods used were factor tests and discriminant analysis using the Cochran and Kaiser Meyer Olkin Measure of Sampling (KMO) tests. It is hoped that the results of this research can strengthen the results of previous year's research by exploring potential marketing strategies and comparisons of each industry. The formulation of a blue ocean strategy that can be recommended to Provinsi Sumatera Utara Small and Medium Industries (HCI), includes: (1) Through the six paths framework, there are four alternatives that can be used by Provinsi Sumatera Utara SMEs to reconstruct its market boundaries, including looking at alternative industries, strategic groups, complementary product and service offerings, and emotional-functional appeal for buyers. (2) Formulation of a four-step framework by enhancing hospitality and decorum; as well as creating hall or auditorium packages for exhibitions as well as product packages, supporting facilities, promotions via social networks, light visualization concepts, and rental of stands to provide appetizers. (3) Strategy formulation has three good characteristics, namely focusing on service and improving product marketing, divergent with the creation of new factors that can make Provinsi Sumatera Utara SMEs stay away from competition. Formulation Model The competitive strategy for the Shellfish industry is formulated using the SWOT Strategy, namely (1) The appropriate SWOT strategy for Shellfish SMEs in developing their business and facing competition between businesses (commercial studies) is another market penetration strategy that emerges from the QSPM matrix. (2) The factor that is the advantage of the Shell Shell HCI which can be used to increase competitiveness in facing competition between used tire businesses is the cheaper price factor. (3) There are 9 key strategic factors that influence competition between HCI Shellfish and its competitors, these strategic factors are finance, price, operational techniques, operational costs, facilities and infrastructure, promotion and advertising, transportation facilities, service quality, completeness of business operational equipment.

Lazy, Selfish and Ruthless: Marketing Legal Information Services

Abstract“I will build it and so they will come” is not an effective strategy for any business or business function, Matthew Leopold tells us, and in this article, based on his presentation at the BIALL Conference in Belfast, he expands on this, exploring the importance of marketing legal information services internally and externally. Drawing on marketing principles and insights from renowned marketing thought leaders and academic research, this paper presents a four-step framework to enhance marketing effectiveness: understanding marketing's role, capturing attention through relevance and connection, delivering impactful communications and implementing actionable campaigns. By employing these strategies, legal information professionals can effectively promote their library services, enhance their visibility and meet the evolving needs of their audience.

Becoming Awakened: Four Yue Opera Segments in Xie Jin’s Two Stage Sisters

Abstract: A major work of the renowned director Xie Jin, the 1964 film Two Stage Sisters (Wutai jiemei 舞台姐妹) has received popular reception and critical acclaim both domestically and internationally. Existing scholarship has interpreted Two Stage Sisters primarily through the film analysis methodology, which overlooks the critical component of the film’s aesthetics—the Chinese Yue opera performance. My analysis will shed new light on the film’s depiction of Yue opera actresses by examining details of Yue opera performances and their intermedial interactions with the film. Examination of the “drama-within-drama” device in Two Stage Sisters —in which several excerpted opera segments are inserted into the film’s narrative—reveals that it serves both political and humanistic purposes. Drawing on my fifteen years of personal experience with Yue opera theater, I analyze the film through a new methodological approach that takes into account the film’s transmedial and multimedia connections with the operatic lyrics, singing, music, costume, and movement. This paper invites a rereading of Two Stage Sisters by presenting an original decoding of four Yue opera segments, particularly regarding the parallels and tensions between the onstage opera world and the off-stage film narrative. I demonstrate that each opera segment directly matches one step in the four-step framework of “escape → anger → half-awakened → awakened” identified by Wang Hui as the construction trajectory of female protagonist Zhu Chunhua’s revolutionary subjectivity. In this, I hold that all the Yue opera segments are carefully chosen and crafted into the film holistically to bear meaning and purpose, both in relationship with each other and in relationship to the overall film narrative. I will argue that the selected opera segments serve three central purposes in Two Stage Sisters . First, they externalize Chunhua’s interiority in her becoming a revolutionary subject. Second, they showcase the historical transformation of Yue opera theater. Third, rather than posing a stark disconnect, the premodern opera segments speak to and connect with the historicity and sufferings of women depicted in the last two modern segments, thus integrating gender and collective consciousness into the overarching revolutionary discourse. Overall, this paper uncovers the unacknowledged subtleties and richness of the film owing to the Yue opera segments.

Predicting Plant miRNA-lncRNA Interactions via a Deep Learning Method.

In recent years, due to the contribution to elucidating the functional mechanisms of miRNAs and lncRNAs, the research on miRNA-lncRNA interaction prediction has increased exponentially. However, the prediction research is challenging in bioinformatics domain. It is expensive and time-consuming to verify the interactions by biological experiments. The existing prediction models have some limitations, such as the need to manually extract features, the potential loss of features from pre-treatment approaches, long-distance dependency to be solved, and so on. Additionally, most of the current models prefer to the animal data. However, the establishment of an efficient and accurate plant miRNA-lncRNA interaction prediction model is necessary. In this work, a new deep learning model called PmlIPM is presented to infer plant miRNA-lncRNA associations. PmlIPM is a four-step framework including Input Embedding, Positional Encoding, Multi-Head Attention and Max Pooling. PmlIPM accepts separately input of miRNA and lncRNA to extract sequence features, avoiding information loss caused by direct splicing the two sequences as model inputs. The attention mechanisms give the model the ability to capture long distance features. PmlIPM is compared with the existing models on 2 benchmark datasets. The results show that our model performs better than other methods and obtains AUC scores of 0.8412, 0.8587, 0.9666 and 0.9225 in the four independent test sets of Arabidopsis lyrata (A.ly), Solanum lycopersicum (S.ly), Brachypodium distachyon (B.di) and Solanum tuberosum (S.tu), respectively.

A Lifestyle Communication Tool: Association of E-cigarette Use and Pre-diabetes.

The aim of this study was to present a framework for clinicians to use when discussing electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use and its association with pre-diabetes. A communication tool was designed using evidence-based strategies from the academic literature. A four-step framework is presented, which includes: step (1) helping patients to understand the association between e-cigarette use and pre-diabetes; step (2) the synergistic health impacts of e-cigarette use and pre-diabetes; step (3) management of diabetes-related lifestyle factors; and step (4) stages of change assessment related to e-cigarette reduction. This communication tool provides support for clinicians to discuss the risk of pre-diabetes associated with e-cigarette use. Moving forward, implementation and evaluation of this model are needed.

An Analysis of EFL Students’ Writing Needs: Considerations for Writing Task-Based Course Design

The present study adopts the four-step framework of course development processes proposed by Graves (1996) to develop a writing course for EFL Vietnamese undergraduates. A total of 60 students were asked to take a writing test and a survey about writing problems to identify their “objective needs”. Then “subjective needs” were collected from interviews. In addition, the three language teachers were invited to the semi-structured interviews to collect their perspectives on teaching writing, which were analyzed in parallel with students’ needs. The findings show that students’ writing levels are low-intermediate and intermediate, and they have major problems with the organization of ideas, followed by grammar and idea development. Regarding teaching, students’ main concerns are a lack of writing activities and teacher feedback, which may be due to large classes and heavy workloads. To improve students’ writing problems, more writing tasks are needed, including pre-planning (idea development), performance (writing practice), and post-writing (peer feedback, teacher feedback, final draft). These writing tasks are arranged into different phases to help teachers follow up on students’ writing practice and reduce their workloads. Considering these conditions, a proposed writing task-based course was suitable to develop, including the five components of course design: context; goals and objectives; content; method and material; and assessment, as professional support for EFL or ESL language teachers in designing a writing course that can be used for teaching, training, or coaching in a similar context.

Efforts To Increase the Number of Customers Transacting at The Kimia Farma Malang Clinical Laboratory with The Blue Ocean Strategy Approach

PT. Kimia Farma Diagnostik is a subsidiary of PT. Chemical Pharmacies Pharmacies. KFD's business scope is clinical and clinical laboratories. This research is located in the clinical laboratory of Kimia Farma Malang. The revenue of the Malang pharma chemical laboratory in 2020 tends to be unstable and the number of customers has fallen. Based on the comparison of competitors, it can be seen that the competitor's facilities are superior with a larger number of outlets. Due to the limited facilities and human resources owned, the laboratory must have a strategy to be able to compete. This research uses a qualitative descriptive method in the form of a case study with direct observation, in-depth interviews, and document review. The interview results are translated into a SWOT analysis and then a four-step framework is created, namely eliminate, reduce, raise, and create. Then create a canvas strategy and then create an innovation strategy. After that, recommendations were prepared to increase the number of customers who transacted at the Malang pharma chemistry clinic laboratory. The results of this study show strategic innovations that are close to the Blue Ocean Strategy, namely the differentiation strategy of facilities and infrastructure, product development strategies (genomic laboratories, DNA test services and home services), Information Technology (IT) strategies, market extension strategies for laboratory quality to international standardization, market penetration strategies for customers (loyal customers and retain customers).

Keeping Active with Texting after Stroke (KATS): development of a text message intervention to promote physical activity and exercise after stroke

BackgroundPost-stroke physical activity reduces disability and risk of further stroke. When stroke rehabilitation ends, some people feel abandoned by services and struggle to undertake physical activities that support recovery and health. The aim of this study was to codesign a novel text message intervention to promote physical activity among people with stroke and provide support when formal rehabilitation ends. This manuscript describes the intervention development processes that will inform future pilot and feasibility studies.MethodsThe planned intervention was a series of text messages to be sent in a predetermined sequence to people with stroke at the end of rehabilitation. The intervention, underpinned by behaviour change theory and using salient behaviour change techniques, would provide daily messages offering encouragement and support for the uptake and maintenance of physical activity following stroke. The intervention was codesigned by a Collaborative Working Group, comprised of people with stroke, rehabilitation therapists, representatives from stroke charities and academics. A four-step framework was used to design the intervention: formative research on physical activity post-stroke, creation of the behaviour change text message intervention, pre-testing and refinement. Formative research included a review of the scientific evidence and interviews with community-dwelling people with stroke. Data generated were used by the Collaborative Working Group to identify topics to be addressed in the intervention. These were mapped to constructs of the Health Action Process Approach, and salient behaviour change techniques to deliver the intervention were identified. The intervention was rendered into a series of text messages to be delivered over 12 weeks. The draft intervention was revised and refined through an iterative process including review by people with stroke, their spouses, rehabilitation therapists and experts in the field of stroke.The messages encourage regular physical activity but do not prescribe exercise or provide reminders to exercise at specific times. They use conversational language to encourage engagement, and some are personalised for participants. Quotes from people with stroke provide encouragement and support and model key behaviour change techniques such as goal setting and coping planning.DiscussionCo-design processes were critical in systematically developing this theory and evidence-based intervention. People with stroke and rehabilitation therapists provided insights into perceived barriers post-rehabilitation and identified strategies to overcome them. The structured multistep approach highlighted areas for improvement through successive rounds of review. The intervention will be tested for acceptability, feasibility and effectiveness in future studies. This co-design approach could be used for interventions for other heath behaviours and with different populations.

A framework for the analysis of emergent visual systems

Visual systems are composed of several visual devices whose interactions are not always deliberately designed but rather emerge from the self-organization of employees. Thus, these emergent interactions can be glossed over and the effectiveness of improving individual visual devices might be low. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a four-step framework for the analysis of visual systems, involving: the functional modelling of the target social-technical system; assessment of the existing visual devices; identification of emergent visual systems; and practical recommendations. The interactions between the visual devices are assumed to be mediated by the functions that use them. The framework was applied in an intensive care unit, based on interviews, questionnaires, document analysis, and observations. Twenty groups of visual devices and six visual systems were identified. Three propositions offer additional guidance for the framework application and for understanding the nature of visual systems, allowing for the analysis of emergent visual systems that otherwise can remain hidden in plain sight.

A semi supervised approach to Arabic aspect category detection using Bert and teacher-student model.

Aspect-based sentiment analysis tasks are well researched in English. However, we find such research lacking in the context of the Arabic language, especially with reference to aspect category detection. Most of this research is focusing on supervised machine learning methods that require the use of large, labeled datasets. Therefore, the aim of this research is to implement a semi-supervised self-training approach which utilizes a noisy student framework to enhance the capability of a deep learning model, AraBERT v02. The objective is to perform aspect category detection on both the SemEval 2016 hotel review dataset and the Hotel Arabic-Reviews Dataset (HARD) 2016. The four-step framework firstly entails developing a teacher model that is trained on the aspect categories of the SemEval 2016 labeled dataset. Secondly, it generates pseudo labels for the unlabeled HARD dataset based on the teacher model. Thirdly, it creates a noisy student model that is trained on the combined datasets (∼1 million sentences). The aim is to minimize the combined cross entropy loss. Fourthly, an ensembling of both teacher and student models is carried out to enhance the performance of AraBERT. Findings indicate that the ensembled teacher-student model demonstrates a 0.3% improvement in its micro F1 over the initial noisy student implementation, both in predicting the Aspect Categories in the combined datasets. However, it has achieved a 1% increase over the micro F1 of the teacher model. These results outperform both baselines and other deep learning models discussed in the related literature.

General-practitioner-led alcohol and other drugs withdrawal: Supporting patient choice, safety and success

Alcohol or other drug (AOD) withdrawal is a common reason for patients to seek treatment. Ambulatory, or 'home-based', AOD withdrawal for patients who are low risk is a useful intervention for general practitioners (GPs) to help empower their patients to improve their health and make meaningful change to their AOD use.This article explores the themes of patient choice, safety and optimising success in GP-led withdrawal. The four-step framework of 'who', 'prepare', 'withdrawal' and 'follow-up' outlines how to best support patients in the general practice setting to undertake a withdrawal.There are many benefits to a GP-led, home-based AOD withdrawal. The strategies to facilitate choice and safety and to optimise withdrawal success described in the article include careful patient selection, preparing the patient using domains of whole-person care, clarifying the patient's goals and stage of change, support during withdrawal and fostering long-term treatment in general practice.

Using legal doctrine and feminist theory to move beyond shared decision making for the practice of consent

The necessity of consent is widely justified on the basis of the principle of respect for autonomy. Also, it is widely believed that shared decision making (SDM) is the practical device to seek patients’ consent for medical treatment. In this essay, I argue that SDM, while necessary, is insufficient for consent; because, in the paradigm of evidence-based medicine, SDM is contingent upon other practices to identify appropriate treatments that form the subjects of SDM. Indeed, case law emphasises normative decision-making practices that precede SDM. Furthermore, case law supplies a nuanced understanding of SDM, which includes not only exchange of information but also attention to human vulnerability that persists despite formal retention of decision-making capacity. In addition, the law marks out a space in which people with capacity are absolutely entitled to self-determination. Thus, a four-step framework of decision making can be induced from legal doctrine. This legal framework corresponds to a construct of respect for autonomy that draws upon feminist theory. Feminist scholars have objected to the focus on individuals in traditional theories of autonomy; instead, they insist that people have to be considered in the context of their social influences and relationships. Feminists separate out four ideas of autonomy, and these ideas can be used to construct a four-layered model of respect for autonomy, in which each layer corresponds sequentially to a step in the legal framework of decision making. This model of respect for autonomy provides both conceptual clarity and theoretically robust justification for doctors’ various obligations in decision-making practices for consent.

Business Model Design Based on Blue Ocean Strategy Based for Eco-Friendly Sativa Mouthwash

Sativa mouthwash based on 3% nigella sativa extract contains thymoquinone which can reduce the porphyromonas gingivalis bacteria that causes gingivitis and bad breath. Based on the inhibition zone test it can reduce the E faecalis bacteria that causes cavities. Oral hygiene and health have a broad impact on the condition of the immune system of all organs of the human body. Such a great opportunity for the development of the world of health, it is necessary to develop a business strategy for Sativa mouthwash products through the Business Model Canvas and its blue ocean strategy. Problems that often occur to consumers with a tropical climate in Indonesia are oral health problems and concerns about product safety for the health of other organs. This research method uses descriptive analysis with case studies on Sativa brand mouthwash products. The results of the SWOT analysis are in quadrant I (1.610928; 2.326923), indicating that there are still many strengths and opportunities for the development of the Sativa mouthwash product business. Progressive action is needed through the redesign of the Business Model Canvas, followed by the preparation of the Blue Ocean Strategic using a four-step framework, including no longer using unprofessional key partners, reducing waste in the production and distribution process, increasing value propositions, and creating a unique and attractive web for educating community about the importance of oral health and the importance of using mouthwash that is safe and eco-friendly.

Responsible management education in business schools: Are we there yet?

The effectiveness of principles for responsible management education (PRME) in transforming management education to responsible management education (RME) to develop students as responsible future leaders has been debated in recent years. In the light of this debate, we analyse how the introduction of sustainable development goals (SDGs) has influenced the progress of RME and its delivery across business schools (B-schools) through the lens of Habermas’s theory (1987). We draw on the nuanced perspectives of multiple stakeholders across several countries to unpack diverse approaches adopted by B-schools and the associated challenges and opportunities for embedding SDGs for RME. Furthermore, integrating Habermas’s theory, we develop a four-step framework for B-schools to embed SDGs through awareness building, institutionalisation, knowledge creation, and knowledge dissemination. Our research has implications for academics, B-schools and policymakers for improving policy and practice in higher education to deliver RME and contribute to the PRME/SDG discourse.