But it's this kind of "inversion of thought" (as Janet Kwasniak, a retired biologist, put it on her neuroscience blog, Thoughts on Thoughts) that can often spark new approaches to intractable problems.
Chan's efforts reflect her approach to seemingly intractable problems: identify the best compromise deal possible, then push on every lever possible to achieve that goal.
The low fluence-induced decomposition stands for the first example of the thermal decomposition of polyvinyls into the monomer and the high-fluence ablative deposition represents a one-step approach to crosslinked (intractable), thermally stable and polar polymeric films from linear-chain polymers with pending functional groups.
Because microbiota are easily manipulatable by prebiotics, probiotics, antibiotics, fecal transplants, and dietary changes, altering our microbiota offers a tractable approach to otherwise intractable problems of obesity and unhealthy eating.
However, these treatments are not appropriate or helpful for all. 2 Direct brain stimulation is one approach to treating medically intractable partial-onset seizures.
Mathematical models provide one approach to some otherwise intractable issues, such as understanding the likely long-term effects of large-scale deployment of interventions that have population-level effects like ITNs and IRS.
While small and deliverable changes were promised, the approach to larger and more intractable questions was consultation, and involving parliamentarians and the public in deciding the way forward.
As the Obama Administration has demonstrated with Cuba and the Iranian nuclear deal, taking a new and more just approach to long-standing, seemingly intractable problems can yield results.
As a promising approach to solve the computationally intractable problem, the method based on DNA computing is an emerging research area including mathematics, computer science and molecular biology.
In a move that exemplified Rahm Emanuel's approach to Chicago's most intractable problems, the city's new mayor sat down on Wednesday with the leaders of six major grocery-store chains to address the crisis of the city's so-called "food deserts".
The goal of the Office of American Innovation could have come from any Silicon Valley disruptor: "To bring a creative and strategic approach to many critical issues and intractable problems," as Kushner put it in a White House press release.
