Contextual Constraints Research Articles

Pemenuhan Persyaratan Permohonan Paten dengan Metode Multi-Attribute Global Inference of Quality (MAGIQ)

As a decision support system, we implemented the Multi-Attribute Global Inference of Quality (MAGIQ) method in patent applications. By employing the Rank Order Centroid (ROC) weighting approach, we determined that MAGIQ provides an effective and efficient solution for addressing challenges in the patent application process. Although previous studies have applied MAGIQ to software quality evaluation, our application in selecting patent applicants introduces a new perspective. Our analysis identified Applicant 2 as the most suitable, achieving the highest score of 0.454861. Furthermore, when comparing our results with those derived from the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, we observed a high consistency in rankings, affirming MAGIQ's reliability. Consequently, we suggest applying MAGIQ to more intricate problems to delve deeper into its potential and constraints in diverse contexts

Bio-physical determinants of sediment accumulation on an offshore coral reef: A snapshot study

Sediments are found on all coral reefs around the globe. However, the amount of sediment in different reservoirs, and the rates at which sediments move between reservoirs, can shape the biological functioning of coral reefs. Unfortunately, relatively few studies have examined reef sediment dynamics, and associated bio-physical drivers, simultaneously over matching spatial and temporal scales. This has led to a partial understanding of how sediments and living reef systems are connected, especially on clear-water offshore reefs. To address this problem, four sediment reservoirs/sedimentary processes and three bio-physical drivers were quantified across seven different reef habitats/depths at Lizard Island, an exposed mid-shelf reef on the Great Barrier Reef. Even in this clear-water reef location a substantial load of suspended sediment passed over the reef; a load theoretically capable of replacing the entire standing stock of on-reef turf sediments in just 8 h. However, quantification of actual sediment deposition suggested that just 2 % of this passing sediment settled on the reef. The data also revealed marked spatial incongruence in sediment deposition (sediment trap data) and accumulation (TurfPod data) across the reef profile, with the flat and back reef emerging as key areas of both deposition and accumulation. By contrast, the shallow windward reef crest was an area of deposition but had a limited capacity for sediment accumulation. These cross-reef patterns related to wave energy and reef geomorphology, with low sediment accumulation on the ecologically important reef crest aligning with substantial wave energy. These findings reveal a disconnect between patterns of sediment deposition and accumulation on the benthos, with the ‘post-settlement’ fate of sediments dependent on local hydrodynamic conditions. From an ecological perspective, the data suggests key contextual constraints (wave energy and reef geomorphology) may predispose some reefs or reef areas to high-load turf sediment regimes.

Comparison of vestibular input statistics during natural activities and while piloting an aircraft.

The present study investigates the statistics and spectral content of natural vestibular stimuli experienced by healthy human subjects during three unconstrained activities. More specifically, we assessed how the characteristics of vestibular inputs are altered during the operation of a complex human-machine interface (a flight in a helicopter simulator) compared with more ecological tasks, namely a walk in an office space and a seated visual exploration task. As previously reported, we found that the power spectra of vestibular stimuli experienced during self-navigation could be modeled by two power laws but noted a potential effect of task intensity on the transition frequency between the two fits. In contrast, both tasks that required a seated position had power spectra that were better described by an inverted U shape in all planes of motion. Taken together, our results suggest that 1) walking elicits stereotyped vestibular inputs whose power spectra can be modeled by two power laws that intersect at a task intensity-dependent frequency; 2) body posture induces changes in the frequency content of vestibular information; 3) pilots tend to operate their aircraft in a way that does not generate highly nonecological vestibular stimuli; and 4) nevertheless, human-machine interfaces used as a means of manual navigation still impose some unnatural, contextual constraints on their operators.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Building upon previously published research, this study assesses and compares the vestibular stimuli experienced by healthy subjects in natural tasks and during the interaction with a complex machine: a helicopter simulator. Our results suggest the existence of an anatomical filter, meaning that body posture shapes vestibular spectral content. Our findings further indicate that operators control their machine within a constrained operating range such that they experience vestibular stimulations that are as ecological as possible.

Solving the elusiveness of word meanings: two arguments for a continuous meaning space for language.

I explore the hypothesis that the experience of meaning discreteness when we think about the "meaning" of a word is a "communicative" illusion. The illusion is created by processing-contextual constraints that impose disambiguation on the semantic input making salient a specific interpretation within a conceptual space that is otherwise continuous. It is this salience that we experience as discreteness. The understanding of word meaning as non-discrete raises the question of what is context; what are the mechanisms of constraint that it imposes and what is the nature of the conceptual space with which pronunciations (i.e., visual/oral signs) associate themselves. I address these questions by leveraging an algebraic continuous system for word meaning that is itself constrained by two fundamental parameters: control-asymmetry and connectedness. I evaluate this model by meeting two challenges to word meaning discreteness (1) cases where the same pronunciation is associated with multiple senses that are nonetheless interdependent, e.g., English "smoke," and (2) cases where the same pronunciation is associated with a family of meanings, minimally distinct from each other organized as a "cline," e.g., English "have." These cases are not marginal-they are ubiquitous in languages across the world. Any model that captures them is accounting for the meaning system for language. At the heart of the argumentation is the demonstration of how the parameterized space naturally organizes these kinds of cases without appeal for further categorization or segmentation of any kind. From this, I conclude that discreteness in word meaning is epiphenomenal: it is the experience of salience produced by contextual constraints. And that this is possible because, by and large, every time that we become consciously aware of the conceptual structure associated with a pronunciation, i.e., its meaning, we do so under real-time processing conditions which are biased toward producing a specific interpretation in reference to a specific situation in the world. Supporting it is a parameterized space that gives rise to lexico-conceptual representations: generalized algebraic structures necessary for the identification, processing, and encoding of an individual's understanding of the world.

CGC-Net: A Context-Guided Constrained Network for Remote-Sensing Image Super Resolution

In remote-sensing image processing tasks, images with higher resolution always result in better performance on downstream tasks, such as scene classification and object segmentation. However, objects in remote-sensing images often have low resolution and complex textures due to the imaging environment. Therefore, effectively reconstructing high-resolution remote-sensing images remains challenging. To address this concern, we investigate embedding context information and object priors from remote-sensing images into current deep learning super-resolution models. Hence, this paper proposes a novel remote-sensing image super-resolution method called Context-Guided Constrained Network (CGC-Net). In CGC-Net, we first design a simple but effective method to generate inverse distance maps from the remote-sensing image segmentation maps as prior information. Combined with prior information, we propose a Global Context-Constrained Layer (GCCL) to extract high-quality features with global context constraints. Furthermore, we introduce a Guided Local Feature Enhancement Block (GLFE) to enhance the local texture context via a learnable guided filter. Additionally, we design a High-Frequency Consistency Loss (HFC Loss) to ensure gradient consistency between the reconstructed image (HR) and the original high-quality image (HQ). Unlike existing remote-sensing image super-resolution methods, the proposed CGC-Net achieves superior visual results and reports new state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on three popular remote-sensing image datasets, demonstrating its effectiveness in remote-sensing image super-resolution (RSI-SR) tasks.

Contextual Factors Influencing the Performance of Mobile Services in Monitoring the Delivery of Public Health Services

Rationale of Study – This paper established contextual factors affecting the performance of mobile services for monitoring the delivery of public health services in Uganda.Methodology – The study adopted a survey type of descriptive research design. A questionnaire was used to collect data, which were analyzed using crosstabs. The study population included Village Health Team (VHT) members and key informants from selected districts, with a sample size of 368 VHTs, 97 health facilities, and 62 key informants.Findings – The study revealed that user and task characteristics, as well as motivational, physical, technical, social, and organizational factors, all affect the performance of mobile services for monitoring the delivery of public health services.Implications – The study emphasizes the need to consider the specific task requirements and context when designing mobile services to optimize performance. The implication is that developers and implementers of mobile services for monitoring the delivery of public health services in developing countries should consider the unique challenges and constraints of the local context when designing mobile technology to ensure that it is relevant, effective, and appropriate for the specific use case.Originality – The study identified contextual factors that impact the performance of mobile services for monitoring public health services in Uganda. By considering user and task characteristics and motivational, physical, technical, social, and organizational factors, the study recommends designing contextspecific solutions to improve health outcomes in developing countries. This research contributes to the existing literature on mHealth and guides practitioners and policymakers working to improve public health services in similar contexts.

When a Liberal Use of Metaphor Is Really a Conservative One: The Case of Boris Johnson’s Televised Press Releases

The Covid-19 pandemic has generated a number of studies on the use of metaphor to frame the disease and the trope has been presented as a prominent feature of Covid-19 discourse. The metaphor of war has been identified as the master metaphor for framing the health emergency, prompting reflections about its possible drawbacks and feasible alternative framings in order to generate a more constructive stance among the general public, politicians and administrators.
 Such studies largely refer to corpora drawn from heterogeneous sources, combining official statements with coverage in mainstream media, blogs and opinion pieces. The present study is based exclusively on a homogeneous single-genre corpus, namely the official Covid-19 announcements made by the former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from the beginning of March 2020 to December of the same year.
 Using automated interrogation routines, frequency and keyword functions were examined to define the extent and expose underlying patterns of metaphor use in this genre. The quantitative data was also subjected to qualitative analysis from the perspective of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which led to insights into contextual constraints and cultural facets of metaphor use in this genre.
 The results obtained could be considered surprising. It emerged that Boris Johnson resorted to metaphor only sparingly in this genre. The results highlighted that, on the rare occasions when he did rely on this trope, his usage was very predictable and conventional. However, despite the low frequency and keyness of metaphor in his Covid-19 announcements, this rhetorical figure was seen to offer diverse resources and produce multiple effects, even when used so conservatively.

Exploring L2 students’ experiences with an integrated teacher written and spoken feedback strategy

AbstractThis qualitative case study explores second‐language (L2) students’ experiences through their sequential exposure to teacher written and spoken feedback that was offered from a meaning‐making perspective (i.e., the perspective that highlights the relationship between language resources and meaning). The study drew on L2 students’ interviews, reflections, their sequential interactions with teacher written and spoken feedback, and their writing pieces collected from an English writing course at a Chinese university. The study showed that meaning‐making‐based teacher written feedback afforded L2 students time to independently digest and address their writing issues related to the relationship between language and meaning, despite the observable confusions students encountered. Echoing teacher written feedback, teacher spoken feedback, as a follow‐up, further highlighted writing as a meaning‐making process, dynamically helping the students to understand or challenge the written feedback and mitigating contextual constraints on their uptake of teacher written feedback. These findings underscore the usefulness of sequentially implementing teacher written and spoken feedback, especially from a meaning‐making perspective, to sensitize L2 students to the relationship between language and meaning and to enhance their success in writing.

Teacher learning as a polyphonic endeavor: A context sensitive model of teacher professional development

ABSTRACT Despite an increasing interest in the sociocultural aspects of teacher professional development and the recognition of context in teacher education, there is a lack of a conceptualisation of how professional learning occurs within and across various contexts. To this aim, we take up a view of professional learning that is dialogic and apply the concept of ‘polyphony’ to conceptualise teacher practice and teacher professional learning as the teacher’s orchestration of multiple voices within context. Inviting ‘polyphony’ to the realm of teacher education refers to the composition of multiple co-existing contextual affordances and constraints affecting teacher practice. It is the multitude of various and at times disagreeing voices surrounding teacher practice. Our proposed model offers a reflexive definition of ‘teacher agency’ that involves the recognition of the voices that the teacher draws upon so that they can be interrogated and deliberately invoked or suppressed in practice for particular contexts. We discuss two methodological implications including a polyphonic design methodology of professional learning opportunities, and a polyphonic education research method in addressing the problem of teachers’ implementation and adjustment to new practices.

73 vs. 91: drafting a code for new alphabetical catalog of the British Museum

The paper, starting from the draft of 73 Rules Museum proposed by Panizzi to the Trustees in March 1839, aims at bringing out Panizzi’s underlying design for the new alphabetical catalog of the British Museum. Two temporal perspectives are crossed in contextualizing the process of drafting the rules: one of shorter duration, with a focus on items and actors of a confrontation that became intense between 1834 and 1839; and another, of a wider time span, aimed at reconstructing the conflicts of bibliographic cultures, the lines of tradition and the originality of Panizzi’s approach. At the bottom of the draft, there is an intellectual wager: although in the context constraints, to go beyond the boundaries of the English bibliographic traditions of the time by opening up to other bibliographic cultures. The most stimulating perspective comes from Audiffredi’s lesson mediated by a principle of exactitude which, if in the most immediate references has roots in the highest peaks of the contemporary French bibliographic culture (Barbier and Querard), draws its sap from the erudite tradition of the Italian eighteenth century (Tiraboschi). The paper discusses whether and what changes were made to this design in the passage from 73 to 91.

Indonesia free from pasung: a policy analysis

BackgroundMany people with mental illnesses remain isolated, chained, and inside cages, called Pasung in Indonesia. Despite numerous policies introduced to eradicate Pasung, Indonesia has made slow progress in decreasing this practice. This policy analysis examined existing policies, plans and initiatives in Indonesia targeted at eradicating Pasung. Policy gaps and contextual constraints are identified in order to propose stronger policy solutions.MethodsEighteen policy documents were examined, including government news releases and organisational archives. A content analysis was undertaken of national-level policies that address Pasung within the context of the health system, social system and human rights since the establishment of Indonesia. This was followed by a case study analysis of policy and program responses particularly in West Java Province.FindingsWhile policy to address Pasung exists at a national level, implementation at national and local levels is complicated. Pasung policy has generated a sense of awareness but the different directions and ambiguous messaging across all stakeholders, including policy actors, has created a lack of clarity about institutions’ roles and responsibilities in the implementation process, as well as accountability for outcomes. This situation is exacerbated by an incomplete decentralisation of healthcare policymaking and service delivery, particularly at the primary level. It is possible that policymakers have overlooked international obligations and lessons learned from successful policymaking in comparable regional countries, resulting in disparities in target-setting, implementation mechanisms, and evaluation.ConclusionWhile the public has become more informed of the need to eradicate Pasung, ongoing communication with the various clusters of policy actors on the aforementioned issues will be critical. Addressing the various segments of the policy actors and their challenges in response to policy will be critical as part of building the evidence base to establish a feasible and effective policy to combat Pasung in Indonesia.

Enduring commitment: older couples living apart

As people live longer, there is an increasing possibility of couples becoming separated because one partner moves into a care home. Our qualitative mixed-method pilot study in an English town involved eight married couples aged over 65 years to explore experiences and practices of couplehood in these circumstances. This article focuses on the most striking emergent element of expressed couplehood in these now challenged long-term relationships: commitment. Drawing on in-depth (biographical) individual and joint interviews, observations and emotion maps, this article explores how separation affected the couples’ current sense and enactment of commitment to the relationship. Commitment in the partnership is now often one-sided. How committed the community-living partner feels – and its enactment – is heavily shaped by the shared history of happy and unhappy periods in the relationships, current contextual constraints, and family and institutional support.

Sleep and sleep knowledge among social work students: Implications for mental health and self-care education

ABSTRACT Obtaining good quality sleep is crucial to mental health. Social work students might be particularly vulnerable to mental health challenges and insufficient sleep, which can have important implications for self-care education. Examining social work students’ sleep characteristics (i.e. sleep duration and sleep quality) and health knowledge gaps can provide an important context for promoting healthy sleep among social work students. Nonetheless, the empirical literature lacks such data. The purpose of this study was to employ a sample of undergraduate and graduate social work students to: 1. assess sleep duration and sleep quality; 2. quantitatively and qualitatively examine knowledge about sleep and healthy sleep behaviors; and 3. identify sleep health knowledge gaps. Twenty-five social work students completed validated assessments and participated in a semi-structured focus group. Quantitative and qualitative data highlight poor sleep duration, poor sleep quality, and sleep health knowledge gaps among this population. Data also reveal that while students recognize the importance of sleep, they have difficulty obtaining adequate sleep due to various contextual constraints. These data support the importance of including sleep health in self-care education among social work students and highlight sleep health knowledge gaps that could be integrated into self-care education.

Researchers’ strategies to cope with the covid-19 impact on their activity

This study aims to characterize the strategies researchers used to cope with Covid-19 impact and to explore the relationship between those strategies, researchers’ characteristics and the pandemic impact in their lives. 721 researchers, proportionally distributed among three Spanish regions, answered an online survey on the pandemic impact on their activity. Scales referred to social support, productivity, research tasks, working conditions, and work and personal life balance. An open-ended section was included to collect the strategies they used to cope with the pandemic consequences. 1528 strategies were content analysed and categorised based on their purposes and related to the rest of the impact variables. Results show the predominance of some strategies for the whole sample both at the work level, such as organizing work duties and plans, and at the personal level, such as maintaining life-work balance and improving personal well-being. Results stress to what extent a strategic approach contributed to minimize contextual issues or constraints even in an extreme situation as the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. A non-strategic approach, consisting of just reacting emotionally or dropping research, was the less effective way to maintain interest in research, sustained work and productivity and to warrant work-life balance. Developing a strategic approach was easier for those without caring responsibilities and for men. Women in our study, especially with caring responsibilities, had reduced opportunities to continue with their careers during the pandemic. No evidence of institutional strategies supporting researchers to cope with the situation was found.

Investigating Second Language Request Strategies by a Chinese Undergraduate Student Majoring in Business English

Making requests is one of the most commonplace pragmatic behaviors in daily interactions. This present paper attempts to specifically examine the use of second language (L2) request strategies by a single English major in China. By providing four different role-play scenarios in which relative power (+/–P) and social distance (+/–D) were deliberately designed as the contextual constraints, while low ranking of imposition (–R) was kept constant, this case study elicited and audio-recorded the participant’s conversational data via WeChat. Drawing upon the coding scheme developed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), the study showcased that the participant was inclined to chiefly employ conventionally indirect requests and more external modification devices than internal ones in all the role-plays. In addition, the participant’s inappropriate adoption of direct requests in the first and third role-plays and written responses to the follow-up survey questions suggested that he was not conscious of the contextual variables at all when performing requests. In conclusion, some pedagogical recommendations are proposed to enhance L2 learners’ pragmatic competence by integrating pragmatic instruction into English language classes.

Maximising Professional Growth: A Case Study Exploring Reflective Practices of Teacher Educators

This qualitative case study aimed to explore the reflective teaching practices used by teacher educators in their classrooms for professional learning and development in Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two experienced teacher educators from a public university. Using within-case and cross-case analysis, data analysis uncovered themes related to interactive teaching methods, student feedback, self-reflection, collegial support, evaluation techniques, and contextual constraints. The results of the study revealed that teacher educators used reflection-on-action and reflection-for-action techniques for the improvement of their teaching. However, they faced some barriers while implementing these practices in classrooms due to contextual settings. The study’s findings emphasise the need for institutional support and the provision of professional development opportunities to teacher educators for facilitating reflective teaching practices. The study contributes meaningful insights into teacher educators’ experiences employing reflective practices in their unique contexts.

Investing in human development and building state resilience in fragile contexts: A case study of early nutrition investments in Burkina Faso.

Maternal and early malnutrition have negative health and developmental impacts over the life-course. Consequently, early nutrition support can provide significant benefits into later life, provided the later life contexts allow. This study examines the limits of siloed investments in nutrition and illustrates how ignoring life-course contextual constraints limits human development benefits and exacerbates inequality, particularly in fragile contexts. This case study focuses on Burkina Faso, a country with high rates of early malnutrition and a fragile state. We modelled the impact of scaling up 10 nutrition interventions to 80% coverage for a single year cohort on stunting, nationally and sub-nationally, using the Lives Saved Tool (LiST), and the consequent impact on earnings, without and with a complementary cash-transfer in later life. The impact on earnings was modelled utilising the well-established pathway between early nutrition, years of completed schooling and, consequent adult earnings. Productivity returns were estimated as the present value of increased income over individuals' working lives, then compared to estimates of the present value of providing the cost of nutrition interventions and cash-transfers. The cost benefit ratio at the national level for scaled nutrition alone is 1:1. Sub-nationally the worst-off region yields the lowest ratio < 0.2 for every dollar spent. The combination of nutrition and cash-transfers national cost benefit is 1:12, still with regional variation but with great improvement in the poorest region. This study shows that early nutrition support alone may not be enough to address inequality and may add to state fragility. Taking a life-course perspective when priority-setting in contexts with multiple constraints on development can help to identify interventions that maximizing returns, without worsening inequality.

Assessment of Urban Sustainability—The Case of Amman City in Jordan

Accelerated urbanization causes an increasing number of city dwellers, insufficient and overburdened infrastructure and services, and negative environmental impacts and climate change impacts. Measuring the city’s progress toward sustainability is essential to support decision-making and policy development. This study aims to establish an assessment and monitoring method of sustainable development goals at the city level, focusing on identifying indicators that are compatible with the city context to update and monitor progress toward sustainability. A review of the literature on sustainability assessment methods and tools is presented. A comprehensive framework for city sustainability assessment and a checklist of indicators. Amman city in Jordan is suggested. A Voluntary Local Review (VLR) report of Amman was presented to the United Nations in 2022. The report reviews Amman’s progress toward achieving the SDGs; however, it lacks clear and a quantitative assessment of the city’s sustainability, particularly SDG 11, which this paper seeks to address. The checklist survey questions were formulated according to the sub-indicators of the UN-Habitat SDG indicator metadata. The checklist was distributed to respondents from the Municipality of Amman and related organizations to the VLR. The respondents evaluated the sub-indicators of Goal 11 and gave performance level scores in three levels: low, average, and optimal. The sum of the indicator values is quantitatively presented in tables. The findings reveal that the indicator values of the city sustainability assessment framework, as applied in this paper, can be adjusted within the characteristics and constraints of the local context in a two-year observation period to provide updated data for decision-makers regarding the current status and future implementation of sustainability agendas.

Prediction error cost exists in the reading processing of Chinese native speakers and advanced Chinese L2 learners.

This study applies the paradigm of self-paced reading to examine the Context Predictability Effect in the processing of Chinese and detect whether there is a prediction error cost. Context constraint strength (constraining and neutral) and word predictability (predictable and unpredictable) were strictly manipulated. The statistical results suggest that: (1) There is a Context Predictability Effect for Chinese native speakers in reading processing, which is consistent with most previous studies; (2) There is also a Context Predictability Effect for advanced Chinese L2 learners; (3) Both Chinese native speakers and Chinese L2 learners have a prediction error cost in reading processing, a finding different from those of much previous research. (4) Chinese L2 learners are significantly slower than Chinese native speakers when they conduct predictive reading processing. This paper is very enlightening in that it identifies the existence of a prediction error cost in Chinese L2 processing by means of behavioral experiments, providing evidence for the hypothesis of Lexical Prediction. In a strongly predictive setting, when encountering a plausible but unpredictable word, the brain must expend extra effort to suppress, revise, or reanalyze the material, and this may account for the prediction error cost.

Development of a cerebral aneurysm segmentation method to prevent sentinel hemorrhage

Image segmentation being the first step is always crucial for brain aneurysm treatment planning; it is also crucial during the procedure. A robust brain aneurysm segmentation has the potential to prevent the blood leakage, also known as sentinel hemorrhage. Here, we present a method combining a multiresolution and a statistical approach in two dimensional domain to segment cerebral aneurysm in which the Contourlet transform (CT) extracts the image features, while the Hidden Markov Random Field with Expectation Maximization (HMRF-EM) segments the image, based on the spatial contextual constraints. The proposed algorithm is tested on Three-Dimensional Rotational Angiography (3DRA) datasets; the average values of segmentation accuracy, DSC, FPR, FNR, specificity, and sensitivity, are found to be 99.72%, 93.52%, 0.07%, 5.23%, 94.77%, and 99.96%, respectively.