[Politics] :
Main opposition Democratic Party chair Lee Jae-myung says he will appeal a court decision to fine his wife one-point-five million won, or around one-thousand-100 U.S. dollars, for violating the Public Official Election Act.  Lee expressed deep regret over the Suwon District Court handing down such a ...

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WARSAW, 9 July 2016 ─ Michael Georg Link, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), today welcomed the decision by the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan to reconsider the case of human rights defender Azimjan Askarov, and again called on the Kyrgyz authorities to heed a decision of the UN Human Rights Committee calling for Askarov’s release.

A Supreme Court hearing is scheduled to review Mr. Askarov’s case on Monday, 11 July.

“I welcome Kyrgyzstan’s openness to reviewing Azimjan Askarov’s case, and my Office stands ready to support the Kyrgyz authorities in their implementation of OSCE commitments related to human rights,” said Director Link. “Kyrgyzstan is obligated under both international law and its own Constitution to quash Askarov’s conviction and immediately release him.”

On 21 April 2016, the UN Human Rights Committee decided in favour of a complaint filed by Askarov, finding that he had been arbitrarily detained, held in inhumane conditions, tortured and mistreated, and prevented from adequately preparing his trial defence. The Committee called on Kyrgyzstan to immediately release him, overturn his conviction, and provide him with compensation for the violations of his human rights. Article 41.2 of the Kyrgyz Constitution requires authorities to implement the Human Rights Committee decision.

“Mr. Askarov’s ongoing detention is not only unlawful, as the UN Human Rights Committee made clear, but also inhumane, in light of the serious deterioration of his health,” the ODIHR Director said. “We look forward to Mr. Askarov’s release and the restoration of his rights, including his access to urgently needed medical care outside of confinement.”

Askarov was reportedly subjected to ill-treatment during his initial detention by police and during his trial. Despite very serious health concerns, he was denied access to adequate medical treatment by detention officials. Since then, he has been held at Penal Colony No. 47, in Bishkek, where his health has reportedly deteriorated further.

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The union representing Montreal dockworkers is planning a legal challenge of the federal labour minister's decision to end lockouts at ports by sending the disputes to binding arbitration.

The man shares that by reducing personal choices, he experiences a lighter mental load, enabling effective decision-making at work.

The first minister was speaking after SNP MPs put their names forward to stand at the 2026 Holyrood election.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah clarified that no decision has been taken on giving reservations to Muslims.

At one of my first meetings as an elected council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, we approved a report called Access All Ages. It encouraged less ageist thinking and bias among healthcare staff that might lead to them denying older people surgery.1 But sometimes an operation isn’t the best option. Among patients who have surgery, 14% express regret and 15% experience complications, which are at least four times as likely if they’re frail or physically inactive.2 The Centre for Perioperative Care has published information on the importance of exercise before surgery,3 but that alone may not be enough.We need shared decision making,4 including asking patients what matters to them. The public should be primed to ask about BRAN—the benefits, risks, and alternatives to surgery and the likely result from doing nothing.4 A slew of data supports this approach, especially from the POPS initiative (Perioperative Care of...

The prefrontal cortex is critical for decision-making across species, with its activity linked to choosing between options. Drift diffusion models (DDMs) are commonly employed to understand the neural computations underlying this behavior. Studies exploring the specific roles of regions of the rodent prefrontal cortex in controlling the decision process are limited. This study explored the role of the prelimbic cortex (PLC) in decision-making using a two-alternative forced-choice task. Rats first learned to report the location of a lateralized visual stimulus. The brightness of the stimulus indicated its reward value. Then, the rats learned to make choices between pairs of stimuli. Sex differences in learning were observed, with females responding faster and more selectively to high-value stimuli than males. DDM analysis found that males had decreased decision thresholds during initial learning, whereas females maintained a consistently higher drift rate. Pharmacological manipulations revealed that PLC inactivation reduced the decision threshold for all rats, indicating that less information was needed to make a choice in the absence of normal PLC processing. μ-Opioid receptor stimulation of the PLC had the opposite effect, raising the decision threshold and reducing bias in the decision process toward high-value stimuli. These effects were observed without any impact on the rats’ choice preferences. Our findings suggest that PLC has an inhibitory role in the decision process and regulates the amount of evidence that is required to make a choice. That is, PLC activity controls "when," but not "how," to act.

Net Alpha Financial Systems, LLC, the technology company developing solutions that are transforming the way manufacturers, producers, distributors, and brokers transact in raw materials, today announced materialx® Decision Support, a new cloud-based subscription service that enables supply chain management organizations to make better raw material purchase decisions.

Small business advocates largely grumbled after the nation's highest court overturned a decades-old decision on online sales tax.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states now have the power to force online retailers to collect sales tax in states where they do not have a physical presence, reversing a ruling from 1992 in a 5-4 decision. The move also revives a 2016 South Dakota law that required large, out-of-state e-commerce companies to collect sales tax, one that big e-commerce players fought. Some online retailers, such as Amazon.com, currently collect state sales tax on products they directly sell but do not collect taxes from many of the independent sellers on the site.

The decision removes the sales-tax savings that consumers could reap by making purchases online instead of buying from local brick-and-mortar shops. Although the move does help to level the playing field for physical small businesses, it also places new burdens on small online retailers.

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Surprising new research from NYU and the Wharton School shows that entrepreneurs who start a business on their own are likelier to succeed than those who do so with one or more partners.

That's pretty much the opposite of what most aspiring founders would guess. After all, you can't be good at everything. You might be a marketing expert but not know how to manage cash flow. Or you might good at building great products but bad at setting prices for them. So you team up with someone who's strong in the areas where you're weak, and you start the business together.

This reasoning seems logical, and it is how most people--even experts--see entrepreneurship. In fact, it is such an ingrained belief that VCs and other investors routinely choose to fund companies founded by teams rather than those with a solo founder.

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Every day brings a tidal wave of choices, from hiring to product features to marketing plans. As the founder and CEO of JotForm, I know that decision-making is one of the toughest parts of my job. Technology and markets evolve at lightning speed, and there’s endless data to weigh with every choice.

On the bright side, learning to make smart decisions can help you work more productively, manage stress, dodge burnout and feel more satisfied in your business and your life.

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Another controversial green belt housing development is under the spotlight this week after the recent explosion of objection to the plan for Top Wighay Farm in Hucknall...

A decision is due on whether 56 hectares of greenbelt land in Sutton Coldfield will be retained as a site for major investment...

Can listeners find you? Or is your name and frequency too difficult to find on a voice-controlled device or in a device-controlled system in the car?

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Offering an array of choices might seem like an excellent way to cater to diverse user preferences, but more often than not, it can cause decision fatigue, negatively impacting the user experience and conversion rates. So, how do we strategically …

Fr. Ted boldly states that if we believe God is real, we should act accordingly.

Fr. Theodore Paraskevopoulos explains the Synodal System within the Orthodox Church.

Dn. Mark contends that when making the decision to become the primary caregiver, you must do so with your eyes wide open and at least some idea of what you're getting into.

Dn. Mark continues his discussion of what to consider before making the decision to become a caregiver.

the ruling is "a knife in the back of libraries," claiming that authors won't write new books if libraries lend digital books for free #

Something for if you’re stuck overthinking something: Very few decisions are permanent. Almost all decisions can be reversed, altered, or adjusted.

Proposals for renewable energy schemes in Wales could be sped up under new plans.

A council delays a decision on the Saunton Sands beach proposal for additional survey work.

Decision-making involves choosing between one ore more alternatives, to achieve one or more goals. To support this process, there are decision support systems that employ different approaches, supporting groups or not. Generally, however, these systems do not have great flexibility; their users have to follow preestablished decision methods. This paper, after exposing some decision-making processes, describes a system, LaSca (from Large Scale), to support decisions in large-scale groups. This system, besides allowing effective achievement of the benefits of deciding in large groups through the proper structuring of the group, also allows its users to define themselves how this structuring will happen, based or not in the existing theories on the subject. So, in addition to facilitate the decision-making process, LaSca also allows its users to decide how to decide.

The utilisation of big data presents significant opportunities for businesses to create value and gain a competitive edge. This capability enables firms to anticipate and uncover information quickly and intelligently. The author introduces a human resource scheduling optimisation strategy using a parallel network fusion structure model. The author's approach involves designing a set of network structures based on parallel networks and streaming media, enabling the macro implementation of the enterprise parallel network fusion structure. Furthermore, the author proposes a human resource scheduling optimisation method based on a parallel deep learning network fusion structure. It combines convolutional neural networks and transformer networks to fuse streaming media features, thereby achieving comprehensive identification of the effectiveness of the current human resource scheduling in enterprises. The result shows that the macro and deep learning methods achieve a recognition rate of 87.53%, making it feasible to assess the current state of human resource scheduling in enterprises.

Human behaviour, which is led by the human, emotional and occasionally fallible brain, is highly influenced by the environment in which choices are presented. This research paper explores the synergistic potential of the Internet of Behaviours (IoB) and digital nudges in the financial sector as new avenues for intervention while shedding light on the IoB benefits and the digital nudges' added value in these financial settings. Afterward, it proposes an IoB-Nudges conceptual model to explain how these two concepts would be incorporated and investigates their complementary relationship and benefits for this sector. Finally, the paper also discusses key challenges to be addressed by the IoB framework.

Aiming at the problems of long evaluation time and poor evaluation accuracy of existing evaluation methods, an improved decision tree-based evaluation method for the effectiveness of college online course teaching reform is proposed. Firstly, the teaching mode of college online course is analysed, and an evaluation system is constructed to ensure the applicability of the evaluation method. Secondly, AHP entropy weight method is used to calculate the weights of evaluation indicators to ensure the accuracy and authority of evaluation results. Finally, the evaluation model based on decision tree algorithm is constructed and improved by fuzzy neural network to further optimise the evaluation results. The parameters of fuzzy neural network are adjusted and gradient descent method is used to optimise the evaluation results, so as to effectively evaluate the effect of college online course teaching reform. Through experiments, the evaluation time of the method is less than 5 ms, and the evaluation accuracy is more than 92.5%, which shows that the method is efficient and accurate, and provides an effective evaluation means for the teaching reform of online courses in colleges and universities.

In order to overcome the problems of low evaluation accuracy and long evaluation time in traditional teaching quality evaluation methods, a method of English distance information teaching quality evaluation based on decision tree classification algorithm is proposed. Firstly, construct teaching quality evaluation indicators under different roles. Secondly, the information gain theory in decision tree classification algorithm is used to divide the attributes of teaching resources. Finally, the rough set theory is used to calculate the index weight and establish the risk evaluation index factor set. The result of teaching quality evaluation is obtained through fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. The experimental results show that the accuracy rate of the teaching quality evaluation of this method can reach 99.2%, the recall rate of the English information teaching quality evaluation is 99%, and the time used for the English distance information teaching quality evaluation of this method is only 8.9 seconds.

In order to overcome the problems of poor evaluation accuracy and long evaluation time in traditional customer relationship evaluation methods, this study proposes a new customer relationship evaluation method for e-commerce platform based on decision tree algorithm. Firstly, analyse the connotation and characteristics of customer relationship; secondly, the importance of customer relationship in e-commerce platform is determined by using decision tree algorithm by selecting and dividing attributes according to the information gain results. Finally, the decision tree algorithm is used to design the classifier, the weighted sampling method is used to obtain the training samples of the base classifier, and the multi-period excess income method is used to construct the customer relationship evaluation function to achieve customer relationship evaluation. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the customer relationship evaluation results of this method is 99.8%, and the evaluation time is only 51 minutes.

In this article, we have attempted to study the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has gradually increased and impacted the world. The authors integrate the knowledge from cognitive psychology literature to illustrate how the limitations of the human mind might have a critical role in the decisions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors show the correlation between different biases in various contexts involved in the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the ways in which we can nudge ourselves and various stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. This study uses a typology of biases to examine how different patterns of biases affect the decision-making behaviour of people during the pandemic. The presented model investigates the potential interrelations among environmental transformations, cognitive biases, and strategic decisions. By referring to cognitive biases, our model also helps to understand why the same performance improvement practices might incite different opinions among decision-makers.

Numerous Internet of Things (IoT) applications require brain-empowered intelligence. This necessity has caused the emergence of a new area called cognitive IoT (CIoT). Reasoning, planning, and selection are typically involved in decision-making within the network bandwidth limit. Consequently, data minimisation is needed. Therefore, this research proposes a novel technique to extract conscious data from a massive dataset. First, it groups the data using k-means clustering, and the entropy is computed for each cluster. The most prominent cluster is then determined by selecting the cluster with the highest entropy. Subsequently, it transforms each cluster element into an informative element. The most informative data is chosen from the most prominent cluster that represents the whole massive data, which is further used for intelligent decision-making. The experimental evaluation is conducted on the 21.25 years of environmental dataset, revealing that the proposed method is efficient over competing approaches.

This paper describes the employment of a Personal Response System (PRS) during a Decision Analysis course for Management Information Systems (MIS) students. The description shows how the carefully designed PRS-based questions, the delivery, and the follow-up discussions; provided a context for eliciting and exercising central concepts of the course topics as well as central skills required for MIS majors. A sample of PRS-based questions is presented along with a description for each question of its purpose, the way it was delivered, the response rate, the responses and their frequencies, and the respective in-class discussion. Lessons from these findings are discussed.

Aim/Purpose: This paper describes and information system for the maintenance and management of municipal lighting systems that also serves as a decision support tool for reducing power consumption on urban lighting. Background: Many municipalities are financially constrained and unable to invest in improving their lighting infrastructure. We propose a very efficient and inexpensive way to set up the database and provide city leaders with tools to improve their system efficiently. Methodology: An information database for the data management and an Integer Programming model for deriving the optimal investment plan. Contribution: This paper contributes to the fields of urban economics and sustainability. Findings: Informing management and workers about the status of the system and how to optimize it will reward the city with considerable savings and improve the service quality. Recommendations for Practitioners: The application of this model, even in a small scale such as a neighborhood can improve citizen’s quality of life without a heavy burden on the city budget. Recommendation for Researchers: There is a growing need for cost-effective means to improve urban management. Innovative ideas that meet these goals should be researched and developed. Impact on Society: First, it allows reduction in carbon emissions and light pollution by reducing power consumption and over-luminous lighting levels. Second, financially constrained municipalities can manage their systems at a very low cost. Future Research: A full scale application is needed in order to evaluate the city-wide benefits of the system.

Aim/Purpose: Our research goal was to examine the factors that motivate women to enroll in Computer Science (CS) courses in order to better understand the small number of women in the field of CS. Background: This work is in line with the growing interest in better understanding the problem of the underrepresentation of women in the field of CS. Methodology: We focused on a college that differs in its high numbers of female CS students. The student population there consists mostly of religious Jews; some of them are Haredi, who, because of their unique lifestyle, are expected to be the breadwinners in their family. Following group interviews with 18 students, a questionnaire was administered to all the female students and 449 of them responded. We analyzed it statistically. We compared the responses of the Haredi and non-Haredi students. Contribution: The main contribution of this work lies in the idea that studying the factors underlying women’s presence in a CS program in unique communities and cultures, where women are equally represented in the field, might shed light on the nature of this phenomenon, especially whether it is universal or confined to the surrounding culture. Findings: There were significant differences between the Haredi and non-Haredi women regarding the importance they attributed to different factors. Haredi women resemble, regarding some social and economic variables, women in developing countries, but differ in others. The non-Haredi women are more akin to Western women, yet they did not completely overlap. Both groups value their family and career as the most important factors in their lives. These factors unify women in the West and in developing countries, though with different outcomes. In the West, it deters women from studying CS, whereas in Israel and in Malaysia, other factors can overcome this barrier. Both groups attributed low importance to the masculine image of CS, found important in the West. Hence, our findings support the hypothesis that women’s participation in the field of CS is culturally dependent. Recommendations for Practitioners: It is important to learn about the culture within which women operate in order to attract more women to CS. Recommendations for Researchers: Future work is required to examine other loci where women are underrepre-sented in CS, as well as how the insights obtained in this study can be utilized to decrease women’s underrepresentation in other loci. Impact on Society: Women's underrepresentation in CS is an important topic for both economic and social justice reasons. It raises questions regarding fairness and equality. In the CS field the gender pay gaps are smaller than in other professional areas. Thus, resolving the underrepresentation of women in CS will serve as a means to decrease the social gender gap in other areas.