What's the difference between difficulty and obstacle?

Difficulty


Definition:

  • (n.) The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
  • (n.) Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
  • (n.) A controversy; a falling out; a disagreement; an objection; a cavil.
  • (n.) Embarrassment of affairs, especially financial affairs; -- usually in the plural; as, to be in difficulties.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Technical factors that account for increased difficulty in these patients include: problems with guide catheter impaction and ostial trauma; inability to inflate the balloon with adequate guide catheter support; and need for increased intracoronary manipulation.
  • (2) To overcome this difficulty, a "hetero-antibody" RIA was studied.
  • (3) Epidemiological studies on low risks involve a number of major methodological difficulties.
  • (4) Mild swallowing difficulties occurred in 18 patients (39%), moderate dysfunction in 23 (50%), and severe dysfunction in five (11%).
  • (5) Reasons for non-acceptance do not indicate any major difficulties in the employment of such staff in general practice, at least as far as the patients are concerned.
  • (6) Spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions may be the only way of revealing very rare events but they present great difficulties of rational interpretation.
  • (7) The indication of the DNA probe method would be considered in the four cases as follows, 1. necessity of the special equipment to isolate the pathogen, 2. necessity of the long period to isolate the pathogen, 3. existence of the cross reaction among the pathogen and relative organisms in the immunological procedure, 4. existence of the difficulty to identify the species of the pathogen by the ordinary procedure.
  • (8) The 1-0-methylalduronic-acidmethylesters, obtained by the methanolysis of the polysaccharides, are reduced with boronhydrid to the corresponding methyl glycosides; there are split with acid to the aldoses, which are converted in pyridine with hydroxylamine to the aldoximes and than with acetic anhydride to the aldonitrilacetates, which can be separated by gaschromatography without difficulty.
  • (9) A control experiment demonstrated that changes in general arousal could not account for the effects of task difficulty on neuronal responses.
  • (10) In the anatomy laboratory we looked for an alternative approach to the glenohumeral joint which would accommodate these difficulties.
  • (11) A 27-year-old lady presented with history of discomfort in the throat and difficulty in swallowing for two weeks.
  • (12) Especially in the old patients (over 70 years) the incisional hernias represents an invalidating pathology whose treatment, for the high incidence of associated diseases of respiratory and cardiocirculatory apparatus in the aged, offers difficulties connected both to surgical methods and to the perioperative evaluation and preparation of patients.
  • (13) Marked pain and great difficulty in introducing the apparatus made its use limited in respectively 15% and 14.5% of cases.
  • (14) The tasks which appeared to present the most difficulties for the patients were written spelling, pragmatic processing tasks like sentence disambiguation and proverb interpretation.
  • (15) In favorable cases, tRNA-DNA hybrids of length about 80 nucleotide pairs can be recognized (although with difficulty).
  • (16) The patient with the right posterior lesion could not recognize handwriting, was prosopagnosic and topographagnosic, but had no difficulty in reading, lipreading, or in recognizing stylized drawings.
  • (17) A review of the literature summarises the difficulties of diagnosis.
  • (18) The major difficulty encountered with the current technique is the danger of neurologic injury during the passage and handling of conventional wires, especially in extensive procedures.
  • (19) However six equivocal studies were observed in profoundly jaundiced patients with bilirubin levels above 400 mumol l-1 due to difficulties in differentiating extrahepatic obstruction from severe intrahepatic cholestasis.
  • (20) While mindful of the potential difficulties which attend its introduction into the treatment situation there is an attempt to balance this position through a consideration of the appropriate conditions and modes of operation under which a humor-enriched approach may be efficacious.

Obstacle


Definition:

  • (v.) That which stands in the way, or opposes; anything that hinders progress; a hindrance; an obstruction, physical or moral.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Since the first is balked by the obstacle of deficit reduction, emphasis has turned to the second.
  • (2) If women psychiatrists are to fill some of the positions in Departments of Psychiatry, which will fall vacant over the next decade, much more attention must be paid to eliminating or diminishing the multiple obstacles for women who chose a career in academic psychiatry.
  • (3) Counselors who serve pregnant US teens face a number of obstacles in communicating adoption as a positive alternative.
  • (4) A major obstacle to the characterization of the latter two mechanisms has been the lack of suitable model systems expressing only a single nucleoside transport activity.
  • (5) These observations suggest that refractive anomalies such as anisometropia that limit high frequency spatial resolution and binocular integration can present a major obstacle to the postnatal development of binocular vision.
  • (6) The initiation of clinical trials on islet transplantation as a possible therapeutic approach for human diabetes had been blocked by 2 major obstacles.
  • (7) Venous ectasias and varices which can be encountered, associated with DVA constitute an acquired feature in relation to a venous outlet obstacle.
  • (8) Despite these obstacles, new technologies, coupled with educational efforts, should allow the computer to emerge as a crucial aid to clinicians in the decade ahead.
  • (9) Yet experience has disclosed an obstacle to understanding the relationship between cervical cancer and OC use--cervical cancer may be caused by the human papilloma virus transmitted by sexual intercourse.
  • (10) In this paper something is given of their evolution, diversity, aims and activities; and of the important role they now play in many instances, as well as some of the obstacles to collaboration, co-ordination and integration at different levels of operation--internationally, nationally and locally.
  • (11) It is no obstacle to perform pre- and postoperative radio- and chemotherapy.
  • (12) Obstacles to successful treatment include an erratic schedule, mistrust of authority, and uncooperative or aggressive behavior.
  • (13) One of the main obstacles for the introduction of PCR method to identify HIV1 proviral DNA in routine diagnostic laboratories is the use of radiolabelled oligodeoxynucleotide probes.
  • (14) Digital culture has hardly helped, adding revenge porn, trolls and stranger-shaming to the list of uncomfortable modern obstacles.
  • (15) She feared her chances of being offered a place would be diminished by a Brexit vote, and the practical considerations like a visa and funding would be more of an obstacle.
  • (16) It goes without saying that this won't be easy to achieve, and there are many obstacles to be overcome.
  • (17) Armstrong recognised no obstacle to his ambitions – not morality, not the law.
  • (18) Where foreign policy and defence are concerned, Britain’s desire to be taken very seriously is the chief obstacle to it being taken more seriously.
  • (19) The presence of calcifications within the thyroid cartilage is the major obstacle to US imaging of the larynx and is directly related to age; indeed, only 40% of subjects can be examined at the age of 70.
  • (20) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Britain needs to talk about the R-word: racism It is also a wakeup call to those who recognise racism only when it is played out like a scene from Django Unchained , those who think that racism has to be some vulgar incident perpetrated only by the backward, ignorant and poorly educated, those who believe that racism has to be an act, rather than a complicated and intangible framework that sets up obstacles.