Areas Of Ambiguity Research Articles

The causal relationship between gut microbiota and lymphoma: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study.

Previous studies have indicated a potential link between the gut microbiota and lymphoma. However, the exact causal interplay between the two remains an area of ambiguity. We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to elucidate the causal relationship between gut microbiota and five types of lymphoma. The research drew upon microbiome data from a research project of 14,306 participants and lymphoma data encompassing 324,650 cases. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms were meticulously chosen as instrumental variables according to multiple stringent criteria. Five MR methodologies, including the inverse variance weighted approach, were utilized to assess the direct causal impact between the microbial exposures and lymphoma outcomes. Moreover, sensitivity analyses were carried out to robustly scrutinize and validate the potential presence of heterogeneity and pleiotropy, thereby ensuring the reliability and accuracy. We discerned 38 potential causal associations linking genetic predispositions within the gut microbiome to the development of lymphoma. A few of the more significant results are as follows: Genus Coprobacter (OR = 0.619, 95% CI 0.438-0.873, P = 0.006) demonstrated a potentially protective effect against Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL). Genus Alistipes (OR = 0.473, 95% CI 0.278-0.807, P = 0.006) was a protective factor for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Genus Ruminococcaceae (OR = 0.541, 95% CI 0.341-0.857, P = 0.009) exhibited suggestive protective effects against follicular lymphoma. Genus LachnospiraceaeUCG001 (OR = 0.354, 95% CI 0.198-0.631, P = 0.0004) showed protective properties against T/NK cell lymphoma. The Q test indicated an absence of heterogeneity, and the MR-Egger test did not show significant horizontal polytropy. Furthermore, the leave-one-out analysis failed to identify any SNP that exerted a substantial influence on the overall results. Our study elucidates a definitive causal link between gut microbiota and lymphoma development, pinpointing specific microbial taxa with potential causative roles in lymphomagenesis, as well as identifying probiotic candidates that may impact disease progression, which provide new ideas for possible therapeutic approaches to lymphoma and clues to the pathogenesis of lymphoma.

MurSS: A Multi-Resolution Selective Segmentation Model for Breast Cancer.

Accurately segmenting cancer lesions is essential for effective personalized treatment and enhanced patient outcomes. We propose a multi-resolution selective segmentation (MurSS) model to accurately segment breast cancer lesions from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained whole-slide images (WSIs). We used The Cancer Genome Atlas breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA) public dataset for training and validation. We used the Korea University Medical Center, Guro Hospital, BRCA dataset for the final test evaluation. MurSS utilizes both low- and high-resolution patches to leverage multi-resolution features using adaptive instance normalization. This enhances segmentation performance while employing a selective segmentation method to automatically reject ambiguous tissue regions, ensuring stable training. MurSS rejects 5% of WSI regions and achieves a pixel-level accuracy of 96.88% (95% confidence interval (CI): 95.97-97.62%) and mean Intersection over Union of 0.7283 (95% CI: 0.6865-0.7640). In our study, MurSS exhibits superior performance over other deep learning models, showcasing its ability to reject ambiguous areas identified by expert annotations while using multi-resolution inputs.

Redefining Boundaries: The Case for Enterprise-Structured Waqf Over Corporate Waqf

Purpose — This paper highlights the overextension in the definition of the term corporate waqf in the current literature, proposing a return to its original meaning. It also advocates for the use of a new term, enterprise-structured waqf, to capture the broader and more inclusive contexts of waqf. This paper further elaborates on and categorises the facets of the newly advocated term, clearly delineating its scope. Design/Methodology/Approach — This paper utilises a qualitative content analysis (QCA) methodology to recognise specified characteristics within the corporate waqf literature. It prudently dissects the prevailing narratives, revealing areas of conceptual ambiguity and inconsistency. It further proposes new narratives. Findings — It is shown that the extended definition of the term corporate waqf has left it ambiguous, with two meanings. The first is waqf that is established by corporate entities. The second is waqf whose assets are dedicated to entities with strategic business frameworks, regardless of the founder’s corporate or non-corporate status. The second meaning, while innovative, is misleading. It is therefore proposed that the term corporate waqf be returned to its original meaning and the term enterprise-structured waqf be used instead to capture the broader and more inclusive contexts of waqf. Originality/Value — This paper is the first to highlight the overextension in the definition of the term corporate waqf, propose a return to its original meaning, and advocate for the use of an alternative term, namely enterprise-structured waqf. Practical Implications — Returning to corporate waqf’s original meaning while distinguishing it from the broader concept of enterprise-structured waqf will potentially help expand waqf engagement and resource mobilisation.

DNA profiling in India: Addressing issues of sample preservation, databasing, marker selection, & statistical approaches

DNA technology is the gold standard with respect to the identification of individuals from biological evidence. The technology offers the convenience of a universally similar approach and methodology for analysis across the globe. However, the technology has not realised its full potential in India due to the lack of a DNA database and lacunae in sample collection and preservation from the scene of crime and victims (especially those of sexual assault). Further, statistical interpretation of DNA results is non-existent in the majority of cases. Though the latest technologies and developments in the field of DNA analysis are being adopted and implemented,very little has been enacted practically to improve optimise sample collection and preservation. This article discusses current casework scenarios that highlight the pitfalls and ambiguous areas in the field of DNA analysis, especially with respect DNA databases, sampling, andstatistical approaches to genetic data analysis. Possible solutions and mitigation measures are suggested.

Effect of propofol and isoflurane on NK Cells: A pilot study on perioperative breast cancer patients from Eastern India

Introduction: In onco-anesthesiology, the selection between intravenous and volatile anesthetics for maintaining NK cell response during cancer surgery has been an ambiguous area. In the absence of any such comparative Indian report, this pilot study aimed to investigate the effect of intravenous anesthetic, Propofol, and volatile anesthetic, Isoflurane on the NK cell-mediated immune-inflammatory response of perioperative breast cancer patients. Materials and Methods: Treatment naive breast cancer patients (N, 50) selected for surgery were randomly subjected to either Isoflurane (N, 25) or Propofol (N, 25) anesthetic group. The peripheral blood samples were collected 1 day before surgery (Pre), 1 h after incision (Intra) and 48 h after surgery (Post). The blood samples were subjected to immunophenotyping, activation, degranulation, and cytokine analysis. Results: The frequency of NK cell populations did not differ between the Isoflurane and Propofol groups irrespective of cancer stage II/III. NK cell degranulation marker CD107a and activation marker CD335 expression were significantly reduced in the postoperative period compared to the preoperative group in the Isoflurane group but Propofol did not inflict such alterations. Both Isoflurane/Propofol elicited similar trends in the cytokine profiles of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-15, interferon (IFN)-g and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β levels. Isoflurane significantly increased IL-8 during the intraoperative period and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 during the postoperative period whereas no such changes were observed with Propofol. Conclusion: This pilot study indicated that Propofol partially proved better over Isoflurane in maintaining the activation (CD335) and degranulation of NK cells (CD107a) and alleviating inflammation (IL-8 and MMP-9) during the perioperative period in the breast cancer patients.

The jaguar and the hummingbird: Photo‐ethnography of the walls in Comuna 13 of Medellin

AbstractThis paper presents a study conducted in Comuna 13 of Medellín. The author delves into the history of Comuna 13 by giving voice to five images painted on public walls. Through these images, readers are provided with a deeper understanding of the neighborhood's history, collective memory, communal processes, changes, adaptations, and the political, economic, social, and cultural implications, including conflicts, disputes, and areas of ambiguity. Subsequently, the author analyzes the impact of those images on the daily lives of residents. By combining images and text, this paper aims to contribute to the field of graphic anthropology.

Wellness Tourism Attributes and Tourist Outcomes: An Analysis of Configurational Effects

Prior studies have identified the complexity involved in explaining the relationship between wellness tourism attributes and tourist behavior. This study investigated the configurational effects of 10 constructs in predicting the ambiguous area between overall satisfaction and destination behavioral loyalty. To achieve this, the study used a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and necessary condition analysis (NCA). The results of the fsQCA generated a range of models that effectively predicted tourists’ high or low levels of overall satisfaction and behavioral loyalty. Furthermore, the NCA results identified perceived quality as an essential construct for achieving the combination of overall satisfaction and behavioral loyalty. The study enhances our current knowledge by broadening our comprehension of the intricate aspects of tourists’ decision-making processes and the formation of their behaviors. Additionally, it provides a roadmap for the industry to effectively address challenges in managing wellness tourism resources.

NuInsSeg: A fully annotated dataset for nuclei instance segmentation in H&E-stained histological images

In computational pathology, automatic nuclei instance segmentation plays an essential role in whole slide image analysis. While many computerized approaches have been proposed for this task, supervised deep learning (DL) methods have shown superior segmentation performances compared to classical machine learning and image processing techniques. However, these models need fully annotated datasets for training which is challenging to acquire, especially in the medical domain. In this work, we release one of the biggest fully manually annotated datasets of nuclei in Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E)-stained histological images, called NuInsSeg. This dataset contains 665 image patches with more than 30,000 manually segmented nuclei from 31 human and mouse organs. Moreover, for the first time, we provide additional ambiguous area masks for the entire dataset. These vague areas represent the parts of the images where precise and deterministic manual annotations are impossible, even for human experts. The dataset and detailed step-by-step instructions to generate related segmentation masks are publicly available on the respective repositories.

Constrained Power Expansion: China’s Procuratorial Reforms within and beyond Criminal Justice

This article employs the ecological theory of “boundary work and exchange” to elucidate the latest reforms in China’s procuratorial system, delineating the expanding remits of the procuratorates both within and beyond their traditional domain of criminal justice. Following the national supervision system pilot reform in 2016, which stripped the procuratorial bodies of their authority to investigate official crimes, China’s procuratorates have endeavored to expand their jurisdictions in areas such as criminal, civil, administrative, and public interest litigation. By examining how China’s procuratorates leverage their respective institutional advantages to broaden their functions, we find that they have not only strengthened their role in criminal proceedings but have also continuously expanded their functions beyond criminal litigation. These reforms follow a well-defined trajectory shaped by boundary work and exchange. However, in contrast to boundary work and exchange as usually theorized, which usually starts in ambiguous and elastic areas, China’s procuratorial reforms are notably confined to a fixed sphere. This can be attributed to the procuratorate’s pursuit of state support, which has, in turn, led to its constrained expansion. This enhanced theoretical framework sheds light on the evolving role of China’s procuratorates and underscores the potential significance of ecological theory for understanding broader institutional reforms in China.

Land governance ambiguity and protected area degradation in Cameroon: the case of the Ottotomo reserve

Land governance ambiguity and protected area degradation in Cameroon: the case of the Ottotomo reserve

Association between remnant cholesterol and insulin resistance levels in patients with metabolic-associated fatty liver disease

The relationship between remnant cholesterol (RC) and homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in the context of metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) remains an area of ambiguity. This investigation was designed to elucidate the potential association between RC and HOMA-IR in a cohort of American adults diagnosed with MAFLD. Data from 5533 participants were procured from the 2017–2018 US National Health and Nutrition Examination (NHANES) databases. A weighted linear regression model was employed to analyze the association between RC and HOMA-IR in the context of MAFLD. Preliminary analysis revealed that 44.67% of the participants were diagnosed with MAFLD, with a higher prevalence observed in individuals aged 50–64 years (31.84%, p < 0.0001) and in males compared to females (53.48% vs. 46.52%, p < 0.0001). A positive correlation was identified between RC and HOMA-IR in MAFLD patients. The threshold effect analysis model indicated a breakpoint at RC = 30 mg/dl, with a more pronounced positive correlation when RC < 30 mg/dl (β = 0.17, p < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic analysis further demonstrated that among all lipid parameters, RC exhibited the largest area under the curve. The study findings suggest a positive correlation between RC and HOMA-IR in MAFLD patients, indicating that elevated RC may serve as an independent risk factor for MAFLD.

Clarifying and Enhancing the Role of Equality in Youth Work Ethics: The Case for an Equality Studies Approach

ABSTRACT Implicitly or explicitly, youth work practitioners, scholars and advocates typically invoke a set of egalitarian values to explain, justify and promote the ethical basis of their work. Despite such commitments, there exists conceptual ambiguity surrounding equality across much of the youth work literature which has significant consequences for how youth work is framed and defended. This article introduces the interdisciplinary field of Equality Studies and argues that an Equality Studies approach provides a means to (i) clarify equality-related normative goals within the youth work field and (ii) enhance radically orientated youth work by strengthening the conception of equality at its core. It analyses three areas of conceptual ambiguity within the youth work literature with respect to the value of equality, in each case demonstrating how an Equality Studies approach can help remedy the problem. These areas are: (i) the assumption that equality means ‘sameness’; (ii) the limits of equality of opportunity and anti-discrimination; and (iii) the relationship between equality and other values. It then evaluates the concept of ‘equity’, arguing that it is a vague, inadequate and unnecessary vehicle for capturing egalitarian concerns. The article concludes with some comments on the feasibility of radically egalitarian youth work.

Orthodox justification of collective violence: An epistemological and systematic framework

Using a religious studies methodology, this paper offers a detailed contextual mapping and a structural configuration of how collective violence is justified in Orthodox Christianity. The research design is explanatory, whereby the functional perspectives of doctrine, ethics and worship are all investigated and probed as phenomena of lived religion and orthopraxy. While predominantly initiatory and pedagogical, the paper also proposes a systematic platform for advanced research on this subject, by flagging contexts, themes and areas of inquiry that a researcher might examine in order to untangle the inner workings of the justification of violence in the mind of the Orthodox. Given the ongoing Russian War on Ukraine, relevant samples are drawn from this case.Contribution: This paper outlines the Orthodox Christian justification of violence from the perspectives of doctrine, ethics and ritual and identifies pivotal areas of ambiguity between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

More matters of typology

Abstract Since their coinage a quarter-century ago, the terms abugida and alphasyllabary (Bright 1999; Daniels &amp; Bright 1996) have revolutionised our conceptualisation of writing systems. Together with alphabet, these terms have proven invaluable in classifying subtypes of segmentaries–writing systems whose grain size is the phonological segment (Gnanadesikan 2017). Nevertheless, there remain areas of ambiguity. Segmentaries that are either abugidas or alphasyllabaries–but not both–may be classified under various labels, and inconsistently so. Moreover, certain minoritised writing systems such as those based on Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or Braille are only rarely covered in typological studies, despite the potential insights they offer. In this paper, I use Bright’s (1999) and Gnanadesikan’s (2017) typology of vowelled segmentaries as the point of departure to propose an augmented classification based on specific graphematic criteria. Aside from illustrating the proposed typology by applying it to various writing systems, I also identify avenues for further refinement.

Advances in the Automatic Lemmatization of Old English: Class IV Strong Verbs (L-Y)

The morphological features of an inflectional language like Old English (OE), which also presents generalized spelling inconsistencies, limit the use of lemmatizing and tagging tools that can be applied to natural languages. Consequently, the development of Natural Language Processing (NLP) models, which crucially depend on lemmatized corpora, is slowed down. Against this background, this article develops a lemmatizer within the framework of Morphological Generation that allows for the type-based automatic lemmatization of OE class IV strong verbs (L–Y). The lemmatizer incorporates a set of algorithms to account for features of inflectional, derivational, morphophonological and diatopic variation. The generated forms are automatically compared with Taylor et al. (2003) and Healey et al. (2004) to confirm their attestation and are assigned a lemma. Overall, the research proves successful in setting up form-lemma associations, while highlighting areas of ambiguity and mismatches. The main conclusion of the article is that taking the route of automatic lemmatization with this methodological framework will contribute to the field of OE lexicography by both lemmatizing attested inflectional forms and by identifying areas for manual revision.

Metaphorographic - Performative Experiences In Performances: (and :

The article aims to analyze the choreographic structures in the performances made by companies in the independent sector. The realization of performative atmospheres specific to immersive theater within artistic products represents an area of research still unexplored. Traveling from concept to artistic materialization requires a reordering of the professional relationship between the director and the choreographer or the stage movement coordinator. These professional relationships and the principles under which they are established are often discussed, but their mapping often remains in an ambiguous area. The objective of this work is to re-discuss the role of the choreographer and/or the stage movement coordinator in the creation of artistic products.

Impact of Nutritional Interventions on Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The most prevalent type of dementia, especially in older persons, is Alzheimer's disease (AD), which has clinical signs of progressive cognitive decline and functional impairment. However, new research indicates that AD patients' dietary patterns and nutritional intake could hold the key to staving off some of the complications. Therefore, the primary aim of this investigation was to analyze various dietary patterns and the subsequent impact of the resulting nutritional intake on AD patients. Various online databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) were searched using appropriate keywords, reference searches, and citation searches. The databases were accessed using the search phrases "Alzheimer's disease," "dietary habits," "minerals," "nutritional profile," and "vitamins." Fifteen of the 21 investigations that we selected for our systematic review and subsequent meta-analysis revealed that micronutrient supplementation and some dietary patterns were helpful in alleviating a few of the symptoms of AD, especially with regard to the progression of dementia in the assessed patients. It was shown that dietary interventions and nutritional adjustments can considerably delay the onset of AD and the varying degrees of dementia that often accompany it. However, there were some areas of ambiguity in our findings because a few of the chosen studies did not document any noticeable improvements in the patient's conditions.

Boundary uncertainty aware network for automated polyp segmentation

Recently, leveraging deep neural networks for automated colorectal polyp segmentation has emerged as a hot topic due to the favored advantages in evading the limitations of visual inspection, e.g., overwork and subjectivity. However, most existing methods do not pay enough attention to the uncertain areas of colonoscopy images and often provide unsatisfactory segmentation performance. In this paper, we propose a novel boundary uncertainty aware network (BUNet) for precise and robust colorectal polyp segmentation. Specifically, considering that polyps vary greatly in size and shape, we first adopt a pyramid vision transformer encoder to learn multi-scale feature representations. Then, a simple yet effective boundary exploration module (BEM) is proposed to explore boundary cues from the low-level features. To make the network focus on the ambiguous area where the prediction score is biased to neither the foreground nor the background, we further introduce a boundary uncertainty aware module (BUM) that explores error-prone regions from the high-level features with the assistance of boundary cues provided by the BEM. Through the top-down hybrid deep supervision, our BUNet implements coarse-to-fine polyp segmentation and finally localizes polyp regions precisely. Extensive experiments on five public datasets show that BUNet is superior to thirteen competing methods in terms of both effectiveness and generalization ability.

Challenges of Linguistic Human Rights in Relation to Language Education

Linguistic human rights (LHRs) envelop many questions and ambiguous areas of language pedagogy and sociolinguistics. Difficulties arise as one must understand, due to the demands of linguistic rights, what treatment is owed to whom while balancing the sensitivities of a culture and the linguistic demands of individuals. Further, linguistic concerns themselves are highly complex, as one language may be endangered while another is privileged—complicating LHRs as one navigates the many interests and differences found in language use and acquisition in any given culture or community. Through secondary research, this paper will work toward identifying the difficulties they face, in part by looking at historical developments of LHRs and language education in the West. This secondary research primarily focused on peer-review publications within the last ten years, with key terms including “linguistic human rights,” “language rights,” “culture and language,” and “bilingualism and court decisions.” This approach to linguistic human rights will help reveal the differences in value individuals hold toward language education depending on various factors (e.g., immigration, political conflict, cultural identity) and the interplay between linguistic rights and language education. Additionally, it is through this approach that one sees the variety of responses and proposed solutions to the issues surrounding LHRs, but disagreement on how best to address the issue of LHRs remains. Ultimately, both researchers and instructors would benefit from being aware of linguistic human rights and historical interactions between cultures and language rights, as both shape the education—and therefore the lives—of students.

Оценка и мониторинг геологического риска освоения угольных месторождений

An approach to the quantitative assessment is considered for the geological risk of a decision-making on the development of a subsurface site based on the results of geological exploration, for the determination of the design solutions feasibility for the construction of a mining plant and for the annual mining development plans feasibility during the operation of the enterprise. The fundamentals of the geometric approach to the quantitative assessment of the confidence of geological indicators models, the use of which allows to avoid the problems arising during geostatistical methods applications in the conditions of coal deposits are set out. The confidence of the study of geological indicators is assessed by the degree of ambiguity of their geometrization results, which is quantified based on preliminary artificial creation of indirect redundant measurements in the exploration well grid. At the stage of coal mining, the evaluation of the significance of the geometrization results ambiguity is carried out with additional consideration of the constantly accumulated experience of mining operations in the mode of monitoring the confidence of resources. The possibility of design solutions implementation is assessed based on a pre-created alternative model of the geological indicator. Such a model is created by “distortion” of the traditional model using an additional negatively influenced indicator values which are in areas of the geometrization ambiguity. In the case the design solution can be successfully implemented in the conditions of the alternative model, the implementation impossibility risk is considered insignificant.