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We explored the roles of attending physicians of long-term care (LTC) residents in supporting their family caregivers (FCGs). In this mixed-methods study, we conducted surveys and focus group interviews with physicians and FCGs. There were 78 FCGs and 18 physicians in the survey, and 18 FCGs and 9 physicians in the focus groups. They were recruited from 5 urban LTC settings. Although 83.3% of physicians reported they had experience caring for FCGs, 71.8% of FCGs perceived they had not received support from the physicians. There was no statistically significant difference between the FCGs' and physicians' mean responses to the mirrored survey questions. Both groups gave similar ratings, means neutral and agree indicative of ambivalence, on physician's knowledge to identify FCGs who need assistance, ability to assess FCG stress, and aid those experiencing distress and needing advocacy. Analysis of the focus groups revealed the overarching theme: ambiguity about the LTC residents' physicians' role in supporting FCGs. Although physicians noted that residents and families come as a unit, there was ambivalence about the physician's role in supporting FCGs. FCG roles in LTC are also vague. There were 3 sub-themes: "accord on the surface"; "tension in the interface"; and "smoothing the relationship." Both groups thought FCG medical care was beyond the purview of the resident's physician. Physicians and FCGs provided different explanations for the tensions in the FCG/physician interface. Physicians attributed tension to FCG stress and inadequate knowledge, whereas FCGs thought physicians' communication could be improved. Suggestions to smooth the relationship were to align FCG expectations to reality of LTC and different staffing models. Family physicians, policy makers, and FCGs will need to work on polices to ensure LTC physicians' roles in supporting FCGs and FCGs' roles in LTC are delineated and supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two different forms of ambiguity have been hallmarks of several major conflicts over the past two decades: tactical and political. These two forms of ambiguity interact differently with strategy. The first interferes with the internal logic of strategy itself, whereas the second inhibits the political choice in favor of practicing strategy, but does not inhibit strategy itself. The strategic response to political ambiguity is military force, which still works in such contexts. Any inhibitions against strategy in a politically ambiguous context are political, rather than strategic. Yet, even political objections can be minimized by relying on the West's own ambiguous forces to respond to a Russian ambiguous invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risky behaviours have received little attention in the safety literature in recent years, compared to safety behaviours such as safety compliance or safety participation. However, it is important to focus on risky behaviours and their predictors in order to prevent accidents. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of role stressors (role ambiguity and role overload) on risky behaviours, and the mediating role of dissatisfaction (both job and safety dissatisfaction). The sample consists of 566 employees from two nuclear power plants in Spain. Structural equation modelling is used to determine the effects of role ambiguity and role overload on risky behaviours. Role stressors (role ambiguity and role overload) predict risky behaviours. On the one hand, role ambiguity predicts risky behaviours through dissatisfaction with both the job and safety. On the other hand, role overload positively and directly influences risky behaviours. Assessing and reducing workers’ role ambiguity and role overload levels is vital to avoid risky behaviours among employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological ambiguity is an important phenomenon affecting several tasks in Arabic text analysis, indexing and mining. Nevertheless, it has not been well studied in related works. We investigate, in this paper, new approaches to disambiguate the morphological features of non-vocalized Arabic texts, combining statistical classification and linguistic rules. Indeed, we perform unsupervised training from unlabelled vocalized Arabic corpora. Thus, the training and testing sets contain imperfect instances (i.e. having ambiguous attributes and/or classes). To handle imperfect data, we compare two approaches: i) a possibilistic approach allowing to handle imperfection in a direct manner; and, ii) a data transformation-based approach permitting to convert an imperfect dataset to a perfect one, thus allowing to exploit classical classifiers. We also present an approach dealing with unknown (Out-of-Vocabulary) words. The experiments focus mainly on classical texts, which were not sufficiently studied in related works. We show that the possibilistic approach performs better than the transformation-based one. Besides, we report encouraging results as far as i) the role of linguistic rules in enhancing the disambiguation rates; and, ii) the accuracy of our approach for full morphological disambiguation of unknown words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objectives: Based on the role episode model (), the purpose of this study was to examine the reciprocal relationship between role ambiguity () and group cohesion () in youth interdependent sport teams. Design: Longitudinal research with self-reported questionnaires. Methods: Participants (N =162; 12–18 years of age; M =15.00 years) took part in two testing sessions (midseason vs. late-season) designed to gather information on individual perceptions of role ambiguity and group cohesion. Results: After statistically controlling for status, gender, and team membership, results demonstrated that perceptions of social cohesion at midseason positively predicted variations in perceptions of scope of responsibilities and role behaviors in defense between mid- and end of season. Conclusions: The need to belong (fundamental human motivation) and the unbalanced gender composition of the sample could explain the salience of social cohesion in the cohesion-role ambiguity relationship within youth interdependent sport teams. Results underlined that a part of role construction within youth teams is based on the peer social relationships developed between teammates. Implications are identified for youth practice. Limitations and future directions are addressed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Objectives: The present article provides a summary of four studies undertaken to examine the structure of the role ambiguity framework advanced by and its validity in another culture (i.e., French culture). Two forms of the Role Ambiguity Scale () were developed into French: a version distinguishing the offensive and defensive contexts; a version without specification of any context. Three competing models of the organization of the role ambiguity dimensions were examined. Method: Overall, 1145 male and female athletes completing in different team sports participated in the study. Design: Cross-sectional with self-reported questionnaires. Results: In the French culture, the results supported a hierarchical organization of role ambiguity with three first-order dimensions loading on a second-order factor. The fourth study examining the predictive validity of the questionnaires revealed that a four-dimension model slightly accounted for more variance in task cohesion than a three-dimension model and enabled a more accurate description of the role ambiguity-task cohesion relationship. Conclusions: Theoretical and cultural implications were advanced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Police-probation partnerships have increased in recent years, but evaluations of such partnerships are rare. Particularly within probation agencies, such partnerships can be perceived as an abandonment of service responsibilities in favor of enforcing the law against probationers, but the views of police officers involved in these partnerships have not been examined in the past. The current study began this process by examining the perceptions of law enforcement officers in Texas. In particular, the following questions were addressed: (1) whether they experience role conflict or role ambiguity, (2) how they perceive the effectiveness of partnerships, and (3) how they evaluate the impact of partnerships on crime reduction. Three partnership patterns were identified using cluster analysis. The analysis revealed a significant relationship between the extent of partnerships and the perceptions of law enforcement officers on the partnerships. The policy implications of the findings are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Background: The posterior tibial slope of the knee is an issue in total knee arthroplasty. It has also been suggested to be a determinant for the difference in the incidence of anterior cruciate ligament rupture between males and females. The current literature features discrepancies in inter-individual variation in posterior slope and the effect of gender. This in vitro study was aimed at quantifying the inter-individual variations of the posterior tibial slope and the gender difference. Methods: The slope of the medial tibial plateau of 61 male and 44 female, bare human tibias was measured in three sagittal planes, separated by 5mm, with the use of a custom-made device. The effect of measurement location, gender and ethnicity was determined with analysis of variance. Findings: The difference between the measurement locations was statistically significant but smaller than the variation between specimens. The mean posterior slope was 8.4° (SD 3.7°), 95% confidence interval was 1.0–5.8°. Ethnicity did affect posterior slope (p =0.001), but gender did not reach significance (p =0.091). Interpretation: The results support the existence of a substantial inter-individual variation in posterior slope. For total knee arthroplasty, the pre-operative posterior slope is apparently not compatible with the suggestion not to cut a slope greater than 8°, as more than half of the tibias had a greater slope. Secondly, part of the variance over subjects is related to ethnicity and possibly also to gender, which might have implications for the risk of sustaining an anterior cruciate ligament rupture and for the success of total knee arthroplasty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Despite the acknowledged key role of leaders for psychosocial work environment, few studies focus on how leaders can decrease work-related stress. To gain deeper knowledge of leaders’ perceptions and strategies for dealing with their own and their subordinates’ stress in public human service organisations (HSO), qualitative interviews were made with leaders from hospitals and regional social insurance offices (n=21), and analysed in line with grounded theory method. The leaders handled subordinates’ stress and perceived leadership demands by acting as shock absorber (core category) and used strategies characterised as leading in continuous change whilst maintaining trustworthiness. To cope with their own stress from perceived leadership demands, they tried to sustain their own integrity (core category) by either identifying with or distancing themselves from the leader role. The strategies for dealing with leaders’ own and subordinates’ exposures to stressors was pervaded by perceived leadership demands and are probably influencing each other. Supportive structures and improved communication about everyday dilemmas seem to be needed in order, not just to prevent stress reactions, but to improve the basic conditions for practicing leadership in HSO. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A series of 4-amino-5-vinyl-3(2H)-pyridazinones and analogues were synthesized and their antinociceptive effect was evaluated in the mouse abdominal constriction model. Several of the novel compounds showed ED50 values in the range 6–20mg/kg/sc and demonstrated to be able to completely protect all the treated animals from the effect of the noxious stimulus at 30mg/kg/sc. SAR studies confirmed the essential role played by an amino or substituted amino function at position 4 and by a vinyl group at position 5 of the diazine system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using evidence from eye-tracking studies, have argued against currently implemented constraint-based models of syntactic ambiguity resolution. The case against these competition models is based on a mismatch between reported patterns of reading data and the putative predictions of the models. Using a series of detailed simulations, we show that there are marked differences between the actual and claimed predictions of one of the main exemplar models. As a consequence, we argue that the existing data remain entirely compatible with at least one current constraint-based account. We end with a brief discussion of the implications for a range of other implemented models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The study focuses on teachers’ perceived certainty, a concept which is understood as being made up of didactic, practical and relational certainty, and its relationship with teacher collaboration, role ambiguity and job satisfaction. Analyses draw on data from 1153 Norwegian elementary and junior high school teachers. Results indicate that there are statistically significant differences between the two subgroups of teachers concerning collaboration and job satisfaction. Furthermore, interesting differences regarding relations between collaboration and teacher certainty are found. Teachers in this study also report most collaboration on planning lessons, but little collaboration on activities one would expect to enhance self-awareness and reflection. A structural equation model involving relationships between all variables is tested and results reveal good fit indices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]