Association between distribution centre design and contextual characteristics

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between the main decisions for designing distribution centers (DCs) and the contextual characteristics of the distribution networks. Design/methodology/approach Experts were surveyed and responses analyzed quantitatively through multivariate data techniques. This study considered four contextual characteristics that were deemed as influential for DC design: types of routes in the distribution network, quantity of DCs, distribution network levels and company size. Findings This paper evidenced which decisions are affected by each contextual characteristic encompassed in this study. This paper identified that the characteristic types of route in the distribution network must be carefully considered, as it had the greatest amount of associations with the decisions for designing a DC. Originality/value Despite its importance, most studies on design of DCs disregard the effect of the context in which DCs are inserted. This research provides arguments to support decision-making process of DCs design, increasing assertiveness of their planning. This work fulfills a literature gap by empirically examining the effect of contextual variables on the decisions related to DC design. Regarding practice, this paper addressed a fundamental issue for managers looking to design a DC, as it evidenced how contextual characteristics impact the decision-making.

Incorporating Contextual Information into Personalized Mobile Applications Recommendation

With the rise of the mobile internet, the number of mobile applications (apps) has shown explosive growth, which directly leads to the apps data overload. Currently, the recommender system has become the most effective method to solve the app data overload. App has the functional exclusiveness feature, which means the target users will not reuse apps with the same function in a certain spatiotemporal information. Most of the existing recommended methods for apps ignore the functional exclusiveness feature which makes it difficult to further improve the recommendation performance of the app recommendation. To solve this problem, we aim to improve the app recommendation performance, and propose a Personalized Context-aware Mobile App Recommendation Approach, called PCMARA. PCMARA comprehensively considers the user and app contextual information, which can mine the users app usage preference effectively. Specifically, (1) PCMARA explores the contextual characteristic of app, and constructs the app contextual factors for app which represent the function of app. (2) For the app functional exclusiveness problem, PCMARA leverages the app contextual factor to design a novel app similarity model, which enable to effectively eliminate this problem. (3) PCMARA considers the contextual information of users and apps to generates a recommendation list for target users based on the target users' current time and location. We applied the PCMARA to a real-world dataset and conducted a large-scale recommendation effect experiment. The experimental results show that the recommendation effect of PCMARA is satisfactory.

At the intersection: Race, gender, and discretion in police traffic stop outcomes

Racial disparities in traffic stop outcomes are widespread and well documented. Less well understood is how racial disparities may be amplified or muted in different contexts. Here we focus on one such situational factor: whether the initial traffic stop was related to a traffic safety violation or a (broadly defined) investigatory purpose. This is a salient contextual characteristic as stop type relates to different levels of assumed discretion and purpose. While all traffic stops involve some officer discretion, investigatory stops are more easily used as justifications to conduct a search based on an officer's diffuse suspicion; traffic safety stops are more often just what they seem. Using millions of traffic stops from several states, we show that black male drivers are more likely to be searched and less likely to be found with contraband and that this relationship is amplified where the initial stop purpose is investigatory. One implication of this is that one path to alleviating disparities in traffic stops for agencies is emphasizing traffic safety, rather than using stops as a supplemental investigatory tool.

Application of AHP to Road Selection

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a decision-making method, allows the relative prioritization and assessment of alternatives under multiple criteria contexts. This method is also well suited for road selection. The method for road selection based on AHP involves four steps: (i) Points of Interest (POIs), the point-like representations of the facilities and habitations in maps, are used to describe and build the contextual characteristic indicator of roads; (ii) form an AHP model of roads with topological, geometrical, and contextual characteristic indicators to calculate their importance; (iii) select roads based on their importance and the adaptive thresholds of their constituent density partitions; and (iv) maintain the global connectivity of the selected network. The generalized result at a scale of 1:200,000 by AHP-based methods better preserved the structure of the original road network compared with other methods. Our method also gives preference to roads with relatively significant contextual characteristics without interfering with the structure of the road network. Furthermore, the result of our method largely agrees with that of the manual method.

Konstruksi Tematik Ayat-Ayat Hukum (Konsep dan Dasar Seleksi Ayat Hukum Menurut Al-Tahawi)

This research begins from the unavailability of basis in selecting legal verses. Therefore, this research aims to construct the foundation of selecting legal verses starting from the selection done by al-Tahawi. This research is normative law research (doctrinaire, dogmatic). The research object is legal verses of al-Tahawi’s selection found in Aḥkām al-Qur’ān. The object is approached by using mimetic and objective approach. There are two foundations used by al-Tahawi in selecting legal verses; textually and contextually. The textual foundation consists of the availability or unavailability of mukallaf action in a verse. The contextual foundation consists of asbāb al-nuzūl and explaining hadis. From the selection basis, the characteristic of legal verses is also constructed textually and contextually. The textual characteristic consists of keywords showing law content such as: lā junāḥa, laisa ḥaraj, ḥurrima, uḥilla, kutiba, farīḍah, al-ṣalāt, al-ṣaum, al-zakāh, al-ḥajj, ar-rafaṡ. Contextual characteristic consists of: asbāb al-nuzūl of a legal verse should be related to a legal matter, and there are explaining hadis showing the existence of law content in certain verses.

Domestic Violence and Torture

Although gender-based violations, including rape and domestic violence, are already recognized as torture in international law, their commonalities with torture have not been adequately investigated. This chapter is intended as a “case study” to demonstrate the conceptual, contextual, and definitional commonalities between torture and domestic violence from a psychological perspective. A direct comparison of 228 domestic violence survivors with 109 tortured women showed that domestic violence was not distinguishable from torture in the nature and severity of trauma, its mental effects, and the psychological processes that lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Loss of control over life through deprivation of liberty contributed to PTSD and depression independently of acts of violence. These findings suggest that both torture and domestic violence share the same contextual characteristic: helplessness under the control of others. As such, they support recognition of domestic violence as torture by international law.

Creativity: The Influence of Cultural, Social, and Work Contexts

The present article aims to answer the question of whether creativity is universal or culture-specific. We develop a conceptual framework that expands the existing knowledge in two ways. First, it distinguishes between the two dimensions of creativity – novelty and usefulness, and their relationship to culture. Second, it clarifies how the social context moderates the relationship between culture and creativity. We focus on the social context where cultural differences are likely to be more salient because of the presence of others, relative to the private work context where no one observes whether a person performs in a normative or a unique way. In addition, we propose that task structure, whether a task is tightly or loosely structured, is an important contextual characteristic that moderates the relationship between culture and creativity. Lastly, we offer several propositions to guide future research.

Sociological research on age: legacy and challenge: a comment

As the ‘aging and society’ paradigm examines structure in its own right, it should have an immediate appeal to sociologists. On the one hand it can be seen as a schematic for gerontology or research on human development and, on the other, as a theory or paradigm in its own right. I see the various parts and phases of the paradigm as a learning process, where stopping somewhere half-way is risky: one has to go the whole hog before really prospering from its logic.To focus on individuals and social change together requires analyses that, in the words of Hardy and Waite (1997), can assess the nature and temporal patterns of individual behaviour, while simultaneously attending to the manner in which this behaviour is enclosed in different organisational structures that are themselves changing, whether synchronically or asynchronically.The Rileys have always reminded us of the dangers of neglecting structure, or of treating it as a mere contextual characteristic in people's lives, particularly in the form of life course reductionism. In addition, however, the temporal aspects of structures are important. There is a risk in using solely the various social situations of different cohorts as the basis of analysis. Mere comparison with an older cohort causes the ‘surrounding structure’ to appear too static. The explanation or understanding of a phenomenon consequently stops half-way. We must also remember that the cohort concept, as well as chronological age, serves as a proxy measure for attitudes and behaviours that actually carry the effect and provide theoretically meaningful interpretation.

When at risk? Drinking contexts and heavy drinking in the Montreal adult population

The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of contexts associated with heavier alcohol intake. Data come from a telephone survey carried out in April 1993 with a random sample of the metropolitan Montreal adult population (Quebec, Canada). Drinking contexts were investigated with regard to the situational setting (circumstances, time and location) and the relational setting (drinking partners’ relationship and sociodemographic similarity) characterizing the drinking occasion. Having five or more drinks per occasion, linked by many studies to alcohol-related problems, was deemed to be heavy drinking. The results of the logistic regressions performed reveal that for men under 25 years old, drinking with other men is the only contextual characteristic associated positively with heavy drinking, while for men age 25 and over, situational characteristics as well as relational characteristics are associated positively with heavy drinking. For women, heavy drinking is only weakly associated with contextual characteristics.