Types Of Frames Research Articles

Clinicians' Use of Choice Framing in ICU Family Meetings.

To quantify the frequency and patterns of clinicians' use of choice frames when discussing preference-sensitive care with surrogate decision-makers in the ICU. Secondary sequential content analysis. One hundred one audio-recorded and transcribed conferences between surrogates and clinicians of incapacitated, critically ill adults from a prospective, multicenter cohort study. Surrogate decision-makers and clinicians. None. Four coders identified preference-sensitive decision episodes addressed in the meetings, including topics such as mechanical ventilation, renal replacement, and overall goals of care. Prior critical care literature provided specific topics identified as preference-sensitive specific to the critical care context. Coders then examined each decision episode for the types of choice frames used by clinicians. The choice frames were selected a priori based on decision science literature. In total, there were 202 decision episodes across the 101 transcripts, with 20.3% of the decision episodes discussing mechanical ventilation, 19.3% overall goals of care, 14.4% renal replacement therapy, 14.4% post-discharge care (i.e., discharge location such as a skilled nursing facility), and the remaining 32.1% other topics. Clinicians used default framing, in which an option is presented that will be carried out if another option is not actively chosen, more frequently than any other choice frame (127 or 62.9% of decision episodes). Clinicians presented a polar interrogative, or a "yes or no question" to accept or reject a specific care choice, in 43 (21.3%) decision episodes. Clinicians more frequently presented options emphasizing both potential losses and gains rather than either in isolation. Clinicians frequently use default framing and polar questions when discussing preference-sensitive choices with surrogate decision-makers, which are known to be powerful nudges. Future work should focus on designing interventions promoting the informed use of these and the other most common choice frames used by practicing clinicians.

Understanding the Political Frames of the Opioid Crisis: A Content Analysis of U.S. Senators’ Tweets

ABSTRACT The opioid epidemic in the United States is a public health emergency that has triggered calls to action for policy reforms. However, variations exist between political parties and policymakers on how this issue is communicated to the public. With the substantial growth in the use of social media by policymakers as a tool for disseminating policy-related information affecting their constituents, examining their communication strategies on public health emergency issues is imperative. To better understand how U.S. Senate members use Twitter (now known as X) to communicate opioid-related issues, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of their opioid-related tweets (N = 697) from January 1 to August 25 2022. Findings reveal a significant political divide regarding how senators characterize the opioid crisis, influencing user engagement on Twitter. Guided by the moral foundation theory, the results suggest that Democratic senators were more likely to employ care/harm or fairness/cheating moral foundations, relative to Republican senators, who used more loyalty/betrayal or authority/subversion. Additionally, Democratic senators framed the opioid crisis as a health or policy issue, relative to Republican senators’ immigration/border frame. For inclusion of information sources, Democratic senators included significantly more health sources compared to Republican senators’ use of media or law enforcement sources. Issue frame and source type significantly influenced user engagement in the form of likes and retweets. These findings provide both practical and theoretical implications.

Semantic units: organizing knowledge graphs into semantically meaningful units of representation

BackgroundIn today’s landscape of data management, the importance of knowledge graphs and ontologies is escalating as critical mechanisms aligned with the FAIR Guiding Principles—ensuring data and metadata are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. We discuss three challenges that may hinder the effective exploitation of the full potential of FAIR knowledge graphs.ResultsWe introduce “semantic units” as a conceptual solution, although currently exemplified only in a limited prototype. Semantic units structure a knowledge graph into identifiable and semantically meaningful subgraphs by adding another layer of triples on top of the conventional data layer. Semantic units and their subgraphs are represented by their own resource that instantiates a corresponding semantic unit class. We distinguish statement and compound units as basic categories of semantic units. A statement unit is the smallest, independent proposition that is semantically meaningful for a human reader. Depending on the relation of its underlying proposition, it consists of one or more triples. Organizing a knowledge graph into statement units results in a partition of the graph, with each triple belonging to exactly one statement unit. A compound unit, on the other hand, is a semantically meaningful collection of statement and compound units that form larger subgraphs. Some semantic units organize the graph into different levels of representational granularity, others orthogonally into different types of granularity trees or different frames of reference, structuring and organizing the knowledge graph into partially overlapping, partially enclosed subgraphs, each of which can be referenced by its own resource.ConclusionsSemantic units, applicable in RDF/OWL and labeled property graphs, offer support for making statements about statements and facilitate graph-alignment, subgraph-matching, knowledge graph profiling, and for management of access restrictions to sensitive data. Additionally, we argue that organizing the graph into semantic units promotes the differentiation of ontological and discursive information, and that it also supports the differentiation of multiple frames of reference within the graph.

Between a Burden and Green Technology: Rishi Sunak’s Framing of Climate Change Discourse on Facebook and X (Twitter)

The issue of climate change has been one of the critical foci of political discourse worldwide (Wagner, 2023). Given that political debates and political discourse are quite often communicated on Social Networking Sites (SNSs), for instance Facebook and X (Araújo & Prior, 2021), it appears highly relevant to tap into political actors’ discourse on SNSs that addresses the issue of climate change. Guided by the importance of SNSs in political discourse on climate change, the present article introduces and discusses a study on how Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister of the United Kingdom (the UK), frames the issue of climate change on his official Facebook and X accounts. Specifically, the aim of the study was to identify the types of frames used in Sunak’s climate change discourse in a corpus of his posts on Facebook and X. The corpus was collected and analysed in accordance with the methodology proposed and developed by Entman (2007). The results of the analysis revealed that Sunak’s framing of climate change involved a pragmatic economy-oriented aspect, which was presented discursively by imparting it a personalised dimension that involved multimodality. In particular, it was discovered that Sunak frequently framed the issue of climate change via the frames Burden and Green Technology. The findings were discussed in conjunction with the prior research on framing in climate change discourse.

From Eye Movements to Personality Traits: A Machine Learning Approach in Blood Donation Advertising

Blood donation heavily depends on voluntary involvement, but the problem of motivating and retaining potential blood donors remains. Understanding the personality traits of donors can assist in this case, bridging communication gaps and increasing participation and retention. To this end, an eye-tracking experiment was designed to examine the viewing behavior of 75 participants as they viewed various blood donation-related advertisements. The purpose of these stimuli was to elicit various types of emotions (positive/negative) and message framings (altruistic/egoistic) to investigate cognitive reactions that arise from donating blood using eye-tracking parameters such as the fixation duration, fixation count, saccade duration, and saccade amplitude. The results indicated significant differences among the eye-tracking metrics, suggesting that visual engagement varies considerably in response to different types of advertisements. The fixation duration also revealed substantial differences in emotions, logo types, and emotional arousal, suggesting that the nature of stimuli can affect how viewers disperse their attention. The saccade amplitude and saccade duration were also affected by the message framings, thus indicating their relevance to eye movement behavior. Generalised linear models (GLMs) showed significant influences of personality trait effects on eye-tracking metrics, including a negative association between honesty–humility and fixation duration and a positive link between openness and both the saccade duration and fixation count. These results indicate that personality traits can significantly impact visual attention processes. The present study broadens the current research frontier by employing machine learning techniques on the collected eye-tracking data to identify personality traits that can influence donation decisions and experiences. Participants’ eye movements were analysed to categorize their dominant personality traits using hierarchical clustering, while machine learning algorithms, including Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, and k-Nearest Neighbours (KNN), were employed to predict personality traits. Among the models, SVM and KNN exhibited high accuracy (86.67%), while Random Forest scored considerably lower (66.67%). This investigation reveals that computational models can infer personality traits from eye movements, which shows great potential for psychological profiling and human–computer interaction. This study integrates psychology research and machine learning, paving the way for further studies on personality assessment by eye tracking.

Communication Strategies to Promote COVID-19 Vaccination Intention: How Effective are Source, Appeal, Framing, and Evidence Type Approaches?

ABSTRACT This systematic review analyzed the effectiveness of key persuasive strategies – source, appeal, framing, and evidence (SAFE) – on COVID-19 vaccination intention. Quantitative studies were searched in Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed following the PRISMA guidelines. From the 61 studies that met inclusion criteria, source and framing are the most commonly applied SAFE strategies. However, source characteristics are a more consistent influence on vaccine intentions than message framing strategies, with expert sources and general practitioners emerging as the key sources contributing to greater vaccine intentions. In addition, a range of mediators and moderators influence the process through which SAFE message strategies impact vaccine intentions. Framing effects, in particular, are moderated by political identity, source characteristics, and vaccine perceptions. Tests of mediating processes highlight how health behavior judgments (e.g. perceived vaccine benefits, risks, trust in vaccination, perceived severity) and message response/perceptions (e.g. counterarguing, perceived similarity/empathy) operate as key intervening factors between SAFE message strategies and vaccine intentions. Overall, when practitioners apply various structural approaches (narrative elements, fear appeals, framing cues) to vaccine promotion campaigns, they should be cognizant of who is providing that appeal. Targeted populations may benefit most from different structural elements if they are integrated with sources that resonate with the audience.

Examining associations between goal and attribute framing, HIV treatment motivation, and affective responses: A mixed methods study of patient thoughts and perceptions

AbstractThe use of framing in persuasive health communications considerably affects health behaviour, but our understanding of how framing influences patient motivation to take HIV treatments remains limited. This study examined how goal and attribute framing are related to the motivational and affective responses linked to HIV treatment adherence behaviours. The predominantly low‐income, African American sample (n = 30) consisted of HIV patients living in Chicago and Los Angeles who reported their thoughts and perceptions regarding HIV treatment in two previous studies. We performed content analysis on data consisting of a total of 119 thoughts and perceptions, categorized the data by type of framing expressed (goal, attribute), and determined correlations between framing type, treatment‐related motivation (i.e., intrinsic, extrinsic, approach, avoidance) and affective responses (i.e., positive, negative). Goal framed thoughts were classified as either gain‐ or loss‐framed. We found that goal framed thoughts highlighting the gains associated with medication adherence were associated with higher levels of intrinsic motivation than either goal framed thoughts highlighting losses or attribute framed thoughts (p < .02). There were no significant associations between type of framing and patients' extrinsic, approach, or avoidance treatment motivations. Negative affect related more strongly to attribute framed thoughts and perceptions than to either gain‐ or loss‐framed thoughts (p < .001). Findings suggest that gain framing may be associated with stronger and more consistent adherence and treatment engagement among HIV patients with a promotion‐oriented self‐regulatory focus. Future studies are needed to evaluate the relative effect of framing manipulations on actual changes in HIV treatment adherence across time.

Factorized and progressive knowledge distillation for CTC-based ASR models

Knowledge distillation (KD) is a popular model compression method to improve the performance of lightweight models by transferring knowledge from a teacher model to a student model. However, applying KD to connectionist temporal classification (CTC) ASR model is challenging due to its peaky posterior property. In this paper, we propose to address this issue by treating non-blank and blank frames differently for two main reasons. First, the non-blank frames in the teacher model’s posterior matrix and hidden representations provide more acoustic and linguistic information than the blank frames, but the frame number of non-blank frames only accounts for a small fraction of all frames, leading to a severe learning imbalance problem. Second, the non-blank tokens in the teacher’s blank-frame posteriors exhibit irregular probability distributions, negatively impacting the student model’s learning. Thus, we propose to factorize the distillation of non-blank and blank frames and further combine them into a progressive KD framework, which contains three incremental stages to facilitate the student model gradually building up its knowledge. The first stage involves a simple binary classification KD task, in which the student learns to distinguish between non-blank and blank frames, as the two types of frames are learned separately in subsequent stages. The second stage is a factorized representation-based KD, in which hidden representations are divided into non-blank and blank frames so that both can be distilled in a balanced manner. In the third stage, the student learns from the teacher’s posterior matrix through our proposed method, factorized KL-divergence (FKL), which performs different operation on blank and non-blank frame posteriors to alleviate the imbalance issue and reduce the influence of irregular probability distributions. Compared to the baseline, our proposed method achieves 22.5% relative CER reduction on the Aishell-1 dataset, 23.0% relative WER reduction on the Tedlium-2 dataset, and 17.6% relative WER reduction on the LibriSpeech dataset. To show the generalization of our method, we also evaluate our method on the hybrid CTC/Attention architecture as well as on scenarios with cross-model topology KD.

Stories and Selves: A Twisted Love Story about the Meaning of Life

AbstractI argue that stories are ‘equipment for living’ in two senses: retrospectively, they provide ‘configurational comprehension’ of a temporal sequence of events; prospectively, they offer templates for action. Narrative conceptions of the self appear well poised to leverage these functional roles for stories into an intuitively compelling view of self-construction as self-construal. However, the narrative conception defines selves in terms of the lives they live: a self is the protagonist in a lifelong story. And narrative structure is itself defined by ‘retrospective necessity’: the meaning of events within a story is given by their contribution to that story's ending. Together, this entails that life stories hold selves metaphysically, epistemically, and practically hostage to their ends. Fortunately, narratives are just one species of interpretive frame. I suggest some alternative types of frames, including identity labels and metaphors, that support configurational comprehension, action guidance, and self construction without shackling selves to their lives’ ends.

Differences in 5'untranslated regions highlight the importance of translational regulation of dosage sensitive genes

BackgroundUntranslated regions (UTRs) are important mediators of post-transcriptional regulation. The length of UTRs and the composition of regulatory elements within them are known to vary substantially across genes, but little is known about the reasons for this variation in humans. Here, we set out to determine whether this variation, specifically in 5’UTRs, correlates with gene dosage sensitivity.ResultsWe investigate 5’UTR length, the number of alternative transcription start sites, the potential for alternative splicing, the number and type of upstream open reading frames (uORFs) and the propensity of 5’UTRs to form secondary structures. We explore how these elements vary by gene tolerance to loss-of-function (LoF; using the LOEUF metric), and in genes where changes in dosage are known to cause disease. We show that LOEUF correlates with 5’UTR length and complexity. Genes that are most intolerant to LoF have longer 5’UTRs, greater TSS diversity, and more upstream regulatory elements than their LoF tolerant counterparts. We show that these differences are evident in disease gene-sets, but not in recessive developmental disorder genes where LoF of a single allele is tolerated.ConclusionsOur results confirm the importance of post-transcriptional regulation through 5'UTRs in tight regulation of mRNA and protein levels, particularly for genes where changes in dosage are deleterious and lead to disease. Finally, to support gene-based investigation we release a web-based browser tool, VuTR, that supports exploration of the composition of individual 5'UTRs and the impact of genetic variation within them.

Castro’s victory: An assessment of New York Times coverage of the 1959 Cuban Revolution

This research applies framing theory and basic quantitative content methods to analyze the New York Times coverage of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, in order to examine assertions that New York Times stories contributed to Fidel Castro’s victory. Specifically, the study analyzes datelines, bylines, types of sources and story framing in all the stories about Cuba published on the front page of the New York Times between January 1, 1957, and December 31, 1962. The findings of this research contest long-held claims that the New York Times stories, in particular those written by reporter Herbert L. Matthews, contributed to the success of the Cuban Revolution. Matthews’s three-part front-page scoop in 1957 introduced Castro and the bearded Cuban revolutionaries to the world, but his stories and subsequent New York Times coverage are unlikely to have been decisive in Castro’s overthrow of the Batista regime. This study argues instead that the New York Times coverage of the 1959 Cuban Revolution was written through an aspirational lens, much like the stories about other major political revolutions written by U.S. foreign correspondents, and that stories played an important inter-media agenda-setting role, as evident from the many news organizations that covered the revolution after Matthews’ scoop.

Investigating the seismic performance and developing the fragility curves of self-centering steel frames with augmented nonlinear viscous damping: A numerical simulation

This paper focuses on investigating the seismic performance of post-tensioned steel frames equipped with nonlinear viscous dampers. The aim is to increase the ductility and seismic energy dissipation capacity of these structures. Finite element (FE) models were created using the Abaqus software and validated against reference experimental data under cyclic loading. Two types of post-tensioned moment-resisting frames (PT-Frames) were developed: a conventional PT-Frame and a PT-Frame with two pairs of nonlinear viscous dampers acting as knee braces (each brace pair, contains two dampers connected in parallel, thus there are 4 dampers used in total). Various analyses, including modal analysis, cyclic loading, and incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), were conducted using earthquake records mentioned in FEMA P-695. Fragility curves were plotted based on the IDA results. The findings indicate that the augmented nonlinear viscous damping significantly increases the natural fundamental period of vibration in PT-Frames (133 % increase observed). It also enhances the absorption and dissipation of input seismic energy (800 % increase in cumulative dissipated seismic energy observed). Moreover, it reduces the probability of damage exceeding the damage index value for different performance levels (collapse prevention, life safety, and immediate occupancy) by average values of 115 %, 61.72 %, and 25.126 %, respectively. These improvements help mitigate damage to the structural components.

Culturally mixed co-branding product framing in China: the role of cultural sensitivity, product quality, and purchase probability

Chinese consumers have shown a strong preference for foreign brands (FBs) for many years. However, in recent years, rising patriotism has spurred Chinese consumers to source locally, indicating a shift in preference for patriotic brands (PBs). FBs operating in the world’s second-largest market are now framing their marketing strategies to appeal more to Chinese consumers. This study examines two culturally mixed co-branded product (CMCP) framing strategies: foreign × host culture (FB × PB) and host × foreign culture (PB × FB). The results show that the effects of product fit and cultural congruence on co-branding attitude for PB × FB is stronger than that of FB × PB, and the influence of brand fit on co-branding attitude for FB × PB is stronger than that of PB × FB. Additionally, the impact of the co-branding attitude on cultural sensitivity was significant for PB × FB, whereas that on product quality was significant for FB × PB. Furthermore, the effects of co-branding attitude on purchase probability were significant for both types of CMCP framing (FB × PB < PB × FB). Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the preferences of 479 Chinese consumers. This study provides significant recommendations for FBs and PBs to benefit from a strong wave of patriotism in China through culturally mixed framing and glocalization co-branding strategies.

Effects of virtual agents on interaction efficiency and environmental immersion in MR environments

BackgroundPhysical entity interactions in mixed reality (MR) environments aim to harness human capabilities in manipulating physical objects, thereby enhancing virtual environment (VEs) functionality. In MR, a common strategy is to use virtual agents as substitutes for physical entities, balancing interaction efficiency with environmental immersion. However, the impact of virtual agent size and form on interaction performance remains unclear. MethodsTwo experiments were conducted to explore how virtual agent size and form affect interaction performance, immersion, and preference in MR environments. The first experiment assessed five virtual agent sizes (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, and 125% of physical size). The second experiment tested four types of frames (no frame, consistent frame, half frame, and surrounding frame) across all agent sizes. Participants, utilizing a headmounted display, performed tasks involving moving cups, typing words, and using a mouse. They completed questionnaires assessing aspects such as the virtual environment effects, interaction effects, collision concerns, and preferences. ResultsResults from the first experiment revealed that agents matching physical object size produced the best overall performance. The second experiment demonstrated that consistent framing notably enhances interaction accuracy and speed but reduces immersion. To balance efficiency and immersion, frameless agents matching physical object sizes were deemed optimal. ConclusionsVirtual agents matching physical entity sizes enhance user experience and interaction performance. Conversely, familiar frames from 2D interfaces detrimentally affect interaction and immersion in virtual spaces. This study provides valuable insights for the future development of MR systems.

Can failure be useful in policymaking? The case of EU equal pay policy

Although equal pay for equal work between women and men is a founding principle of the European Union, enshrined in the Treaties since 1957, the gender pay gap stands at 12.7 per cent in 2021 and has only changed minimally for two decades. This article explores a policymaking paradox: the EU equal pay policy seems unaffected by failure, on the contrary, failure seems to contribute to the legitimisation of the policy. The article asks how and why a policy implementation failure framing has been developed in the field of EU equal pay promotion? What is the political function of this framing and what is its impact on the EU policymaking process? Over the years, the EU equal pay policy has been associated with a repeated experience of implementation failure. This failure framing has been particularly present in the debates over the implementation of the 2006 Recast Directive, especially since this frame has been impelled by the quantitative and symbolic strength of the gender pay gap’s percentage. The article shows that this framing performed important functions. From a policymaking perspective, the implementation failure framing allowed the gender equality policy community to keep the issue firmly on the EU agenda and to ride out the dismantling storm. The article also shows that the analytical definition of what constitutes a policy failure should be more nuanced. To conclude, the article asks if this type of failure framing can continue to produce results in an increasingly polarised context such as that of gender equality.

Research on Restoring Force Model Characteristics of Prestressed Steel Reinforced Concrete Frames

On the basis of reasonable selection of material constitutive model, the numerical model of singlebay prestressed section steel-concrete frame. was constructed by using ABAQUS and Open SEES finite element software, respectively, and numerical analyses of the whole process of monotonic and hysteretic force were carried out, and the hysteretic characteristics of this type of frame. structure were analyzed. The main parameters affecting the hysteresis characteristics of this type of frame. were determined through parametric analysis, and the restoring force model was established as a result. The results show that: the numerical model constructed by ABAQUS software can intuitively reflect the damage morphology and stress distribution of the frame, and the simulated peak load is 191kN, with an error of 10% from the test; the numerical model constructed by OPENSEES finite element software can macroscopically reflect the energy-consuming capacity of the frame, and the simulated peak load is 186kN, with an error of 12% from the test; both the axial compression ratio and the length to slenderness ratio are sensitive parameters of prestressed steel and concrete members, the load capacity of the specimen increases with the increase of the design axial compression ratio, and decreases with the increase of the length and slenderness ratio, but too small length and slenderness ratio leads to the destruction of the specimen faster, which is not conducive to the ductility of the specimen; the prestressing effect on the ductility of the hysteresis curve is not obvious; according to the mechanical properties of the section, the geometrical parameters of the member, the restoring force constructed by means of linear regression can be a good fit for this type of frame.

Pengaruh Kenaikan Laju Alir Fluida Panas dan Arah Aliran terhadap Kinerja Plate and Frame Heat Exchanger

Plate and Frame Heat Exchanger (PFHE) is a plate and frame type heat exchanger that is efficient and effective in improving energy efficiency. Research using PFHE aims to determine the effect of increasing the flow rate of hot fluid on heat exchanger performance. This research was conducted at a flow rate variation of 0.7 L/min, 0.9 L/min, 1.1 L/min, 1.3 L/min, 1.5 L/min, 1.7 L/min, and 1.8 L/min with 180 seconds of testing each variation and recording data every 2 seconds. The cold fluid used is tap water and the hot fluid used is distilled water. The results showed that with the increase in hot fluid flow rate, the performance of PFHE also increased because the effectiveness of NTU (Ɛ-NTU) increased. The Ɛ-NTU value of unidirectional flow is 25.37% - 44.87% and in the opposite direction 37% - 68.39%. The largest Ɛ-NTU value in the countercurrent flow indicates that the countercurrent flow is more effective than the unidirectional flow. In addition, increasing the flow rate increases the Reynold's number (Nre) and Nusselt's number (Nu) which indicates the greatest convection heat transfer occurs at the highest flow rate.

Frame’s Types of Inequalities and Stratification

In this paper we examine some inequalities of Frame's type on the interval \((0,\pi/2)\). By observing this domain we simply obtain the results using the appropriate families of stratified functions and MTP - Mixed Trigonometric Polynomials. Additionally, from those families we specify a minimax approximant as a function with some optimal properties.

Design and Manufacture of Virus Sterilization Machine on Packaging to Prevent Transmission of Viruses and Bacteria in the Community

The increasing types of viruses and bacteria such as flu, tuberculosis or even the COVID-19 virus are quite worrying and the potential for this virus to spread is very large through product packaging, so manufacturing of virus and bacteria sterilization machines for product packaging can be a solution. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light type C with wavelengths below 260 nm can kill bacteria, viruses, and fungi. This research aims to create a virus and bacteria sterilization machine for packaging. The technology used is using automatic control, electric motor, conveyor, ergonomic frame, and ultraviolet (UV) light type C. This research was done by making design concepts related to machine components, making sterilization tool designs using Autocad software, and making tools to test virus sterilization machines. The creation of this machine can be an effective way to prevent the spread of viruses and bacteria that are carried and attached to the packaging during distribution.&#x0D; Keywords: Keywords: machine; sterilization; virus; bacteria; packaging; ultraviolet; UV

Assessing the discriminability of PCR-based open reading frame typing versus single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis via draft whole-genome sequencing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in nosocomial transmission analysis

Phylogenetic analysis based on single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based through whole-genome sequencing is recognized as the standard method for probing nosocomial transmission. However, the application of WGS is constrained by the high cost of equipment and the need for diverse analysis tools, which limits its widespread use in clinical laboratory settings. In Japan, the prevalent use of PCR-based open reading frame typing (POT) for tracing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) transmission routes is attributed to its simplicity and ease of use. Although POT's discriminatory power is considered insufficient for nosocomial transmission analysis, conclusive data supporting this notion is lacking. This study assessed the discriminatory capabilities of SNP analysis and POT across 64 clinical MRSA strains. All 21 MRSA strains of ST5/SCCmec IIa, having more than 16 SNPs, demonstrated distinct clones. Conversely, two strains shared the same POT number and were identified as group A. Among the 12 MRSA strains of ST8/SCCmec IVl with over nine SNPs, five fell into POT group B, and five into POT group C. All four MRSA strains of ST8/SCCmec IVa were classified into POT group D, although they included strains with more than 30 SNPs. Among the 27 MRSA strains of ST1/SCCmec IVa, 14 were classified into POT group E. However, except for two clusters (each comprising two or three strains), all had SNP counts >10 (Fig. 1-D). SNP analysis of MRSA in CC1/SCCmec IV showed that several strains had the same number of SNPs in POT number (106-183-37), even among bacteria with >100 SNPs, indicating POT's limited use in detailed nosocomial transmission analysis.