bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Combating Gender-Based Violence and Fostering Women's Well-Being
Authors: Wamue-Ngare Grace N. , Warren Meg A. , Torjesen Karen J.
Published: July 2021

Gender-based violence (GBV) and its threat to women's well-being is an insidious and widespread challenge in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Cultural beliefs about gender roles and sexuality, and religious teachings on marriage, masculinity, and femininity make interventions on GBV in the DRC difficult. This chapter examines a faith-based intervention, ‘The Tamar Campaign', which sought to align the strengths underpinning religion and culture. Findings revealed that participants of the Tamar Campaign reported 1) low prevalence of GBV four years after the intervention as compared to results of previous studies in the region, 2) positive effect of the intervention on marital satisfaction, and 3) engaging in activism alongside their family and community to combat GBV. This study thus offers initial evidence for faith-based interventions in not only reducing GBV, but also holistically improving women's overall well-being.
Measuring Progress Towards the Sustainable Development Goals
Authors: Popescu Cristina Raluca Gh.
Published: July 2021

In the modern, knowledge-based economy, it is believed that mastering the methods and tools for assessing intellectual capital and capitalizing on intellectual capital influence on economic performance are essential criteria. In addition, it has been prompted that the key issues specific to performance are directly related to those of intellectual capital measurement, having to respond to the challenges of a new economy and sustainable world, built through alliances not only locally, regionally, and nationally, but also internationally – only from this perspective being able to approach performance and the idea that, in time, performance will have the potential to lead to the necessary, but sinuous and difficult road, to excellence. This chapter explores this in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Providing Aid to Developing Countries by Helping to Establish Family Firms
Authors: Nova Monika
Published: July 2021

The chapter would aim to pinpoint and depict some specific features of family firms in developing countries and to examine social and economic consequences that they might have for the families involved. Precisely targeted selection of the families to be researched resulted in choosing four families conducting business in the local conditions for three years or longer and supported by foreign donors. All the families were domiciled in the Republic of Malawi. The qualitative research presented in the chapter will examine support given to the family firms. Having summarized and discussed results, the authors found this type of enterprise to be a new valuable tool of development cooperation capable of creating job openings, encouraging intergenerational experience sharing, and reducing ill-considered migration in search of work. Family firms do not rest on only their economic potential. Their non-economic repercussions make the businesses unique and of profound consequence to local communities.
Service Only Supply Chain
Authors: Nagariya Ramji , Kumar Divesh , Kumar Ishwar , Patel Bharat Singh
Published: July 2021

Broadly, the sustainable practices for the manufacturing supply chain are considered as environmental, social, and economic practices. But due to different characteristics of services, the above-mentioned sustainable practices are necessary. Beyond these practices, some other novel practices are necessary for the service context. This chapter discusses the novel sustainable practices for the service only supply chain (SOSC). The discussed sustainable practices will enhance the understanding of sustainable practices in SOSC context. How these practices will help the organizations in achieving sustainable development goals will also be discussed. Potential future research directions are also provided.
Sustainable Practices in an Online College
Authors: Neumann Crystal , Lundquist Laura
Published: July 2021

Achieving sustainability goals for an online institution were evaluated through a qualitative case study including observation techniques, document reviews, and subcommittee narratives highlighting the practices and achievements from American College of Education's 2020-2021 Benefit Corporation (B Corp) subcommittee implementation. The purpose of this study was to explore how the subcommittees impacted goals of sustainability within the college. Full-time employees volunteered, and three subcommittees were formed, which include community, environment, and workers. The result was that each of the three subcommittees were able to make an impact and increase the overall score on the B Impact Assessment Scorecard, which is an evaluation used to certify or recertify a B Corp. Lessons learned in 2020 included but were not limited to faculty and staff members being more engaged, motivated, and taking ownership of meeting sustainability goals for the organization.
The Measurement of Employee Welfare and Its Effects on the Output Level
Authors: Karapınar Kocağ Esra
Published: July 2021

Welfare, in general, refers to both economic and social prosperity of individuals. From an economic point of view, individuals are very important actors of the labour market in the production process. This chapter focuses on employees and attempts to offer a valuable insight into the concept of welfare, its measurement, and its potential impact on the national product. Measuring welfare is not straightforward due to its multidimensional concept. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a way of measurement of employee welfare through an index that combines selected welfare components of employees. In the process of building that index, principal component analysis (PCA) was applied. Preserving variability and reducing dimensionality, this method is a very functional tool to represent multidimensional variables such as welfare in this case. Eurostat data for the period of 2008-2018 were utilized to explain the impact of employee welfare on the GDP per capita for 32 European countries. Findings revealed that employee welfare is a significant indicator of the national product.
Use and Misuse of Technology in Marketing
Authors: Fatma Sabeeha
Published: July 2021

This article describes how the recent breakthrough in information technology has changed in day-to-day life. The smart phone rules the minds and hearts of a major chunk of the population. Internet has become a basic requirement of many a people. Although technology has affected all functional area of business, marketing is feeling the heat even more. The leap in the information technology replaced mass marketing with one-to-one marketing. Customer relationship, knowledge management, database marketing became the buzz words during 1990s. Search services, biometrics and smart cards, enhanced computational speed, M-commerce, and GPS tracking have changed the way marketing is done. However, technology is often misused by marketers to lure customers on wrong premises. Marketers may at times misuse technology for their vested interest. The article discusses the various cases where technology has been misused by the marketers. The article explores the technological innovations in marketing and the potential misuse of technology with special focus on cases from India.
An Absorptive Capacity Perspective of Organizational Learning Through Social Media
Authors: Boateng Richard , Owusu-Bempah Edna , Ansong Eric
Published: July 2021

The Absorptive Capacity Theory was used as the theoretical lens for this study to help analyze how organizations absorb new knowledge using social media tools and applications. A survey of fashion designers and employees numbering 196 was carried out in 55 fashion firms whereas two fashion firms were used in a case study. Data analysis was performed using the Structural Equation Modelling. The findings from the study suggest that Ghanaian fashion designers do not intensively use social media to assimilate knowledge but rather to acquire, transform and exploit knowledge. The popular social media applications include; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook, for instance, is used on a daily basis by most Ghanaian fashion designers. Fashion designers use social media to acquire, transform and exploit knowledge through research, interaction, communication, and marketing with suppliers, customers, and other fashion designers. Future research can extend this work by looking at organizational learning and social media use in a different industry.
Knowledge Management and Social Media in Tourism Industry
Authors: Agrifoglio Rocco , Metallo Concetta
Published: July 2021

The chapter aims to provide an overview of the role of social media for knowledge management in tourism industry. Respect than traditional tools, the social media penetration within such industry is growing thanks to opportunity for travelers and travel professionals to access critical tourism knowledge everywhere and every time. Prior research has mainly focused on how social media are changing the tourism industry, while it is lacking enough the contribution of these technologies to managing touristic knowledge. This chapter seeks to shed light on how social media support knowledge management, with particular attention to knowledge creation, sharing, and preservation processes, in tourism industry. In particular, while knowledge creation and sharing process have attracted the attention of scholars, knowledge preservation via social media seems be still in its infancy stage.
Maximizing Social Presence to Improve Website Loyalty
Authors: Jih Wen-Jang (Kenny)
Published: July 2021

Technology plays a crucial role in the development of customer brand loyalty. However, technological user interface often falls short on major important aspects of business interaction, such as context-based exchange of information and opinions. Adding social networking features to the corporate website is an attempt to mitigate this weakness. This chapter investigates the driving forces of website loyalty, an issue of interest to the businesses deploying social networks as a new technological tool for business promotion. Using Facebook as the target of observation, this study evaluates the effects of social presence and social capital on website loyalty. The analysis reveals a positive influence of social presence on all three (structural, relational, and cognitive) dimensions of social capital. Further, both the relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital show positive influence on the website loyalty. These findings have practical implications for company seeking to cultivate brand loyalty via website design and management.
Influence and Information Flow in Online Social Networks
Authors: Agah Afrand , Asadi Mehran
Published: July 2021

This article introduces a new method to discover the role of influential people in online social networks and presents an algorithm that recognizes influential users to reach a target in the network, in order to provide a strategic advantage for organizations to direct the scope of their digital marketing strategies. Social links among friends play an important role in dictating their behavior in online social networks, these social links determine the flow of information in form of wall posts via shares, likes, re-tweets, mentions, etc., which determines the influence of a node. This article initially identities the correlated nodes in large data sets using customized divide-and-conquer algorithm and then measures the influence of each of these nodes using a linear function. Furthermore, the empirical results show that users who have the highest influence are those whose total number of friends are closer to the total number of friends of each node divided by the total number of nodes in the network.
Twitter Based Capital Market Analysis Using Cloud Statistics
Authors: Gupta Sangeeta , Aluvalu Rajanikanth
Published: July 2021

People in the modern world are attracted towards smart working and earning environments rather than having a long-term perception. The goal of this work is to address the challenge of providing better inputs to the customers interested to investing in the share market to earn better returns on investments. The Twitter social networking site is chosen to develop the proposed environment as a majority of the customers tweet about their opinions. A huge set of data across various companies that take inputs from Twitter are processed and stored in the cloud environment for efficient analysis and assessment. A statistical measure is used to signal the worth of investing in a particular stock based on the outcomes obtained. Also, rather than ignoring the missing values and unstructured data, the proposed work analyzes every single entity to enable the customers to take worthy decisions. Tweets in the range of 1 to 100,000 are taken to perform analysis and it is observed from the results that for a maximum of 100,000 tweets, the number of missing is identified as 2,524 and the statistical measure to fill in the missing values is calculated based on the particular missing data record, the count of all data records, and the total number of records. If the outcome of the measure is obtained as a negative, then proceeding with an investment is not recommended. The findings of this work will help the share market investors to earn better profits.
Exploring the Relationship Between Social Media and Social Influence
Authors: Usman Ali , Okafor Sebastian
Published: July 2021

Online behavioral tailoring has become an integral part of online marketing strategies. Contemporary marketers increasingly seek to create an influential environment on social media to empower online users to participate in online brand communities. By interacting in this way, online communities hosted by brands marketers can enhance the nature of the complex interactions that occur amongst those that participate. Such online interactions lead to three different types of social influence compliance, internalization, and identity, which develop the consumers' purchase intentions. This chapter explains how the social influence support the change in beliefs, attitude, and intentions of the online consumers in the user-generated social media networking sites (SNSs). Furthermore, it discusses the functional impact of such online social influence that enables companies to understand the perceptions and needs of online users making sense of how multiple levels of social influence phenomenon on social media impact on consumers purchase intentions.
Storytelling as an Approach to Voice Complaints and eWOM on Social Media/Facebook
Authors: Mei Xiang Ying , Bagaas Ingrid K. , Relling Erling K. L.
Published: July 2021

Customer complaints are unavoidable in any businesses and how firms handle such complaints will affect the public's perception of the company's brand and reputation. While storytelling is being embraced by an increasing number of companies as a different way to communicate their brand, many customers are now also using storytelling as an approach to voice their unfavourable experiences on the social media in regards to a particular unsatisfactory purchase as part of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Such creative and humorous complaints serve as a way to cut through the clutter in order to gain the company's attention. Those companies that embrace such complaints by responding in an equally humorous and creative manner as part of their service recovery process will manage to recover their customers as well as their employees. As such posts are often shared publicly on the Internet, they may become viral and thus can create great positive effect on the company's reputation. Hence, it is important to empower the employees to recover the services using untraditional responses.
Analyzing the Impact of Social Network Sites and Social Applications on Buying Attitude in Developing Nations
Authors: Alam MD Sarwar-A , Wang Daoping , Rafique Kalsoom
Published: July 2021

This article investigates the relationships among social network sites (SNSs) and social apps (SAPs) on consumers' online purchase attitude (OPA) with moderating effect of gender (GND). Structural equation modeling using SPSS and supporting tools was employed to represent the correlations among adopted constructs. To this end, the questionnaires were distributed to online shoppers from September 2017 and November 2017. The findings revealed the positive relationships of SNSs, i.e., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest on consumers' OPA. Second, it is found that SAPs, i.e., Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Wechat, Instagram, and Snapchat have positive relationships on consumers' OPA. In addition, it is found that GND did not moderate the relationships among SNSs, SAPs, and consumers' OPA. This study furnishes insights how strategic managers can utilize such social media tools in marketing communications to empower consumers' OPA in today's era. Aside, study provides future studies for academicians and professionals.
The Impact of Rumors on Social Media Sites in Behavior of Purchasing Food Products in the Egyptian Market
Authors: Abdelkader Ali Ahmed , Mohamed Hossam El Din Fathy
Published: July 2021

The purpose of this article is to detect the impact of rumors on social media on the purchasing behavior of food products. The descriptive approach on four rumors related to food products were identified in the Egyptian market. A sample of 387 participants were selected from consumers who use Facebook in Egypt. The primary data was collected via an E-Questioner method. The results indicated that there is a significant relationship between the rumors on social media, and purchasing behavior of food products. There is also a significant difference between the products and the impact of rumors. These results assure the importance of social media and its impact on a customer's decision to purchase food products. This article not only explains the importance of rumors on social media in the food sector but also enhances the understanding of the influence of social media on consumer's behavior. It also provides some insights for facing the rumors. Organizations are advised to adopt social media in their business.
Hiring the Best Job Applicants?
Authors: Lewis Anthony , Thomas Brychan Celfyn
Published: July 2021

Human resources (HR) management professionals have been using different methods of social media (SM) in their recruitment strategies with varying degrees of success. Through examining SM and its effect, this can support the development of a more effective HR recruitment strategy. This research investigates effects and issues associated with SM and recruitment and whether SM is effective as an innovative e-entrepreneurship method of hiring the best job applicants for enterprises. Professionals, recruiters, and employees were questioned on their views of SM from a personal and professional perspective through a variety of methods including focus groups and questionnaires. It is argued that the advantages of using SM for online recruitment include increased efficiency and convenience for both potential employees and enterprises, whereas where the systems are not designed correctly, it can create increased difficulties for the enterprises in communicating with potential employees. A framework is provided that can be used by enterprises in order to create their own SM recruitment cycle.
Tweeting About Business and Society
Authors: Rathore Ashish Kumar , Tuli Nikhil , Ilavarasan P. Vigneswara
Published: July 2021

This chapter examines the social media content posted by a woman Indian chief executive officer (CEO) on Twitter. The active involvement of CEO in communication activities influences the business effectiveness, performance, and standing of the business headed by her. Rstudio and Nvivo, two analytical tools, were used for different analysis such as tweets extraction and content analysis. The findings show the various themes in CEO communication which are categorized in different sectors in terms of her personal views (feelings and status updates), political views, and social concerns (ranging from education, women empowerment, governance, and policy support). The chapter extends the theoretical and empirical arguments for the importance of CEOs' social media communications. Finally, this research suggests that with a well-planned and strategic social media use, CEOs can create value for themselves and their businesses.
Measuring Satisfaction and Loyalty of Guests Based on Vietnamese Hotel Online Reviews
Authors: Thu Ha Nguyen Thi , Minh Tuan Tran , Ngoc Tu Nguyen Thi , Nguyen Binh Giang , Ngoc Linh Nguyen
Published: July 2021

Measuring customer satisfaction is a key task for hotels today. Analyzing online reviews of experienced guests will help the managers to know if guests are satisfied or dissatisfied with the service that they provided. Hence, they have solutions to improve service quality. This study presents a method to measure guest satisfaction based on sentiment lexicon that is developed for hospitality domain to increase the accuracy of the analysis results. Actual data is downloaded from TripAdvisor with 35 four-star to five-star hotels of five cities in Vietnam to analyze guest satisfaction that shows that nearly 80% of customers are satisfied with the quality of Vietnamese hotels. Based on data analysis, the study also evaluating guest loyalty through phrases like “came here several,” “come back,” “recommend,” etc. This rate corresponds to the number that was reported by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.
The Prediction of Venture Capitalists' Investment Propensity Using Machine Learning
Authors: Choi Youngkeun , Choi Jae W.
Published: July 2021

This paper describes the most visible data science methods suitable for entrepreneurial research and provides links to literature and big data resources for venture capitalists. In the results, first, all organizational characteristics such as the characteristic of parent company of VC, the fund size of VC, and the reputation of VC, have significant influences on the risk-taking investment of venture capitalists, while functional background, school prestige, and VC experience except educational level among individual characteristics have significant influences on the risk-taking investment of venture capitalists. Second, for the full model, the accuracy rate is 0.855, which implies that the error rate is 0.145. Among the venture capitalists who are predicted not to do risk-taking investment, the accuracy that would not do risk-taking investment is 85.75%, and the accuracy that do risk-taking investment is 79.59% among the venture capitalists who are predicted to do risk-taking investment.
Which Organizational and Individual Factors Predict Success vs. Failure in Procurement Projects
Authors: Strang Kenneth David
Published: July 2021

Project manager (PM) certification and other commonly-tested independent factors were deductively examined using logistic regression to develop an explanatory model of high-priced public procurement project success versus failure. Overall 59% were successful, and 41% failed. The model correctly classified 67.3% of the 2,692 projects, yielding a significant 12% effect size. Individual factors, PM experience, certification, and contractor quality, impacted performance, but contractor size, revenue, industry type, PM age, gender, and education had negligible effect on performance. Quality was in the opposite hypothesized direction. Certified PMs were more likely to achieve successful projects rather than encounter failures. Future research advice was offered.
A Review of Augmented Reality in K-12 Education Environments
Authors: Carreon Adam C. , Smith Sean J. , Rao Kavita
Published: July 2021

Augmented reality (AR) continues to gain popularity within the classroom setting, lauded for the potential it brings to further engage students and contextualize instruction. AR offers an interactive experience where digital objects, seen through various mobile devices (e.g., iPad, mobile phone), are overlaid on the real world. This literature review of 38 research studies conducted in K-12 settings examined the defining characteristics of AR, the purpose and application of the AR intervention, and the outcomes associated with the current use of AR. The results of the review reveal that studies use varying defining characteristics of AR which leads to varying levels of applications for all students in instructional settings. With no common definition leading to a wide array of classroom usage, the authors examine AR usage for students with and without disabilities. This article also provides recommendations to establish a strong research base on specific characteristics and the impact AR has on education.
Investigation of the Fluxing Additives Effect on the Foaming of Different Silicate Raw Materials
Authors: Goltsman Boris M. , Yatsenko Elena A. , Yatsenko Lyubov A. , Goltsman Natalia S. , Kuzmenkov Dmitriy M.
Published: July 2021

The main trends in the use of silicate raw materials for the production of heat-insulating materials are considered. It is shown that the introduction of modifying additives-fluxes is promising to reduce the energy intensity of the technology. The substances that play the role of fluxes in the silicate industry are selected. The most active fluxes were chosen - sodium tetraborate Na2B4O7 (borax) and sodium fluoride NaF. The mechanism of their melting effect on the silicate mass is investigated. It is shown that both borax and sodium fluoride are active fluxes, intensifying the melting of silicate raw materials of all types. The use of fluoride is hampered by a narrow temperature range, in which the formation of a stable porous structure is possible.
Severe male factor in in vitro fertilization
Authors: Mazzilli Rossella , Vaiarelli Alberto , Dovere Lisa , Cimadomo Danilo , Ubaldi Nicolò , Ferrero Susanna , Rienzi Laura , Lombardo Francesco , Lenzi Andrea , Tournaye Herman , Ubaldi Filippo Maria
Published: July 2021

Infertility affects 10%–15% of couples worldwide. Of all infertility cases, 20%–70% are due to male factors. In the past, men with severe male factor (SMF) were considered sterile. Nevertheless, the development of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) drastically modified this scenario. The advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART), specifically regarding surgical sperm retrieval procedures, allowed the efficacious treatment of these conditions. Yet, before undergoing ICSI, male factor infertility requires careful evaluation of clinical and lifestyle behavior together with medical treatment. Epidemiologically speaking, women whose male partner is azoospermic tend to be younger and with a better ovarian reserve. These couples, in fact, are proposed ART earlier in their life, and for this reason, their ovarian response after stimulation is generally good. Furthermore, in younger couples, azoospermia can be partially compensated by the efficient ovarian response, resulting in an acceptable fertility rate following in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques. Conversely, when azoospermia is associated with a reduced ovarian reserve and/or advanced maternal age, the treatment becomes more challenging, with a consequent reduction in IVF outcomes. Nonetheless, azoospermia seems to impair neither the euploidy rate at the blastocyst stage nor the implantation of euploid blastocysts. Based on the current knowledge, the assessment of male infertility factors should involve: (1) evaluation – to diagnose and quantify seminologic alterations; (2) potentiality – to determine the real possibilities to improve sperm parameters and/or retrieve spermatozoa; (3) time – to consider the available “treatment window”, based on maternal age and ovarian reserve. This review represents an update of the definition, prevalence, causes, and treatment of SMF in a modern ART clinic.
A Prospective Study of Surgical Revascularization in Patients of Buerger's Disease from North India
Authors: Haseen Mohd Azam , Ghazanfar Md , Aslam Mohd , Yadav Mayank , Singh Sumit Pratap , Naqvi Sayyed Ehtesham Hussain , Gupta Manju , Beg Mohammed Haneef
Published: July 2021

Introduction:

Buerger's disease, also known as thromboangiitis obliterans (TAO), is vasculitis of small- and medium-sized arteries and veins, which may involve both upper and lower extremities. It is strongly related to smoking and fairly common in the Indian subcontinent. Diagnosis is based on history, clinical examination, and angiography. The single most important modality of treatment is smoking cessation. As only few patients have suitable anatomy for surgical revascularization, the aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility and outcome of surgical revascularization in TAO patients of North India.

Methods:

This is a prospective observational study involving 50 patients of TAO diagnosed by modified Shionoya criteria who underwent surgical revascularization. Computed tomographic angiography was done in all patients to see their suitability for surgical revascularization. Graft patency at 6 months postsurgery, pre- and post-operative ankle–brachial pressure index (ABPI), and visual analog scale (VAS) score for pain were calculated and compared.

Results:

All patients were male bidi smokers, with a mean age of 29.8 ± 9.5 years. Intermittent claudication was present in 42%, rest pain in 58%, and ulcer in 40%. Most common area of blockage was tibioperoneal trunk (62%) and tibial arteries (52%). The most frequent bypass procedure was popliteotibial done in 32 (64%) patients, followed by femoropopliteal bypass in 8 (16%) patients. Majority of our patients were symptom free at 6 months postsurgery. The mean VAS score for pain at the time of presentation was 6.08 ± 1.77, which decreased to 1.62 ± 1.23 at the end of 6 months. The mean preoperative ABPI was 0.45 ± 0.12 which improved to 0.73 ± 0.09 at 6 months postsurgery. A total of 46 (92%) limbs were salvaged while overall our graft patency rate was 70% at 6 months.

Conclusion:

We conclude that surgical revascularization is feasible in properly selected patients of TAO with acceptable results.
Lower Leg Compartment Syndrome Detected by Peripheral Angiography
Authors: Singla Sanjeev Kumar
Published: July 2021

Compartment syndrome occurs when the pressure within a defined compartmental space increases past a critical pressure threshold jeopardizing the blood supply. Compartment syndrome can occur in any area of the body with closed compartments. The below-knee leg is the most likely compartment to develop acute compartment syndrome, followed by the forearm, thigh, and arm. Rapid diagnosis and treatment can be life or limb saving. Any delay in evaluating and treating patients with lower extremity compartment syndrome can be devastating for the patient. High suspicion is needed to diagnose the condition. The classic signs of compartment syndrome, the “6 P's,” can be deceiving. Advanced diagnostic techniques like peripheral angiography at the earliest can be lifesaving.
Chronic Venous Insufficiency in Pregnant Women
Authors: Patnaik Nabnita , Pradhan Nihar Ranjan
Published: July 2021

Objective:

C-hronic venous insufficiency (CVI) occurs in up to 80% of pregnant women, while around seven of every 1000 pregnant mothers face venous thromboembolism and pulmonary embolism. A review of the literature on CVI in pregnant women reveals considerable guidance for their treatment. Pregnancy causes significant hemodynamic changes within the circulatory system. Pregnancy has significant effects on the lower extremity venous system. Increasing venous pressure and blood volume, in combination with reduced flow rates within the deep veins, predisposes pregnant women to both primary and secondary CVI. This article highlights the specific physiologic and hemodynamic changes that occur during pregnancy and examines the nonpharmacologic, pharmacologic, and invasive interventions that are appropriate for both prophylaxis and treatment of CVI.

Methods:

This study is a review article of the key literature related to CVI in pregnancy.

Results:

Consequences of pregnancy can result in venous disease only during pregnancy or, particularly in the multiparous patient, can progress to CVI. Significant hemodynamic changes occur in the lower extremities during pregnancy.

Conclusions:

There is a paucity of data available to construct guidelines for care, particularly in pregnant patients with symptomatic superficial venous insufficiency. The physiologic changes throughout the arterial and venous systems during pregnancy are well documented.
Iatrogenic Preauricular Arteriovenous Fistula in Underlying Slow-Flow Venous Malformation and Its Endovascular Management
Authors: Garg Pawan K , Khera Pushpinder S , Pathvardhan Preetham , Tiwari Sarbesh , Yadav Taruna , Sureka Binit
Published: July 2021

Arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is direct abnormal communication with the shunting of blood from an artery to a vein without intervening capillary network. AVF in preauricular location is uncommon, and most of the cases are posttraumatic or iatrogenic. The endovascular route is the preferred approach for treating such a lesion with better cosmetic outcome, however surgical excision may be required for complex cases.
Clinicopathologic Characteristics and Clinical Outcome of Localized Liposarcoma: A Single-Center Experience over 25 Years and Evaluation of PD-L1 Expression
Authors: Chae Heejung , Kim Jeong Eun , Kim Wanlim , Lee Jong-Seok , Song Si Yeol , Lee Min Hee , Chung Hye Won , Cho Kyung-Ja , Song Joon Seon , Ahn Jin-Hee
Published: July 2021

Purpose For liposarcoma (LPS), clinical course and proper treatment strategies have not been well-established. Recently, immune-checkpoint inhibitors have shown potential efficacy in LPS. We aimed to describe the clinical course of LPS and evaluate the clinical impact of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1).Materials and Methods We reviewed all consecutive patients (n=332) who underwent curative-intent surgery for localized LPS at Asan Medical Center between 1989 and 2017. PD-L1 testing was performed in well-differentiated and dedifferentiated LPS.Results The median age was 56 years with males comprising 60.8%. Abdomen-pelvis (47.6%) and well-differentiated (37.7%) were the most frequent primary site and histologic subtype, respectively. During a median follow-up of 81.2 months, recurrence was observed in 135 (40.7%), and 86.7% (117/135) were loco-regional. Well-differentiated subtype (hazard ratio [HR], 0.38), abdomen-pelvis origin (HR, 2.43), tumor size larger than 5 cm (HR, 1.83), positive resection margin (HR, 2.58), and postoperative radiotherapy (HR, 0.36) were significantly related with recurrence-free survival as well as visceral involvement (HR, 1.84) and multifocality (HR, 3.79) in abdomen-pelvis LPS. PD-L1 was positive in 31.5% (23/73) and 51.3% (39/76) of well-differentiated and dedifferentiated LPS, respectively, but had no impact on survival outcomes.Conclusion Clinical course of LPS was heterogeneous according to histology and anatomic location. Clear resection margin was important to lower recurrence and postoperative radiotherapy might have additional benefit. A decent portion of well-differentiated and dedifferentiated LPS were positive for PD-L1, but its prognostic role was unclear. Further research is needed to determine clinical implications of PD-L1, especially for advanced-stage LPS with unmet needs for effective systemic treatment.
The Picard groups of inclusions of -algebras induced by equivalence bimodules
Authors: Kodaka Kazunori
Published: July 2021

For two
$\sigma $
-unital
$C^*$
-algebras, we consider two equivalence bimodules over them, respectively. Then, by taking the crossed products by the equivalence bimodules, we get two inclusions of
$C^*$
-algebras. Furthermore, we suppose that one of the inclusions of
$C^*$
-algebras is irreducible, that is, the relative commutant of one of the
$\sigma $
-unital
$C^*$
-algebras in the multiplier
$C^*$
-algebra of the crossed product is trivial. We will give a sufficient and necessary condition that the two inclusions are strongly Morita equivalent. Applying this result, we will compute the Picard group of a unital inclusion of unital
$C^*$
-algebras induced by an equivalence bimodule over the unital
$C^*$
-algebra under the assumption that the unital inclusion of unital
$C^*$
-algebras is irreducible.
Prevalence and risk factors of chronic rhinosinusitis in South Korea according to diagnostic criteria
Authors: Kim J.H. , Cho C. , Lee E.J. , Suh Y.S. , Choi B.I. , Kim K.S.
Published: July 2021

Background: We aimed to compare the prevalence and risk factors of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) using two different diagnostic criteria with the same statistical data from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2009. Methods: Symptom-based CRS was defined as CRS diagnosed by questionnaires related to nasal symptoms. Endoscopy-based CRS was defined based on endoscopic findings and nasal symptoms of symptom-based CRS. Results: The overall prevalence of CRS based on the different diagnostic criteria was as follows: symptom-based CRS was 10.78% (797 of 7,394) and endoscopy-based CRS was 1.20% (88 of 7,343). Comparing symptom-based CRS to endoscopy-based CRS showed slight agreement (kappa = 0.183 (0.150-0.216, 95% confidence interval)). Allergic rhinitis was identified as a common risk factor for CRS based on the two diagnostic criteria. Conclusions: The prevalence and risk factors of CRS were quite different from each other according to the different criteria, even in the same population. Therefore, it would be important to consider what specific diagnostic criteria have been adopted in the studies comparing the prevalence of CRS.
Using postoperative SNOT-22 to help predict the probability of revision sinus surgery
Authors: Rudmik Luke , Soler Zachary M , Hopkins Claire
Published: July 2021

Background: There is a need to develop a patient-level strategy to identify those at higher risk of requiring revision ESS since this may assist clinicians in tailoring their postoperative management. This study evaluated whether identifying changes in the post- operative 22-item Sinonasal Outcome Test (SNOT-22) can help identify patients at increased risk of needing revision sinus surgery for refractory chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Methods: 668 CRS patients undergoing primary ESS with complete 60-month follow-up were evaluated in this prospective, longitudinal cohort study. Outcomes were evaluated in an unselected cohort and a low-risk cohort, which was comprised of patients without a history of asthma or aspirin sensitivity. Results: Failing to achieve an improvement of greater than one minimal clinically important difference (MCID; 9 points) at 3 months after primary ESS and a deterioration of greater than one MCID (ie. >9 points) from the 3- to 12-month follow-up periods was associated with an increased risk of revision ESS in both the unselected and low-risk CRS cohorts. Conclusion: Outcomes from this study suggest that identifying MCID changes in the SNOT-22 score within 12 months after primary ESS can identify patients at increased risk for needing revision surgery.
Safety of human olfactory mucosal biopsy for the purpose of olfactory ensheathing cell harvest and nerve repair: a prospective controlled study in patients undergoing endoscopic sinus surgery
Authors: Andrews Peter J. , Poirrier Anne-Lise , Lund Valerie J. , Choi David
Published: July 2021

Background: Nasal olfactory mucosa is an accessible source of olfactory ensheathing cells for spinal cord regeneration. However, safety of the biopsy technique and the effects on sense of smell and nasal function have not been robustly assessed in the form of a prospective controlled study. Methodology: National Health Service ethical approval was granted for this study of 131 patients. The primary outcome measure was olfactory function and the secondary outcomes included postoperative complication rates as well as the SNOT 22, NOSE scale scores and surgeon reported (Lund-Kennedy score) nasal function outcomes. Results: 65 patients underwent functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) and superior turbinate biopsy, and 66 patients underwent FESS only as the control group. There was no significant difference in complication rates between the two groups. All Olfactory function outcomes were unaffected following olfactory biopsy. We demonstrated that the patients quality of life and nasal patency as well as surgeon reported outcome measurements remain unaffected following olfactory harvesting. Conclusions: We have uniquely provided level 2a evidence for the safety of endoscopic biopsy of olfactory mucosa, which does not affect nasal function or the sense of smell compared to standard FESS without biopsy.
Cross-lingual transfer of sentiment classifiers
Authors: Robnik-Šikonja Marko , Reba Kristjan , Mozetič Igor
Published: July 2021

Word embeddings represent words in a numeric space so that semantic relations between words are represented as distances and directions in the vector space. Cross-lingual word embeddings transform vector spaces of different languages so that similar words are aligned. This is done by mapping one language’s vector space to the vector space of another language or by construction of a joint vector space for multiple languages. Cross-lingual embeddings can be used to transfer machine learning models between languages, thereby compensating for insufficient data in less-resourced languages. We use cross-lingual word embeddings to transfer machine learning prediction models for Twitter sentiment between 13 languages. We focus on two transfer mechanisms that recently show superior transfer performance. The first mechanism uses the trained models whose input is the joint numerical space for many languages as implemented in the LASER library. The second mechanism uses large pretrained multilingual BERT language models. Our experiments show that the transfer of models between similar languages is sensible, even with no target language data. The performance of cross-lingual models obtained with the multilingual BERT and LASER library is comparable, and the differences are language-dependent. The transfer with CroSloEngual BERT, pretrained on only three languages, is superior on these and some closely related languages.
Hedging modal adverbs in Slovenian academic discourse
Authors: Lenardič Jakob , Fišer Darja
Published: July 2021

This paper first presents a comparative analysis of modal adverbs in doctoral theses in the humanities and social sciences on the one hand, and in natural and technical sciences on the other from the 1.7-billion-token corpus of Slovenian academic texts KAS (Erjavec et al., 2019a). Using a randomized concordance analysis, we observe the epistemic and non-epistemic usage of the modal adverbs and show that epistemic adverbs are more characteristic of the humanities and social sciences theses. We also show that the non-epistemic dispositional meaning of possibility, which is most commonly used in natural and technical sciences theses, is not used as a hedging device. In the second part of the paper we compare the usage of a selected set of modals in bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral theses in order to chart how researchers’ approach to stance-taking changes at different proficiency levels in academic writing, showing that the observed increase in hedging devices in doctoral theses seems to be less a function of an increased proficiency level in academic writing as such and more the result of conceptual differences between undergraduate and postgraduate theses, only the latter of which are original research contributions with extensive discussion of the results.
Slovene and Croatian word embeddings in terms of gender occupational analogies
Authors: Ulčar Matej , Supej Anka , Robnik-Šikonja Marko , Pollak Senja
Published: July 2021

In recent years, the use of deep neural networks and dense vector embeddings for text representation have led to excellent results in the field of computational understanding of natural language. It has also been shown that word embeddings often capture gender, racial and other types of bias. The article focuses on evaluating Slovene and Croatian word embeddings in terms of gender bias using word analogy calculations. We compiled a list of masculine and feminine nouns for occupations in Slovene and evaluated the gender bias of fastText, word2vec and ELMo embeddings with different configurations and different approaches to analogy calculations. The lowest occupational gender bias was observed with the fastText embeddings. Similarly, we compared different fastText embeddings on Croatian occupational analogies.
Sign language lexicography: a case study of an online dictionary
Authors: Vlášková Lucia , Strachoňová Hana
Published: July 2021

As a growing field of study within sign language linguistics, sign language lexicography faces many challenges that have already been answered for audio-oral language material. In this paper, we present some of these challenges and methods developed to help navigate the complex lexical classification field. The described methods and strategies are implemented in the first Czech sign language (ČZJ) online dictionary, a part of the platform Dictio, developed at Masaryk University in Brno. We cover the topic of lemmatisation and how to decide what constitutes a lexeme in sign language. We introduce four types of expressions that qualify for a dictionary entry: a simple lexeme, a compound, a derivative, and a set phrase. We address the question of the place of classifier constructions and shape and size specifiers in a dictionary, given their peculiar semantic status. We maintain the standard classification of classifiers (whole entity and holding classifiers) and size and shape specifiers (SASSes; static and tracing specifiers). We provide arguments for separating the category of specifiers from the category of classifiers. We discuss the proper treatment of mouthings and mouth gestures concerning citation forms, derivation and translation. We show why it is difficult in sign language to distinguish synonyms from variants and how our proposed phonological criteria can help. We explain how to construct a semantic definition in a sign language and what is the solution for multiple meanings of one form. We offer simple guidelines for forming proper examples of use in a sign language. And finally, we briefly comment on the process of the translation between sign and spoken languages. We conclude the paper with a summary of roles that Dictio plays in the ČZJ-signing community.
Rachela Fajgenberg
Authors: Nalewajko-Kulikov Joanna
Published: July 2021

The project “Canon of the Memoir Literature of Polish Jews”is currently being prepared at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Polish Scientific Publishers PWN in Warsaw. Its purpose is to introduce 27 volumes of Jewish memoirs that make up the Jews. Poland. Autobiography series into Polish academic and literary circulation, and to integrate this corpus into the current scholarly discourse on Polish history and culture. This section presents excerpts from the autobiographies of two Jewish writers translated from Yiddish: Rachel (Rokhl) Feygenberg (1885–1972) and Kadia Molodowsky (1894–1975). Rachel Feygenberg depicts her childhood in the shtetl of Lubańin Minsk province, reminiscing about her education, her family’s religiosity, her work in a shop, and the first signs of her writing talent. Molodowsky describes her work teaching homeless children during World War I and the beginnings of her poetic career. She also portrays the Jewish literary milieu in Kiev centered around the Eygns almanac, and her meeting with the patron of Yiddish literature and publisher Boris Kletskin that resulted in the publication of her first volume of poetry Kheshvendike nekht [Nights of Cheshvan].