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Based on ethnographic data and mapping exercises, this article explores North West Park in Copenhagen, Denmark and asks how lighting forms perceptions of urban space. The park was inaugurated in the late 2000s and has been praised for its bold landscape and lighting design. However, it was received in more ambiguous ways by users, explaining their experience of it in words such as "magical" and "kitsch." This ambiguity highlights how current urban design may entail a reconfiguration of how visibility unfolds. Urban spaces have largely been lit to be seen. However, current trends in lighting design increasingly aim for spaces to be felt. Beyond visibility as the ability to see and be seen, we argue that the park design also evinces a more fundamental attuned visibility, conceptualized through the notion of ways of feeling. In a broader sense, we suggest that the increasingly atmosphere-oriented design of urban spaces facilitates a pressure to feel something. That is, this type of design is not solely functional but demands emotional responses – although undeterminable and open-ended. For the users, the atmospheric design raises questions about how lighting shapes urban life during dark hours in the field of tension between usage and architectural imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concept analysis is a useful qualitative research method for psychologists aiming to define, clarify or critique concept meaning and use in theory, practice or research. This article explains Reformative Concept Analysis (RCA), a novel method derived from nursing and political science concept analysis approaches, and reformed for applied psychology research. First, the role of concepts as epistemological vessels in psychological theory and practice is described. Some problems with concept use in clinical practice and research are highlighted, to demonstrate why critical analytic methods to improve concept definition and utility are needed. Then, overviews of some existing concept analysis methods are provided, with summaries of their strengths and limitations from an applied psychology perspective. The importance of comparing and combining meaning frameworks constructed from qualitative narratives and literature review is highlighted. Finally, the eight stages of RCA method are set out, along with some ontological, epistemological, design, rigour and presentation considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, policy learning has emerged as a theoretical lens to provide an alternative understanding of powering-based approaches to the policy process and policy outcomes. This has been a success story, with policy learning gaining presence among theoretical frameworks on the policy process. However, the puzzling-powering dichotomy is reductive. In real-world policy processes, we find both puzzling and powering. Also, we cannot reduce the value of learning to what is not explained by power alone. This Introduction shows how puzzling and powering interact and with what consequences on policy processes, moving beyond the dichotomy. We present how the four contributions of this Special Issue explore this territory and suggest how to approach the design of governance architectures for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive control facilitates the resolution of representational conflict during language comprehension when incompatible interpretations vie for selection due to linguistic ambiguity. However, it remains unknown if control is required only when conflict arises between multiple, strongly supported interpretations, or even when there is substantial evidence for one interpretation and competition from weak alternatives. We investigated referential ambiguities such as “She will eat the red … ”, in which listeners temporarily consider multiple red objects as potential referents, including those that are partially consistent with the input (e.g. heart satisfies “red” but not “eat”). We introduce a remote visual-world paradigm to track listeners’ interpretive commitments via webcam, combined with a cross-task adaptation manipulation of cognitive-control engagement. We replicated subtle competition effects in referential ambiguity but found that upregulated cognitive control did not modulate competition. This suggests that a competing representation must reach a certain activation threshold before conflict arises, requiring cognitive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn their highly influential push for a “strong program” in Cultural Sociology, Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith argue for deep cultural codes of “good” versus “evil,” which they equate to the “sacred” versus the “profane,” respectively. However, Dmitry Kurakin argued that, in equating the “good” with Durkheim’s “sacred” and “evil” with the “profane,” Alexander and Smith depart from Durkheim’s original meaning where both good and evil are part of the sacred. While I agree with Kurakin on this, I critique his subsequent interpretation of Durkheim on the “ambiguity of the sacred” and hold he has not adequately addressed what difference this correction makes for the strong program. In contrast, I argue that the real problem of ambiguity, as well as for the strong program, lies with the profane rather than the sacred – it is what Durkheim saw as profane that gets omitted from the strong program’s analyses via its conflation of the “profane” with “evil.” I conclude with a discussion of how, by bringing the profane back in, we can expand and deepen the analysis of culture beyond “the times of tension, unease, and crisis” emphasized by Alexander and Smith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connection between the online commentary on the South Korean novel, and later film, Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 (2016; film released in 2019), and the perception of feminism within South Korea. To capture how Kim Ji-Young’s “meaning” is entangled with popular beliefs about feminism, I analyze audience reception through Kim Ji-Young’s paratexts: (a) tweets and (b) comments responding to newspaper articles mentioning the novel and/or film Kim Ji-Young from the Korean platform Naver. I examine paratexts to reveal that the “meaning” Kim Ji-Young has in online spaces is not determined solely by the novel or film-as-referent. I show that Kim Ji-Young the source text has become inextricable from the mélange of preconceptions regarding what constitutes a “feminist” stance in Korea, ranging from the stereotype of the selfish “feminist” who shirks her maternal duty towards the nation to the discontent of stay-at-home moms. I show that online misogyny has forced those who support Kim Ji-Young’s feminist message to employ what rhetorician Leah Ceccarelli describes as “strategic ambiguity.” This involves simultaneously disavowing Kim Ji-Young‘s feminism while praising the text’s feminist politics, a tactic used to shield themselves from attacks by misogynistic trolls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constraint satisfaction theories were prominent in the late 20th century and emphasized continuous, rich interaction between many sources of information in a linguistic signal unfolding over time. A major challenge was rigorously capturing these highly interactive comprehension processes and yielding explicit predictions, because the important constraints were numerous and changed in prominence from one context to the next. Connectionist models were conceptually well-suited to this, but researchers had insufficient computing power and lacked sufficiently large corpora to bring these models to bear. These limitations no longer hold, and large language models (LLMs) offer an opportunity to test constraint satisfaction ideas about human language comprehension. We consider how LLMs can be applied to study interactive processes with lexical ambiguity resolution as a test case. We argue that further study of LLMs can advance theories of constraint satisfaction, though gaps remain in our understanding of how people and LLMs combine linguistic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employee non-green behavior (ENGB) is an important obstacle to corporate green transformation; however, existing literature has paid little attention to ENGB. Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study establishes a model to explore whether and how role stressors affect ENGB and test the hypothesis using a structural equation model with data for employees. The results show that ENGB can be divided into four dimensions: green ignoring behavior, green exclusionary behavior, green silent behavior and green disregardful behavior. There are significant differences in the effects of the three role stressors on four ENGBs. Among them, role conflict directly induces green ignoring behavior and green exclusionary behavior, while its impact on the other two ENGBs is not significant. However, role ambiguity and role overload indirectly induce four ENGBs through the mediation of emotional exhaustion. These findings provide strong recommendations for corporations to reduce ENGB by mitigating employee role stressors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On August 15, 2021, American military forces withdrew from Kabul, and the sanctioning of Afghanistan began. Marred by the usual problems—ineffective, counterproductive, unwieldy—these sanctions revealed three additional puzzles. First, although grounded in targeted sanctions, they transformed into de facto comprehensive sanctions. Secondly, that transformation was instantaneous and unprompted. Thirdly, a near-famine followed within weeks. I make nested analytical, functional, and explanatory arguments. The analytical argument is that targeted sanctions are best understood not as tools of international coercion but primarily as domestic regulations. The functional argument is that the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) uses tactical and strategic ambiguity to maximize its regulatory reach over financial intuitions, humanitarian aid organizations, and money transfer organizations. The explanatory argument returns to the puzzles. I argue that, without any signal from OFAC, which was the signal, and reflecting OFAC's regulatory domination, when the Taliban took Kabul, the international financial community, humanitarian aid organizations, and remittance providers all dissociated from Afghanistan with immediate effect and particularly acute consequences on food entitlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines early twentieth-century Japanese writer Kajii Motojirō's short story 'Remon' ('The Lemon,' 1925) and explores the intersection of Kajii's descriptions and an emerging urbanscape in Kyoto. Turn-of-the-century Kyoto undertook a massive scale of urbanization, remaking itself as a resurgent imperial capital. Instead of taking note of transformations of the scenery or the frenzies of new experiences, 'Remon' illustrates the narrator's movement unintelligibly suspended in Kyoto's back alleys. The repeated juxtaposing of different forms of representational media in the narrative also creates intermedial confusion, intensifying the sense of perceptual uncertainty. The article contends that reading the descriptions of ambiguous in-betweenness in the text reveals Kajii's writerly engagement with the urbanization of Kyoto and leads us to a reevaluation of Kajii's investment in literary modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) bills itself as an alliance. It is seen as Russia's hedge to NATO, yet it often acts in an inconsistent manner vis-a-vis its members when they face crisis situations. These situations are complicated by the fact that the alliance engages in a policy of strategic ambiguity without making a firm commitment to either side of a dispute. Since Russia often acts as a security guarantor on a bilateral level for these states, staying in the alliance may become counterproductive. In order to prevent defection of its members and assuage their fears of abandonment, while maintaining this unofficial policy of strategic ambiguity, and thus help the alliance patron, Russia, avoid entanglement, reassurances are needed. These reassurances come in the form of sunk costs, specifically joint annual military exercise, and the 2022 intervention in Kazakhstan. These sunk costs by the CSTO enhance its reputation for reliability, while maintaining its policy of strategic ambiguity. They reassure its members, assuaging their fear of abandonment, and keeping them invested in the alliance. This will be shown through the use of process tracing in a case study that examines an internal alliance dilemma with two of the organization's members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is rapidly developing interest in legal coding, the development of machine-consumable code representations of legal rules. However, interpretive ambiguities inherent in legal rules make it challenging to directly translate law into code. Interpretive ambiguities pose challenges for legal coders, who must determine the extent to which they disambiguate rules, as well as the interpretive methods applied. Similar interpretive issues have been historically addressed in the field of legal translation. This paper argues that a legal translation framework, known as the principle of fidelity, can be used to better understand and resolve interpretive ambiguities inherent in the legal coding process. Three models of fidelity prominently discussed in legal translation literature are adapted and applied to legal coding. Accordingly, the application of fidelity models to the legal coding process could provide new understanding and methods to address complex interpretive ambiguities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe present paper is the last of a series of three papers, constituting a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the “Catalogo no. 2 – Le madri di tutte noi”, published by the Milan Women’s Bookstore in 1982. The idea for the project was conceived by Silvia Niccolai and Angela Condello, who selected the extracts and provided the written commentaries on the original texts. The Yellow Catalogue, in which we find collective discussions, pages of personal diaries and, overall, the enterprise of a group of women debating over their literary symbolic mothers (who to read? And why?), is an interesting example of a political use of literature. After four decades from its publication, it still proposes inspiring and fresh suggestions for feminist political action and critique, while representing an interesting occasion for researching the philosophical roots of feminism. In particular, the debate on the literary “mothers,” i.e. on the female authors that can contribute to the formation of a feminine symbolic, shows the kind of concerns of difference feminism in Italy (especially during the Seventies). The text offers, in other words, the opportunity to enter a world that nowadays – with the new, varied streams of feminism and the battles over the neutralization of sexual identity – is less frequent, and nevertheless we find it important in order to understand the social, political and cultural power of feminism. The project is composed like follows: Paper No. 1, In search of a feminine symbolic, by Angela Condello, already published on Law& Literature and Paper No. 2, From Novels to the Figures, themes and strategies for a political practice. Paper No 2 is structured in two parts. Part One, entitled “Interest in Reality.” For every woman’s autobiography, by Silvia Niccolai, is already published in Law & Literature; Part Two is the present paper: coauthored by Angela Condello and Silvia Niccolai, it addresses issues of sexual difference, identity and ambiguity, and the theories behind the idea of body and life at the core of the Catalogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterosexual university students continue to endorse sexual scripts that preference men's desire and sustain gendered power imbalances in sexual relationships and encounters, leading women to risk pregnancy by engaging in unprotected sex. Because young women also endorse norms encouraging them to protect themselves and their partners from unintended pregnancy, women are caught in a bind between two often competing norms. We conducted semi-structured individual interviews with university women (n = 45) to examine how they navigate these competing norms. We found that women explained risky contraceptive decisions by saying they "just weren't thinking," thus employing strategic ambiguity, or vague language used to maintain social status, to navigate between competing norms. Our findings suggest that women were actually thinking about risks and making calculated decisions in the moment which often privileged men, putting themselves at risk and sometimes causing distress. To save face, women presented the idea that they "just weren't thinking" in different ways that conformed to traditional notions of romance and sexuality: being in the moment, love and trust for their partner, and deferring to the perceived or actual wishes of men. We conclude that there is a need to promote and achieve affirmative sexuality which includes women feeling empowered to express their own sexual needs -- whether that be consent or refusal, contraception, pleasure, or all of these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the prevalent view positions data as an objective and unbiased resource of truth about the world, scholars have noted that this understanding cannot be all-encompassing and data activists may comprehend the relationship between knowledge, reality, and data differently. Data activists are civil society actors with a critical stance towards datafication; they either consider data as a political issue or employ it to advance desirable social change. This article investigates activists' data epistemologies in a twofold manner. First, it poses the question of how activists can simultaneously use a certain dataset while questioning its credibility. Second, the article explores how activists' data epistemology transforms other domains of socio-political grassroots interventions. To answer these questions, I turn to the case of the DTP Map – an interactive geoweb map of traffic accidents in Russia made by activists using the official governmental data. Turning to the concept of contentious data politics, I demonstrate how the project transforms by continuously dealing with the data's epistemologically ambiguous nature. In their data practices aimed at gaining and maintaining the users' trust, activists have tried to ensure their project will be employed by various collectives for the common goal of reducing traffic accidents in Russia. Their data practices can be considered both a repertoire of social change and a stake of activist intervention. Crucially, in the process of map-making, activists do not gain the epistemologically unambiguous view of data but rather they manage to retain this ambiguity and make it a constitutive part of their project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I reflect on my recent experience to call for progress to address pervasive disability discrimination, including more attention in disability studies to empower disabled people to pursue their preferences in public life. Relating to Nolan's recent story, I highlight a six-fold barrier for disabled people to challenge discrimination, in particular critiquing the ambiguity of 'reasonableness' in reasonable adjustment which dilutes legal obligation and reduces its efficacy in practice. Reasonable adjustment has been construed with an ableist mind frame and places an unfair and unrealistic burden on disabled people to access justice. I argue for equality of preference between disabled and non-disabled people to normalise disability, urging everyone to take positive action against disability discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on coopetition literature, we deconstruct alliance coopetition to horizontal coopetition and vertical coopetition, so as to pursue deeper insight into the impacts of different types of alliance coopetition on breakthrough innovation in the context of the firm's knowledge resource endowment. Drawing on the data extracted from 222 Chinese firms, we theorise and demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between alliance coopetition and breakthrough innovation and the incentive of alliance coopetition on breakthrough innovation performance is contingent on the resource integration ability of firms. In addition, we find the knowledge ambiguity positively moderates the direct effect of horizontal coopetition on firms' resource integration, but negatively moderates the effect of vertical coopetition on firms' resource integration. Our findings help to clarify the controversial relation between coopetition and innovation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the urban canyon environment, the integer ambiguity is hard to be fixed completely mainly because of the multipath effects, hence partial ambiguity resolution (PAR) is developed. This paper systematically introduces a new model-driven PAR method considering elevation and C/N0. Firstly, the theory of partial ambiguity resolution, the elevation-C/N0 function, and the proposed elevation-C/N0 PAR method are deduced in detail. Secondly, the proposed elevation-C/N0 method is applied in the static and dynamic experiments. The performances of the proposed method are compared with the full ambiguity resolution method, traditional elevation-dependent method, and C/N0-dependent method. Comparisons indicate that the proposed elevation-C/N0 method outperforms other methods. The results show that no matter in the urban static experiment or the dynamic experiment, the ambiguity resolution and positioning solutions can be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a continuous-time version of a reinsurance chain, which is sequentially formed by n+1 companies, with the first company being the primary insurer and the rest being reinsurers. Because of possible model misspecification, all companies are ambiguous about the original risk of the primary insurer. We model each reinsurance contracting problem as a Stackelberg game, in which the assuming reinsurer acts as the leader while the ceding company is the follower. Reinsurance is priced using the mean-variance premium principle and all companies are risk neutral under their own beliefs. We obtain equilibrium indemnities, premium loadings, and distortions in closed form, all of which are proportional to the original risk, with the corresponding proportions decreasing along the chain. We also show that the reinsurance chain with ambiguity aversions in increasing order is optimal from the perspectives of both selfish individual companies and an unselfish central planner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many regions or countries seek to transition to a low-carbon economy, but there is ambiguity about how carbon emissions change with economic growth. This paper captures characteristics of carbon emissions in China using the Tapio Method. To detect driving factors of carbon emissions in economic growth, we adopt the Log-Mean Divisia Index decomposition method. The results of the paper are as follows: (1) Economic growth in most regions of China has outpaced the growth rate of carbon emissions, showing the characteristics of decoupling. (2) Metropolitan cities have a greater impact on the level of decoupling in neighboring provinces and municipalities. (3) The decoupling of carbon emissions from economic growth is caused by declining energy intensity in China. (4) The energy mix and industrial structure have little impact on the growth rate of carbon emissions. In addition, some policy implications are summarized according to the findings of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If employees lack information about their job responsibilities, do they halt their voluntary work efforts, and if so, why and when? To answer these questions, this study attempts to unpack the relationship between employees’ role ambiguity and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and proposes both a mediating role of procedural injustice and a moderating role of relational resources (i.e. social interaction and goodwill trust). Survey data collected from employees who work for a services organization in Mozambique indicate that a critical reason that unclear role descriptions diminish extra-role work activities is that employees criticize their organization for maintaining unfair decision-making processes. The informality and trustworthiness of their peer relationships mitigate this detrimental effect. For employees who feel stressed by insufficient information about job responsibilities, this study indicates a risk that their organizational standing might become compromised because they respond by refraining from work-related voluntarism. Organizations need to encourage high-quality interpersonal exchanges to help reduce this risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of "dual carbon" objectives, ESG investment concept has received wide attention. In this paper, based on stochastic systems and stakeholder theory, we analyze the interest requirements of subject stakeholders and investigate the agency conflict and coordination problems in the system. Combining with the contract theory, we construct a continuous-time principal-agent model with ambiguity aversion under ESG rating Knightian uncertainty. By the method of stochastic calculus in multiple priors, we derive the HJB equation for the optimal dynamic contract value function based on ESG rating Knightian uncertainty under incentive compatibility conditions. Then, for different ESG rating levels, through numerical simulation, we discuss the impact of the Knightian uncertainty degree of ESG rating on the optimal contract. The study shows that as the Knightian uncertainty degree of ESG rating increases, companies are more inclined to green development and the maximum expected return of principals decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces the ways in which Kafka's drawings position themselves adamantly in the middle of things: temporally both through the foregrounding of their own becoming and through dynamic evocations of motion, as well as interpersonally through networks of performance and observation. The article juxtaposes images with texts such as "Wunsch, Indianer zu werden," "Der Kübelreiter," and sections of letters that describe the process of drawing to argue for a generative rather than privative sense of incomplete becoming that functions differently in the two media. It also explores how meanings arise and vary through relation and perspective. The images reflect self-referentially on the visual medium through depicted acts of observation, and also offer a visual commentary on textuality through expressive portraits of Kafka's own relatives reading. The drawings' sketchiness—their dynamic refusal of closure—enables a theory of humor in Kafka's work as arising from the way the viewer is "drawn into" the images. The recognition of one's own implication in this prolific openness of bodies and in the always-undercut drive to find meanings reveals the viewer as a co-inhabiter of an absurd and yet vibrant world in flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kafka's drawing style, like his writing one, is abstemious in the extreme; the question is how to characterize his criterion of subtraction. Studying the diary drawings alongside the text in which they are embedded points toward a general dynamic of deactivation—an aesthetics of disillusion in the baroque tradition of desengaño—that can be seen more clearly than read. Kafka repeatedly draws and writes about thresholds. But while his diary writing tends to thematize a perceived failure to pass from one side to another, the accompanying drawings systematically eliminate this register, and with it, all sense of directional movement or striving. The drawings operate as emblems of a passage, and so also of metapherein, in all its most iconic shapes—ladders, gates, permeable walls—but of a passage suspended at the very apex of its arc, where failure is impossible to distinguish from success. The nihilistic thrust of an aestheticized despair is here in turn negated, and the result, like Wittgenstein's duck rabbit example, is in principle ambiguous. The essay argues that such structural ambiguity becomes a crucial feature of the literary works, which are constructed, as the diary entries themselves usually are not, in accordance with a similarly emblematic technique of double negation or "right despair." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physicians' empathy and ambiguity tolerance have recently become a focus of medical education. However, the association between the two concepts remains unclear. This study examined the association between empathy and ambiguity tolerance in the clinical context among medical trainees. We conducted a multicenter cross-sectional study in 12 institutions: 2 universities for medical students and 10 hospitals for residents. We assessed ambiguity tolerance using the Japanese version of the Tolerance of Ambiguity in Medical Students and Doctors scale. The outcome variable was empathy, measured using the Japanese translation of the Jefferson Scales of Empathy (JSE). Data from 100 medical students and 135 residents were analyzed. After adjustment for possible confounders, the factor scores of 'tolerance for things that are not black or white in medicine' showed a dose-dependent association with the JSE. There was no clear trend in the association between the total scores or other factor scores and empathy. This nationwide multicenter study showed that the factor scores of 'tolerance for things that are not black or white in medicine' were associated with empathy among medical trainees. Our findings may be helpful for developing interventions in the field of medical education to nurture empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies robust optimal asset-liability management problems for an ambiguity-averse manager in a possibly non-Markovian environment with stochastic investment opportunities. The manager has access to one risk-free asset and one risky asset in a financial market. The market price of risk relies on a stochastic factor process satisfying an affine-form, square-root, Markovian model, whereas the risky asset’s return rate and volatility are potentially given by general non-Markovian, unbounded stochastic processes. This financial framework includes, but is not limited to, the constant elasticity of variance (CEV) model, the family of 4/2 stochastic volatility models, and some path-dependent non-Markovian models, as exceptional cases. As opposed to most of the papers using the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman-Issacs (HJBI) equation to deal with model ambiguity in the Markovian cases, we address the non-Markovian case by proposing a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) approach. By solving the associated BSDEs explicitly, we derive, in closed form, the robust optimal controls and robust optimal value functions for power and exponential utility, respectively. In addition, analytical solutions to some particular cases of our model are provided. Finally, the effects of model ambiguity and market parameters on the robust optimal investment strategies are illustrated under the CEV model and 4/2 model with numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formed in 1969 and active through the early 2000s, Pesniary were arguably the most popular band in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Their music is distinctively Belarusian, but still fits neatly within a broader Soviet narrative. This article explores the extent to which Pesniary represent an independent Belarusian identity or Soviet kitsch. It considers both the group's reception at home in the Soviet Union and abroad. Pesniary's ability to repackage both Soviet cultural policy directives and Western popular music motifs as authentic folk material was key to their success in the 1970s Soviet music scene and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infertile women often experience chronic stress that can harm their well-being. Our aim was to investigate the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes on tolerance of ambiguity, rumination, and metacognitive awareness in infertile women. The sample included all infertile women referred to the Valiasr Hospital Health Center in Iran in 2019 who were treated for infertility. A total of 52 women undergoing infertility treatment were selected by availability sampling and assigned to either the experimental (26) or the control group (26). Using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANOVA) we found that a mindfulness-based stress reduction programme helps to increase tolerance to ambiguity, rumination, and metacognitive awareness among infertile women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Hungry Donkey Task (HDT) are well-known tasks employed to assess decisions under ambiguity. Although the two tasks are equal in terms of wins and losses, they differ in terms of the recipient: while in the IGT participants make decisions for themselves, in the HDT decisions are made to help a hungry donkey. Decisions for themselves versus another one in a situation of ambiguity are particularly important in the field of aging because of older adults' changes in motivational and other-oriented behavior. The present study aimed to test whether older adults make different decisions under ambiguity for themselves than for another one (i.e., the hungry donkey) as compared to younger adults. Forty-five young adults (M = 23.31; SD = 1.58) and 45 older adults (M = 72.47; SD = 5.49) performed the IGT and the HDT. In addition, participants performed tasks on working memory, set-shifting, and inhibition. Results showed age-related differences in the HDT but not in the IGT. Older adults, compared to younger adults, made disadvantageous decisions to help the hungry donkey as compared to themselves. Interestingly, this pattern of results is not explained by the age-related decline in cognitive functioning. The findings seem to suggest that older adults' decisions made under the condition of ambiguity are affected by motivational and emotional changes associated with aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In regard to the purpose of money use, economic theory provides a functionalist answer, while a dominant sociological view focuses on culture. However, Simmel noted the paradoxical nature of money in this respect. Money brings together both quantity and quality; therefore, it simultaneously has different potentialities for its usage. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis by using a representative sample (n = 2000) of the population in Austria to explore the potentialities of money usage. We found seven factors: freedom, community, status, institutional control, conflict, work-related control and household control. A discussion of the factors reveals the simultaneous, ambiguous existence of the qualitative and quantitative potentialities of the usage of money. We conclude that the ambiguity of money can only be described in all its contradictoriness by distinguishing between the concrete earmarking money for specific social purposes (Zelizer) and the potentially unspecific, open usability for alternative concrete or fictional purposes (Simmel). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foucauldian critical studies are cornucopian in illustrating how policy as discourse normalizes and yields human beings into made subjects in modern societies. However, Foucault's own slide from the 'terminal stage of discourse' pays little attention to the linguistic elements, and thus weakens the theory's potency in explaining the reality. Specifically, when the production of desirable subjects implicates clear target/norm-setting, ambiguous expressions are persistent in policy documents. To explicate this contradiction, this article firstly traces back to the foundation of Foucault's critical approach to policy analysis – socio-linguistic studies, to demonstrate the inevitable existence of ambiguity in language. It then continues such interdisciplinary efforts by combining research in public administration, politics and international relationship, to explore the positive effects of equivocalness in policy texts. Empirically based on China's regulation over transnational higher education, this study argues ambiguous expressions facilitate modern states, especially those fraught with conflicting discourses to mask the discursive conflict and leave negotiation room for innovative policy enactment. The vague norms of subject production are thus both inevitable and intentionally employed in policy developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dullness is a quality that is hard to pin down for a woodworker; it defies easy definitions, and yet has the power to radically change the temper of experience. Using methods of self-observation drawn from sensory ethnography, I describe how I encounter dullness in my own skilled craft practice. I capture the intersensory nature of perception, how dullness is known through touch, sight, and sound. I follow traces of dullness on the wood I carve, in my body, and along the edge of my tool. This sensory portrait of dullness as elusive, relational, and shifting is a textured and nuanced account of how a craftsperson knows what they need to know from the body and experience. In the analysis section, I draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of the inexhaustibility of perception to enhance my claim that dullness is not a fixed object, but a state filled with ambiguity. Perception does not give us easy answers. The article counters popular renderings of craft as practical or technical know-how with a contrary theory of craft as filled with poetic ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feeling like a different person when speaking different languages has been investigated before and attributed to several linguistic as well as psychological factors. Language proficiency, the context of language acquisition, personality traits, emotional intelligence, and the topic of conversation as well as the interlocutor have been found to give rise to this feeling. Here, the discussion of this phenomenon is continued and extended to the investigation of the psychological constructs of tolerance of ambiguity (TA) and need for cognitive closure (NCC) as well as several demographic and linguistic variables, including: age, gender, age of second language acquisition (L2 AoA), and second language (L2) proficiency. Data collected via an online questionnaire from a group of 452 bilingual first language (L1) German – L2 English speakers were analysed with binary logistic regression (GLM model). The analysis returned five factors, i.e. valuing diverse others, decisiveness, change, participants' gender as well as age, as significant predictors of feeling like a different person (D2 = 0.0718). In addition, qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the languages themselves as well as varied levels of language proficiency and distinct cultural backgrounds might be responsible for feeling different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

\nKEY POINTSPreventing infections in nursing homes is highly challenging, given the ambiguous nature of nursing homes as care institutions and places to live. Yet, little is known about how care workers experience preventing infections in this context. Understanding the ambiguities experienced by care workers in nursing homes when enacting infection prevention is crucial to preparing for future health crises. This study investigates and identifies the ambiguities care workers faced and experienced when preventing infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews and observations were combined to capture narratives and behaviors related to infection prevention and care work. By using thematic analysis, three types of ambiguity were identified: (a) an Ambiguous sense of purpose, (b) Environmental ambiguity, and (c) Information ambiguity. The findings provide a nuanced understanding of the ambiguities care workers face and experience in nursing homes when preventing infections and indicate that such ambiguities impact their behaviors and attitudes. From this study, it is possible to conclude that policymakers must consider nursing homes’ ambiguous characteristics in infection prevention programs. Preventing infections in nursing homes entails performing behaviors related to hygiene in the ambiguous context of being both a home and a care institution.Care workers experience ambiguity of purpose, environmental ambiguity and information ambiguity when preventing infections in nursing homes.Infection prevention policies need to consider nursing homes’ ambiguous characteristics to respond to health crises in the future.Particular attention must be paid to the ambiguities experienced by care workers.Preventing infections in nursing homes entails performing behaviors related to hygiene in the ambiguous context of being both a home and a care institution.Care workers experience ambiguity of purpose, environmental ambiguity and information ambiguity when preventing infections in nursing homes.Infection prevention policies need to consider nursing homes’ ambiguous characteristics to respond to health crises in the future.Particular attention must be paid to the ambiguities experienced by care workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other Semitic languages, Arabic is known for its rich morphology and consonantal writing system. In this article, we report the first case of acquired surface dyslexia in an Arabic-speaking patient (HBS). Surface dyslexia is characterised by difficulty reading irregularly spelled words, while performance is better with regular words and nonwords. The purpose of this study was to describe the symptoms of surface dyslexia in Arabic and to investigate how orthographic depth may affect reading in the context of semantic impairment. In HBS, who had Alzheimer’s disease, reading was impaired for both words and nonwords. Her reading performance was affected by orthographic ambiguity and by the presence of diacritics depicting short vowels. In particular, she produced mainly vowel errors, suggesting an overreliance on the sublexical route of reading. On the other hand, HBS was able to distinguish long vowels from consonants represented by the same letters, provided there was a real root. This finding can be taken as evidence that HBS could access the word’s root to decide whether the vowel letter represents a long vowel or a consonant. The results of this study suggest that the characteristics of surface dyslexia appear to be universal: reading regular words is spared compared to irregular words and non-words. However, the error patterns that HBS showed in reading support a language-specific conceptualisation of the processing components of the lexical and sublexical routes of reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of data-based and information-centric Industry 4.0, extracting potential knowledge and valuable information from data is central to data mining tasks. Yet, the ambiguity, imprecision, incompleteness, and hybrid in real-world data pose tremendous challenges to critical information mining. Accordingly, we propose a new Max-Correlation Min-Redundant (MCMR) attribute reduction model from the uncertainty relation of attributes to avoid information loss in incomplete mixed data. Specifically, the neighbor relations are primarily developed based on the soft computing approach of the neighborhood information system, which divides the objects into neighborhood covers to maximize the utilization of the information in the incomplete mixed data. Then, we detailly analyze the internal and external consistency relationships of the four main uncertainty functions. Based on this, a new MCMR uncertain function is designed with maximum relevance and minimum redundancy. Experiments on nine real-world datasets validate the proposed model can improve data quality by mining critical information in classification tasks and achieving optimal performance with a minimum number of attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

9/11 and its aftermath was to have a dramatic impact on the visual arts and the artistic response to the War on Terror. This study surveys the evolution of these responses from the dramatic events of 11 September 2001 to the longer term reactions generated by the two-decade long encounter with the so-called War on Terrorism, primarily via the Imperial War Museum's Age of Terror/Art Since 9/11 exhibition of 2017–2018. The analysis suggests that the visual artistic response moved from the initial amazement at the destruction of the Twin Towers, through satirical caricature of the terrorist persona, to a trite predictability that mirrored official equivocation about the threat posed by violent jihadist activism. Artistic endeavor on these terms became notable only for its moral ambiguity and complicity in self-censorship rather than contributing to the creation of artwork of enduring value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon her introduction as the new Ms. Marvel in 2013, the Pakistani-American superhero Kamala Khan was celebrated, by audiences and critics alike, as a welcome addition to the world of superhero comics. Familiar superhero tropes and ethical dilemmas were given an added twist for Marvel's first Muslim protagonist as the teenage girl strives to reconcile her newfound powers with the moral authorities of her family and her faith. Many comics scholars reserved special praise for the nuanced and unobtrusive way in which the new Ms. Marvel introduces American readers to Muslim culture by following its eminently 'relatable' heroine on her search for moral guidance, whereas others were more sceptical of the extent to which the comic's representation of Muslims can be considered progress. This article probes this ambivalence by analysing the cultural authorities invoked in the first eleven issues of the series. Instead of resolving the critical disagreement, a close reading of Kamala Khan's implicit and explicit appeals to authority allows for a more complicated and richer understanding of the comic's, as well as its eponymous intersectional superheroine's, ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a non-Gaussian dynamic currency hedging strategy for globally diversified investors with ambiguity. It provides theoretical and empirical evidence that, under the stylized fact of non-Gaussianity of financial returns and for a given optimal portfolio, the investor-specific ambiguity can be estimated from historical asset returns without the need for additional exogenous information. Acknowledging non-Gaussianity, we compute an optimal ambiguity-adjusted mean-variance (dynamic) currency allocation. Next, we propose an extended filtered historical simulation that combines Monte Carlo simulation based on volatility clustering patterns with the semi-parametric non-normal return distribution from historical data. This simulation allows us to incorporate investor's ambiguity into a dynamic currency hedging strategy algorithm that can numerically optimize an arbitrary risk measure, such as the expected shortfall. The out-of-sample backtest demonstrates that, for globally diversified investors, the derived non-Gaussian dynamic currency hedging strategy is stable, robust, and highly risk reductive. It outperforms the benchmarks of constant hedging as well as static/dynamic hedging approaches with Gaussianity in terms of lower maximum drawdown and higher Sharpe and Sortino ratios, net of transaction costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several authors assume that evaluative conditioning (EC) relies on high-level propositional thinking. In contrast, the dual-process perspective proposes two processing pathways, one associative and the other propositional, contributing to EC. Dual-process theorists argue that attitudinal ambiguity resulting from these two pathways' conflicting evaluations demonstrate the involvement of both automatic and controlled processes in EC. Previously, we suggested that amplitude variations of error-related negativity and error-positivity, two well-researched event-related potentials of performance monitoring, allow for the detection of attitudinal ambiguity at the neural level. The present study utilises self-reported evaluation, categorisation performance, and neural correlates of performance monitoring to explore associative-propositional ambiguity during social attitude formation. Our results show that compared to associative-propositional harmony, attitudinal ambiguity correlates with more neutral subjective evaluations, longer response times, increased error commission, and diminished error-related negativity amplitudes. While our findings align with dual-process models, we aim to offer a propositional interpretation. We discuss dual-process theories in the context of evolutionary psychology, suggesting that associative processes may only represent a small piece of the EC puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, approach-avoidance tendencies and visual perception biases have been increasingly studied using bistable point-light walkers (PLWs). Prior studies have found a facing-the-viewer bias when one is primed with general threat stimuli (e.g. angry faces), explained by the "error management theory", as failing to detect a threat as approaching is riskier than the opposite. Importantly, no study has explored how disease threat – linked to the behavioural immune system – might affect this bias. This study aimed to explore whether disease-signalling cues can alter how we perceive the motion direction of ambiguous PLWs. Throughout 3 experiments, participants indicated the motion direction of a bistable PLW previously primed with a control or disease-signalling stimuli – that is, face with a surgical mask (Experiment 1), sickness sound (Experiment 2), or face with a disease cue (Experiment 3). Results showed that sickness cues do not significantly modulate the perception of approach-avoidance behaviours. However, a pattern emerged in Experiments 2 and 3, suggesting that sickness stimuli led to more facing away percepts. Unlike other types of threat, this implies that disease-related threat stimuli might trigger a distinct perceptual bias, indicating a preference to avoid a possible infection source. Nonetheless, this finding warrants future investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution argues that policymakers instrumentalise legal ambiguity to provide solutions to crises and achieve their preferences in complex governance systems. It looks at the Eurozone crisis and the introduction of sovereign debt restructuring as part of the policy solution. Despite initial opposition from the European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission (EC), as well as negative market reactions, Greece's debt was restructured in 2012. The notion of collective action clauses (CACs)—a private contractual term in bond documentation that enables bondholder coordination—was promoted as the credible tool for enabling sovereign debt restructuring. However, this paper argues that the success of CACs is related to how it functions as a boundary object, enabling a shared space of interpretive flexibility that allows policymakers to interpret CACs in terms of their preferences, despite a lack of consensus on the permissibility of future Eurozone sovereign debt restructurings. While enabling cooperation, this interpretive flexibility leads to different iterations of CACs—the Euro-CAC and Greece's retrofit-CAC—which connects EU fiscal policy to monetary policy in a way that induces legal uncertainty as to the viability of future debt restructurings vis-à-vis the ECB's bond-buying programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional pedagogical responsibility (PPR) for teachers does not only mean to meet deadlines or attend meetings, but also to be conscious of how their actions can contribute to challenging inequities in society. Thus, it is imperative that teachers of English embrace the responsibility of teaching English as a tool to promote social justice. This article reports on a qualitative study to understand how seven pre-service teachers developed a sense of PPR and to what extent participants' discourse revealed a sense of social justice. Data were collected through a number of semi-structured interviews that required participants to reflect on different practicum experiences and expectations for their future work as teachers of English. The results demonstrated different degrees of PPR ranging from resistance to high levels of agency. These different degrees were shaped by personal drives such as preservice teachers' motives for teaching English, but also by social and contextual factors such as expectations and requirements of the practicum. The outcomes also suggested that most preservice teachers were unaware of their role as change agents. The paper concludes with implications on how the integration of a social justice perspective in initial English language teacher education programmes can strengthen their professional responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsupervised hyperspectral image (HSI) band selection methods have been attracting ever-increasing attention. However, the local structural features captured by most of the existing methods suffer from a certain degree of risk of feature ambiguity. Moreover, these methods typically have difficulty preserving the latent manifold structure of the HSI in selected subsets of the bands. To address these problems, firstly, the graph approximate representation learning (GARL) model is proposed in this article by incorporating graph-regularized sparse coding into self-representation learning to preserve the local manifold structure information of HSI in the selected subset of bands. Meanwhile, to alleviate the ambiguity of the local graph structures, we design a local-global feature relationship expression model to construct the latent long-distance contextual connectivity (LDCC) graphs between the obtained local graph structures. Then, to preserve HSI's local and non-local manifold structure information as much as possible in the selected subset of bands, a multigraph approximate representation learning (MGARL) model is proposed in this article by incorporating the obtained LDCC graph into the proposed GARL model. Next, we design a solution method to solve the proposed formulation. Finally, extensive experimental results on four datasets reveal the promising performance of MGARL over some state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractBackgroundAimsResultsConclusionsUncertainty is pervasive throughout healthcare practice. Uncertainty tolerance (i.e. adaptively responding to perceived uncertainty) is considered to benefit practitioner wellbeing, encourage person-centred care, and support judicious healthcare resource utilisation. Accordingly, uncertainty tolerance development is increasingly referenced within training frameworks. Practical approaches to support healthcare learners’ uncertainty tolerance development, however, are lacking.Drawing on findings across the literature, and the authors’ educational experiences, twelve tips for promoting healthcare learners’ uncertainty tolerance were developed.Tips are divided into 1. Tips for Learners, 2. Tips for Educators and Supervisors, and 3. Tips for Healthcare Education Institutions and Systems. Each tip summarises relevant research findings, alongside applications to educational practice.Approaches to developing uncertainty tolerance balance factors supporting learners through uncertain experiences, with introducing challenges for learners to further develop uncertainty tolerance. These tips can reassure healthcare education stakeholders that developing learner uncertainty tolerance, alongside core knowledge, is achievable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Ulysses" by James Joyce, authored by Nandini Ramesh Sankar, explores the symbolic significance of the mysterious herb "moly" in the novel. The analysis suggests that the composite object, referred to as "potatosoap," consisting of a dried potato and soap, acts as Bloom's moly, including the botanical ambiguity of the original moly in Homer's Odyssey, the potato's historical connotations in Irish culture, and the alchemical symbolism associated with the soap.

This article explores Thomas Browne's figuration of the Amphibium mind in Religio Medici as the hallmark of the seventeenth-century literary mind, oriented toward intellectual flexibility, generosity, and harmony. The article argues that such a mind is the specific product of Browne's double engagement with rhetoric and scepticism, whose innate kinship has not received much critical attention. Religio Medici includes multiple locations, in which Browne's diversity-seeking, conciliatory rhetoric is aligned with his sceptical acuity. The rhetoric and scepticism share dissatisfaction with any dogmatic centralisation of ideas and sensitivity to the ambiguity of truth. Their affiliation is often expressed in this book as a dynamic presentation of conflicting perspectives, ideas, and values, subject to a careful deliberation that demands the suspension of judgment and the open-minded acceptance of different opinions. Investigating this rhetoric-scepticism coupling illuminates the process of how his distinctively magnanimous mind germinated and developed into his literary profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An anonymous survey was given to n = 73 students in an asynchronous online statistical literacy course at a mid-sized Hispanic Serving Institution. Informed by teaching experience, literature on lexical ambiguity, and everyday usage of statistics words and phrases, the first author designed the survey to yield insight into how students view phrases such as "average person," "random person," and "outlier person," and to explore possible connections or patterns with such phrases. Findings suggest that students view phrases such as "random person" in a way much further from standard usage than they do phrases such as "anonymous person." Considerations such as diversity, agency, and variable identification are identified as possibly affecting usage and meriting further investigation. Recommendations for teaching and future research are provided. Supplementary materials for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work investigates a robust optimal dynamic reinsurance problem for an ambiguity averse insurer (AAI) concerned about potential ambiguity of claim intensity. The study aims to determine a robust optimal reinsurance contract to minimize the discounted ruin probability imposed a penalization owing to model ambiguity, including discounting for the time of ruin. We suppose that the surplus process is modeled by a diffusion model. The AAI purchases reinsurance from the reinsurer to manage risk, subject to the incentive compatibility constraint, which rules out moral hazard. Moreover, the reinsurance premium is calculated based on the mean-RVaR premium principle, which generalizes the expected value premium principle and the mean-CVaR premium principle and reflects the different risk preferences of reinsurers. Based on the dynamic programming approach, we obtain the value function and optimal reinsurance policies (the dual excess-of-loss reinsurance). Finally, we show a numerical example to illustrate the effects of premium and ambiguity averse on the discounted ruin probability and the robust optimal contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Role conflicts and role ambiguity have been identified as important risk factors for exposure to workplace bullying, particularly when combined with inadequate leadership practices. Even though role ambiguity theoretically can be considered a causal precursor to role conflicts, previous research has mainly examined these role stressors as concurrent predictors of workplace bullying. The present study provides a more nuanced analysis by investigating role conflicts as a mediator in the relationship between role ambiguity and exposure to bullying behaviours. Adding to the understanding of the bullying process we also considered the possible moderating roles of laissez-faire and transformational leadership in the role stressor–bullying relationship. Employing a national probability sample of 1,164 Norwegian workers, with three measurements across a 12-month period, the results showed an indirect effect of employees' role ambiguity on subsequent exposure to bullying behaviours through employees' experience of role conflicts. Moreover, laissez-faire leadership exacerbated, while transformational leadership attenuated, the indirect relationship between role ambiguity and exposure to bullying behaviours through role conflicts. In summary, the present data shows that when the management of organisations neglects its inherent responsibility to adequately address employees' experiences of role ambiguity and role conflicts, the risk of exposure to workplace bullying is likely to increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]