Contradictory Answers Research Articles

Beyond ‘Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay’: the simultaneous impacts of co-agency in migration

ABSTRACT What are the impacts of migration on those directly involved in it: those who stay and those who leave? The deceptive simplicity of this question becomes obvious once we look at the diverse and mutually contradictory empirical answers it has received. On the basis of Web of Science data, we provide a mapping of existing studies on migration’s impacts, which reveals a clearly pronounced modularity between different disciplines and theoretical approaches, with psychological studies on migrants’ mental health, political science studies of remittances, and economic studies on labour market impacts, for example, often speaking at cross-purposes and not engaging in a meaningful dialogue. To reconcile available evidence and bridge the gap between different disciplines and approaches, in this Special Issue, we put forward the concept of co-agency that underlines the dynamic, relational, co-constructed, and co-performed nature of migration and its impacts. The concept of co-agency draws attention not to what happens to actors involved in migration, but on what they attain, what they perform, ultimately: what they do through migration. Furthermore, co-agency emphasises what actors involved in migration – both those who leave and those who stay behind – do together, rejecting a distinction between migrants as active and those staying behind as simply passive recipients of remittances, development, etc. Focusing on the co-agency of a wide variety of actors – both individual and collective, our conceptual approach emphasises the need to study the interplay between simultaneous impacts of co-agency in migration – including, but not limited to, health impacts on individuals, care-provision impacts on families, and development and policy impacts on states as collective actors. Ultimately, rather than promoting migration-pessimism or migration-optimism, we argue for a nuanced multi-level understanding of the complex interacting impacts of co-agency in migration.

How Second Language Learners from Mars and Venus Are Different in Lexical Acquisition

Up to the present day the issue of gender and language has been widely studied by numerous researchers not only by linguistics but also practitioners from other fields of study. The amount of research has been done through different methods, instrument and scope. These various approaches have brought contradictory answers of the questions - is there any effect of gender on the language acquisition? If so, to what extent gender demonstrates its influence on language learning? More specifically, does gender difference demonstrate different lexical acquisition of second language learners? Does gender solely affect second language learners lexical acquisition? Burning questions come up along with the various perspectives and paradigm held by practitioners. The complexity brings the impossibility to cover all of questions in one study. Therefore, this study is intended to contribute to sum up studies done in the field of how gender difference demonstrate its effects on second language learners lexical acquisition. By thematical approach, this library research presents a few studies related to gender lexical acquisition that have been available over the last twenty years. The contradictory findings are revealed, that is differences do exist with huge varieties in terms of lexical acquisition, vocabulary, learning strategy and lexical use. Yet, complex measurement of gender effect on lexical acquisition occurs as the effect of the potential existence of other variable factors. Some researchers believe that gender does not solely influence second language learners acquisition. They assume that various findings might be affected by some other variable factors that make male become male and make female become female or make language learners lost their gender identity or home whether they are from Mars or Venus in language acquisition. These variable factors include age, biological, social (context, experience & socialization), psychological, pedagogical (teaching & learning instruction) and linguistical (L1 & L2 relation)

Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved.

Do larger incomes make people happier? Two authors of the present paper have published contradictory answers. Using dichotomous questions about the preceding day, [Kahneman and Deaton,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.107, 16489-16493 (2010)] reported a flattening pattern: happiness increased steadily with log(income) up to a threshold and then plateaued. Using experience sampling with a continuous scale, [Killingsworth, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.118, e2016976118 (2021)] reported a linear-log pattern in which average happiness rose consistently with log(income). We engaged in an adversarial collaboration to search for a coherent interpretation of both studies. A reanalysis of Killingsworth's experienced sampling data confirmed the flattening pattern only for the least happy people. Happiness increases steadily with log(income) among happier people, and even accelerates in the happiest group. Complementary nonlinearities contribute to the overall linear-log relationship. We then explain why Kahneman and Deaton overstated the flattening pattern and why Killingsworth failed to find it. We suggest that Kahnemanand Deaton might have reached the correct conclusion if they had described their results in terms of unhappiness rather than happiness; their measures could not discriminate among degrees of happiness because of a ceiling effect. The authors of both studies failed to anticipate that increased income is associated with systematic changes in the shape of the happiness distribution. The mislabeling of the dependent variable and the incorrect assumption of homogeneity were consequences of practices that are standard in social science but should be questioned more often. We flag the benefits of adversarial collaboration.

The uncertain interstellar medium of high-redshift quiescent galaxies: Impact of methodology

How much gas and dust is contained in high-redshift quiescent galaxies (QGs) is currently an open question with relatively few and contradictory answers, as well as important implications for our understanding of the nature of star formation quenching processes at cosmic noon. Here we revisit far-infrared (FIR) observations of the REQUIEM-ALMA sample of six z = 1.6 − 3.2 QGs strongly lensed by intermediate-redshift galaxy clusters. We measured their continuum emission using priors obtained from high resolution near-infrared (NIR) imaging, as opposed to focusing on point-source extraction, converted it into dust masses using a FIR dust emission model derived from statistical samples of QGs, and compared the results to those of the reference work. We find that, while at least the most massive sample galaxy is indeed dust-poor, the picture is much more nuanced than previously reported. In particular, these more conservative constraints remain consistent with high dust fractions in early QGs. We find that these measurements are very sensitive to the adopted extraction method and conversion factors: the use of an extended light model to fit the FIR emission increases the flux of detections by up to 50% and the upper limit by up to a factor 6. Adding the FIR-to-dust conversion, this amounts to an order of magnitude difference in dust fraction, casting doubts on the power of these data to discriminate between star formation quenching scenarios. Unless these are identified by other means, mapping the dust and gas in high-redshift QGs will continue to require somewhat costly observations.

The 'Oumuamua Controversy: Bayesian Priors and the Evolution of Technological Intelligence.

Was the interstellar object 'Oumuamua a light sail constructed by aliens (hypothesis A) or can it be explained by more natural processes (hypothesis N)? To compare these two hypotheses, a Bayesian analysis of the Sagan standard is introduced. I show that apparently contradictory answers are not contradictory when one is careful about the specific question one is trying to answer. Different estimates of prior odds play the dominant role in the controversy. The existence of technological alien civilizations is largely an issue of evolutionary biology, not astronomy. I argue that, based on tens of millions of independent evolutionary experiments here on Earth, the probability of technological alien civilizations is somewhere between zero and tiny. This extremely low prior decreases the probability of A being favored in the posterior odds, but counterintuitively increases the power of the new evidence to favor A.

L’ARGUMENTATION DANS LE DÉBAT TÉLÉVISUEL

The argumentative process in the analysed corpus starts from contradictory answers to common questions. The confrontation is based on the divergence of points of view, on the rejection and the attack of the other’s arguments. The conclusion will be drawn by the ultimate recipients of the message. The audience has a horizon of expectations and a certain cultural experience, to which the personal experience of each viewer is added. Consequently, the argument in the televised message will receive a plurality of readings. The goal of each participant, through the used argumentative strategies, is to make the public support his/her thesis.

The association of three doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine with abnormal bleeding and an irregular menstrual cycle among premenopausal females: A single institute observation study.

BackgroundThe COVID‐19 vaccine is effective in preventing severe cases of COVID‐19. For women, gynecological adverse events, such as menstrual irregularities and irregular bleeding, could be a concern after COVID‐19 vaccination. In this study, we investigated gynecological adverse events in the vaccinated Japanese female population.MethodsWe conducted a survey‐based study with health‐care workers, including medical doctors and nurses, medical coworkers, and medical university faculty, staff, and students, at a single medical school and affiliated hospital in Japan. We used McNemar's test and network analysis.ResultsOverall, we obtained 819 responses, and 424 were from females. After the exclusion of contradictory answers, 309 surveys were finally considered appropriate for the analysis. The frequencies of abnormal bleeding were 0.6%, 1.0%, and 3.0% for the first, second, and third doses, respectively. An irregular menstrual cycle was more common than abnormal bleeding: 1.9%, 4.9%, and 6.6% for the first, second, and third doses, respectively. Network analysis revealed that abnormal bleeding and an irregular menstrual cycle were not associated with other adverse reactions.ConclusionThe present study showed that the effects of COVID‐19 vaccination on menstruation seem limited.

Iğdır Yöresinde Organik Arıcılık ve Bal Üretimi Anla

Organic agricultural products are food products that are inspected and certified at all stages of production until they are offered for consumption by institutions that are authorized by the state. Beekeeping products made for human food are also subject to the same certification process. With this research, it was aimed to reveal the organic beekeeping and organic honey understanding of the people of Iğdır region. With the survey, the information of the local consumers about organic honey, how they got this information, their status and reasons for organic honey consumption, as well as the certification processes were collected. The obtained data were analyzed with numerical, proportional, and decision tree methods. The genders of the survey participants were 66% male, 34% female. It was also determined that 70.5% of the participants were under the age of 40, had a bachelor's degree or higher education level in the proportion of 43%, and 63% had a minimum wage or lower-income level. For the questions asked about the research topic, it was reported that participants know and eat organic honey in the proportion of 93%, buy organic honey in the proportion of 77.5%, having information about the organic honey certificate in the proportion of 67% and certification stages in the proportion of 43%. Despite these high rates, the same participants gave contradictory answers to some other questions, such as; for the question of “What is organic honey?” the answer of "Certified honey" in the proportion of only 11.5% and for the question of “How did you know that the organic honey you bought was organic honey?” the answer of " I saw its certificate” in the proportion of only 18.1%. This contradiction was noted. With this research, it was determined that the local people did not have enough information about organic beekeeping and honey understanding. In order to fill this gap, it can be suggested that healthy nutrition lessons be included in the education curricula starting from primary school, and usage of TV, radio, and internet broadcasting for this purpose. The fact that the participants' education level is high and their age is young may provide an advantage in order to get results from the training to be given on the subject.

Two oncologists, three opinions? Second opinions in oncology: Noise, bias, and disagreement.

e23009 Background: Systematic reviews show that second opinion consultations in Oncology are frequent (1 – 35%) and differ from initial recommendations by up to 50% (BMJ Open 2021;11:e044033). This study evaluates the variability of second opinions of Oncology Fellows in a Virtual Observational Standard Clinical Examination (V-OSCE 2021) (J Clin Oncol 39, 2021, suppl 15; abstr 11005). Methods: One of the stations of the V-OSCE 2021 included a simulated patient’s relative requesting a second opinion. The patient was a 62-year-old male with advanced lung adenocarcinoma (Mts in lymph nodes, bone and liver) PDL1 3%. All other markers (EGFR, ALK, ROS1 and Her2) were negative. The tumor progressed at first line with standard chemoimmunotherapy (Carboplatin + Pemetrexed + Pembrolizumab). At the time of consultation, the patient had PS2, depression, hepatic progression without evidence of CNS lesions and all laboratory results were normal. Docetaxel had been recommended as a second line of treatment. The case was sent to each Fellow before the examination, and the evaluation consisted of ten standardized prognostic and therapeutic questions. Results: A total of 16 Oncology Fellows were evaluated. Sex Female/Male (11/5) Age: Mean 33 years (r= 30-35). We analyzed the answers to ten standardized questions (Table). Conclusions: A) The Oncology Fellows agreed on only two out of ten answers to the standardized questions (incurability and mental health referral); and in the remaining eight, disagreement is evident. B) Within the first seven questions, all Fellows differed among themselves in at least one answer. C) These findings coincide with our daily practice: It is highly likely that if a patient gets a second opinion, they will get divergent and even contradictory answers about their case. D) Are these findings a product of differing knowledge or physicians’ noises and biases? Further research could address how medical education and professional development can help with reflecting upon these issues.[Table: see text]

Children prefer to learn from smart devices, but do not trust them more than humans

Despite the rise in prevalence of voice-activated smart devices and their potential to influence how young children learn about the world, we know little about how children interact with and learn from these devices. In the current study, 5- to 6-year-old children (n=30) were asked whether they wanted to learn more information about a series of obscure animals from an Amazon Echo or a human confederate. After informants gave contradictory answers, participants were asked whose information they trusted. Children significantly preferred to request information from the Amazon Echo but showed no preference with regards to whose information they endorsed. Furthermore, performance was not affected by technology experience. While children enjoy interacting with smart devices, they may not believe the information that they receive.

Personality tests across settings, considering language proficiency and literacy

IntroductionGeneric psychometric instruments are frequently used in psychiatric practice. When a respondent provides an affirmative reply to two contrasting items in such a questionnaire (e.g. “I am reserved” and “I am outgoing”), serious questions need to be asked about the respondent, the instrument, and the interaction between the two.ObjectivesThe research aims to identify reasons which could explain the contradictory answers provided by respondents to a well-established, and seemingly psychometrically sound instrument.MethodsWorld Values Survey data, collected in South Africa (N = 3 531), were analysed, focusing on the personality survey, where contrasting response to matching items were identified. Exploratory factor analyses were used to inspect the factorial structure of the instrument across groups, after which measurement invariance tests were done.ResultsThe theorised factorial structure of the personality survey did not mirror the structure in the South African sample. This was demonstrated in the inspection-report, as well as in the tests of measurement invariance. However, in some groups, specifically those who were well-versed in English and possessed higher levels of education, the structures were replaceable.ConclusionsThe assumption that well-established instruments are valid in settings different to the one where they were initially developed, should be questioned, and such instruments should not be used unless thoroughly tested. This presentation exposes the extent of measurement non-invariance when using an instrument in a foreign setting and shows how this can be detected and addressed. Those working with foreign individuals or conducting cross-cultural research should be particularly aware of these threats to validity.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Feudal Contradictions between Communist Allies

Abstract In the late 1970s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and North Korea arrived at contradictory answers regarding the question of succession, testing the strength of bilateral ties at a complex moment in the two countries’ domestic politics and in the Cold War. Blaming the excesses of Maoist radicalism on “feudal thinking,” Deng Xiaoping launched a campaign in the summer of 1980 to “eliminate feudalism” from the Chinese Communist Party and elevate a new generation of leaders. Just a few months later, at the Sixth Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party, Kim Il Sung went public with what Deng saw as the ultimate “feudal” act: a plan to pass down the role of Supreme Leader to his eldest son, Kim Jong Il. By scrutinizing the public record and secret transcripts of Sino-Korean diplomacy, this article traces the origins of their contradictory approaches to political succession and the evolution of Deng's response to Kim's plan from disapproval to acquiescence.

Language Processing in Arabic Diglossia: Evidence for Memory-Based Automaticity

Diglossia in Arabic refers to the existence of two distinct varieties: Spoken Arabic (SA), which is used orally in daily communication, and literary Arabic (LA), used in reading, writing, and for formal functions. Similarly, bilinguals often use different languages (L1, L2) for different purposes, so the question presents itself: Is Arabic diglossia a type of bilingualism? Because behavioral and fMRI studies provide contradictory answers, the current paper develops a cognitive account grounded in memory-based automaticity to align available evidence pertaining to diglossia into one developmental profile.

Astronomers’ representations of the earth and day / night cycle: Implications for children’s acquisition of scientific concepts

Previous researchers (e.g., Vosniadou and Brewer, Cognitive Psychology 24:535–585, 1992) have claimed that children have naïve, but coherent, mental models of the earth, such as the flat earth and the hollow sphere. Recent studies have challenged this view, focusing on the original researchers’ methods of testing (drawing and open questions) and coding. In this study we tested the construct validity of these methods by asking expert astronomers to complete the same test originally used with 5-year-olds. Many astronomers gave responses that, if given by young children, would have been considered non-scientific and as evidence of naïve mental models. Many gave two or more seemingly contradictory answers to the same questions and, even when only their ‘most scientific’ responses were considered, fewer than 50% of these expert scientists were classified as having coherent scientific mental models. Comparison with children’s responses to a rephrased and disambiguated task indicated that even 6–7-year-olds gave more scientific answers. The astronomers’ comments revealed the main reasons why the original task lacks validity: they found many questions confusing and ambiguous. This may well explain many children’s responses, too. Since the task incorrectly indicates that experts in the field have fundamental misconceptions, it is likely also to have led to substantial underestimates of children’s scientific understanding.

When Does Multipath Improve Imaging Resolution?

In this paper, we characterize resolution limits for imaging in electromagnetic spectrum where multipath is commonly encountered, e.g., spectrum often used for wireless communication. We analyze a passive system configuration with an aperture of fixed spatial extent sampling fields backscattered from an imaging scene consisting of both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths. We characterize the resolution limits using the degrees of freedom (DoF) metric. We make progress towards answering the question: when does multipath offer gains in imaging resolution over LOS-only propagation? Prior theoretical and empirical analysis offer seemingly contradictory answers to this question. On the one hand, prior theoretical analysis suggests that multipath does not improve resolution beyond LOS-only propagation. However, numerical simulations of multipath-exploiting imaging suggest otherwise. We show that the prior results correspond to two extreme operational regimes, under which multipath is equivalent to either LOS-only or NLOS-only propagation. Our DoF analysis unifies prior results, and establishes that: (i) multipath captures the best of both LOS-only and NLOS-only propagation, and (ii) under certain geometric configurations of scatterers, multipath can offer significant resolution gains over LOS-only propagation.

Critical Issues of Working during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Italian Healthcare Workers' Experience.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted on healthcare services’ organization and healthcare workers’ mental health, increasing the risk of psychological symptoms and burnout. Italy has been one of the most affected countries, especially the northern regions, even with exceptions in some rural provinces. Aim: We chose to investigate the mental health conditions of healthcare workers operating in the rural province of Rovigo (a small town in Veneto, northern Italy), where relatively few deaths and contagions were reported during the pandemic, even if Veneto—globally—was one of the most affected regions of Italy. We wanted to verify the psychological outcomes of health workers operating in a context where the impact of the pandemic appeared to be relatively mild. Methods: Through an online survey, we investigated perceived difficulties at work and in daily life, perceived loneliness and social support, coping strategies, and level of psychological distress (sample size: 749; mean age = 48.04 years, SD = 10.66). The questionnaire had both open- (2) and close-ended questions (5 single-choice and 13 multiple-choice). We verified possible associations between sex, age group, work department and percentage of responses with chi-square tests of independence on each question. Data cleaning excluded all contradictory answers from the multiple-choice questions from the analyses (final sample size: 640). Results: Frontliners and non-frontliners reported a similar experience of the COVID-19 pandemic (without significant differences in perceived difficulties, coping strategies and sources of support). Nevertheless, they still reported various forms of negative emotions (e.g., helplessness—40.94%; sadness—36.56%; frustration—32.66%) and lack of support from the health organization (especially frontliners—28.72%). However, psychological help was scarcely requested. Conclusions: Despite the province not being massively affected by the pandemic, healthcare workers felt the need for clearer and more supportive guidance. They seem to perceive collective opportunities to share needs and difficulties as more useful than individual interventions (as those provided by the ad hoc created listening service).

Impact of D2O on peptidization of L-histidine

This is our sixth consecutive study carried out in an order to collect an experimental evidence on the impact of heavy water (D2O) on spontaneous peptidization of the proteinogenic α-amino acids and this time it is L-histidine (L-His). Scientists have not yet achieved a full consensus regarding the source of this very important amino acid in human and mammalian tissues, and on this particular question rather contradictory answers in form of experimental results are produced, equally supporting its exogenous and endogenous origin. Although this issue still remains unsolved, for practical demands of life sciences the two UN agencies, FAO and WHO, have both tentatively accepted that L-His is an exogenous α-amino acid. As analytical techniques, in our studies we employed high-performance liquid chromatography with the diode array detection (HPLC–DAD), mass spectrometry (MS), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Spontaneous peptidization of L-His dissolved in methanol + H2O, 7:3 (v/v) was carried out at 22 ± 0.5 °C in the darkness for a relatively long period of 314 h, and its progress was chromatographically checked by targeting concentration of the L-His monomer in the 12-min intervals. This investigation revealed alternating yet non-periodic concentration changes, indicating changeable formation and hydrolytic decay of the L-His-derived oligopeptides in the function of time, and a fast net concentration fall of the L-His monomer (witnessing to quite vigorous peptidization). Moreover, the MS results confirmed formation of the relatively high oligopeptides, falling within the range of two or more dozen L-His monomer units. Impact of D2O on peptidization of L-His was traced with use of MS and SEM for the L-His samples dissolved in aqueous methanol solvents containing 5, 10, 20, and 30% D2O, and also in pure D2O. Similar to the results earlier presented for five other proteinogenic α-amino acids, heavy water exerts a powerful inhibitory effect on spontaneous peptidization of L-His, equally perceptible when assessed with aid of mass spectrometry (with the mass spectra in the first instance playing the role of quasi-quantitative fingerprints), and based on purely qualitative micrographs derived with use of SEM.

Prescription Opioid Misuse and Property Crime

AbstractWhile there is an extensive literature on the relationship between drug use and crime, research on crime stemming from the recent uptick in opioid misuse is surprisingly sparse, and much of it provides contradictory answers. Using state‐level data and dynamic panel techniques, we find evidence of a large, positive association between nonmedical use of pain relievers and property crime. The correlation is strongest for the youngest users, holds for multiple classes of property crime, and its magnitude suggests hundreds of thousands of excess property crimes over the study period resulting from even modest increases in opioid abuse. We also present evidence of a link between prescribing rates and crime. Evidence of a link between pain relievers and violent crime is much weaker, as is evidence of an association between other drugs and crime. Our use of robust panel inference helps to address endogeneity concerns that can arise in other studies, many of which also draw conclusions from small or nonrepresentative samples.

Survey on patients\u2019 organisations\u2019 knowledge and position paper on screening for inherited neuromuscular diseases in Europe

BackgroundThe development of new genetic testing methods and the approval of the first treatments raises questions regarding when and how to perform screening for inherited neuromuscular conditions. Screening directives and access to the different techniques is not uniform across Europe. The patient advisory board of the European reference network for rare neuromuscular diseases (NMD) conducted a qualitative study to understand the state of play of screening for inherited NMD in Europe and patients’ needs.ResultsWe collected answers from 30 patient organisations (POs) from 18 European countries. Fifteen acknowledge the existence of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis in their country. Regarding prenatal screening, we had 25 positive answers and 5 negative ones. Twenty-four POs mentioned that newborn screening was available in their country. We had some contradictory answers from POs from the same country and in some cases; diseases said to be part of the screening programmes were not hereditary disorders. Twenty-eight organisations were in favour of screening tests. The reasons for the two negative answers were lack of reimbursement and treatment, religious beliefs and eventual insurance constrains. Most POs (21) were in favour of systematic screening with the option to opt-out. Regarding the timing for screening, “at birth”, was the most consensual response. The main priority to perform screening for NMDs was early access to treatment, followed by shorter time to diagnostic, preventive care and genetic counselling.ConclusionsThis is the first study to assess knowledge and needs of POs concerning screening for NMDs. The knowledge of POs regarding screening techniques is quite uneven. This implies that, even in communities highly motivated and knowledgeable of the conditions they advocate for, there is a need for better information. Differences in the responses to the questions “how and when to screen” shows that the screening path depends on the disease and the presence of a disease modifying treatment. The unmet need for screening inherited NMDs should follow an adaptive pathway related to the fast moving medical landscape of NMDs. International coordination leading to a common policy would certainly be a precious asset tending to harmonize the situation amongst European countries.

IRAQI EFL COLLEGE INSTRUCTORS’ AWARENESS OF SOME OF THE PROBLEMS OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Applied linguistics is one of the most influential disciplines that appeared in the twentieth century. This discipline received a major interest in many western countries. In many Arab countries; this discipline started to receive the attention gradually. This research is an attempt to investigate Iraqi instructors’ background knowledge of applied linguistics at AL- Mustansiryiah University-English department and some instructors from different Iraqi universities. To collect the data, twenty instructors gave their opinions through a questionnaire, while, eight other instructors contributed through an interview. The results of this study showed a variation in the answers of the instructors. That is different and contradictory answers and opinions were given regarding some of the questions in the field. As a result, it is really preferable and recommended to do workshops to enhance the background knowledge of the instructors regarding this field.