Pragmatic Implications Research Articles

Exploring Lateral Movement Coefficient's Influence on Ground Movement Patterns in Shallow Urban Tunnels

In its natural state, the ground experiences geostatic stresses, which tunnel excavation disrupts, inducing both elastic and plastic deformations in the areas surrounding the tunnel. Consequently, displacements occur in the vicinity of the tunnel and at the Earth's surface. These displacements have the potential to inflict damage on existing structures and pose environmental hazards. To mitigatethese adverse consequences, accurate prediction of these changes is imperative. Several factors influence these movements, with the lateral earth pressure coefficient (K0) being a pivotal parameter. This paper delves into the repercussions of varying K0 values on surface movements, encompassing both longitudinal and Lateral directions, within shallow urban tunnelsis investigated using two excavation methods, NATM and TBM. The study leverages numerical simulations facilitated by the PLAXIS 3D TUNNEL software, with the results meticulously presented separately. The primary objective of this research is to furnish valuable insights into the intricacies of tunneling-induced ground movements, offering pragmatic implications for the field of tunnel engineering practices and the broader realm of urban infrastructure development.

The impact of artificial intelligence capabilities on servitization: The moderating role of absorptive capacity-A dynamic capabilities perspective

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies has opened new opportunities for manufacturers to maintain their technological edge and address pressing societal challenges. This research investigates the nature of the relationships between AI capabilities, servitization, and the role of absorptive capacity. Building on dynamic capabilities literature, we developed and empirically tested a model using structural equation modeling (SEM) and further applied a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Through the construct of AI capabilities and its four sub-dimensions, we find supportive evidence from our model estimates employing data from 185 manufacturing firms in the US and EU. The study findings highlight the positive impact of AI capabilities on servitization; this relationship is positively moderated by absorptive capacity. Furthermore, the road to servitization is through advancing AI capabilities related to internal process and resource optimization coupled with AI for social innovation services. The study’s theoretical and pragmatic implications are discussed.

Global Structural Shocks and FDI Dynamic Impact on Productive Capacities: An Application of CS-ARDL Estimation

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted structural shocks on the global economic system by raising high economic uncertainty. Policymakers are exploring alternative measures and incentivizing foreign direct investment for the restoration of global economic operations to achieve short- and long-term growth. Given this, the study examines the global response of FDI inflow to measure the change in productive capacity. The productive capacity is proxied by structural change, private business sector, institutional quality, transportation infrastructure development, and natural capital. The study implements empirical analysis for a large panel of 170 countries in a data set from 2000 to 2021. Furthermore, the study employed the cross-sectional augmented auto-regressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) econometric estimation method for better examinations of current changes in an economic outbreak. From the results of the study, the estimations reveal that FDI inward has significant positive impact over the private business sector, institutional quality, transportation infrastructure, and natural capital on inward FDI. In accordance with discussions, the study suggests several pragmatic policy implications to achieve maximum output by utilizing the inward FDI as incentivized by the governments of the selected countries.

Teacher-Student Interaction for English-Medium Instruction (EMI) Content and Language Learning and the Effects of Implementing Multimodal Input of Classroom Interaction: University Students’ Perceptions

The discourse of interaction, Initiation-Response-Feedback (I-R-F) gained its popularity by fostering discussion between the teacher and learners but received critics for developing interactive communication in a controlled manner. With an attempt to provide pragmatic implications for EMI instructors, the study probed into perceptions of students (n=42) from different majors on how two pedagogical approaches (i.e., the I-R-F and the multimodal input of classroom interaction) differed in one EMI Cross-cultural Communication course in one middle-ranked university in Taiwan. The comparative, quasi-experiment research firstly investigated these students’ perceptions of teacher-student interaction for EMI content and language learning and secondly compared their perceptions on the implementation of the multimodal input of classroom interaction against the conventional baseline, the I-R-F. Both quantitative (i.e., survey) and qualitative (i.e., post-lesson student reflection journals and audio recordings) research methods were used. The survey results showed that these students were inclined to engage in extensive and substantial verbal output, expressed the importance of teacher-student interaction for learning the content of the course, and expected chances of lengthy verbal output and corrective feedback from the instructor. The results from students’ journals yielded that the instructor’s use of the multimodal input of classroom interaction significantly outperformed the use of the I-R-F in the categories of effectiveness, the level of student engagement, and the effectiveness of helping them learn the content. Ultimately, it was found that the use of the multimodal input of classroom interaction had triggered their higher-order of cognitive processing more (i.e., analyzing, evaluating, and creating).

The Application of Hirschberg Maxims in Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ and Darwish’s ‘Scenario Jaahiz’

This paper presents a study of prosodic traits and the pragmatic implications connected to them. It is suggested that there is a prosodic code in which a selection of suprasegmental elements is deliberately and consciously changed, putting it in relation to syntactic structures, lexical choices, and pragmatic meanings, is believed that a prosodic grammar works together with the linguistic and rhetorical devices in order to organize a narrative discourse firstly, and secondly to highlight the argumentative part within the narrative discourse.
 The prosodic features and the possible communicative meanings associated as well as the pragmatic effects are all described and justified. This study is the result of the analysis of two narrative poems in two different languages; English and Arabic. It is believed that the methodological procedures followed and the conclusions arrived at can be easily extended to other languages. General correlations that could be a starting point for further studies and practical employment of prosodic features are proposed.

Social VR and the continuing reinvention of local in theatre and performance

ABSTRACT This paper examines the emergent performance context of social virtual reality (social VR) as the latest manifestation of the continuing disruption of theatre as axiomatically local. Against the backdrop of Double Eye Studio’s 2020 adaptation of the Pandora mythos, Finding Pandora X, analysis centers on the ways in which social VR simultaneously expands and contracts theatre’s ‘localness’, a reconfiguration with pragmatic and theoretical implications for practice and scholarship in the twenty-first century.

Employee sensemaking of CSR: on micro-discourses of corporate social responsibility

PurposeRecently, scholars are pushing for an internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) view through employee perspectives regarding CSR efforts, particularly in considering how organizations can act responsibly toward internal stakeholders (May, 2011). Thus, research has begun taking a “micro-turn” in analyzing CSR (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012), focused on individual analysis of such practices within organizations. The purpose of this study is to uncover the organizational sensemaking of CSR by an important yet less understood stakeholder group, employees.Design/methodology/approachThis study takes a primarily qualitative, micro-approach via interviews (n = 42) to understanding the internal sensemaking of various organizations' CSR efforts from the perspective of employees. Organizational discourse analysis is utilized.FindingsAt the individual level, findings from over 40 one-on-one interviews highlighted how this stakeholder group rationalizes, perceives and identifies with their employers' socially responsible efforts. Findings uncover both macro- and micro-level understandings of CSR, as well as the reality of CSR within particular organizations from an operational standpoint.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides important theoretical and methodological implications, particularly in its explicitly interpretive and qualitative approach. Specifically, this work contributes to the micro-foundations and limited internal view of CSR by interviewing over 40 employees.Practical implicationsThis study provides important pragmatic implications, particularly when considering how CSR is communicated to (internal) stakeholders. Additionally, CSR must be seen as strategic and embedded in core business practices, rather than a one-off campaign.Social implicationsOn a societal level, there is an expectation that corporations take care of their employees in terms of emotional and physical well-being, equity, work–life balance, among others. This study suggests a move to more inward-facing CSR practices—specifically those benefiting internal members.Originality/valueThis work contributes to research on the micro-foundations and limited internal view of CSR and provides important pragmatic implications. Specifically, the use of interviews of employees in gaining access to an important stakeholder group is a significant contribution to CSR scholarship.

Tourist scams: cues and processes in decision-making

ABSTRACT Tourist scams have long been a challenge for tourist security and destination management. Understanding the tourist decision-making process can improve scam prevention. Through a quasi-experiment, 609 participants made, and documented reasons for, decisions after viewing animated scam videos. Thematic analysis was conducted to explore the external (operational) cues and internal (respondent-related) references, and revealed two categories of cues, namely scam-covering and scam-revealing cues. Three internal references—emotions, knowledge and needs—exerted a crucial impact. Multiple heuristics strategies were identified, and a model was made to illustrate the decision-making process. Theoretic and pragmatic implications are discussed for communicating scam detection.

Do biofuel production and financial speculation in agricultural commodities influence African food prices? New evidence from a TVP-VAR extended joint connectedness approach

Many African countries experienced social disorder and subsequent political instability as a result of global commodity price inflation in 2007–2008, which reaffirmed the importance of overseas factors such as biofuel production, international food and energy prices, and financial speculation. Biofuel, in particular, is often placed at the center of the debate around identifying potential determinants of food price hikes. We apply a time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) extended joint connectedness approach to uncover the dynamic connectivity of African food prices, US biofuel production, global energy and food prices, and financial speculation. The key findings are; 1) the results of averaged connectedness suggest that US biofuel production and financial speculation in agricultural commodities significantly influence African food prices; 2) the hefty surges in the dynamic connectedness between African food prices and four cross-border factors are triggered by global events like the 2000 dot-com bubble, the 2008 global commodity boom, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic; 3) arbitrage transactions transmitted intense shocks to African food prices between 2001 and 2012, while biofuel production constantly affected African food prices between 2001 and 2021. We draw pragmatic policy implications to prevent or mitigate market shock transmissions to African food markets.

The application of an age adjusted D-dimer threshold to rule out suspected venous thromboembolism (VTE) in an emergency department setting: a retrospective diagnostic cohort study

BackgroundVenous Thromboembolic disease (VTE) poses a diagnostic challenge for clinicians in acute care. Over reliance on reference standard investigations can lead to over treatment and potential harm.We sought to evaluate the pragmatic performance and implications of using an age adjusted D-dimer (AADD) strategy to rule out VTE in patients with suspected disease attending an emergency department (ED) setting. We aimed to determine diagnostic test characteristics and assess whether this strategy would result in proportional imaging reduction and potential cost savings.MethodsDesign: Single centre retrospective diagnostic cohort study.All patients > 50 years old evaluated for possible VTE who presented to the emergency department over a consecutive 12-month period between January and December 2016 with a positive D-dimer result. Clinical assessment records and reference standard imaging results were followed up by multiple independent adjudicators and coded as VTE positive or negative.ResultsDuring the study period, there were 2132 positive D-dimer results. One thousand two hundred thirty-six patients received reference standard investigations. A total increase of 314/1236 (25.1%) results would have been coded as true negatives as opposed to false positive if the AADD cut off point had been applied, with 314 reference standard tests subsequently avoided. The AADD cut off had comparable sensitivity to the current cut off despite this increase in specificity; sensitivities for the diagnosis of DVT were 99.28% (95% CI 96.06–99.98%) and 97.72% for PE (95% CI 91.94% to 97.72). There were 3 false negative results using the AADD strategy.ConclusionsIn patients with suspected VTE with a low or moderate pre-test probability, the application of AADD appears to increase the proportion of patients in which VTE can be excluded without the need for reference standard imaging. This management strategy is likely to be associated with substantial reduction in anticoagulation treatment, investigations and cost/time savings.

Social processes of participatory engagement effects: a longitudinal examination with a sample of young women in the United States

ABSTRACT Participatory interventions enable active user engagement, but research is needed to examine the longitudinal mechanisms through which engagement may generate outcomes. This study investigated the social processes following a web-based participatory media literacy intervention. In this program, young women were asked to create a digital counter message against the media content that promotes risk behavior. The effects of the message production were assessed at an immediate post-test and three- and six-month follow-ups. Message production increased collective efficacy at the immediate post-test, which then stimulated the sharing of self-generated messages and interpersonal conversation at the three-month follow-up. These sharing behaviors, in turn, led to critical media use and a negative attitude toward risk behavior at six months. Collective efficacy and sharing behavior sequentially mediated the effects of message production on outcomes. Theoretical and pragmatic implications are discussed.

Phenotypes of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and all-cause mortality: unsupervised machine learning analysis of NHANES III

ObjectivesNon-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a non-communicable disease with a rising prevalence worldwide and with large burden for patients and health systems. To date, the presence of unique phenotypes...

Societal reminiscence and decisions for a better society: A belief in progress explanation

This research investigates how reminiscing a society's past can encourage risk taking for the society. In one field study and four experiments, we show that encountering objects or appeals linked to their society’s past can lead individuals to become more risk taking and to choose less certain but potentially better options in decisions for society. This effect is mitigated when the reminiscence concerns one’s personal past and when the decisions concern personal welfare. It can also be mitigated by heightening or suppressing the belief that society has progressed. Our findings validate belief in progress as a novel explanation, suggesting that the thoughts evoked in reminiscence supplement their emotional counterparts such as nostalgic and upbeat feelings in altering how decisions are made. This investigation has pragmatic implications for designing past-linked appeals in advertising and branding as well as in advocacy for social change or innovation.

Exploring the Player Experiences of Wearable Gaming Interfaces: A User Elicitation Study

The design and development of playful wearable devices is a challenging and complicated problem. It entails not only multidisciplinary expertise but also a comprehensive understanding of player experience. There is a scarcity of evidence-based studies in current state-of-art literature that investigate general design practices and provide pragmatic design implications and suggestions based on solid user-centered research. To bridge the gap, we developed five experience prototypes based on the speculative design concepts from previous studies, and a Wizard of Oz experiment was conducted to elicit end users' feedback regarding general gaming experience as well as specific design themes in different gaming scenarios. The user experiment results were analyzed qualitatively following a rigorous thematic analysis, generating five major design implications as output. We believe this study will offer forward-looking insights to designers, developers and the research community, facilitating future work in this field.

Emotive facets of place meet urban analytics

AbstractThe lack of a well‐established and unified place theory across disciplines is decelerating its formalization, evolution, and especially its pragmatic implications and applicability. In this article, we identify research gaps in the emotive facets of place scholarship. We found that it: (1) rarely joins physical, social, and individual variables in the same model; (2) omits the immediately perceived and sensory dimensions; (3) disregards the analysis of how individual–place emotive relationships vary across time; and (4) overlooks the difficulties of reducing multifaceted emotive facets of place into geographic features. Next, we examine these research gaps through the lens of technology‐based advancements in urban analytics. Finally, we discuss the need to combine social‐oriented research and (spatial) data‐driven disciplines to enrich and expand the research area of emotive facets of place and connected disciplines.

PSII-B-21 Does Prior Viral Infection Exacerbate the Response to Heat Stress?

Abstract In rodent models, prior immune activation appears to exacerbate the response to heat stress (HS), presumably by compounding an inflammatory response by both insults. Thus, study objectives were to investigate whether prior viral infection aggravates the physiological and feed intake (FI) responses to HS. Crossbred barrows (n=45; 75.5±4.8 kg BW) were enrolled in two experimental periods (P). During P1 (2 d), pigs were fed ad libitum and housed in thermoneutral (20ºC) conditions. During P2 (6 d), pigs were exposed to an increased heat load (28 to 31ºC). Rectal temperature (TR), skin temperature (TS), and respiration rate (RR) were obtained twice daily. FI was measured daily as feed disappearance. Unexpectedly, pigs became sick during the experiment and tested positive for influenza on d 6 of P2. Based on TR obtained during P1, animals were retrospectively categorized into 1 of 2 groups: 1) High-TR (HT; top third of pigs; TR>39.32ºC; x̅=39.38ºC; n=15), or 2) Low-TR (LT; bottom third of pigs; TR< 39.10ºC; x̅=38.95ºC; n=15). Pigs in the middle third tier were excluded from the analysis. This ostensibly categorized pigs into a “sick” and “healthy” status. Data were statistically analyzed using the MIXED procedure in SAS. As expected, HS increased TR in both groups; however, HT had elevated TR during P2 relative to LT pigs (+0.5ºC; P< 0.01). Skin temperature and RR increased during HS but remained similar between HT and LT pigs (P>0.41). During P1, FI was similar between groups (P>0.33). During P2, HS reduced FI in both groups; however, the decrease was more severe in HT than LT pigs (53 vs. 37%, respectively; P=0.01). Altogether, HT pigs, presumably infected before HS exposure, had increased TR and a more drastic reduction in FI during HS than LT pigs. A better understanding of how viral or bacterial infection influences the response to HS would have pragmatic implications for all segments of animal agriculture.

Figuring Embedded Librarianship: An Analysis of the Embedded Journalist Metaphor in the Professional Discourse

In the wake of the COVID pandemic, many academic libraries sought virtual instruction options, like the embedded librarian model, bringing renewed interest to the topic. Debates defining embedded librarianship are plentiful and varied, but a review of the professional literature reveals a commonly used metaphor comparing embedded librarians to embedded journalists. This paper analyses the prevalence of that metaphor in the professional discourse through the lens of cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) to reveal the semantic and pragmatic implications of its use. CMT highlights the power of figurative language to reflect and define professional identities. The metaphor’s militaristic rhetoric counters negative stereotypes of librarians as passive or meek, while the metaphor’s combative rhetoric discloses complex power dynamics between academic librarians and faculty. However, the etymology of ‘embed’ reveals more productive definitions related to geology, computer science, and linguistics. Embracing these multiple definitions will help librarians shape that role in the future.

The impact of COVID-19 on visitors' wayfinding within healthcare centers

The novel COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial calamities in developing countries such as Iran, which initially suffered from inadequate infrastructure essential for the pandemic control. Due to the ongoing development of this malady, healthcare centers are recognized as one of the most significant hotspots within public settings so they are directly pertinent to the physical and mental health of visitors. The main objective for conducting the present study is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the visitors' wayfinding procedure within Qa'em hospital, located in Rasht, northern Iran. The adopted methodology in the present study is based on a comparison between the collected data regarding the wayfinding behavior of visitors before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic using mixed methods, namely Space Syntax, gate counting, people following, and semi-structured interviews. The obtained empirical results displayed that visitors were significantly confused and hesitant throughout their wayfinding process after the outbreak of the pandemic. Indeed, spatial accessibility and legibility were not found to be adequate for facilitating the wayfinding of the visitors. Moreover, the requirements for the reconfiguration of furniture layout in the waiting areas, according to the underlying notions of social distancing, became conspicuous as the pragmatic implications for the post-pandemic healthcare centers.

Unveiling the Relationship between Economic Growth and Equality for Developing Countries

AbstractThis study investigates the relationship between economic growth and inequality by employing the artificial neural network approach. There are many important findings. First, this work reveals the underlying functional form of economic growth and inequality by using three‐dimensional diagrams. Second, the findings show that there was an inverted‐U relationship between economic growth and inequality. This explains apparent contradictions in research findings in the literature. Third, the optimal level of inequality, which corresponds to the highest level of economic growth, is computed for different economies. Our findings were confirmed by the development processes in many developing countries and also in China in recent years, thereby highlighting the importance of inequality alleviation in promoting further economic growth. These findings enable us to derive pragmatic policy implications for other developing countries at different stages of economic development in achieving sustainable growth with equity.

SENTENÇAS PEJORATIVAS VERDADEIRAS ALÉM DO NÚCLEO EXISTENCIAL: SOBRE AS IMPLICAÇÕES DA TEORIA DE HOM E MAY

ABSTRACT This paper considers one of the most significant and controversial attempts to account for the meaning of pejoratives as lexical items, namely Hom and May’s. After outlining the theory, we pinpoint sets of pejorative sentences that come out true on their account and for which the question as to whether they are compatible with the view advocated by them (so-called Moral and Semantic Innocence) remains open. Helping ourselves to the standard model-theoretical framework Hom and May (presumably) work in, we prove they are compatible with the view. Given that the issues of both the moral import of pejoratives and the practical effects of their utterance are not settled by the proof, we then highlight unwelcome moral and pragmatic implications for some of the pejorative sentences under scrutiny, thereby showing that the view, broadly understood, is not as morally and semantically innocuous as it is meant to be.