Explanation For Inconsistency Research Articles

Aristotle on Materiate Paronymy: Concerning an Apparent Inconsistency in Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Abstract Aristotle offers apparently inconsistent explanations for paronymous expressions derived from matter: on the received picture, derived from Metaphysics Θ.7, such expressions are used in all and only cases of substantial change, because predicating the matter directly of a substance would be false; on the error picture, derived from Metaphysics Z.7, the same expressions are used in all and only cases of change from an unclear and nameless privation, because ordinary language users conflate such privations with matter. I propose a resolution: the received picture explains why the usage is fitting, but the error picture explains how the usage originated.

Reconciling founder variant multiplicity of HIV-1 infection with the rate of CD4+ decline.

HIV-1 transmission precipitates a stringent genetic bottleneck, with 75% of new infections initiated by a single genetic variant. Where multiple variants initiate infection, recipient set point viral load (SpVL) and the rate of CD4+ T cell decline may be elevated, but these findings remain inconsistent. Here, we summarised the evidence for this phenomenon, then tested whether previous studies possessed sufficient statistical power to reliably identify a true effect of multiple variant infection leading to higher SpVL. Next, we combined models of HIV-1 transmission, heritability and disease progression to understand whether available data suggest a faster CD4+ T cell decline would be expected to associated with multiple variant infection, without an explicit dependency between the two. First, we found that most studies had insufficient power to identify a true significant difference, prompting an explanation for previous inconsistencies. Next, our model framework revealed we would not expect to observe a positive association between multiple variant infections and faster CD4+ T cell decline, in the absence of an explicit dependency. Consequently, while empirical evidence may be consistent with a positive association between multiple variant infection and faster CD4+ T cell decline, further investigation is required to establish a causal basis.

Contribution of Green Home Appliances in the Green Economy

Environmental deterioration achieved by customers' non-practical usage design is squeezing the climate and is deterring manageable turn of events. To ruin this effect and animate a more feasible economic development, one arrangement is to diminish or move use designs from traditional items to eco-friendly items. The creators directed an audit investigation of green buy conduct research across the 6-year period from 2015 to 2021, distinguishing 108 examinations that met our incorporation rules. The current survey recognizes distinctive unavoidable facilitators, intentions, and snags affecting customers' dynamic cycle towards environmentally friendly items, and it gives likely explanations for logical inconsistencies found in green buy conduct (GPB). The paper uncovers the fundamental determinants of purchaser's GPB, and in light of the survey, 212 factors that influence green buy aim (GPI) were distinguished. In addition, 135 determinants that influence GPB were recorded. Thusly, other than adding to the writing, it will help policymakers in detailing and utilizing techniques to convince eco-friendly buying, and it will offer a chance for advertisers to create appropriate promoting systems for attracting customers and ensuring ideal deals.

Prevalence and concentration of aflatoxin M1 in breast milk in Africa: a meta-analysis and implication for the interface of agriculture and health

Breast milk is one of the many distinct forms of food that can be contaminated with aflatoxin M1 (AFM1). They may be consumed by eating contaminated foods, such as contaminated meat and crops, which would then be present in breast milk and cause health problems, including nervous system disorders and cancers of the lungs, liver, kidneys, and urinary tract. However, the prevalently inconsistent explanation of prevalence and concentration remains a big challenge. Thus, this meta-analysis was conducted to determine the prevalence and concentration of harmful chemicals in breast milk in an African context. The databases MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase, SCOPUS, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched for both published and unpublished research. To conduct the analysis, the collected data were exported to Stata version 18. The results were shown using a forest plot and a prevalence with a 95% confidence interval (CI) using the random-effects model. The Cochrane chi-square (I2) statistics were used to measure the studies' heterogeneity, and Egger's intercept was used to measure publication bias. This review included twenty-eight studies with 4016 breast milk samples and newborns. The analysis showed the overall prevalence and concentration of aflatoxin M1 in breast milk were 53% (95% CI 40, 65; i2 = 98.26%; P = 0.001). The pooled mean aflatoxin M1 concentration in breast milk was 93.02 ng/l. According to this study, the eastern region of Africa was 62% (95% CI 39–82) profoundly affected as compared to other regions of the continent. In subgroup analysis by publication year, the highest level of exposure to aflatoxins (68%; 95% CI 47–85) was observed among studies published from 2010 to 2019. This finding confirmed that more than half of lactating women’s breast milk was contaminated with aflatoxin M1 in Africa. The pooled mean aflatoxin M1 concentration in breast milk was 93.02 ng/l. According to this study, the eastern region of Africa was profoundly affected compared with other regions. Thus, the government and all stakeholders must instigate policies that mitigate the toxicity of aflatoxins in lactating women, fetuses, and newborns.

Limitations of recent cellulose studies: How overzealous dispersion technique, fluorescence labeling and interpretation limit the findings of recent safety assessments for cellulose materials

Microfibrillated, nanofibrillated, and nanocrystalline cellulose materials are next-generation biobased cellulose materials with applications in the food industry as food contact materials and functional ingredients. Manufacturers have adopted a proactive approach to demonstrate the safety of these cellulose materials as they contribute toward a more sustainable economy. Animal studies and alternative testing approaches are needed to fill data gaps in the literature for the physicochemical and toxicological characterization of cellulose materials. Recently, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) funded a project that used New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) to assess the hazards of nanofibers, including methods to evaluate simulated gastrointestinal digestion, cellular uptake, local effects via simulated oral exposure, and gut-on-a-chip toxicity models. Upon review, we identified methodological and analytical limitations in these studies, which may affect the study conclusions that oral exposure to cellulose materials is associated with adverse effects. The aim of this Short Communication is to discuss the limitations of the reported findings in the NAM study and provide a balanced perspective of the study and of the safety of cellulose materials. This Short Communication highlights a major concern that the NAM study was published in the public domain without any peer review from cellulose experts. We identify and discuss several major limitations, including an unrealistic dispersion method, lack of controls in fluorescent labeling, lack of proper control groups in the experimental design, incomplete reporting of statistical analyses, bias toward reporting adverse effects, and inconsistent explanations of discordant results within the greater scientific literature.

Reactance to Persuasive Messages Depends on Felt Obligation

Psychological reactance theory suggests that the higher the threat-level of persuasive messages, the higher the reactance. Previous research has revealed ways to manipulate messages to either arouse or reduce psychological reactance. By contrast, the current work compares people’s reactance across different target actions while keeping the threat-level of the message consistent. We propose that reactance to a message depends on the target action’s pre-existing felt obligation. We demonstrate that low-obligation actions are more sensitive than high-obligation actions to the threat-level of a persuasive message. The current work provides one explanation for inconsistencies in the literature regarding message effects. This work also suggests that pre-existing obligation of a target action should be accounted for in order to successfully implement a message intervention.

Executive function's structure in monolingual and bilingual adults using confirmatory factor analysis

Abstract In processing their two languages, bilinguals have to selectively attend to the target language and reduce interference from the non-target language. This experience may have specific cognitive consequences on Executive Functions (EF) through bilingual language processing. Some studies found cognitive consequences in executive functioning skills. However, other studies did not replicate these findings or found a bilingual disadvantage. The aim of this study was to test for the cognitive consequences of bilingualism in EF among a large number of young adults using a latent variable approach, to rule out non-EF task differences as an explanation for inconsistency across studies. Also, we were interested in testing the EF structure using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) approach. The results did not support a cognitive consequence of bilingualism and also the EF structure was the same for both groups. We discuss other possible variables that might contribute to the mixed results across studies.

Explaining Generalization Power of a DNN Using Interactive Concepts

This paper explains the generalization power of a deep neural network (DNN) from the perspective of interactions. Although there is no universally accepted definition of the concepts encoded by a DNN, the sparsity of interactions in a DNN has been proved, i.e., the output score of a DNN can be well explained by a small number of interactions between input variables. In this way, to some extent, we can consider such interactions as interactive concepts encoded by the DNN. Therefore, in this paper, we derive an analytic explanation of inconsistency of concepts of different complexities. This may shed new lights on using the generalization power of concepts to explain the generalization power of the entire DNN. Besides, we discover that the DNN with stronger generalization power usually learns simple concepts more quickly and encodes fewer complex concepts. We also discover the detouring dynamics of learning complex concepts, which explains both the high learning difficulty and the low generalization power of complex concepts. The code will be released when the paper is accepted.

Salt-rich versus salt-poor structural scenarios in the central Northern Calcareous Alps: implications for the Hallstatt facies and early Alpine tectonic evolution (Eastern Alps, Austria)

One of the most remarkable features of the central Northern Calcareous Alps (Eastern Alps, Austria) is the widespread presence of Upper Triassic deep-water carbonates (the Hallstatt facies) and Permo-Triassic evaporites resting on deep-water Middle Jurassic strata and their underlying Upper Triassic shallow-water carbonate platform successions. The Hallstatt facies and accompanying evaporites have been classically interpreted to originate either from a location south of the time-equivalent carbonate platforms, or to have been deposited in deeper water seaways within the broad platform domain. To date, this dispute has been addressed mostly through the analysis of Triassic and Jurassic facies distribution in map view, which, however, is subject to some degree of ambiguity and subjectivity. In this contribution we present, for the first time, sequentially restored regional cross-sections through the central Northern Calcareous Alps to understand the implications of the contrasting paleogeographic models. We present (a) an interpretation based on a highly allochthonous origin of the Triassic deep-water units and (b) an interpretation based on their relative autochthony in which we incorporate the potential influence of salt tectonics in the central NCA. The restored cross-sections provide a framework within which the alternative scenarios and their paleogeographic implications can be better understood. Through this analysis we propose that salt tectonics in the central NCA can provide a valid explanation for apparent inconsistencies in the relative autochthony scenario and thus constitutes a reasonable alternative to the currently accepted allochthony scenario.Graphical abstract

Specific-cytokine associations with outcomes in knee osteoarthritis subgroups: breaking down disease heterogeneity with phenotyping

BackgroundDespite existing extensive literature, a comprehensive and clinically relevant classification system for osteoarthritis (OA) has yet to be established. In this study, we aimed to further characterize four knee OA (KOA) inflammatory phenotypes (KOIP) recently proposed by our group, by identifying the inflammatory factors associated with KOA severity and progression in a phenotype-specific manner.MethodsWe performed an analysis within each of the previously defined four KOIP groups, to assess the association between KOA severity and progression and a panel of 13 cytokines evaluated in the plasma and synovial fluid of our cohort’s patients. The cohort included 168 symptomatic female KOA patients with persistent joint effusion.ResultsOverall, our analyses showed that associations with KOA outcomes were of higher magnitude within the KOIP groups than for the overall patient series (all p-values < 1.30e−16) and that several of the cytokines showed a KOIP-specific behaviour regarding their associations with KOA outcomes.ConclusionOur study adds further evidence supporting KOA as a multifaceted syndrome composed of multiple phenotypes with differing pathophysiological pathways, providing an explanation for inconsistencies between previous studies focussed on the role of cytokines in OA and the lack of translational results to date. Our findings also highlight the potential clinical benefits of accurately phenotyping KOA patients, including improved patient stratification, tailored therapies, and the discovery of novel treatments.

Change in quantitative bipolar argumentation: Sufficient, necessary, and counterfactual explanations

This paper presents a formal approach to explaining change of inference in Quantitative Bipolar Argumentation Frameworks (QBAFs). When drawing conclusions from a QBAF and updating the QBAF to then again draw conclusions (and so on), our approach traces changes – which we call strength inconsistencies – in the partial order over argument strengths that a semantics establishes on some arguments of interest, called topic arguments. We trace the causes of strength inconsistencies to specific arguments, which then serve as explanations. We identify sufficient, necessary, and counterfactual explanations for strength inconsistencies and show that strength inconsistency explanations exist if and only if an update leads to strength inconsistency. We define a heuristic-based approach to facilitate the search for strength inconsistency explanations, for which we also provide an implementation.

On peoples, history, and sovereignty

ABSTRACTThe article opens with materials from the author’s research among east Slavs in Poland: a close-up portrayal of villagers classified as Ukrainians in the Polish People’s Republic, some of whom had no developed national consciousness; and an equally brief account of a postsocialist project in a nearby city, in which the boundaries between rival peoples were clearly drawn. Explanations for inconsistencies between individuals and enduring tensions between groups must be sought in the complicated history of this ethnic borderland. Collective identities and peoplehood are plastic. Outcomes are shaped by many factors: language and religion are fundamental, but account must also be taken of the contingencies of imperial politics, violence, industrialization, and the aspirations of intellectuals. The distinction between historical and non-historical peoples is found to be useful, but neither Ernest Gellner’s theory of nationalism nor conventional accounts of colonialism have much traction in this case. The implicit presentism of those who sacralize state boundaries at one point in time in the name of “sovereignty” has affinities with the functionalist presentism developed by Bronisław Malinowski in very different, non-European contexts. While that paradigm has few adherents nowadays, Malinowski’s posthumous critique of the state and “political sovereignty” is salutary for understanding the ongoing catastrophe in Ukraine.

Does Trauma Center Volume Account for the Association Between Trauma Center Verification Level and In-Hospital Mortality among Children Injured by Firearms in California?

Heterogeneity in trauma center designation and injury volume offer possible explanations for inconsistencies in pediatric trauma center designation's association with lower mortality among children. We hypothesized that rigorous trauma center verification, regardless of volume, would be associated with lower firearm injury-associated mortality in children. This retrospective cohort study leveraged the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development patient discharge data. Data from children aged 0 to 14 years in California from 2005 to 2018 directly transported with firearm injuries were analyzed. American College of Surgeons (ACS) trauma center verification level was the primary predictor of in-hospital mortality. Centers' annual firearm injury volume data were analyzed as a mediator of the association between center verification level and in-hospital mortality. Two mixed-effects multivariable logistic regressions modeled in-hospital mortality and the estimated association with center verification while adjusting for patient demographic and clinical characteristics. One model included the center's firearm injury volume and one did not. The cohort included 2,409 children with a mortality rate of 8.6% (n = 206). Adjusted odds of mortality were lower for children at adult level I (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.38, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.80), pediatric (aOR 0.17, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.61), and dual (aOR 0.48, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.93) trauma centers compared to nontrauma/level III/IV centers. Firearm injury volume did not mediate the association between ACS trauma center verification and mortality (aOR/10 patient increase in volume 1.01, 95% CI 0.99 to 1.03). Trauma center verification level, regardless of firearm injury volume, was associated with lower firearm injury-associated mortality, suggesting that the ACS verification process is contributing to achieving optimal outcomes.

Bridging the gap: the influence of information and education on acceptance of environmental taxes in Switzerland

Mitigating climate change remains a challenge for politics since efficient instruments such as environmental taxes are widely unpopular, with one determinant of objection being a lack of knowledge. Trying to increase environmental tax acceptance, previous studies found positive, negative as well as no effects of information treatments about environmental taxes. Contributing to this inconclusive research, I apply MOSAiCH 2020 panel data from Switzerland, calculating the causal effect of receiving an environmental tax information treatment on willingness to pay them. While the information effect was inconsistent for the full sample, information significantly increases green tax acceptance of less educated people. This subgroup effect hence offers an explanation for previous inconsistencies by showing that information does not affect everyone equally. Especially for less educated people, receiving information about the functioning of environmental taxes might therefore prove crucial for policymakers to gain majority support of environmental taxes necessary for their implementation.

Toward Reliable Software Analytics: Systematic Integration of Explanations From Different Model-Agnostic Techniques

Recently, software analytics began to explain the reasons behind the predictions of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models for various aspects of software projects using model-agnostic techniques derived from explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) domain. However, there is no guarantee that different modelagnostic techniques generate consistent explanations for the same predictions. Therefore, practitioners may obtain different insights depending on the technique they use. This article discusses in detail the problems caused by the inconsistent explanations generated from different model-agnostic techniques. In addition, we propose a method to integrate inconsistent explanations to derive information which can provide more useful and reliable software analytics to practitioners. Lastly, we discuss the future research directions for which explainable artificial intelligence for software engineering (XAI4SE) community to carry forward in exploiting the practical value of model-agnostic techniques.

Social exclusion and consumer responses: A comprehensive review and theoretical framework

AbstractWhile social exclusion in the consumption context has gained significant interest recently, its literature remains fragmented and underexplored due to restricted categorization and limited conceptual lenses. This systematic review attempts to broaden social exclusion literature by including multiple possible aspects of social exclusion, and providing a nuanced approach to identifying changes in the consumption response of excluded individuals. Using the ‘Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Review’ (SPAR‐4‐SLR) protocol to assemble, arrange and assess studies published between 2010 and 2021, we selected 83 studies as the basis of this review. With the objective of providing a synthesized view of the existing literature and presenting possible explanations for inconsistencies, this article (a) undertakes a systematic review of the existing research in the domain, (b) introduces a conceptual framework and (c) provides a taxonomy to categorize diverse strands of consumption responses. Identifying gaps, this study also provides directions for future research using the Theory, Characteristics, Context and Methodology (TCCM) framework. This study can thus enable marketers, advertisers and public policymakers to understand the needs of socially excluded individuals, and subsequently make more inclusive decisions.

Impact of Contract Specificity and Enforcement on Channel Opportunism and Conflict

ABSTRACT Purpose Scholars have conducted extensive research regarding contractual governance in marketing channels. Operationalizing contractual governance intensity as contract specificity, researchers focused on the impact of contract specificity, while little effort has been paid to the impact of contract enforcement. As a distinct construct of contractual governance mechanism, contract enforcement largely determines the integrity of contracts and the effectiveness of their coordination effects. Dividing contractual governance into contract specificity and contract enforcement, this paper examines the direct and interactive effects of contract specificity and contract enforcement on channel opportunism and conflict. It tries to answer: (1) How do contract specificity and distributor contract enforcement affect supplier opportunism and channel conflict respectively? (2) What are the interactive effect of specificity and enforcement when they are considered simultaneously? Methodology/Approach The paper proposed a research model by taking contract specificity, distributor contract enforcement and their interaction as the antecedents, and supplier opportunism and channel conflict between distributor and supplier as the consequences. To test the model, with the help of a large domestic household appliance supplier in China, we collected data from the side of distributors, and analyzed the data from 607 valid responses with structural equation model (SEM). Findings Both contract specificity and distributor contract enforcement would respectively inhibit supplier opportunism, and supplier opportunism in turn would be positively associated with channel conflict. On the other hand, distributor contract enforcement would increase, while contract specificity would have an insignificant impact on, channel conflict. In addition, interaction between distributor contract enforcement and contract specificity would reduce both supplier opportunism and channel conflict. Originality/Value/Contribution This paper tries to make three contributions. First, it investigated the impact of contractual governance in marketing channels in more depth by dividing contractual governance into two dimensions, namely contractual specificity and contract enforcement, enriching the literature of contractual governance in marketing channels. Second, it empirically tested the impacts of contract enforcement on supplier opportunism and channel conflict between distributor and supplier, to which previous studies have paid little attention. Third, it for the first time considered the interactive effects of contract specificity and contract enforcement on channel opportunism and channel conflict. As a result, it provides a new line of explanation for previous inconsistencies in the effect of contract specificity on channel opportunism as well as channel enforcement on channel opportunism. Practical implications Firms are encouraged to draft specific contracts with their channel partners despite the time and effort required by both parties based on the findings of this research and previous studies. However, contracts should be carefully enforced. According to the findings of this study, if imposed highly strict, contract enforcement may intensify channel conflict between partners.

Federated Onboard-Ground Station Computing With Weakly Supervised Cascading Pyramid Attention Network for Satellite Image Analysis

With advances in NanoSat (CubeSat) and high-resolution sensors, the amount of raw data to be analyzed by human supervisors has been explosively increasing for satellite image analysis. To reduce the raw data, the satellite onboard AI processing with low-power COTS (Commercial, Off-The-Shelf) HW has emerged from a real satellite mission. It filters the useless data (e.g. cloudy images) that is worthless to supervisors, achieving efficient satellite-ground station communication. In the application for complex object recognition, however, additional explanation is required for the reliability of the AI prediction due to its low performance. Although various eXplainable AI (XAI) methods for providing human-interpretable explanation have been studied, the pyramid architecture in a deep network leads to the background bias problem which visual explanation only focuses on the background context around the object. Missing the small objects in a tiny region leads to poor explainability although the AI model corrects the object class. To resolve the problems, we propose a novel federated onboard-ground station (FOGS) computing with Cascading Pyramid Attention Network (CPANet) for reliable onboard XAI in object recognition. We present an XAI architecture with a cascading attention mechanism for mitigating the background bias for the onboard processing. By exploiting the localization ability in pyramid feature blocks, we can extract high-quality visual explanation covering the both semantic and small contexts of an object. For enhancing visual explainability of complex satellite images, we also describe a novel computing federation with the ground station and supervisors. In the ground station, active learning-based sample selection and attention refinement scheme with a simple feedback method are conducted to achieve the robustness of explanation and efficient supervisor’s annotation cost, simultaneously. Experiments on various datasets show that the proposed system improves accuracy in object recognition and accurate visual explanation detecting small contexts of objects even in a peripheral region. Then, our attention refinement mechanism demonstrates that the inconsistent explanation can be efficiently resolved only with very simple selection-based feedback.

Novel Loss-of-Function Mutations in DNAH1 Displayed Different Phenotypic Spectrum in Humans and Mice.

Male infertility is a prevalent disorder distressing an estimated 70 million people worldwide. Despite continued progress in understanding the causes of male infertility, idiopathic sperm abnormalities such as multiple morphological abnormalities of sperm flagella (MMAF) still account for about 30% of male infertility. Recurrent mutations in DNAH1 have been reported to cause MMAF in various populations, but the underlying mechanism is still poorly explored. This study investigated the MMAF phenotype of two extended consanguineous Pakistani families without manifesting primary ciliary dyskinesia symptoms. The transmission electron microscopy analysis of cross-sections of microtubule doublets revealed a missing central singlet of microtubules and a disorganized fibrous sheath. SPAG6 staining, a marker generally used to check the integration of microtubules of central pair, further confirmed the disruption of central pair in the spermatozoa of patients. Thus, whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed, and WES analysis identified two novel mutations in the DNAH1 gene that were recessively co-segregating with MMAF phenotype in both families. To mechanistically study the impact of identified mutation, we generated Dnah1 mice models to confirm the in vivo effects of identified mutations. Though Dnah1 △iso1/△iso1 mutant mice represented MMAF phenotype, no significant defects were observed in the ultrastructure of mutant mice spermatozoa. Interestingly, we found DNAH1 isoform2 in Dnah1 △iso1/△iso1 mutant mice that may be mediating the formation of normal ultrastructure in the absence of full-length protein. Altogether we are first reporting the possible explanation of inconsistency between mouse and human DNAH1 mutant phenotypes, which will pave the way for further understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanism of MMAF.

Exploring the interactive influence on landscape preference from multiple visual attributes: Openness, richness, order, and depth

Interactions among visual attributes shape people's landscape preferences. Insufficient understanding of the interactions often leads to inconsistent explanations of the main influencing factors of landscape preference. We analyzed 488 respondents' perceptions of four visual attributes and their preferences of a set of simulated landscape scenes simultaneously to explore the relationships between visual attributes and landscape preference. These scenes were generated by manipulating a real-world photo to create gradients in the openness of visual scale, the richness of composing elements, the orderliness of organization, and the depth of view while keeping other attributes constant. Our results provide direct evidence of the interactive influences of different visual attributes on landscape preference. Respondents preferred landscape scenes with high openness and high sense of order. The high richness of landscape elements could affect preference positively when the landscape kept a good sense of order. The depth of view only affected landscape preference significantly when the landscape had a moderate level of openness. Future studies on landscape preference should pay attention to the interactive nature of visual attributes and avoid making interpretations based on a single visual attribute.