Independent Decisions Research Articles

Мобильный телефон (smartphone) как инструмент агрария в системе цифрового земледелия

Remote sensing in agriculture is one of the rapidly developing areas of observation of agricultural biological objects. Combining the latest sensor technologies with smartphones allows us to develop powerful platforms for solving various tasks in agriculture. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in analyzing and evaluating the usage of mobile phones and smartphones to monitor the state of the field and agricultural crops in order to obtain information necessary for making optimal management decisions. (Materials and methods) The article presents the results of scientific research and reviews on the use of mobile phones and smartphones to obtain information about agricultural crops in the precision farming system. (Results and discussion) The software for smartphones in agriculture is considered as a subdivision of precise agricultural technologies for monitoring and protecting crops. Smartphones with the required software enable farmers to receive information from various sensors. Authors reviewed the existing simplest mobile applications for smartphones that allow detecting and identifying biotic stresses by comparing photos of plants taken with images from the library, and applications whose work is based on photographing biological objects and sending them to an expert. It has been revealed that mobile applications created on the basis of convolutional neural networks of deep learning, capable of making independent decisions, are gaining popularity. (Conclusions) The use of smartphones equipped with various sensors and additional software opens up new opportunities for farmers, providing data collection, storage, transmission and processing for making management decisions. The article presents the disadvantages of mobile applications. Further expansion of the scope of smartphones for crop monitoring is possible when developing new software using convolutional neural networks of deep learning.

Risk-informed control systems for improved operational performance and decision-making

Autonomous systems, including airborne, land-based, marine, and underwater vehicles, are increasingly present in the world. One important aspect of autonomy is the capability to process information and to make independent decisions for achieving a mission goal. Information on the level of risk related to the operation may improve the decision-making process of autonomous systems. This article describes the integration of risk analysis methods with the control system of autonomous and highly automated systems that are evaluated during operation. Four main areas of implementation are identified; (i) risk models used to directly make decisions, (ii) use of the output of risk models as input to decision-making and optimization algorithms, (iii) the output of risk models may be used as a constraint in or modifying constraints of algorithms, and (iv) the output of risk models may be used to inform representations or maps of the environment to be used in path planning. A case study on a dynamic positioning controller of an offshore supply vessel exemplifies the concepts described in this article. In addition, it demonstrates how risk model output may be used within a hybrid controller.

The Ethics of Dying: Deciphering Pandemic-Resultant Pressures That Influence Elderly Patients' Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Decisions.

The objective of medicine is to provide humans with the best possible health outcomes from the beginning to the end of life. If the continuation of life becomes unbearable, some may evaluate procedures to end their lives prematurely. One such procedure is Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), and it is hotly contended in many spheres of society. From legal to personal perspectives, there are strong arguments for its implementation and prohibition. This article intends to add to this rich discourse by exploring MAiD in the context of our current pandemic-ridden society as new pressures from social isolation and guilt threaten the autonomy of vulnerable elderly patients. Although autonomy is of chief importance, variables within our current context undermine otherwise independent decisions. Many older individuals are isolated from their social network, resulting in a decline in their mental health. Individuals in such a state are more likely to request a MAiD outcome. Furthermore, overwhelmed healthcare systems may not adequately address this state, which would normally have prompted a mental health intervention. The future of MAiD is far from settled and careful consideration must be given as new contexts come to light, such as those outlined in this paper.

Exploring attributes of high-quality clinical supervision in general practice through interviews with peer-recognised GP supervisors

BackgroundClinical supervision in general practice is critical for enabling registrars (GP trainees) to provide safe medical care, develop skills and enjoy primary care careers. However, this largely depends on the quality of supervision provided. There has been limited research describing what encompasses quality within GP clinical supervision, making it difficult to promote best practice. This study aimed to explore the attributes of high-quality clinical supervision for GP registrars.MethodsIn 2019–20, 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with GP supervisors who were peer-nominated as best practice supervisors, by Regional GP Training Organisations and GP Colleges in Australia. Purposeful sampling sought respondents with diverse characteristics including gender and career stage, practice size, state/territory and rurality. Interviews were conducted by video-consultation and recorded. De-identified transcripts were independently coded using iterative, inductive thematic analyses to derive themes that reflected quality in GP supervision.ResultsSeven themes emerged. Participants understood the meaning of quality supervision based on their experience of being supervised when they were a registrar, and from reflecting and learning from other supervisors and their own supervision experiences. Quality was reflected by actively structuring GP placements to optimise all possible learning opportunities, building a secure and caring relationship with registrars as the basis for handling challenging situations such as registrar mistakes. Quality also encompassed sustaining and enhancing registrar learning by drawing on the input of the whole practice team who had different skills and supervision approaches. Strong learner-centred approaches were used, where supervisors adjusted support and intervention in real-time, as registrar competence emerged in different areas. Quality also involved building the registrar’s professional identity and capabilities for safe and independent decision-making and encouraging registrars to reflect on situations before giving quality feedback, to drive learning.ConclusionsThis study, although exploratory, provides a foundation for understanding the quality of clinical supervision in general practice, from the perspective of peer-recognised GP supervisors. Understanding and adopting quality within GP supervision may be improved by GPs sharing exemplars of best practice and having opportunities for professional reflection. The findings could be used as a point of reference for devising GP supervisor curriculum, resources and professional development activities.

DEA game for internal cooperation between an upper-level process and multiple lower-level processes

Cooperation is an important strategy to improve companies’ profitability. As a data-driven tool for performance evaluation, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is often used to measure the benefits from cooperation between independent decision making units (DMUs) or systems, but few involve the internal cooperation in a network structure system. For a double-level system that consists of an upper- and multiple lower-level processes, prior to cooperation, its internal processes are independent and fail to yield profit. Once the upper-level process cooperates with at least one lower-level process, the system can operate to obtain profit. At present, no research explores the internal cooperation in a double-level system from the perspective of relative performance, considering such dependency between upper- and lower-level processes. To fill this gap, we propose a double-level DEA game by integrating network DEA and cooperative game theory, and prove this new game is monotone, super-additive, and has non-empty core. We use an example of 15 supply chains including one supplier and three retailers to validate our approach and provide an example as a real-life application. Results show the Shapley value and nucleolus have the best performance in allocating the total profit in terms of fairness and stability, respectively.

ANALISIS NILAI MORAL CERPEN YANG BERJUDUL "NASIHAT UNTUK ANAKKU" KARYA MOTINGGO BUSYE

Moral value is one of the ethical values that are usually found in the scope of society that is good and bad. Researchers are interested in analyzing short stories that have a lot of moral value. This study aims to determine the moral values contained in the short story Advise for my son by Motinggo Busye. The steps to analyze this short story are using qualitative descriptive method. This method describes a story of moral values that become the standard of good or bad that is seen by the community through this short story. The conditions that occur in the story will be analyzed. The results of the study, there are moral values contained in the short story. Judging from the dialogue quotes in the short story, the results obtained are (1) Regret for decisions that have been made (2) Independent (3) Respect someone's decisions (4) Smart (5) Thinking realistically and as it is (6) Listening to Parents' Advice (7 ) Sympathy to fellow friends. Therefore, the value that can be taken in short stories is an invitation to good advice and stay away from bad values in order to understand that with advice we can make a conclusion in making a decision in life.

Mentoring New Veterinary Graduates for Transition to Practice and Lifelong Learning.

A new veterinarian's smooth and rapid transition from education to clinical practice is critical to their success and that of their new professional homes. Successful mentoring relationships are critical to smoothing the transition to practice, particularly when independent clinical decisions are abruptly required. A mentor acts as a personal coach and teacher, providing both career and personal guidance. While the profession has focused on training mentors, it has paid little attention to teaching mentees how to maximize the benefits of the relationship. Veterinary colleges can do more to equip their graduates with the skills they need to manage their change to working life successfully. The Western College of Veterinary Medicine's (WCVM) substantive gap analysis revealed mentee training as an important issue to address in support of mentorship and established a mentee training program within the curriculum. The program teaches needs assessment, goal setting, identification of appropriate learning activities, and reflection skills as an iterative and cyclical process. Learning activities include working with one's selected mentor (or mentors). These skills are important for lifelong learning and continuing professional development, as well as transition to practice.

Auditor Independence and Outsourcing: Aligning Incentives to Mitigate Shilling and Shirking

Multinational corporations (MNCs) hire auditors to assess their business partners’ compliance with quality, working conditions, and environmental standards. Independent third-party auditors are widely assumed to outperform second-party auditors employed and thus controlled by MNCs. Synthesizing literatures on auditor independence and outsourcing decisions, we compare how independence and control can affect auditor performance. Using proprietary data from a global apparel brand, we find that second-party auditors outperform independent third-party auditors, and that third-party auditors’ performance improves when MNCs concurrent source audits, using both second- and third-party auditors. However, both second- and third-party auditors perform better with more independence from the entities they audit—specifically, when auditing factories most recently audited by a different firm. These findings yield important insights for more effective monitoring of business partners.

Adolescent Gynecology in the Office Setting.

Ensuring open communication, partnership with patient and parent, and clarification of confidentiality during an adolescent gynecologic visit helps establish an environment in which a history and physical examination can be performed safely and with a focus on prevention, recognition of disease, and treatment as necessary. The history should include the menstrual status and gynecologic review of systems. The examination should document Tanner staging (sexual maturity rating) and be otherwise symptom guided. Similarly, testing in the office is largely risk and symptom related. Contraceptive counseling is an important component of the office visit, as well. Long and short curricula for teaching pediatric and adolescent gynecology have been developed by the North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology and are readily available for use. (1)(2) Although state-based variation in consent and confidentiality exists, pediatric practices should aim to protect patient confidentiality and transition to more independent health-care decision making.

Harmonious passion, bricolage, and firm performance: The role of entrepreneurial autonomy

Drawing from the theory of entrepreneurial bricolage and the resource-based view, we study the indirect influence of harmonious passion on firm performance through bricolage, i.e., achieving specific goals with existing resources. We propose that in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), CEOs with high harmonious passion establish bricolage through deliberate practice, creative solutions, and awareness of organizational capacity. Moreover, firms with high levels of bricolage enhance firm performance through creatively recombining accessible resources, acting on without biases to overcome the liability of smallness, and maximizing the firm’s potential by use of all possible methods. Entrepreneurial autonomy positively strengthens this mediation model by providing independent decision-making and promoting organizational creativity. We test the proposed model using a six-month lagged survey data collected from 237 CEOs of Korean SMEs.

Strategies for an Adaptive Control System to Improve Power Grid Resilience with Smart Buildings

Low-voltage distribution grids face new challenges through the expansion of decentralized, renewable energy generation and the electrification of the heat and mobility sectors. We present a multi-agent system consisting of the energy management systems of smart buildings, a central grid controller, and the local controller of a transformer. It can coordinate the provision of ancillary services for the local grid in a centralized way, coordinated by the central controller, and in a decentralized way, where each building makes independent control decisions based on locally measurable data. The presented system and the different control strategies provide the foundation for a fully adaptive grid control system we plan to implement in the future, which does not only provide resilience against electricity outages but also against communication failures by appropriate switching of strategies. The decentralized strategy, meant to be used during communication failures, could also be used exclusively if communication infrastructure is generally unavailable. The strategies are evaluated in a simulated scenario designed to represent the most extreme load conditions that might occur in low-voltage grids in the future. In the tested scenario, they can substantially reduce voltage range deviations, transformer temperatures, and line congestions.

Modeling Non-Cooperative Water Use in River Basins

Conventional water use and management models have mostly emulated purposefully designed water use systems where centralized governance and rule-based cooperation of agents are assumed. However, water use systems, whether actively governed or not, involve multiple, independent decision makers with diverse and often conflicting interests. In the absence of adequate water management institutions to effectively coordinate decision processes on water use, water users’ behaviors are rather likely to be non-cooperative, meaning that actions by individual users generate externalities and lead to sub-optimal water use efficiency. The objective of this review is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of recently proposed modeling systems dealing with non-cooperative water use regarding their ability to realistically represent the features of complex hydrological and socioeconomic processes and their tractability in terms of modeling tools and computational efficiency. For that purpose, we conducted a systematic review of 47 studies that address non-cooperative water use in decentralized modeling approaches. Even though such a decentralized approach should aim to model decisions by individual water users in non-cooperative water use, we find that most studies assumed the presence of a coordinating agency or market in their model. It also turns out that most of these models employed a solution procedure that sequentially solved independent economic decisions based on pre-defined conditions and heuristics, while only few modeling approaches offered simultaneous solution algorithms. We argue that this approach cannot adequately capture economic trade-offs in resource allocation, in contrast to models with simultaneous solution procedures.

Filozofia wolności

The presented text includes a review of various philosophical approaches to freedom categories, which, according to the author, is a relational term and experience. In his arguments, the researcher discusses freedom in correlation with i.a. such topics as independence, rootedness, sovereignty, the ability to act autonomously and to make independent decisions, etc. In his contemplations, the author elucidates the category of freedom both from a negative and a positive point of view, referring to the thoughts of Epictetus, G.W.F. Hegel, H. Bergson, F. Nietsche, E. Mounier, J.P. Sartre, R. Ingarden, and M. Buber.

Organizing of Independent Cognitive Activity of Teachers in the Context of Didactics and Neuroscience

The article substantiates that in the context of organizing the independent cognitive activity of teachers in the post-Soviet space, the process of improving their qualifications, which takes place on the basis of their free choice of forms of education, programs and educational institutions, is of particular importance. At the heart of this choice, decision-making on independent cognitive activity and emotional-motivational resource are not only external stimuli, but also neurophysiological and psychological mechanisms. The purpose of the study is a scientific substantiation of the necessary and sufficient psychological and pedagogical conditions and models of organization of independent cognitive activity of teachers of secondary schools in the process of competence development. The analysis of the experimental data showed a noticeable difference between samples B3 and B4 at the end of the experiment for each of the defined criteria, as well as for the general indicator of the organizing of independent cognitive activity. The results obtained during the pedagogical experiment proved that the organizing of independent cognitive activity of teachers on the basis of the author's model helped to increase the effectiveness of this activity. During the discussion, it was proved that an important component of a person's professional training for any activity, especially in educational, is the development of neurophysiological and psychological potential for subjective self-determination of self-learning, self-improvement, and in micro-development - for independent choice and decision-making in a situation of cognitive or activity-related uncertainty. Therefore, decision-making is a basic component of any constructive activity.

Mimetic isomorphism, offshore outsourcing and backshoring decisions among micro and small enterprises

ABSTRACT This paper exploits novel data on Italian manufacturing firms to investigate how mimetic isomorphism influences offshore outsourcing and backshoring decisions among micro and small enterprises (MSEs). The results show that offshore outsourcing by peers located in the same home region positively affects the likelihood that an MSE will engage in the same global sourcing strategy. When these dynamics emerge, firms are more likely to engage in long-lasting foreign subcontracting relationships. Mimetic isomorphism is only detected during the early stages of the internationalization process, while backshoring practices appear to be the result of more independent decisions.

Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Distributed Energy Management and Strategy Optimization of Microgrid Market

With the increasing demands for autonomous decision, market initiative, and privacy protection, a distributed energy management and strategy-making framework is more appropriate for the future microgrid. Besides, the integration of various distributed generations (DGs) and load facilities with high randomness poses challenges to traditional model-free microgrid market management approaches. Therefore, this paper concentrates on the distributed energy management and strategy optimization for a regional microgrid from the following aspects. First, a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework is applied to generate independent real-time market decisions and to keep the benefits balance during agents’ interactive learning. Moreover, to solve the defects of traditional RL in the microgrid case of continuous state inputs, a multi-agent deep Q-network (MADQN) is adopted as the approximation of value function. Finally, an optimal equilibrium selection (OES) mechanism is proposed to calculate the collective update objective for promoting learning efficiency and to ensure benefits equilibrium. Combining theoretical analysis and simulation results, the proposed MARL framework can improve the microgrid operation performance from economy, independence, and benefit balance among microgrid participants.

Relational personhood: a conception of legal personhood with insights from disability rights and environmental law

ABSTRACT People with disability have demanded the recognition of full legal personhood in order to realise their rights and to overcome dominance and oppression. Legal personhood is also being claimed for similar reasons for natural entities, including rivers, forests, and mountains. However, the prevailing neo-liberal understanding of legal personhood relies on the individual exercising personhood independently. This may not be enough to secure the interests and realise the rights of people with disability, natural entities, or other cohorts that are not experiencing a wealth of power and privilege. In this article, we attempt to overcome centuries of (white, able-bodied, cis gender) male centric theory of legal personhood. We reject the dominant conceptions of personhood from liberal political theory that emphasise an atomistic, isolated individual making independent decisions. Instead, we argue for a different conception of legal personhood – relational personhood. We use insights from feminist theories of relational autonomy as well as the experience of disability to help us re-conceptualise personhood to embrace exercising autonomy through a collaborative process of acknowledging, interpreting and acting on an individual’s expressions of will and preference. We then apply this new conception to the recognition of legal personhood in nature and explore how natural entities can exercise their personhood via their relationships with humans – and, in particular, Indigenous Peoples, who have developed close relationships with natural entities over centuries. Our aim is to demonstrate the utility of a conception of legal personhood that encompass the reality of the interdependence of all individuals and entities.

An intervention study on students’ decision-making towards consensus building on socio-scientific issues

ABSTRACT Socio-scientific decision-making necessitates reasoning from multiple perspectives and the use of trade-offs. This study examines how students decide on socio-scientific issues when they engage in an instructional intervention to enhance their socio-scientific decision-making towards consensus building that, in this study, emphasises generating solutions to resolve issues. We developed a socio-scientific issue-based unit for non-science undergraduate students focusing on an intervention that enhances their socio-scientific decision-making around issues regarding a genetically modified organism. Our intervention focused on consensus building wherein students identified multiple conflicts among various stakeholders’ opinions and proposed solutions to resolve them. In particular, students considered the trade-offs of science and technology. This paper presents the results from two intervention studies in which 12 and 49 non-science undergraduate students participated. To confirm that the participants of each study achieved the goal of the curriculum unit, we analysed the solutions students collaboratively constructed at the end of the unit (Analysis 1). We then used a pre- and post-intervention approach to assess students’ independent decision-making (Analysis 2). During the curriculum unit, we assigned students an essay-writing task twice and investigated the quality of their decisions. A comparison of the pre- and post-tests revealed a general shift towards higher-level responses after the intervention. Students’ arguments on socio-scientific issues changed from justificatory arguments to proposals for solutions. These findings demonstrated that the instruction promoted students’ socio-scientific decision-making towards consensus building. Finally, we discuss the implications for socio-scientific issue instruction and the evaluation of students’ decision-making as well as provide suggestions for future work.

Smart Control Mechanisms in Digital Technologies of Decision-Making

This paper considers the problems of adopting digital technologies in decision-making. Two types of digital decision technologies are described, namely, the direct (or traditional) technology with human decision-making based on computer-aided advisor systems and also the inverse technology with independent computer decision-making in which a human merely monitors the decision process. These technologies are compared with each other, and some applications are discussed.

A Modular Reinforcement Learning Framework for Interactive Narrative Planning

A key functionality provided by interactive narrative systems is narrative adaptation: tailoring story experiences in response to users’ actions and needs. We present a data-driven framework for dynamically tailoring events in interactive narratives using modular reinforcement learning. The framework involves decomposing an interactive narrative into multiple concurrent sub-problems, formalized as adaptable event sequences (AESs). Each AES is modeled as an independent Markov decision process (MDP). Policies for each MDP are induced using a corpus of user interaction data from an interactive narrative system with exploratory narrative adaptation policies. Rewards are computed based on users’ experiential outcomes. Conflicts between multiple policies are handled using arbitration procedures. In addition to introducing the framework, we describe a corpus of user interaction data from a testbed interactive narrative, CRYSTAL ISLAND, for inducing narrative adaptation policies. Empirical findings suggest that the framework can effectively shape users’ interactive narrative experiences.