Potential Ambiguity Research Articles

Oxygen therapy: time to move on?

This analysis examines the roots of clinical practice regarding oxygen therapy and finds that some aspects have changed very little over the past 200 years. Oxygen is commonly prescribed and administered as a therapy across all healthcare settings, particularly for the treatment and management of respiratory conditions, both acute and chronic. Yet despite its widespread use and recent advances in understanding and guidance, poor practice and controversies regarding its use persist. This historical analysis highlights origins in practice that may suggest where the roots of these fallacies lie, highlighting potential ambiguities and myths that have permeated clinical and social contexts. It can be considered that based on clinical presumptions and speculation the prolific and injudicious use of oxygen was encouraged and the legacy for today's practice seeded. The conjectures proposed here may enable modern day erroneous beliefs to be confronted and clinical practice to move on.

Taxation of Trade Representative Offices

This article discusses issues associated with the taxation of trading representative offices in Indonesia and potential ambiguities involved in the application of Minister of Finance Regulation No. 634/KMK.04/1994.

Rosemarie Trockel and the Body of Society

This article considers the eclectic early work of German artist Rosemarie Trockel, which the author addresses in relation to the specific historical and political conditions of feminism and difference in postwar Germany. Her argument discusses the ways in which the very subject of ‘difference’ in postwar Germany was conflicted –approaching a taboo – that impacted the nature of the sexual revolution, postwar politics, and the subsequent emergence of the feminist movement within and outside of the artworld. In turn, the author examines how Trockel’s art negotiates gender in similarly complex terms, impacting ongoing debates around her work’s political allegiances and its potential ambiguities.

Wilcoxon's signed-rank statistic: what null hypothesis and why it matters.

In statistical literature, the term 'signed-rank test' (or 'Wilcoxon signed-rank test') has been used to refer to two distinct tests: a test for symmetry of distribution and a test for the median of a symmetric distribution, sharing a common test statistic. To avoid potential ambiguity, we propose to refer to those two tests by different names, as 'test for symmetry based on signed-rank statistic' and 'test for median based on signed-rank statistic', respectively. The utility of such terminological differentiation should become evident through our discussion of how those tests connect and contrast with sign test and one-sample t-test. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Practical Linguistic Steganography using Contextual Synonym Substitution and a Novel Vertex Coding Method

Linguistic steganography is concerned with hiding information in natural language text. One of the major transformations used in linguistic steganography is synonym substitution. However, few existing studies have studied the practical application of this approach. In this article we propose two improvements to the use of synonym substitution for encoding hidden bits of information. First, we use the Google n-gram corpus for checking the applicability of a synonym in context, and we evaluate this method using data from the SemEval lexical substitution task and human annotated data. Second, we address the problem that arises from words with more than one sense, which creates a potential ambiguity in terms of which bits are represented by a particular word. We develop a novel method in which words are the vertices in a graph, synonyms are linked by edges, and the bits assigned to a word are determined by a vertex coding algorithm. This method ensures that each word represents a unique sequence of bits, without cutting out large numbers of synonyms, and thus maintains a reasonable embedding capacity.

Saccadic inhibition can cause the remote distractor effect, but the remote distractor effect may not be a useful concept

We have suggested that the remote distractor effect (RDE), the elevation of average saccadic reaction time (SRT) induced by a task-irrelevant distractor, may be explained as a statistical consequence of a characteristic reshaping of the SRT distribution known as saccadic inhibition (SI; Buonocore & McIntosh, 2008). In a recent paper, Walker and Benson (2013) argue against this idea and claim that the RDE and SI are partly dissociable. Here, we examine this claim, taking the opportunity to clarify potential ambiguities about how SI affects average SRT, and how the presence of SI can be inferred from SRT distributions.We highlight what we consider to be the most interesting aspects of Walker and Benson’s data, and suggest that a more flexible and nuanced view of SI can account for them. In considering the relation between SI and the RDE, we conclude that the RDE may no longer be a useful concept for eye movement researchers.

A Refinement Technique for Duplication and Collision Between Features in Software Product Line Engineering

In software product line engineering (SPLE), many studies have been conducted on commonality- and variability-based feature extraction methods and on the reasoning and refinement of feature models (FMs), aiming to enhance the appropriateness and reusability of the constructed FMs in compliance with feature-oriented development. The existing methods, however, failed to assure the developed applications that contain ambiguities between the features generated in FMs by analyzers' intuitions, and hindered the reuse of such applications. Moreover, the accuracy measurements of models based on mathematics-based theoretical verification methods are difficult to apply in practice. Therefore, a refinement technique is demanded to enhance the FM accuracy. This paper aims to identify abnormal feature duplications and collisions based on the feature attributes to address the potential ambiguities between the features in an FM generated for a target domain, and to construct more precise FMs by presenting a technique for eliminating such abnormalities. For this purpose, the profiles of the formalized attributes were first defined based on MDR. Based on the semantics and relationships between the attributes, the duplications and collisions were identified using an analysis matrix, and were generalized to formulate rules by level. Such rules were evaluated to remove the duplications and collisions. In addition, using a supporting analyzer, the features in the initial FM were registered on a repository and were analyzed for feature duplications and collisions based on the saved attribute data. The refinements of the ambiguities between such features are likely to enable the construction of more precise application FMs and the generation of common features with higher reusability. Further, the environments using support tools are expected to provide convenience in the similarity analysis and reuse of features.

The consequences of nonprescription medication sales in Saudi Arabia's community pharmacies: regulations without implementation.

To the Editor, The sale of nonprescription medications is a major challenge faced by developing countries. High treatment costs, limited access to advanced care, patients’ personal experiences and easy access are some of the main factors responsible for self-medication. In developed countries like the United States, approximately 80 products are sold over-the-counter (OTC), which means that patients may purchase them without first consulting a healthcare provider. These OTC medications mainly include analgesics, acne treatments, sunscreen lotions and weight loss pills. The decision to make a drug available OTC is based on the drug’s safety profile and low abuse potential [US FDA, 2012]. Medications with low safety profiles and high abuse potential may not be sold without a prescription. However, in Saudi community pharmacies, every drug is treated as an OTC drug and may be purchased without a prescription [Bin Abdulhak et al. 2011; Emeka and Khan, 2012; Khan and Ibrahim, 2013]. The recent death of an expatriate is a painful reminder of the consequences. The event happened when an Egyptian community pharmacist advised the patient to take an intravenous medication (the media reported it as a ‘flu shot’), which was administered by a ‘pharmacy worker’ [Irfan, 2014]. According to the 1978 law regulating Saudi pharmacy practice, all operations in a pharmacy must be performed by a licensed pharmacist, not by a pharmacy worker, and no medicines other than those designated as OTC should be dispensed without a prescription [Bawazir, 1992]. For three decades, this law has awaited implementation. This malpractice may have resulted in many adverse events, which may not have been reported due to a lack of knowledge among community pharmacists about the adverse event reporting system [Khan, 2013; Mahmoud et al. 2013]. Some patients may have died and relatives simply considered it ‘the will of God’. But the practices in Saudi community pharmacies remain the same. One possible reason for such practices is the lack of Saudi pharmacists in community pharmacies – most of the pharmacists working in Saudi community pharmacies are expatriates from other Gulf countries, mainly Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Practices in their home countries and deficient training may be the main factors affecting their levels of professionalism and responsibility while practicing in Saudi Arabia. Thus, they may concern themselves more with profits, markup percentages and revenue generation (for their companies and themselves) than with patient and community safety [Bawazir, 2004]. Considering patient safety and the severity of current malpractice, it is time for regulatory authorities to take solid measures to implement the drug sale regulations outlined in the 1978 Saudi drug law. All pharmacists working in Saudi community pharmacies should be trained and certified, with up-to-date knowledge about medication safety. Passing the Saudi drug law exam and recertification should be made compulsory for all community pharmacists. The penalties for violation should be explained in their employment contracts, and pharmacy chains should introduce consumer databases to reduce the chances of disease–drug and drug–drug interactions. Last, but not least, an electronic prescription system should be introduced in all polyclinics and community pharmacists should be provided with the tools to countercheck for any potential errors or ambiguities before dispensing a prescription medication. These timely initiatives will not only ensure high levels of professionalism and responsibility among community pharmacists, but will also assist in improving patient safety in Saudi community pharmacies [Haseeb and Elrggal, 2013]. To date, in Saudi Arabia, pharmacy has been considered a respected and lifesaving profession. If this trust is lost, it may take years to regain consumer confidence in the pharmacy profession.

Smart RFID Antenna System for Indoor Tracking and Behavior Analysis of Small Animals in Colony Cages

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is more and more adopted in a wide range of applicative scenarios. Nevertheless, in many applications, commercial and general-purpose solutions can be unsuitable as in the case of the tracking of small-size living animals for the behavior analysis. In such a case, the whole RFID hardware, as well as the control software, should be opportunely tailored for the particular application. In this paper, a novel RFID-based approach enabling an effective localization and tracking of small-sized laboratory animals is proposed. It is mainly based on a near-field (NF) RFID multiantenna system working in the UHF bandwidth, to be placed below the animal's cage, and able to rigorously identify the NF RFID tags implanted in laboratory animals. Once the requirements of the reader antenna have been individuated, an antenna system composed of a matrix of specifically designed segmented loops has been prototyped. Moreover, to improve the effectiveness of the whole tracking system, a properly algorithm based on the measured received signal strength indication has been developed and integrated. It aims at removing potential minor ambiguities of the data captured by the multiantenna system. The whole animal tracking system has been then largely tested on phantom mice to verify its ability to precisely localize each subject and to reconstruct its path. Additionally, a first test performed on living mice has been presented. The achieved and discussed results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

When Negation and Epistemic Modality Combine: The Role of Information Strength in Child Language

Negative sentences with epistemic modals (e.g., John might not come/John can not come) contain two logical operators, negation and the modal, which yields a potential semantic ambiguity depending on scope assignment. The two possible readings are in a subset/superset relation, such that the strong reading (can not) asymmetrically entails the weak reading (might not). In this situation, a potential learnability issue arises. Based on the Semantic Subset Principle, we anticipated that children’s initial interpretations would sometimes differ from those of adults because children are expected to initially prefer strong (can not) readings for sentences that convey weak (might not) readings for adults. This proposal is investigated in two experiments using Standard Italian, which is an ideal testing ground for child language, in view of its simple modal paradigm. The results of these experiments confirm the predictions of the Semantic Subset Principle. Five-year-old Italian-speaking children were found to strongly favor the scope assignment that generates strong (can not) readings, even in cases where adults strongly favor the weak (might not) scope assignment. This result is discussed in relation to some recent alternative proposals (Gualmini & Schwarz, 2009; Musolino, 2006) that do not assume any initial bias toward the strong readings.

A new level set model for multimaterial flows

We propose a new level set model for representing multimaterial flows in multiple space dimensions. Instead of associating a level set function with a specific fluid material, the function is associated with a pair of materials and the interface that separates them. A voting algorithm collects sign information from all level set functions and determines material designation. To represent a general M-material configuration, M(M−1)/2 level set functions need to be accounted for; problems of practical interest use far fewer functions, as not all pairs of materials share an interface, and level-set functions that coincide are grouped together. Under this model, regions of potential material ambiguity, i.e. overlaps or vacuum, are markedly reduced in size: in 2D, ambiguous regions are points, as opposed to lines in material-based level set models; in 3D, they are lines as opposed to surfaces. The model produces excellent results without the need for reinitialization, thereby avoiding additional computational costs and preventing excessive numerical diffusion.

Compressive sensing based Bayesian sparse channel estimation for OFDM communication systems: high performance and low complexity.

In orthogonal frequency division modulation (OFDM) communication systems, channel state information (CSI) is required at receiver due to the fact that frequency-selective fading channel leads to disgusting intersymbol interference (ISI) over data transmission. Broadband channel model is often described by very few dominant channel taps and they can be probed by compressive sensing based sparse channel estimation (SCE) methods, for example, orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm, which can take the advantage of sparse structure effectively in the channel as for prior information. However, these developed methods are vulnerable to both noise interference and column coherence of training signal matrix. In other words, the primary objective of these conventional methods is to catch the dominant channel taps without a report of posterior channel uncertainty. To improve the estimation performance, we proposed a compressive sensing based Bayesian sparse channel estimation (BSCE) method which cannot only exploit the channel sparsity but also mitigate the unexpected channel uncertainty without scarifying any computational complexity. The proposed method can reveal potential ambiguity among multiple channel estimators that are ambiguous due to observation noise or correlation interference among columns in the training matrix. Computer simulations show that proposed method can improve the estimation performance when comparing with conventional SCE methods.

A Descriptive Study of Teacher’s Oral Feedback In an ESL Young Learner Classroom in Indonesia

This study reports the teacher‟s oral positive and corrective feedback in a classroom interaction in ESL young learner context in Indonesia. The study was conducted in a primary one class of a newly-established international school where English was used as the medium of instruction not only in English class but also in almost all subjects. It was revealed that the teacher employed more positive feedback than corrective feedback in the interaction, and in employing positive feedback the teacher preferred to utilize non-verbal cues (paralinguistic strategy) and praise markers. However, there was a potential ambiguity in employing praise markers. In employing negative/corrective feedback, the teacher tended to use explicit feedback rather than implicit feedback. Besides the above, corrective feedback was used to expand conversation, scaffold learning and negotiate meaning and form.

Structures of cefradine dihydrate and cefaclor dihydrate from DFT-D calculations

The crystal structure of cefradine dihydrate, C16H19N3O4S·2H2O, is considered in the pharmaceutical sciences to be the epitome of an isolated-site hydrate. The structure from single-crystal X-ray data was described in 1976, but atomic coordinates were not published. The atomic coordinates are determined here by combining the information available from the published single-crystal data with a dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D) method that has been validated to reproduce molecular crystal structures very accurately. Additional proof for the correctness of the structure comes from comparison with cefaclor dihydrate, C15H14ClN3O4S·2H2O, which is isomorphous and for which more complete single-crystal data are available. H-atom positions have not previously been published for either compound. The DFT-D calculations confirm that both cefradine and cefaclor are present in the zwitterionic form in the two dihydrate structures. A potential ambiguity concerning the orientation of the cyclohexadienyl ring in cefradine dihydrate is also clarified, and on the basis of the calculated energies it is shown that disorder should not be expected at room temperature. The DFT-D methods can be applied to recover full structural data in cases where only partial information is available, and where it may not be possible or desirable to obtain new experimental data.

Quark masses, the Dashen phase, and gauge field topology

The CP violating Dashen phase in QCD is predicted by chiral perturbation theory to occur when the up–down quark mass difference becomes sufficiently large at fixed down-quark mass. Before reaching this phase, all physical hadronic masses and scattering amplitudes are expected to behave smoothly with the up-quark mass, even as this mass passes through zero. In Euclidean space, the topological susceptibility of the gauge fields is positive at positive quark masses but diverges to negative infinity as the Dashen phase is approached. A zero in this susceptibility provides a tentative signal for the point where the mass of the up quark vanishes. I discuss potential ambiguities with this determination.

CP-Negation and the Domain of Quantifier Raising

CP-Negation and the Domain of Quantifier Raising

Choosing to argue: Towards a theory of argumentative decisions

This paper outlines the relevance of decision-making for argumentation, and some theoretical implications of looking at arguments from the standpoint of decision theory. Several strategic decisions required for arguing are analyzed: whether to enter an argument or not, what arguments to use and how to present them, how to react to arguments of the counterpart, how to respond to challenges and objections, how to solve potential ambiguities, when and how to end the argument. Although central for arguing, decision-making has been taken for granted rather than explored in argumentation theories, with few exceptions. This neglect originates from insisting on what is the right move in an argumentative situation, rather than how the subject decides to opt (or not) for that move. In this paper I describe a process-based taxonomy of the main decisions required to initiate, conduce, and terminate arguments, then review some preliminary empirical findings on how people decide to engage and disengage from argumentative interchange, and highlight how a theory of argumentative decisions offers new insight on the role of cognitive biases and constraints in human communication.

The discursive construction of creativity as work in a tertiary art and design environment

Central to most research in the field of creativity is the perception that creativity is an external and essentialist phenomenon. Recent studies, particularly in the area of art and design education, are beginning to question this understanding and seek alternative methods for exploring creativity. This paper takes the view that perceptions of creativity are historically and discursively constructed and that cultural shifts in the early twentieth century have more recently constituted the western understanding of creativity through a discourse of work. As an example, the paper will use a multi-perspectival analytical approach to explore the discursive construction of creativity as work in the situated context of a tertiary art and design studio environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of complications that may arise in the tertiary art and design environment as a result of the potential ambiguity created by the discourse of creativity as work.

Internal Diagrams and Archetypal Reasoning in Category Theory

We can regard operations that discard information, like specializing to a particular case or dropping the intermediate steps of a proof, as projections, and operations that reconstruct information as liftings. By working with several projections in parallel we can make sense of statements like “Set is the archetypal Cartesian Closed Category”, which means that proofs about CCCs can be done in the “archetypal language” and then lifted to proofs in the general setting. The method works even when our archetypal language is diagrammatical, has potential ambiguities, is not completely formalized, and does not have semantics for all terms. We illustrate the method with an example from hyperdoctrines and another from synthetic differential geometry.

Comprehensive molecular diagnosis of 179 Leber congenital amaurosis and juvenile retinitis pigmentosa patients by targeted next generation sequencing

BackgroundLeber congenital amaurosis (LCA) and juvenile retinitis pigmentosa (RP) are inherited retinal diseases that cause early onset severe visual impairment. An accurate molecular diagnosis can refine the clinical diagnosis and...