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Existing frameworks of assimilation and group boundaries are limited in making sense of experiences of racial ambiguity. What happens when racial groups are mistaken for other groups, and how does this phenomenon relate to the racial hierarchy? This paper investigates the on-the-ground mechanisms of racial ambiguity that formal institutions, like the Census, do not capture, yet are the lived realities for many immigrant groups. Through analysis of 120 interviews and supplemental observations, I find that the racialization of second-generation South Asians shifts between racial ambiguity and racial legibility in daily life. I present a theoretical concept – localized racialization – to reveal the transient, yet defining, racial experiences of groups residing in the racial middle. Localized racialization centres multiple factors of skin colour, intersectional status markers, and situational contexts that tether racial experiences to the local. This study's South Asian participants reveal persistent racial dynamism at the micro-interactional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary Objective. The objective of this study was to investigate the factors that might have a negative influence on auditory processing and higher-level language processing in the US veterans of the recent foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). Research Design. Exploratory, cross-sectional, correlational, prospective, cohort-design. Methods and Procedures. The experimental group consisted of 12 US veterans of war (10 males and 2 females) with blast exposure. The control group consisted of six US veterans (5 males and 1 female) without the history of blast exposure. Both groups were matched in mean age. Both groups were tested on Boston Assessment of Traumatic Brain Injury, Consonant Trigrams Test, Symbol Digit Modality Test, Trail Making Test, SCAN-3, CELF-5-Metalinguistics, CASL, and an unpublished test on the processing of sentence prosody. Main Outcomes and Results. Significant group differences in attention, and time-compressed sentence processing were found. For those veterans (in the experimental group) who were not wearing their helmets at the time of blast, additional significant differences were noted with inferencing and auditory figure-ground tasks. Conclusions: Findings support the importance of including speech/language pathologists in all stages of recovery for veterans post-blast exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Happy marriages provide protective health benefits, and social support is a key factor in this association. However, previous research indicates one of the greatest differences between same- and different-sex couples is less social support for same-sex couples. Our goal was to examine the extent to which formal markers of couple status (e.g., marriage) impact wellbeing among same-sex married partners. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from 218 primarily White gay and lesbian individuals in the Midwest. Quantitative analysis revealed individuals in a prior formal union with a different-sex partner reported the lowest levels of sexuality specific social support and acceptance. Qualitative analysis revealed four primary impacts of marriage on support from family, friends, and co-workers: no change, increased support, decreased support, and a synthesis of mixed support. Three mechanisms prompting change in the family were identified and are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study used data provided by 349 professional staff employees from 17 different US higher education institutions to assess aspects of their working conditions that could influence their own work engagement and the work-related behaviours of their colleagues. Relationships among three role stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload), work engagement, organisational citizenship behaviours, and in-role behaviours were examined using correlation, regression and relative weight analyses. The higher participants’ perceptions of role ambiguity, conflict and overload, the lower were the levels of their own work engagement and organizational citizenship and in-role behaviours of their colleagues. Work engagement partially mediated the relationships between role ambiguity, conflict and overload and both organizational citizenship and in-role behaviours. The analysis indicated that role ambiguity had the strongest relationship with work engagement, organisational citizenship and in-role behaviours, followed by role conflict and then by role overload. Practical implications are discussed and managerial interventions suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 9/11, the American policy towards Africa has been strongly influenced by national security interests and in particular by the fight against international terrorism and Islamic radicalisation. Traditionally, the American Africa policy has been the result of bureaucratic policymaking with the Pentagon and the State Department playing prominent roles. The paper argues that in the current century, evangelical Christian lobby groups have gained increasing influence on policymaking on Africa. Because policymaking has been influenced by a number of different actors, the American Africa policy may appear incoherent and ambiguous if judged narrowly on the expectation that it only aims to take care of US national security concerns and economic self-interests. The paper concludes that Africa was important to the United States during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama because of the combination of strong security interests and strong domestic lobby groups that have pressured to place Africa on the US foreign policy agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Occupational stress researchers have given considerable attention to role ambiguity and role conflict as predictors of employee health, job attitudes and behaviour. However, the validity of the Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman’s (1970) scales – the most popular role stressor measures – has been a source of disagreement among researchers. In response to the disputed validity of the Rizzo et al. scales, we developed new measures of role ambiguity and role conflict and conducted five studies to examine their psychometric qualities (Study 1N = 101 U.S. workers; Study 2N = 118 workers primarily employed in the U.S.; Study 3N = 135 employed U.S. MBA students; Study 4N = 973 members of the U.S. Air Force (USAF); Study 5N = 234 workers primarily employed in the U.S.). Across these five studies, we found that the new role stressor scales have desirable psychometric qualities: they displayed high levels of substantive validity, high levels of internal consistency and test–retest reliability, they produced an interpretable factor structure, and we found evidence of their construct validity. We therefore recommend that these new scales be used in future research on role stress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study that investigates the impact of ambiguity aversions in asset pricing of two-person and pure-exchange economy through the adoption of equilibrium general setting in the U.S. The continuous-time and pure-exchange competitive economy are mentioned. Moreover, ways on how to do financial analysis for uncertainty and ambiguity models are also stated.

How can we explain an international agreement that appears to run counter to the declared objectives of one of the key players? This article examines the US–EU Open Skies agreement signed in 2007 and asks why Europeans accepted the agreement after having rejected a comparable version three years earlier. Theoretical approaches that explain time inconsistency in international negotiations tend to focus on reasons why states can be constrained to accept suboptimal solutions. In multi-level bargaining, principal–agent and bureaucratization theories focus on loss of control and constructivists suggest that governments can become trapped in rhetoric. This article shows that paradoxical agreements can be voluntary and explains them by showing the rationale behind multi-games that include ambiguity about the future. In particular, increasing the flexibility of the agreement allowed negotiators to escape present-day constituent pressures by remaining ambiguous and betting on shifting coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A comparison between Iran's current nuclear efforts and those of the pro-Western regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi shows that Iranian ambitions for a full-fledged civilian nuclear programme have remained relatively constant for nearly half a century. Today, fuel cycle technology provides Iran with a latent nuclear weapon's potential. However, US concerns about an Iranian bomb, which began in the early 1970s and aggravated after the Iranian Revolution, long predate Teheran's uranium enrichment programme. Thus, Iran is a specific case of the general problem presented by the inherent potential of nuclear technology to both civilian and military ends. Approaches to dealing with a long-term, ambiguous, latent nuclear weapon threat, whether Iranian or other, are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The EU co-decision procedure gave the Parliament and the Council the possibility to reconcile differences in a conciliation committee similar to US conference committees. This article examines why important rules regulating the scope of these committees, which at first outset look similar, are applied more flexibly in the US than the EU context. Learning about the conditions under which scope rules are applied flexibly is important for EU scholars because these rules control who affects the final legislative outputs. In accordance with insights from recent institutional literature, the article argues that variation in rule ambiguity, demand for flexible rule interpretation, and bargaining power of the actors interested in modifying the scope rules can help explain these differences in rule application between the two systems. However, it also shows how flexible interpretation of even unambiguous rules may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US strategic ambiguity versus clarity has been a centerpiece in maintaining cross-strait stability since the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis. Dialogues and debates abound regarding the relative effectiveness of discrete US policy choices. The current thaw in cross-strait relations does not forestall decisively the resurgence in the long run of the cross-strait tensions during 2000-08, rendering the strategic ambiguity/clarity still a relevant issue. This article argues that the discussions on the issue are seriously plagued by the lack of a sufficiently rigorous and commonly shared conceptualization of strategic ambiguity/clarity, and an internal logical contradiction or an inadequate practical utility as a tool to aid policy-making. To address these problems, this article seeks to clarify and elaborate on the conceptual foundation of strategic ambiguity/clarity by differentiating between two distinct analytic levels thereof, and proposing a conceptual framework for a fuller understanding of the US policy along various dimensions. It also reappraises some major issues or problems found in the existing discussions and US practice, and suggests possible solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the conceptual ambiguity and empirical reticence of distributed leadership in the education system of the U.S. The empirical structure of distributed leadership was analyzed including its scope, focus and nature. In one study conducted on about a hundred elementary schools, researchers have found that leadership functions was distributed typically across three to seven designated leadership positions per school. Key information about the normative structure of distributed leadership is further presented.

In this study, we apply the concept of “ambiguity,” as developed in the decision theory literature, to an analysis of potential psychological consequences of uncertainty about cancer prevention recommendations. We used Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 2003 data to examine how perceived ambiguity about cancer prevention recommendations relates to three other cognitive variables known to influence cancer-protective behavior: perceived cancer preventability, perceived cancer risk, and cancer-related worry. Using logistic regression analyses, we tested several predictions derived from a review of literature on the effects of ambiguity perceptions on decision making, cognitions, and emotions. We found perceived ambiguity to have a strong negative relationship with perceived cancer preventability, consistent with “ambiguity aversion”—a pessimistic bias in the interpretation of ambiguity. Cancer worry moderated this relationship; ambiguity aversion increased with higher levels of worry. At the same time, perceived ambiguity was positively related to both perceived cancer risk and cancer worry. Furthermore, perceived risk partially mediated the relationship between perceived ambiguity and worry. These findings suggest that perceived ambiguity about cancer prevention recommendations may have broad and important effects on other health cognitions. We discuss ethical implications of these findings for health communication efforts, and propose a tentative causal model to guide future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The names given to the towns of New England during the colonial period formed the largest group of place names drawn upon in the naming of places (counties, townships, and aggregated communities) in the western territories and states after the attainment of independence by the United States. The distribution of these names in the twentieth century provides a clue to the westward spread of cultural elements from the northeastern states into the interior of North America, supplementing evidence from speech habits and material elements of the cultural landscape. Because Of ambiguities, especially of contamination by transfer of some identical names from the middle and southern colonies, the present distribution of the names in the states west of the original colonies must be examined in the light of evidence other than their position on the map. The full insight to be gained from the occurrence of the names may be achieved only by a more detailed examination, preferably by individual states, than the sample examined here permits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]