Pragmatic Limitations Research Articles

Top 25 Most-Cited Articles on Robotic-Assisted Lumbar Spine Surgery.

Robot-guided lumbar spine surgery has evolved rapidly with evidence to support its utility and feasibility compared with conventional freehand and fluoroscopy-based techniques. The objective of this study was to assess trends among the top 25 most-cited articles pertaining to robotic-guided lumbar spine surgery. An "advanced document search" using Boolean search operator terms was performed on 16 November 2022 through the Web of Science and SCOPUS citation databases to determine the top 25 most-referenced articles on robotic lumbar spine surgery. The articles were compiled into a directory and hierarchically organized based on the total number of citations. Cumulatively, the "Top 25" list for robot-assisted navigation in lumbar spine surgery received 2240 citations, averaging 97.39 citations annually. The number of citations ranged from 221 to 40 for the 25 most-cited articles. The most-cited study, by Kantelhardt et al, received 221 citations, averaging 18 citations per year. As utilization of robot-guided modalities in lumbar spine surgery increases, this review highlights the most impactful studies to support its efficacy and implementation. Practical considerations such as cost-effectiveness, however, need to be better defined through further longitudinal studies that evaluate patient-reported outcomes and cost-utility. Through an overview of the top 25 most-cited articles, the present review highlights the rising prominence and technical efficacy of robotic-guided systems within lumbar spine surgery, with consideration to pragmatic limitations and need for additional data to facilitate cost-effective applications.

Large Language Models Demonstrate the Potential of Statistical Learning in Language.

To what degree can language be acquired from linguistic input alone? This question has vexed scholars for millennia and is still a major focus of debate in the cognitive science of language. The complexity of human language has hampered progress because studies of language-especially those involving computational modeling-have only been able to deal with small fragments of our linguistic skills. We suggest that the most recent generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) might finally provide the computational tools to determine empirically how much of the human language ability can be acquired from linguistic experience. LLMs are sophisticated deep learning architectures trained on vast amounts of natural language data, enabling them to perform an impressive range of linguistic tasks. We argue that, despite their clear semantic and pragmatic limitations, LLMs have already demonstrated that human-like grammatical language can be acquired without the need for a built-in grammar. Thus, while there is still much to learn about how humans acquire and use language, LLMs provide full-fledged computational models for cognitive scientists to empirically evaluate just how far statistical learning might take us in explaining the full complexity of human language.

Shanzhai: Creative Imitation of China in Highland Myanmar

Abstract The Wa State of Myanmar is often called “shanzhai China,” that is, a lesser imitation of China. This essay unpacks the material and symbolic implications of creative imitation at the Chinese periphery, embodied in shanzhai 山寨 practices. Literally “mountain fortress,” shanzhai refers to the provenience of cheap brand imitations, made by mountain dwellers who cannot afford the original. The term is commonly used to describe creative and ironic brand imitation in the People's Republic of China today. Until the 1950s, the inhabitants of the Wa hills did indeed live in mountain fortresses—both a pragmatic necessity as well as a miniature repetition of Chinese imperial rule. The pragmatic limitations and creative potential of imitating China are shown for the cases of Maoism, authoritarian capitalism, and contemporary nationhood. Rather than an essentialized feature of Chinese cultural practice, the practices of shanzhai reveal that material and symbolic recombination are essential to creative imitation.

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction

Çocukluk Çağı Başlangıçlı Şizofreni ve Otizm Spektrum Bozukluğunda Dil ve İletişim Özellikleri: Bir Literatür Taraması

Introduction: Schizophrenia (SZ) and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) both have life-long and negative impacts on the individuals. In contrast to ASD, SZ occurs “rarely” in childhood (before the age of 13) which is called Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia (COS). Although COS and ASD have distinct pathologies, they exhibit common characteristics since they were described first. One of the most important commonalities is overlapping language and communication features. Till now, it is known that there is no integrative model related to the mutual language characteristics and underlying neurogenetic factors covering both of these disorders. Therefore, this literature review aimed to reveal previous research reporting both diverging and converging language issues with regards to these populations. The information presented in this review also aimed to help special education professionals about noticing the children who might present the features of COS. For this aim, firstly, the historical backgrounds of the disorders were given. Later, the language and communication features of COS and ASD including the overlapping characteristics were presented in light of previous research.Discussion: Studies showed that pragmatic limitations could be observed within both populations. Atypical language characteristics such as echolalia and self-talk could also be mutually observed. A need for future studies exploring the morphological and semantic levels of COS and ASD was emphasized. Furthermore, it was proposed that retrospective and prospective studies could be designed with a large sample. The connection between language and pretend play or executive functions could be examined.

How do the practical and pragmatic limitations in the design or implementation of wildlife disease surveillance systems bias our understanding of the drivers, epidemiology, and impact of pathogen traffic between wildlife and people or domestic species, or within wildlife host populations?

Decision makers want more information on the presence, distribution, movement, and impacts of pathogens in wild animals to anticipate or assess the risk of pathogen spillover from wildlife to people or domestic animals or to better understand the conservation implications of contagious diseases in wildlife. There are many impediments to designing and implementing a wildlife health surveillance system that fulfils all the expectations for ‘good’ surveillance. There are well-known pragmatic limitations such as the inability to sample targeted populations consistently and regularly in a representative manner, lack of validated tests, and funding limitations that restrict surveillance to periodic surveys. The nature and impact of the biases on data collection, generation, management, quality, analysis, interpretations, and information sharing are poorly studied. We invite authors to address the question in the title.

Defining and demonstrating a smart technology configuration to improve energy performance and occupant comfort in existing buildings: a conceptual framework

PurposeTo achieve the building and property by 2050, decarbonisation goals will now require a significant increase in the rate of improvement in the energy performance of buildings. Occupant behaviour is crucial. This study seeks to guide the application of smart building technology in existing building stock to support improved building energy performance and occupant comfort.Design/methodology/approachThis study follows a logical partitioning approach to the development of a schema for building energy performance and occupant comfort. A review of the literature is presented to identify the characteristics that label and structure the problem elements. A smart building technology framework is overlaid on the schema. The framework is then applied to configure and demonstrate an actual technology implementation for existing building stock.FindingsThe developed schema represents the key components and relationships of building energy performance when combined with occupant comfort. This schema provides a basis for the definition of a smart building technologies framework for existing building stock. The study demonstrates a viable configuration of available smart building technologies that couple building energy performance with occupant comfort in the existing building stock. Technical limitations (such as relatively simple building management control regimes) and pragmatic limitations (such as change management issues) are noted for consideration.Originality/valueThis is the first development of a schema to represent how building energy performance can be coupled with occupant comfort in existing building stock using smart building technologies. The demonstration study applies one of many possible technology configurations currently available, and promotes the use of open source applications with push-pull functionality. The schema provides a common basis and guide for future studies.

From Value to Valuation: Pragmatist and Hermeneutic Orientations\xa0for Assessing Science on the International Space Station

Based on a study of the International Space Station (ISS), this paper argues that – as a set of orientations for sociological inquiry – pragmatism and hermeneutics are confluent frameworks to examine valuation as a social process. This confluence is grounded on their common attunement to valuing as a problematic and relational process, their equally common updates with theories of institutions, and a further conceptual development regarding the temporalities of valuation. I advance the argument in four steps. First, looking at how the question about the “scientific value” of the ISS is far from settled, I show how valuation is always about something considered problematic and indeterminate. Second, characterizing the ISS at the intersection of different criteria of assessment, I stress the nature of valuation as a fundamentally perspectival and interpretive process, and show how a hermeneutic approach can complement some of the limitations of pragmatism in this regard. Third, I look at the question of institutions considering how some modes of assessment sediment more successfully than others. Fourth, I argue that, while providing insights towards it, pragmatist and hermeneutic approaches to valuation have not fully grasped its temporal nature as a process, and outline ways to open this line of inquiry. I conclude with some ideas for studies in sociology of science to re-entangle detailed case studies of scientific practice with the study of how institutions make claims of worth about the nature of science, I propose ways to extend these arguments to other studies of what I call iridescent institutions, and I make some considerations about our stance as sociologists in these valuation disputes.

The comprehension of grammaticalized implicit meanings in SPCD and ASD children: A comparative study.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and social pragmatic communication disorder (SPCD) are two neurodevelopmental disorders with many similarities in affected individuals' impairments in social-communicative and pragmatic development. A central question pertaining to their differentiation concerns whether the distinction is truly qualitative or, instead, quantitative in nature, and indeed, defining the boundary between SPCD and ASD with IQ in the normal range often presents differential-diagnostic difficulties. While deficits in the comprehension of certain linguistically systematic implicit verbal meanings have been targeted by experimental research in ASD, to date they have not been investigated in controlled experiments in SPCD. The empirical objectives of our study are twofold. First, it is explored whether the comprehension of a set of highly systematic, grammaticalized implicit meanings is impaired in ASD and SPCD children compared to their typically developing (TD) peers, and whether ASD and SPCD children differ from each other in accessing these verbal meanings. Second, it is investigated whether receptive grammatical competence and first-order ToM abilities are associated with children's performance in any way and whether there is a difference in this regard between the ASD and the SPCD group. Our main experiment, using a sentence-picture verification task, tested the comprehension of highly systematic implicit verbal meanings, including grammaticalized implicatures, presuppositions, and entailments. The experiment was complemented with a false-belief (ToM) task and a test of receptive grammar, among other measures. Seventy-one 4-to-9-year-old children participated in the study (ASD: n=19, SPCD: n=13, TD controls: n=39). While both children with SPCD and children with ASD performed significantly more poorly than the TD group, only the comprehension profile of the SPCD group differed significantly from that of the TD group. Importantly, while ASDs' performance exhibited an association with their ToM results, the performance of SPCDs showed a correlation with their receptive grammar skills. By contrast, the performance of TDs correlated with neither. These findings reveal potential divergences in the cognitive developmental mechanisms that underlie the semantic-pragmatic difficulties in the two clinical groups, suggesting that the communicative impairments in ASD and in SPCD differ qualitatively, rather than quantitatively. Specific implications for theories of pragmatic impairments in ASD and in SPCD are discussed. What is already known on the subject Linguistically systematic implicit meanings are understudied both in ASD and in SPCD. Within this domain of verbal meaning, the majority of relevant experimental work on ASD, concentrated on generalized (mostly: scalar) implicatures, has yielded somewhat divergent results, while the comprehension difficulties in SPCD have remained barely charted territory. Linguistically more highly conventionalized implicit verbal meanings have not been experimentally investigated in either neurodevelopmental disorder. What this study adds A primary finding of our study is that although both the SPCD and the ASD group show significant deficit in the comprehension of highly conventional, grammaticalized implicit meanings, SPCD children may diverge more in their comprehension profile from their TD peers than ASD children. Another key result is that the comprehension of grammaticalized implicit meanings is linked with different cognitive functions in ASD and in SPCD. While comprehension performance is associated with ToM in ASD but not in SPCD or in TD, it is correlated with receptive grammar skills in SPCD but not in ASD or in TD. Clinical implications of this study These findings provide potential support for the hypothesis that the difference between ASD and SPCD is qualitative rather than quantitative in nature, thereby casting doubt on the conception that pragmatic limitations in SPCD are to be approached as a less severe form of similar deficits in ASD. Uncovering differences in the underlying cognitive sources and in the comprehension deficits of children with ASD and SPCD are critical for the improvement of the accuracy of SPCD children's early diagnosis and timely therapeutic intervention.

Shape discrimination in peripheral vision: Addressing pragmatic limitations of M-scaling radial frequency patterns

Peripheral worsening in shape discrimination (SD) can be compensated by size-scaling of peripheral stimuli. However, such scaling results in production of large stimuli that occupy a vast range of eccentricities. We used six proportionally decreasing spatial scales to address this pragmatic limitation and to explore how shape discrimination varies with radius in the nasal visual field. Five participants with normal vision discriminated circles and radial frequency (RF) patterns presented nasally to the fixation point at 5°, 10°, 15° and 20°. Stimuli were scaled with the nasal cortical magnification factor (nCMF) from a central stimulus in six spatial scales, which varied from 0.125 to 1, where 1 corresponded to 1.2° radius. Thresholds expressed in Weber fractions remained constant at eccentricities up to 20° regardless of the spatial scale. Weber fractions for the smaller spatial scales (0.125–0.5) were higher and more variable than for the larger spatial scales (0.75–1), yet still constant across periphery. The results provide evidence that peripheral shape discrimination is constrained by low-level properties, such as eccentricity, and can be predicted by the cortical magnification theory. However, above the peripheral modulation resolution limits, RF shape discrimination is based on the proportion between the modulation amplitude and the radius for larger scales (0.75–1), and demonstrates peripheral scale invariance for these stimuli. For eccentric shape discrimination tests, stimuli with low spatial frequency, high contrast, and radii corresponding to SS 0.75–0.875 should be used to ensure constant Weber fractions, small variability, and peripheral stimuli that are not excessively magnified.

In/on applied legal research: Pragmatic limits to the impact of peripheral international legal scholarship via policy papers

AbstractThis article examines the limits that academics from peripheral countries might encounter while trying to influence the decision-making process inside an international organization. Although there are different mechanisms whereby academia might influence non-academic debates, we highlight here the use of policy papers, in order to examine and discuss the non-textual barriers which might be faced by those academics. After an analysis of primary sources this article presents some pragmatic limits in the use of policy papers and discusses the consequences of this condition for the legitimation of international organizations. As such, relevant international organizations still seem to be unresponsive to some initiatives in particular: closed to the spontaneous participation of academia; and not willing to call for contributions from academic communities. This is particularly relevant for contributions from peripheral academia and other non-state actors, who lack the capability to disturb the traditional ideational power exercised by core (Western) countries and by state-centric ideology in current international law.

Spirits and the Limits of Pragmatism: A Response to “Against Discursive Colonialism”

Spirits and the Limits of Pragmatism: A Response to “Against Discursive Colonialism”

The limits of automatic decision-making based on artificial intelligence in cases that have legal significance

Artificial intelligence technologies represent one of the “pervasive digital technologies” that predetermine the current landscape of society’s technological development. The key problem of applying artificial intelligence technologies from the point of view of law is the limits of making legally significant decisions based on artificial intelligence. Although on the surface this issue may seem quite new, in fact it has been investigated in legal science and interdisciplinary research for decades. These limits can be divided into paradigmatic, axiological and pragmatic ones. Paradigmatic limits are associated with fundamental notions about the meaning of agency in law, and they predetermine the principle of human participation in decisions made with the help of artificial intelligence. Axiological limits presuppose a consistent realization of certain formalized values with respect to new social relations. The most developed system of axiological limits follows from the European concept of human rights. Pragmatic limits are conditioned by peculiarities of both law itself and the technological architecture of artificial intelligence in a social context. Pragmatic limits in this sense include the problem of the “open texture” of legal language and the “semantic limits” of law. The principle of nondiscrimination of legal subjects in machine learning can also be considered as a pragmatic limit. The analysis of the modern regulatory landscape at the level of regulatory practices and self-regulation, focusing on representative international experience, makes it possible to verify the hypothesis of paradigmatic, axiological and pragmatic limits and to suggest their use in the further development of legal regulation of decision-making relations using artificial intelligence systems.

Treaty Promises and the Duty to Consult on Legislation

The members of Mikisew Cree First Nation are descended from signatories of Treaty 8. Their traditional territory encompasses Wood Buffalo National Park and parts of Alberta’s tar sands developments. In 2013, they filed suit in Federal Court, arguing that the Crown had a duty to consult Mikisew Cree First Nation prior to proposing amendments to environmental protection legislation that could impact upon their treaty rights. The litigation made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, where the Court resolved the case on jurisdictional grounds. In three separate opinions, however, the majority went on to explain that the Crown did not have a duty to consult Mikisew Cree First Nation. The majority proceed with barely a nod to Treaty 8, preferring instead to focus on high-level constitutional principles to categorically rule out a duty to consult in the context of proposed legislation. In this article, we show that this approach is difficult to reconcile with the specific promises made by Canada in Treaty 8. While it is not obvious how the duty to consult would best be integrated into the legislative process, and there are normative and pragmatic limits on the role of the courts, we argue that Treaty 8 would have offered an ideal, discrete context for developing the doctrine of the duty to consult with respect to legislation in a manner that reconciles it with the separation of powers and parliamentary sovereignty, rather than invoking the latter principles to oust the duty to consult.

Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG): What Is Wrong with ESDGs, and What Can We Do Better?

This article will discuss social, environmental, and ecological justice in education for sustainable development (ESD) and Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG). The concept of sustainable development and, by extension, the ESD, places heavy emphasis on the economic and social aspects of sustainability. However, the ESD falls short of recognizing ecological justice, or recognition that nonhumans also have a right to exist and flourish. An intervention in the form of an undergraduate course titled Politics, Business, and Environment (PBE) will be discussed. As part of this course, students were asked to reflect on the three pillars of sustainable development: society, economy, and environment, linking these to the fourth concept, ecological justice or biospheric egalitarianism. Biospheric egalitarianism is characterized by the recognition of intrinsic value in the environment and is defined as concern about justice for the environment. Some of the resulting exam answers are analyzed, demonstrating students’ ability to recognize the moral and pragmatic limitations of the anthropocentric approach to justice. This analysis presents ways forward in thinking about the role of “ecological justice” as the ultimate bottom line upon which both society and economy are based.

A multi-objective optimization model for operation of intermittent water distribution networks

Abstract Intermittent operation of water distribution networks (WDNs) is an undesirable yet inevitable strategy under some circumstances such as droughts, development, electricity blackouts, and water pollution, mostly in developing countries. Intermittent utilization of WDNs poses several disadvantages encompassing water quality degradation, deterioration of the water-distribution system, and extra operational and maintenance costs due to frequently interrupted supply, unfair water distribution among consumers, and reduction of system serviceability. This paper proposes a multi-objective optimization model to address the negative consequences of intermittent water shortages. The model is intended to maximize the quantitative and qualitative reliability and the fairness in water supply, and to minimize the frequency of supply interruption. The developed model also considers pragmatic limitations, water quality, water pressure, and supply reservoir's constraints to plan the operation of intermittent water distribution systems under water shortage. The model's efficiency is tested with a WDN in Iran and compared with a standard operation policy (SOP) for water distribution. According to the evaluated efficiency criteria concerning reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability of water quality and quantity of water supply, the developed model is superior to the SOP rule and improves the performance of the network under intermittent operation. In addition, the results demonstrate there is a tradeoff between the uniformity of water distribution and the frequency of supply interruption that shows operators’ and customers’ conflicting priorities.

Children do not ignore (null objects): Against deficit accounts of the null object stage in language acquisition

Children across a variety of languages omit direct objects at higher rates that adults. It has been argued that these omissions arise from children’s performance or pragmatic limitations. The null object approach holds that children start by allowing a broader set of mechanisms for the recoverability of null objects than those possible in the adult grammar, which becomes more restricted with experience. Comprehension data is considered key evidence for evaluating representational approaches, but the interpretation of previous comprehension results is obscured by methodological issues. This article presents new data contrasting the interpretation of various types of direct objects in negative sentences, including null objects (Johnny is not eating) and anaphoric and negative polarity items (not eating it/not eating anything). English-speaking children aged 4–5 (n = 75) participated in three separate comprehension studies contrasting the interpretation of null objects to overt objects. Children consistently accepted sentences with overt anaphoric objects and rejected sentences with negative polarity objects, and treated sentences with null objects as fully ambiguous.

Sample-level sound synthesis with recurrent neural networks and conceptors.

Conceptors are a recent development in the field of reservoir computing; they can be used to influence the dynamics of recurrent neural networks (RNNs), enabling generation of arbitrary patterns based on training data. Conceptors allow interpolation and extrapolation between patterns, and also provide a system of boolean logic for combining patterns together. Generation and manipulation of arbitrary patterns using conceptors has significant potential as a sound synthesis method for applications in computer music but has yet to be explored. Conceptors are untested with the generation of multi-timbre audio patterns, and little testing has been done on scalability to longer patterns required for audio. A novel method of sound synthesis based on conceptors is introduced. Conceptular Synthesis is based on granular synthesis; sets of conceptors are trained to recall varying patterns from a single RNN, then a runtime mechanism switches between them, generating short patterns which are recombined into a longer sound. The quality of sound resynthesis using this technique is experimentally evaluated. Conceptor models are shown to resynthesise audio with a comparable quality to a close equivalent technique using echo state networks with stored patterns and output feedback. Conceptor models are also shown to excel in their malleability and potential for creative sound manipulation, in comparison to echo state network models which tend to fail when the same manipulations are applied. Examples are given demonstrating creative sonic possibilities, by exploiting conceptor pattern morphing, boolean conceptor logic and manipulation of RNN dynamics. Limitations of conceptor models are revealed with regards to reproduction quality, and pragmatic limitations are also shown, where rises in computation and memory requirements preclude the use of these models for training with longer sound samples. The techniques presented here represent an initial exploration of the sound synthesis potential of conceptors, demonstrating possible creative applications in sound design; future possibilities and research questions are outlined.

Clinical Faceoff: Should Routine Histopathological Analysis be Performed on Specimens Obtained During Primary Arthroplasty Surgery?

Clinical Faceoff: Should Routine Histopathological Analysis be Performed on Specimens Obtained During Primary Arthroplasty Surgery?

What Are the Limits of Pragmatism in a Post-Humanist World?

What Are the Limits of Pragmatism in a Post-Humanist World?