•The need for closure (NFC) has a key role in cognitive flexibility.•The scores in preference for predictability and closed-mindedness were higher in ASD.•The ASD group reported lower scores in ...decisiveness.•These NFC facets were associated with cognitive flexibility in ASD and TD groups.
The need for closure (NFC), a desire for a firm answer and less ambiguity, has a key role in cognitive flexibility in typical development (TD) populations. This study investigated this motivational construct and its relation to cognitive inflexibility in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Compared with individuals with TD, those with ASD reported higher levels in preference for predictability and closed-mindedness and lower levels in decisiveness. These NFC facets were significantly associated with cognitive flexibility in ASD as well as TD groups. The study findings provide further insights into the motivational underpinnings of flexible behavior in ASD.
Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder examines how democratic representatives make decisions in crisis situations. By analyzing parliamentary asylum debates from Germany’s Asylum Compromise in 1992-1993 ...and the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, Julius Rogenhofer identifies representatives’ ability to project decisiveness as a crucial determinant for whether the rights and demands of irregular migrants were adequately considered in democratic decision-making. Both crisis situations showcase an emotive dimension to the parliamentary meaning-making process. As politicians confront fears of social and political disorder, they focus on appearing decisive in the eyes of the public and fellow representatives, even at the expense of human rights considerations and inclusive deliberation processes. Rogenhofer shows how his theoretical approach allows us to reinterpret a range of crisis situations beyond the irregular migration context, including democracies’ initial responses to Covid-19, the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, and United States climate politics. These additional case studies help position concerns with decisiveness amid the challenges that populism and technocracy increasingly pose to representative democracies.
Non-tumoral portal vein thrombosis (PVT) is present at liver transplantation in 5% to 26% of cirrhotic patients, and the prevalence of complex PVT as defined here (grade 4 Yerdel, and grade 3,4 ...Jamieson and Charco) has been reported in 0% to 2.2%. Adequate portal inflow is mandatory to ensure graft and patient survival after liver transplantation. With time, the proposed classifications of non-tumoral chronic PVT have evolved from being anatomy-based, to also incorporating functional parameters. However, none of the currently proposed classifications are directed towards decision-making, regarding the choice of inflow to the graft during transplantation and the outcomes thereof. The present scoping review i) addresses the limits of the currently available classifications in terms of surgical decisiveness, ii) clarifies the concept of physiological or non-physiological portal inflow reconstruction, and subsequently, iii) proposes a new classification of non-tumoral PVT in candidates for liver transplantation; to help tailor the surgical strategy to an individual patient, in order to provide portal inflow to the graft together with control of prehepatic portal hypertension whenever feasible.
This paper aims to examine the impact of marketing agility on decision-making during crisis management stages in five-star and four-star hotels in Jordan. The study included 71 top management staff ...members from Jordan’s five- and four-star hotels. A questionnaire was designed and utilized to collect the data on marketing agility and crisis management at four and five-star hotels in Jordan. A total of 213 questionnaires were distributed, and 187 useable responses were returned, which resulted in an 86% response rate. Results show that marketing agility plays a significant role in decision-making during crisis management stages. The analysis revealed that marketing agility affected the five stages of crisis management with mixed levels. The findings show that accessibility, decisiveness, swiftness, and flexibility have an immense impact on crisis management stages, while the alertness dimension result shows a weak impact on crisis management stages except for containment. Hotel managers are recommended to emphasize enhancing coordination and integration internally with different managerial levels and units and with external partners to boost information exchange. In addition, it will help promote learning orientation amongst hotel staff to handle the fast-changing environment.
Although some methods have been proposed to measure the absolute importance of landslide predisposing factors, they are unfortunately complicated by inherent difficulties. In this study, a robust ...analytical index – ‘decisiveness,’ is proposed for measuring factor absolute importance. The idea is to evaluate factor importance according to the capability of differentiating landslide-susceptible and landslide-insusceptible areas; that is, those factors that can zone the target area into units either highly favorable or highly unfavorable to landslides will be of high importance for landslides. For a specific factor, the favorability values of all grid cell units in the target area are first calculated using the certainty factor method. Then, the magnitudes of all those favorability values are integrated to constitute the decisiveness index. The decisiveness ranges within 0, 1, with higher values indicating greater importance. Updated versions of the open software ALSA can be used to calculate favorability values and further decisiveness. The significance and robustness of decisiveness were validated in a case study. Although decisiveness has been proposed to measure the factor importance for landslides, the novel idea and index can also be used to evaluate the importance of factors in determining the spatial distribution of other objects or phenomena.
Today's leaders are often faced with resolving paradoxes stemming from interrelated, yet contradictory demands. One example is the tension between participation and decision speed because, despite ...its advantages, stakeholder involvement often slows the decision-making process. Theory and research suggest that a “both-and” approach in which leaders simultaneously harmonize competing demands is associated with effectiveness. Consistent with this reasoning, we hypothesized that leaders rated higher in both participative and decisive behavior are perceived as most effective. Additionally, however, we hypothesized that stakeholders place different importance on these behaviors, with direct reports emphasizing participation and supervisors emphasizing decisiveness. Using a large 360-degree feedback dataset, several analyses conducted both within and between stakeholder groups supported these predictions. These results add needed nuance to the leadership literature, suggesting that a “both-and” approach may paradoxically result in some behaviors that are less predictive of effectiveness for certain stakeholders.
Abstract
Land regions are warming rapidly. While in a warming world at extra-tropical latitudes vegetation adapted to higher temperatures may move in from lower latitudes this is not possible in the ...tropics. Thus, the limits of plant functioning will determine the nature and composition of future vegetation. The most temperature sensitive component of photosynthesis is photosystem II. Here we report the thermal safety margin (difference between photosystem II thermotolerance (T
50
) and maximum leaf temperature) during the beginning of the dry season for four tree species co-occurring across the forest-savanna transition zone in Brazil, a region which has warmed particularly rapidly over the recent decades. The species selected are evergreen in forests but deciduous in savannas. We find that thermotolerance declines with growth temperature >40 °C for individuals in the savannas. Current maximum leaf temperatures exceed T
50
in some species and will exceed T
50
in a 2.5 °C warmer world in most species evaluated. Despite plasticity in leaf thermal traits to increase leaf cooling in hotter environments, the results show this is not sufficient to maintain a safe thermal safety margin in hotter savannas. Overall, the results suggest that tropical forests may become increasingly deciduous and savanna-like in the future.
The pattern of data availability in a phylogenetic data set may lead to the formation of terraces, collections of equally optimal trees. Terraces can arise in tree space if trees are scored with ...parsimony or with partitioned, edge-unlinked maximum likelihood. Theory predicts that terraces can be large, but their prevalence in contemporary data sets has never been surveyed. We selected 26 data sets and phylogenetic trees reported in recent literature and investigated the terraces to which the trees would belong, under a common set of inference assumptions. We examined terrace size as a function of the sampling properties of the data sets, including taxon coverage density (the proportion of taxon-by-gene positions with any data present) and a measure of gene sampling "sufficiency". We evaluated each data set in relation to the theoretical minimum gene sampling depth needed to reduce terrace size to a single tree, and explored the impact of the terraces found in replicate trees in bootstrap methods.
Terraces were identified in nearly all data sets with taxon coverage densities < 0.90. They were not found, however, in high-coverage-density (i.e., ≥ 0.94) transcriptomic and genomic data sets. The terraces could be very large, and size varied inversely with taxon coverage density and with gene sampling sufficiency. Few data sets achieved a theoretical minimum gene sampling depth needed to reduce terrace size to a single tree. Terraces found during bootstrap resampling reduced overall support.
If certain inference assumptions apply, trees estimated from empirical data sets often belong to large terraces of equally optimal trees. Terrace size correlates to data set sampling properties. Data sets seldom include enough genes to reduce terrace size to one tree. When bootstrap replicate trees lie on a terrace, statistical support for phylogenetic hypotheses may be reduced. Although some of the published analyses surveyed were conducted with edge-linked inference models (which do not induce terraces), unlinked models have been used and advocated. The present study describes the potential impact of that inference assumption on phylogenetic inference in the context of the kinds of multigene data sets now widely assembled for large-scale tree construction.
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