Large Global Network Research Articles

Patient characteristics, surgery outcomes, presumed aetiology and other characteristics of fistula surgeries and related procedures supported by Fistula Foundation from 2019 to 2021: a multicentre, retrospective observational study

ObjectivesObstetric fistula is a devastating childbirth injury primarily caused by prolonged, obstructed labour. It leaves women incontinent, severely stigmatised and isolated. Fistula repair surgery can restore a woman’s health and...

Results from an international interlaboratory study on light‐ and elevated temperature‐induced degradation in solar modules

AbstractThis paper reports the results of an international interlaboratory comparison study on light‐ and elevated temperature‐induced degradation (LETID) on crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) modules. A large global network of PV module manufacturers and PV testing laboratories collaborated to design a protocol for LETID detection and screen a large and diverse set of prototype modules for LETID. Results across labs indicate the reproducibility of LETID testing is likely within ±1% of maximum power (PMP). In intentionally engineered LETID‐sensitive modules, mean degradation after the prescribed detection stress is roughly 6% PMP. In other module types the LETID sensitivity is smaller, and in some we observe essentially negligible degradation attributable to LETID. In LETID‐sensitive modules, both open‐circuit voltage (VOC) and short‐circuit current (ISC) degrade by a roughly similar magnitude. We observe, as do previous studies, that LETID affects each cell in a module differently. An investigation of the potential mismatch losses caused by nonuniform LETID degradation found that mismatch loss is insignificant compared to the estimated loss of cell ISC, which drives loss of module ISC. Overall, this work has helped inform the creation of a forthcoming standard technical specification for LETID testing of PV modules, IEC TS 63342 ED1, and should aid in the interpretation of results from that and other LETID tests.

Indicators keep progress honest: A call to track both the quantity and quality of protected areas

Indicators keep progress honest: A call to track both the quantity and quality of protected areas

The development of the WHO Labour Care Guide: an international survey of maternity care providers

BackgroundThe partograph is the most commonly used labour monitoring tool in the world. However, it has been used incorrectly or inconsistently in many settings. In 2018, a WHO expert group reviewed and revised the design of the partograph in light of emerging evidence, and they developed the first version of the Labour Care Guide (LCG). The objective of this study was to explore opinions of skilled health personnel on the first version of the WHO Labour Care Guide.MethodsSkilled health personnel (including obstetricians, midwives and general practitioners) of any gender from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America were identified through a large global research network. Country coordinators from the network invited 5 to 10 mid-level and senior skilled health personnel who had worked in labour wards anytime in the last 5 years. A self-administered, anonymous, structured, online questionnaire including closed and open-ended questions was designed to assess the clarity, relevance, appropriateness of the frequency of recording, and the completeness of the sections and variables on the LCG.ResultsA total of 110 participants from 23 countries completed the survey between December 2018 and January 2019. Variables included in the LCG were generally considered clear, relevant and to have been recorded at the appropriate frequency. Most sections of the LCG were considered complete. Participants agreed or strongly agreed with the overall design, structure of the LCG, and the usefulness of reference thresholds to trigger further assessment and actions. They also agreed that LCG could potentially have a positive impact on clinical decision-making and respectful maternity care. Participants disagreed with the value of some variables, including coping, urine, and neonatal status.ConclusionsFuture end-users of WHO Labour Care Guide considered the variables to be clear, relevant and appropriate, and, with minor improvements, to have the potential to positively impact clinical decision-making and respectful maternity care.

Nutritional quality of organic foods: A systematic review

Background: Despite rising consumer demand for organically grown foods, there is a scarcity of information based on a thorough assessment of their nutritional qualities. The goal of this study was to quantify the differences in reported nutritional content between organically and conventionally grown foods. Design: From 1 January 1958 to 29 February 2008, we carefully searched Pub Med, Web of Science, and CAB Abstracts, contacted topic experts, and hand-searched bibliographies. If they provided nutritional content comparisons between organic and conventional foodstuffs, we included peer-reviewed publications with English abstracts in the study. Study features, quality, and data were retrieved by two reviewers. The research was limited to the most frequently reported nutrients. In the last two decades, the organic foods sector in the United States has grown dramatically. Organic sales are projected to have grown by almost 20% each year since 1990, with consumer sales reaching $13.8 billion in 2005. While the early days of organic agriculture centered on small farms but also local distribution offresh produce, today's organic food system is a complex mix of small and large food producers, local and global distribution networks, and a wide range of products, which include fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and processedfoods.

Infectious Disease Emergency Specialist (IDES) Training Program in Japan: an innovative governmental challenge to respond to global public health emergencies.

In 2015, Japan created a unique governmental program to train experts in health emergencies called Infectious Disease Emergency Specialist (IDES). This is a concept paper to set out the goal and structure of the program, and to describe the achievement and the way forward to further contribute to global health security. The IDES program background, mission, structure, achievement, and future directions were reviewed and discussed by the IDES trainees, graduates, and program coordinators/supervisors. Since 2015, thirteen Japanese medical doctors have graduated from the program while five are currently in training. The IDES core competencies were identified in the context of a wide range of skillsets required for health emergencies. A large national and global network has been created through the training. Coordinated work with surge capacity of experts is of paramount importance to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies. The IDES program can be a good model to many other governments, and contribute to global health security.

Creating Children’s Television for SVODs: The Alignment of Global Production Practices with National Screen Policies in the Netflix Original Bottersnikes and Gumbles

In many countries, domestically produced children’s television is believed to play an important role in national cultural representation. But national policy settlements and funding schemes designed to support its production are aging rapidly and do not apply to internet-distributed television services. Using the case study of one of Netflix’s first children’s Originals, the Australian animation Bottersnikes and Gumbles, this article analyzes the impact of subscription video on demand (SVOD) services on children’s screen production industries and their practitioners’ creative practice. It reveals how the global SVOD’s operations intersect with national policy instruments and explains the production collaborations developing between Netflix and public service broadcasters in the United Kingdom and Australia. The article’s findings reveal that despite the advantages Netflix’s large content budget and global distribution networks offer to children’s content producers, domestic content quotas and the involvement of linear broadcasters remain vital to the funding and production of local children’s television.;

Design of Link Evaluation Method to Improve Reliability based on Linked Open Big Data and Natural Language Processing

The LOD data sets consist of RDF Triples based on the Ontology, a specification of existing facts, and by linking them to previously disclosed knowledge based on linked data principles. These structured LOD clouds form a large global data network, which provides a more accurate foundation for users to deliver the desired information. However, it is difficult to identify that, if the presence of the same object is identified differently across several LOD data sets, they are inherently identical. This is because objects with different URIs in the LOD datasets must be different and they must be closely examined for similarities in order to judge them as identical. The aim of this study is that the prosed model, RILE, evaluates similarity by comparing object values of existing specified predicates. After performing experiments with our model, we could check the improvement of the confidence level of the connection by extracting the link value.

Combined orbits and clocks from IGS second reprocessing

The Analysis Centers (ACs) of the International GNSS Service (IGS) have reprocessed a large global network of GPS tracking data from 1994.0 until 2014.0 or later. Each AC product time series was extended uniformly till early 2015 using their weekly operational IGS contributions so that the complete combined product set covers GPS weeks 730 through 1831. Three ACs also included GLONASS data from as early as 2002 but that was insufficient to permit combined GLONASS products. The reprocessed terrestrial frame combination procedures and results have been reported already, and those were incorporated into the ITRF2014 multi-technique global frame released in 2016. This paper describes the orbit and clock submissions and their multi-AC combinations and assessments. These were released to users in early 2017 in time for the adoption of IGS14 for generating the operational IGS products. While the reprocessing goal was to enable homogeneous modeling, consistent with the current operational procedures, to be applied retrospectively to the full history of observation data in order to achieve a more suitable reference for geophysical studies, that objective has only been partially achieved. Ongoing AC analysis changes and a lack of full participation limit the consistency and precision of the finished IG2 products. Quantitative internal measures indicate that the reprocessed orbits are somewhat less precise than current operational orbits or even the later orbits from the first IGS reprocessing campaign. That is even more apparent for the clocks where a lack of robust AC participation means that it was only possible to form combined 5-min clocks but not the 30-s satellite clocks published operationally. Therefore, retrospective precise point positioning solutions by users are not recommended using the orbits and clocks. Nevertheless, the orbits do support long-term stable user solutions when used with network processing with either double differencing or explicit clock estimation. Among the main benefits of the reprocessing effort is a more consistent long product set to analyze for sources of systematic error and accuracy. Work to do that is underway but the reprocessing experience already points to a number of ways future IGS performance and reprocessing campaigns can be improved.

Interactions and Influence of World Painters From the Reduced Google Matrix of Wikipedia Networks

This study concentrates on extracting painting art history knowledge from the network structure of Wikipedia. Therefore, we construct theoretical networks of webpages representing the hyper-linked structure of articles of 7 Wikipedia language editions. These 7 networks are analyzed to extract the most influential painters in each edition using Google matrix theory. Importance of webpages of over 3000 painters are measured using PageRank algorithm. The most influential painters are enlisted and their ties are studied with the reduced Google matrix analysis. Reduced Google Matrix is a powerful method that captures both direct and hidden interactions between a subset of selected nodes taking into account the indirect links between these nodes via the remaining part of large global network. This method originates from the scattering theory of nuclear and mesoscopic physics and field of quantum chaos. From this study, we show that it is possible to extract from the components of the reduced Google matrix meaningful information on the ties between these painters. For instance, our analysis groups together painters that belong to the same painting movement and shows meaningful ties between painters of different movements. We also determine the influence of painters on world countries using link sensitivity between Wikipedia articles of painters and countries. The reduced Google matrix approach allows to obtain a balanced view of various cultural opinions of Wikipedia language editions. The world countries with the largest number of top painters of selected 7 Wikipedia editions are found to be Italy, France, Russia. We argue that this approach gives meaningful information about art and that it could be a part of extensive network analysis on human knowledge and cultures.

Estimating network effect in geocenter motion: Applications

AbstractThe network effect is the error associated with the subsampling of the Earth surface by space geodetic networks. It is an obstacle toward the precise measurement of geocenter motion, that is, the relative motion between the center of mass of the Earth system and the center of figure of the Earth surface. In a complementary paper, we proposed a theoretical approach to estimate the magnitude of this effect from the displacement fields predicted by geophysical models. Here we evaluate the effectiveness of our estimate for two illustrative physical processes: coseismic displacements inducing instantaneous changes in the Helmert parameters and elastic deformation due to surface water movements causing secular drifts in those parameters. For the first, we consider simplified models of the 2004 Sumatra‐Andaman and the 2011 Tōhoku‐Oki earthquakes, and for the second, we use the observations of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, complemented by an ocean model. In both case studies, it is found that the magnitude of the network effect, even for a large global network, is often as large as the magnitude of the changes in the Helmert parameters themselves. However, we also show that our proposed modification to the definition of the center of network frame to include weights proportional to the area of the Earth surface that the stations represent can significantly reduce the network effect in most cases.

A focused supply chain strategy for luxury fashion management

PurposeGlobalization and advanced manufacturing capabilities changed industrial dynamics. To this end, not only were new retail concepts developed to broaden the distribution toward larger consumer bases, but alternative ways were also sought to reorganize supply networks for a balance between local and global production. Yet, the choice of supply network configurations must be coherent with a fashion companies’ critical success factors. Hence, it is pivotal to understand how such large brand portfolios and global supply networks could be effectively managed in a united way. In this vein, the purpose of this paper is to explain how the triplet of product, brand, and retail channel could affect SC performance, and how the positioning of a luxury company could depend on managerial attitudes.Design/methodology/approachSubsequent to an extensive literature review, 30 most frequently quoted key performance indicators (KPIs) were derived. A Delphi study was then employed to reach a consensus and 17 key KPIs were derived considering the key SC performance areas and marketing dimensions. Survey technique was deployed to examine the impact of strategic combinations of product, brand, and retail channel on SC strategy. Survey results were analyzed through factor analysis where five principal components emerged to represent performance areas. ANOVA technique was then employed to explore the dependence between product-brand-retail channel and key performance areas.FindingsBrand, retail channel, and product directly affect operational performance. The positioning of a fashion company would depend on its management attitude toward strategy segmentation and considered stage of the SC. The respondents’ profile analysis further showed a preference to segment the SC based on products. Interestingly, this finding is not aligned with earlier research (Brun and Castelli, 2008) suggesting that the brand was to become the most relevant driver for SC segmentation.Originality/valueAcademic development and empirical testing is rather rare in the luxury fashion context. Undeniably, SC strategies represent a very relevant issue for fashion companies, and the present study could be considered a first statistical step toward SC segmentation for luxury fashion companies.

NASA in Chile: Technology and Branding of a Satellite-Tracking Station

In 1957 as part of the Minitrack Network, the U.S. Army installed a satellite-tracking station in Peldehue, Chile, intended to track radio signals from what was then the United States’ Vanguard project. With the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, the station came under its new administration, becoming the subject of a process of rebranding that included the monumental installation of the agency insignia, a rounded slab made in concrete and tiles. By examining this object from a design and archaeological perspective - as it nowadays lays abandoned nearby its original location - this paper attempts to advance our understanding of the Chilean station in terms of its place within a much larger global network by analyzing it within the intersection of design, military economies, technologies, ideologies, and cultural and geospatial considerations.

Centrality in the global network of corporate control

Corporations across the world are highly interconnected in a large global network of corporate control. This paper investigates the global board interlock network, covering 400,000 firms linked through 1,700,000 edges representing shared directors between these firms. The main focus is on the concept of centrality, which is used to investigate the embeddedness of firms from a particular country within the global network. The study results in three contributions. First, to the best of our knowledge for the first time we can investigate the topology as well as the concept of centrality in corporate networks at a global scale, allowing for the largest cross-country comparison ever done in interlocking directorates literature. We demonstrate, amongst other things, extremely similar network topologies, yet large differences between countries when it comes to the relation between economic prominence indicators and firm centrality. Second, we introduce two new metrics that are specifically suitable for comparing the centrality ranking of a partition to that of the full network. Using the notion of centrality persistence we propose to measure the persistence of a partition's centrality ranking in the full network. In the board interlock network, it allows us to assess the extent to which the footprint of a national network is still present within the global network. Next, the measure of centrality ranking dominance tells us whether a partition (country) is more dominant at the top or the bottom of the centrality ranking of the full (global) network. Finally, comparing these two new measures of persistence and dominance between different countries allows us to classify these countries based the their embeddedness, measured using the relation between the centrality of a country's firms on the national and the global scale of the board interlock network.

Intelligent Aggressiveness: Using Forecast Multipliers, Hybrid Forecasting, Fare Adjustment, and Unconstraining Methods to Increase Revenue*

ABSTRACTMany studies have begun the exploration of airlines using intelligent aggressiveness (IA) in unidimensional directions (e.g., forecast multipliers alone). This article uses the sophisticated passenger origin–destination simulator (PODS) to examine the revenue impact of four different IA levers—forecast multipliers, unconstraining, hybrid forecasting (HF) and fare adjustment (FA). We also explore the impacts in two different origin–destination networks. Due to the competitive nature of PODS (two or four airlines competing) and its allowance for customer choice, we are able to assess all the implications, including the impact of spill, upgrades and recapture. We find that with a single IA lever, independent of the network and demand level, in a more‐restricted fare environment, the optimal lever is almost always HF with moderate‐to‐aggressive estimates of willingness‐to‐pay, with revenue gains of 0.4–4.3% in a large global network, and gains of 1.7–4.2% in a domestic network, depending on demand level and optimization method used. We also test two additional, less‐restricted fare environments and find that revenue improvements have a wider range (0.8–6.3%) with a single lever in the larger network. Finally, we explore the impacts of allowing the competitors to use basic IA and the airline of interest to use multiple IA levers.

Statistical framework for estimating GNSS bias

Abstract. We present a statistical framework for estimating global navigation satellite system (GNSS) non-ionospheric differential time delay bias. The biases are estimated by examining differences of measured line-integrated electron densities (total electron content: TEC) that are scaled to equivalent vertical integrated densities. The spatiotemporal variability, instrumentation-dependent errors, and errors due to inaccurate ionospheric altitude profile assumptions are modeled as structure functions. These structure functions determine how the TEC differences are weighted in the linear least-squares minimization procedure, which is used to produce the bias estimates. A method for automatic detection and removal of outlier measurements that do not fit into a model of receiver bias is also described. The same statistical framework can be used for a single receiver station, but it also scales to a large global network of receivers. In addition to the Global Positioning System (GPS), the method is also applicable to other dual-frequency GNSS systems, such as GLONASS (Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema). The use of the framework is demonstrated in practice through several examples. A specific implementation of the methods presented here is used to compute GPS receiver biases for measurements in the MIT Haystack Madrigal distributed database system. Results of the new algorithm are compared with the current MIT Haystack Observatory MAPGPS (MIT Automated Processing of GPS) bias determination algorithm. The new method is found to produce estimates of receiver bias that have reduced day-to-day variability and more consistent coincident vertical TEC values.

Characterization and refinement of growth related quantitative trait loci in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) using a comparative approach

The identification of genetic markers for traits of interest for aquaculture, such as growth, is an important step for the establishment of breeding programmes. As more genomic information becomes available the possibility of applying comparative genomics to identify and refine quantitative trait locus (QTLs) and potentially identify candidate genes responsible for the QTL effect may accelerate genetic improvement in established and new aquaculture species. Here we report such an approach on growth related traits in the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), an important species for European aquaculture. A genetic map was generated with markers targeted to previously identified QTL for growth which reduced distance and improved resolution in these regions. A total of 36 significant QTLs were identified when morphometric traits were considered individually in maternal half sibs, paternal half sibs and sib-pair analysis. Twenty seven new markers targeted to the growth QTLs, obtained by comparative mapping, reduced the average distance between markers from 23.4, 9.1, and 5.8cM in the previous map to 3.4, 2.2, and 5.2cM, on linkage group (LG) LG4, LG6 and LG15 respectively. Lists of genes embedded in the QTL – 591 genes in LG4, 234 genes in LG6 and 450 genes in LG15 – were obtained from the European sea bass genome. Comparative mapping revealed conserved gene synteny across teleost fishes. Functional protein association network analysis with the gene products of the 3 linkage groups revealed a large global association network including 42 gene products. Strikingly the association network was populated with genes of known biological importance for growth and body weight in terrestrial farm animals, such as elements of the signaling pathways for Jak–STAT, MAPK, adipocytokine and insulin, growth hormone, IGFI and II. This study demonstrates the feasibility of a comparative genomics combined with functional gene annotation to refine the resolution of QTL and the establishment of hypothesis to accelerate discovery of putative responsible genes. Statement of relevanceThis study demonstrates the feasibility of a comparative genomics approach, combined with functional annotation to refine the resolution of QTL and establishment of hypothesis to accelerate discovery of candidate genes. As production of genomic data is becoming more accessible, the implementation of this strategy will rapidly and efficiently provide the tools required for genetic selection in new candidate aquaculture species.

Intelligent aggressiveness: Combining forecast multipliers with various unconstraining methods to increase revenue in a global network with four airlines

Airlines are always searching for ways to maximize revenues in the hyper-competitive environment that they exist in. This article uses the sophisticated Passenger Origin-Destination Simulator (PODS) simulator to examine the revenue impact of four levels of forecast multipliers (FM) in combination with three different methods of unconstraining – Expectation Maximization (EM), Projection Detruncation (PD) and Booking Curve (BC). Owing to the competitive nature of PODS (four airlines competing for customers) and its allowance for customer choice, we are able to assess all the implications of these FM levels in combination with unconstraining, including the impact of spill, upgrades and recapture. We find that in this fully/semi-restricted fare environment, under leg optimization and either EM or PD, the optimal level is generally FM of 1.1, independent of demand level, and that under BC unconstraining, the optimal level is FM equal to 1.2. When using realistic booking data from major global airlines to calibrate PODS’ largest global network (U1), we show that becoming more intelligently aggressive with FM can lead to revenue gains of 0.2–0.6 per cent under EM or PD unconstraining and gains of 0.3–1.2 per cent under BC unconstraining. Under network optimization, it is best not to use FM under any unconstraining method, independent of demand level.

Combining hybrid forecasting and fare adjustment with various unconstraining methods to maximize revenue in a global network with four airlines

In their competitive environment, airlines are always searching for ways to maximize revenues. This article uses the sophisticated Passenger Origin-Destination Simulator (PODS) simulator to examine the revenue impact of four implementations of hybrid forecasting (HF) and fare adjustment (FA) in combination with three different methods of unconstraining – Expectation Maximization (EM), Projection Detruncation (PD) and Booking Curve (BC). Owing to the competitive nature of PODS (four airlines competing for customers) and its allowance for customer choice, we are able to assess all the implications of these HF and FA implementations in combination with unconstraining, including the impact of spill, upgrades and recapture. We find that in the fully/semi-restricted fare environment, under either EM or PD, the optimal combination is HF only, independent of demand level and that under BC unconstraining, the optimal combination is HF with FA equal to 0.5 (medium demand) or HF only (high demand) if using leg optimization. Under network optimization, it is best to use HF with FA equal to 0.5 for EM/PD unconstraining and HF only if using BC unconstraining, independent of demand level. When using realistic booking data from major global airlines to calibrate the largest PODS global network (U1), we show that becoming more aggressive with HF and FA can lead to revenue gains of 0.3–2.3 per cent.

What is Canadian about Canadian Buddhism?

AbstractBuddhism in Canada is part of a larger global network of Buddhist people, institutions, and practices in the modern world. It shares much with Buddhism in other countries, such as the United States. What, then, is distinctive about Canadian Buddhism? This article suggests five areas in which researchers may fruitfully probe for what is particular about Buddhism in Canada. These five areas are (1) the history of Buddhist individuals and institutions in Canada; (2) the impact of national and provincial laws and policies; (3) the impact of Canadian social and cultural characteristics, and efforts to create a self‐consciously Canadian Buddhism; (4) the landscape of Canada itself; and (5) Canadian Buddhism’s relationship with Buddhism in other countries.