Frequency Of Conflicts Research Articles

Landscape of pediatric cancer treatment refusal and abandonment in the US: A qualitative study.

To describe United States (US) pediatric oncologists' experiences with treatment refusal or abandonment, exploring types and frequency of decision-making conflicts, and their impact. We conducted exploratory qualitative interviews of pediatric oncologists (n = 30) with experience caring for a pediatric patient who refused or abandoned curative treatment. Interviewees were recruited using convenience and nominated expert sampling, soliciting experiences from diverse geographic locations and institution sizes across the US. We analyzed transcripts using applied thematic analysis to identify and refine meaningful domains. Many oncologists reported multiple experiences with refusal and abandonment. Most anticipated case frequency would increase due to misinformation, particularly on the internet. Interviewees described cases of treatment refusal and abandonment, but also a wider variety of cases than previously described in existing publications, including cases involving: non-adherence; negotiations for different treatments; negotiations for complementary and alternative medicine; delayed treatment initiation; and refusal of a component of recommended therapy. Cases often involved multiple stages or types of conflicts. Recurring patient/family behaviors emerged: clear opposition to treatment from the outset; hesitancy about treatment despite initiating therapy; and psychosocial circumstances becoming an obstacle to treatment completion. Oncologists revealed substantial professional and personal repercussions of these cases. Oncologist interviews highlight a broad range of conflicts, yielding a taxonomy of treatment refusal, non-adherence and abandonment (TRNA) that accounts for the heterogeneity of situations described. Cases' complexity and interrelatedness points to a functional model of TRNA that includes families' behaviors. This preliminary taxonomy and model warrant further research and examination to refine the model and generate strategies to prevent and mitigate TRNA.

Взаимосвязь самоотношения старшеклассников разного пола с частотой проявления когнитивно-эмоционального конфликта

Background. Despite a significant number of studies of self-attitude, the specifics of self-attitude in high school students of different sexes remains insufficiently studied due to the peculiarities of their conscious (cognitive) and emotional regulation. Objective. The target is to identify the relationship between the frequency of manifestations of cognitive-emotional conflict during the video dialogue with the parameters of self-attitude in high school students of different sexes. Methods. Manifestations of cognitive-emotional conflict were recorded in a video dialogue and identified on the basis of formalized integral expert assessments. During the dialogue, questions or approval of the methodology “Research of self-relationship” by S.R. Pantileev were pronounced aloud by the experimenter. The respondent had to answer aloud in detail, and after the answer spontaneous clarifying questions and remarks of the experimenter, uttered in order to provoke a cognitive-emotional conflict and to increase emotionality of the dialogue were possible. The dialogue was conducted by an experienced psychologist (woman). Sample. The study involved 37 people — schoolchildren, grades 8–11 (average age 15 years, standard deviation 1.5 years) from different cities of the Russian Federation (15 boys and 22 girls). Results. As a result of correlation analysis of 9 parameters of self-attitude and the frequency of occurrence of cognitive-emotional conflict, it was shown that the frequency of conflict is associated with the nature of self-attitude and has a pronounced gender specificity. It was revealed that boys have a significant correlation only with the scale "closedness — openness", while girls — with the scales "self-acceptance", "self-attachment", "internal conflict" and "self-accusation". Conclusions. It was found that the more are young men characterized by openness, reflection and self-criticism, the more often they manifest cognitive-emotional conflict in the experimental situation. In girls, the emergence of a cognitive-emotional conflict in a research situation is associated with a decrease in self-acceptance (a general negative background of self-perception), self-worth (dissatisfaction with oneself and the desire to change oneself), as well as a general high internal conflict and self-accusation. Practical application of the results. The results obtained are important both for differentiated education and for organizing more effective psychological support for students in the framework of educational work at school.

Enhanced index of risk assessment of lane change on expressway weaving segments: A case study of an expressway in China

Vehicles frequently change lanes at weaving segments, and there is a high probability of collision. To assess the risk of lane change, this study proposes a novel lane change risk assessment index (LCRAI), which takes both exposure time and conflict severity into consideration. First, the generalized time-to-collision (GTTC) and exposure-to-risk index (ERI) are proposed to evaluate conflicts during lane change, and then a spatiotemporal overlap analysis is applied to exclude the cases when two vehicles arrive at the conflict area at different times. Second, the change of velocity after a crash occurrence is calculated and used to evaluate the severity risk (SRI). Finally, ERI and SRI are combined to compute the LCRAI. A case study of a weaving segment is conducted, and the weaving segment is divided into four sections to compare their risks. Conflict frequency on the section close to the exit is the largest and it is smallest after passing the exit, while conflict severity is most serious just after entering the main line on the middle lane. As for both conflict frequency and severity, LCRAI shows that the middle section is the most dangerous while the last 100 m section is the safest in the weaving segment. The index proposed will contribute to the risk assessment of lane change in connected environments and improve safety in weaving segments of expressway combined with real-time safety countermeasures.

A master equation for power laws.

We propose a new mechanism for generating power laws. Starting from a random walk, we first outline a simple derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation. By analogy, starting from a certain Markov chain, we derive a master equation for power laws that describes how the number of cascades changes over time (cascades are consecutive transitions that end when the initial state is reached). The partial differential equation has a closed form solution which gives an explicit dependence of the number of cascades on their size and on time. Furthermore, the power law solution has a natural cut-off, a feature often seen in empirical data. This is due to the finite size a cascade can have in a finite time horizon. The derivation of the equation provides a justification for an exponent equal to 2, which agrees well with several empirical distributions, including Richardson's Law on the size and frequency of deadly conflicts. Nevertheless, the equation can be solved for any exponent value. In addition, we propose an urn model where the number of consecutive ball extractions follows a power law. In all cases, the power law is manifest over the entire range of cascade sizes, as shown through log-log plots in the frequency and rank distributions.

Analysis of lane-changing conflict between cars and trucks at freeway merging sections using UAV video data

The freeway on-ramp merging section is often identified as a crash-prone spot due to the high frequency of traffic conflicts. Cars and trucks have different sizes and operation characteristics, but very few traffic conflict analysis studies considered different vehicle types at freeway merging sections. Thus, the main objective of this study is to analyze lane-changing conflicts between different vehicle types at freeway merging sections. Vehicle trajectories are extracted from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) video data which are collected in Shanghai, China. Time-to-collision (TTC) is utilized as the surrogate safety measure (SSM) to analyze lane-changing conflicts. Results show that TTC values of car-car conflicts are the smallest, while truck-truck conflicts have the largest TTC values. Although traffic conflicts frequently occur at the on-ramp and additional rightmost lane, the spatial distribution of lane-changing conflicts is significantly different between different vehicle types. The findings of this study are useful for transportation management agencies to design proper strategies to improve traffic safety at freeway merging sections.

The Role of Relationship Conflict for Momentary Loneliness and Affect in the Daily Lives of Older Couples.

Background: Intimate partner relationships foster individuals' well-being throughout the lifespan. However, dissatisfying or conflict-laden relationships can have a detrimental impact on well-being and relationship quality. The majority of older adults live together with a spouse/partner, and intimate relationships are one of the most important social contexts in their daily lives. Purpose: Expanding on previous research, we examined the role of previous conflict on experiences of loneliness and affect in the daily lives of older partners from a dyadic perspective. Relationship duration and quality, personality traits (neuroticism and extraversion), conflict frequency during the measurement period, physical health as well as age were considered as moderators. Study Sample and Data Analysis: We used data from an experience sampling study with 151 older heterosexual couples (302 participants; 65+ years old) reporting on their positive and negative affect, loneliness, and previous experience of relationship conflict 6 times a day for 14days. Data were analyzed using dyadic multilevel models. Results: For both men and women within couples, previous conflict was associated with an increased experience of negative affect and loneliness and a decreased experience of positive affect. Higher neuroticism predicted less positive and more negative affect following conflict for women and more loneliness for men. Higher relationship satisfaction predicted less increase in negative affect after conflict for female partners. Age, relationship duration, physical health, extraversion, and the number of conflict episodes showed no moderating effects. Conclusions: Our results support the notion that relationship conflict deteriorates emotional well-being in old age and renders older adults lonelier even in the context of intimate partner relationships.

Changes in Home-Centered Religious Practices and Relational Wellbeing following the Initial Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

We explored associations between changes in the frequency of home-centered religious practices and family relational conflict, emotional closeness, and the perceived long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on relationships. The panel survey of 1,510 adult individuals in the United States, was administered during the summer of 2020. Given our interest in understanding changes in religious practices following the COVID-19 related closures of religious institutions, the panel included an intentional oversampling of religious individuals from diverse religious affiliations. We employed a mixed methods approach (integrated quantitative and qualitative measures). Controlling for a large group of demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity) and other factors (e.g., religiosity, stage of COVID-19 closures), OLS and logistic regressions found some significant associations between retrospectively reported changes in the frequency of religious practices and emotional closeness and perceived lasting impact of the pandemic on family well-being. Qualitative data from a subsample of survey participants (n = 624) suggested that family prayer, scripture study, shared sacred rituals, and home-based worship helped foster positive family interactions.

A cellular automata approach for modelling pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flow in urban city

In urban streets, the intrusion of pedestrians into the motorway will pose a considerable challenge. However, modelling mixed pedestrian-vehicle traffic scenes is difficult. Pedestrians and vehicles have different motion characteristics and spatial dimensions, so it is hard to carry out unified modelling, and there are few related studies. This paper combines the multi-grid cellular automata model to explore these scenes to connect the vehicle and pedestrian models. An Improved Kerner-Klenov-Wolf (IKKW) model and a pedestrian motion model considering Time-To-Collision (TTC) are proposed, in which the spatial motion of a vehicle and a pedestrian is uniformly updated horizontally and longitudinally. The preliminary analysis of the model shows that it has high simulation accuracy. Applying the model to the simulation of real-life situations, research results reveal the impact of pedestrian intrusion behavior on traffic and the changes in vehicles’ speed and flow rate caused by pedestrian intrusion behavior. The fundamental diagram of pedestrian-vehicle heterogeneous traffic shows significant differences, reflecting the impact of pedestrian intrusion on the state of traffic flow, and exposes six phase regions of pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flow. Moreover, this paper analyzes the conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles under different speed limits and sidewalk widths, showing that lower speeds and wider sidewalks can effectively reduce the frequency of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts. The peak conflicts’ frequency when the vehicles’ speed limit is 60.48 km/h exceeds three times that when the speed limit is 30.24 km/h. The cellular automata model proposed in this paper provides a good direction and idea for studying mixed traffic flow and has high scalability.

Parent‐adolescent conflict processes and their measurement: A systematic review

AbstractConflicts are frequently incorporated into research on parent‐adolescent relationships. However, empirical research has inconsistently used “parent‐adolescent conflict” as a broad and often singular term rather than processes involving a range of constructs. To understand the balance of attention to the constructs involved in parent‐adolescent conflicts, we conducted a systematic review of measures that were reported in peer‐reviewed journal articles between January 1, 1970 and January 31, 2021, across several disciplines. The initial search identified 17,036 references; after removing duplicates, excluding studies based on stated criteria, and adding 22 articles from reference lists, 467 articles were retained, and 568 measures were extracted from articles. Two types of content analysis (directed and conventional) were used to organize measures into categories. Findings reveal that conflict frequency, intensity, and quality of interactions are most often used while initiation and duration tend to be overlooked. Uneven coverage may generate biases in understanding parent‐adolescent conflict processes.

Real-time safety analysis using autonomous vehicle data: a Bayesian hierarchical extreme value model

This study proposes an approach for real-time road network safety analysis using autonomous vehicles (AVs) generated data. The approach utilises a Bayesian hierarchical spatial random parameter extreme value model (BHSRP). The model simultaneously addresses the scarcity and non-stationarity of conflict extremes and unobserved spatial heterogeneity. Two real-time safety metrics are estimated: the risk of crash (RC) and return level (RL). The RC and RL were applied to three months AVs data for evaluating the real-time safety level of an urban corridor in Palo Alto, California. The indicator time to collision (TTC) was used to characterise traffic conflicts. The conflict extreme was defined as the maxima of negated TTC in a 20-min interval (block). The results show that RC can differentiate the block-level risk level, while RL can reflect safety levels among blocks. For the RC, the hot (crash risk prone) segments and intersections are associated with more severe conflict frequency.

Change over time in interactions between unfamiliar toddlers

The frequency and length of games, conflicts, and contingency sequences that took place between toddlers as they got to know one another were studied using archival data. The sample consisted of 28 unfamiliar 20- and 30-month-old toddlers (predominantly White, 16 males) who met separately with each of two other toddlers for 18 play dates. The frequency of games increased over time, while the frequency of conflict and contingency sequences decreased. The length of games increased over time while the length of conflicts and contingency sequences were stable. Age and language ability predicted changes in frequency and length of the different types of sequences. Thus, toddlers engage in less structured interactions when they first meet; their interactions become increasingly more organized and positive as the relationship evolves.

Changing the blame game: Associations between relationship mindfulness, loneliness, negative partner attributions, and subsequent conflict

Given the important associations between couple conflict and various physical and mental health outcomes, it is essential to explore factors that may catalyze or exacerbate the frequency and impact of conflict in romantic relationships. One such factor may be relationship mindfulness, or the tendency to have a nonjudgmental awareness of one’s experiences in romantic relationships. Previous research has demonstrated a link between relationship mindfulness and various relational outcomes, but its association with relationship conflict has not yet been explored. Additionally, the current study sought to explore the mechanisms that link relationship mindfulness and relational outcomes. Based on previous research connecting conflict to negative partner attributions, the study examined how relationship mindfulness may predict conflict through negative partner attributions. Furthermore, the study aimed to incorporate loneliness as a potential mediator between relationship mindfulness and negative partner attributions. A sample of 116 different-sex middle-aged married couples were recruited to complete an online assessment. Using an actor–partner interdependence mediation model, the results indicated several significant associations among relationship mindfulness, negative partner attributions, loneliness, and relationship conflict. For example, a significant indirect effect was found; that is, female relationship mindfulness was associated with decreased relationship conflict via its prior association with both male loneliness and additionally through male loneliness and subsequent male negative partner attributions. The results indicate that by employing interventions that increase relationship mindfulness, it may be possible to both reduce loneliness and encourage more charitable partner attributions which, in turn, may reduce couple conflict.

Modeling conflict risk with real-time traffic data for road safety assessment: a copula-based joint approach

Abstract This study proposes a conflict-based traffic safety assessment method by associating conflict frequency and severity with short-term traffic characteristics. Instead of analysing historical crash data, this study employs microscopic trajectory data to quantify the relationship between conflict risk and traffic characteristics. The time-to-collision (TTC) index is used to detect conflicts, and a severity index (SI) is proposed on the basis of time-integrated TTC. With SI, the k-means algorithm is applied to classify the conflict severity level. Then the severity of regional conflict risk is split to three levels. Zero truncated Poisson regression and ordered logit regression methods are employed to estimate the effects of short-term traffic characteristics on conflict frequency and severity, respectively. Furthermore, the copula-based joint modelling method is applied to explore the potential non-linear dependency of conflict risk outcomes. A total of 18 copula models are tested to select the optimal ones. The HighD dataset from Germany is utilized to examine the proposed framework. Both between-lane and within-lane factors are considered. Results show that the correlations between traffic characteristics and conflict risk are significant, and the dependency of conflict outcomes varies among different severity levels. The difference of speed variation between lanes significantly influences the conflict frequency and severity simultaneously. Findings indicate that the proposed method is practicable to assess real-time traffic safety within a specific region by using short-term (30-second time interval) traffic characteristics. This study also contributes to develop targeted proactive safety strategies by evaluating road safety based on conflict risk, and considering different severity levels.

Seasonal pattern of resource conflict between farmers and herdsmen in benue state, nigeria

There is sparse literature on seasonal pattern of farmers and herdsmen conflict in Benue State, Nigeria despite numerous links between climate change and resource conflict. Thus, this study was designed to assess the seasonal occurrence of armed conflict in Benue State and analyze the monthly death casualties of armed conflict in Benue state from 2010-2019. Data were collected from secondary sources such as report of Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria watch data base and Newspapers. Data were presented in tables and analyzed using descriptive statistic such as range, mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation. Result shows that monthly occurrence of armed conflict ranged from 0-20 times with mean value of 4.92 and 98% coefficient of variation. March has the highest number (20) of armed conflict occurrence followed by April and, then July. October had zero (0) record of armed conflict from 2010-2019. Similarly, the monthly conflict death was higher in dry than rainy season. Monthly death ranged from 0-590 with mean value of 106 deaths and 95 % coefficient of variation. It was concluded that both the frequency and death casualties of resource conflict in Benue State have seasonal pattern and were more in dry than rainy season. Intensification of resolution mechanisms and ranching were recommended.

Dynamic impacts of intermittent trade conflicts

AbstractThis paper examines how intermittent trade conflicts affect production, investment and exports of an industry that produces for both domestic and international markets. We construct a dynamic stochastic model of a representative profit maximising firm that is exposed to intermittent trade conflicts. We then extend the firm‐level model to an industry comprising a continuum of firms with heterogeneous production costs and calibrate its parameters to reflect the stylised facts of Chinese manufacturers between 2005 and 2007. We find that an exporting firm's response to the eruption of a trade conflict depends critically on its cost of production, with low‐cost firms temporarily adjusting production but continuing to export, and high‐cost firms permanently exiting the international market. We also find that an industry can respond quickly to the onset and cessation of a trade conflict. We further predict that in the long run, the severity of trade conflicts has increasing marginal impacts on industry exports, whereas the duration and frequency of conflicts have diminishing marginal impacts. Lastly, we argue that if the government desires to fully restore industry exports or value to pre‐conflict levels, the most efficient policy is to subsidise capital investment.

Transcription–replication conflicts in primordial germ cells necessitate the Fanconi anemia pathway to safeguard genome stability

Preserving a high degree of genome integrity and stability in germ cells is of utmost importance for reproduction and species propagation. However, the regulatory mechanisms of maintaining genome stability in the developing primordial germ cells (PGCs), in which rapid proliferation is coupled with global hypertranscription, remain largely unknown. Here, we find that mouse PGCs encounter a constitutively high frequency of transcription-replication conflicts (TRCs), which lead to R-loop accumulation and impose endogenous replication stress on PGCs. We further demonstrate that the Fanconi anemia (FA) pathway is activated by TRCs and has a central role in the coordination between replication and transcription in the rapidly proliferating PGCs, as disabling the FA pathway leads to TRC and R-loop accumulation, replication fork destabilization, increased DNA damage, dramatic loss of mitotically dividing mouse PGCs, and consequent sterility of both sexes. Overall, our findings uncover the unique source and resolving mechanism of endogenous replication stress during PGC proliferation, provide a biological explanation for reproductive defects in individuals with FA, and improve our understanding of the monitoring strategies for genome stability during germ cell development.

Religious Beliefs of Students from Public Schools in Bogota

The article presents the results of a quantitative research that aimed to characterize young people from Bogotá, who study in public schools, regarding their religious identity, practices and beliefs; the subjective importance they give to religion; and the perceived conflicts between the latter and science. Through descriptive statistics, the article presents and interprets the data provided by a survey applied in 2019 to a random sample of students enrolled in the last grade in public schools of Bogotá. The following findings stand out: the high percentage of young people who no longer identify with Catholicism; and those who, although they have religious beliefs, are not part of a church or community of worshippers. Additionally, data indicate that religious identity, religious beliefs, participation in religious rites, and the frequency of conflicts between religious beliefs and scientific explanations vary with respect to young people’s sex and gender identity.

Better Decision Heuristics in CDCL through Local Search and Target Phases

On practical applications, state-of-the-art SAT solvers dominantly use the conflict-driven clause learning (CDCL) paradigm. An alternative for satisfiable instances is local search solvers, which is more successful on random and hard combinatorial instances. Although there have been attempts to combine these methods in one framework, a tight integration which improves the state of the art on a broad set of application instances has been missing. We present a combination of techniques that achieves such an improvement. Our first contribution is to maximize in a local search fashion the assignment trail in CDCL, by sticking to and extending promising assignments via a technique called target phases. Second, we relax the CDCL framework by again extending promising branches to complete assignments while ignoring conflicts. These assignments are then used as starting point of local search which tries to find improved assignments with fewer unsatisfied clauses. Third, these improved assignments are imported back to the CDCL loop where they are used to determine the value assigned to decision variables. Finally, the conflict frequency of variables in local search can be exploited during variable selection in branching heuristics of CDCL. We implemented these techniques to improve three representative CDCL solvers (Glucose, MapleLcm DistChronoBT, and Kissat). Experiments on benchmarks from the main tracks of the last three SAT Competitions from 2019 to 2021 and an additional benchmark set from spectrum allocation show that the techniques bring significant improvements, particularly and not surprisingly, on satisfiable real-world application instances. We claim that these techniques were essential to the large increase in performance witnessed in the SAT Competition 2020 where Kissat and Relaxed LcmdCbDl NewTech were leading the field followed by CryptoMiniSAT-Ccnr, which also incorporated similar ideas.

Conflict in Virtual Teams & Necessity of Cultural Intelligence for Effective Performance

Applying an Input-Processes-Output model of team processes, we view cultural intelligence as an input variable to global virtual teams, which could help reduce one procedural aspect of team dynamics – frequency of conflicts– and consequently influence the team outcome performance. Utilizing data from a sample of 1592 global virtual teams (consisting of 7029 individuals) we tested for the effects of cultural intelligence on conflict frequency by type and team performance at both the individual and team level. Results showed that cultural intelligence exerts its effect on both individual process performance (e.g., team member satisfaction with the project) and team outcome performance (e.g., grade of the final team report) indirectly via reduction of team conflict frequency. The effects of conflict on outcome performance were differential depending on the type of conflict, which corresponds with previous literature findings. Overall, the study suggests that educators and practitioners can utilize and develop the cultural intelligence of global virtual team members to decrease negative conflict frequency and ultimately increase global virtual team performance. The study contributes to research on cultural intelligence and conflict within the context of global virtual teams.

Creating a Better Workplace for Global Virtual Teams: The Influence of the “Strongest Link”

In virtual spaces, misunderstandings in communication are common due to a lack of non-verbal cues or imprecise language. Utilizing a sample of 3578 participants in 755 global virtual teams (GVTs), we studied the links between the maximum cultural intelligence (MaxCQ) score, team communication frequency and conflict frequency as important elements of the GVTs environment. We also tested for their ultimate effects on GVT process performance via team satisfaction. We utilize the conceptualization of MaxCQ as a “strongest link in the team” argument (Brownell et al, 2021) to explain how it works; namely, via MaxCQ’s effect on reducing conflict frequency during a GVT project. We also found evidence that increased communication decreased conflict frequency leading to positive team satisfaction effects. The results suggest that staffing GVTs with individuals scoring high on CQ and increasing team communication frequency overall can lead to better team processes and result in overall team satisfaction. We found no evidence of MaxCQ affecting communication frequency. This supports the notion that future research should concentrate on communication quality instead of frequency, which might show a relationship between these two variables.