Search

Aim Methods Results Conclusion To provide information including the trend of gynecological malignancies in Japan, we hereby present the Annual Patient Report for 2021 and the Annual Treatment Report for 2016, on the outcomes of patients who started treatment in 2016.The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology maintains an annual tumor registry, where information on gynecological malignancies from various participating institutions is gathered. The data of patients whose treatment with gynecologic malignancies was initiated in 2021 were analyzed retrospectively. Survival of the patients who started treatment with cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancer in 2016 was analyzed by using the Kaplan–Meier, log‐rank, and Wilcoxson tests.Treatment was initiated in 2021 for 8006 patients with cervical cancer, 13 912 with endometrial cancer, 8337 with ovarian, tubal, and peritoneal cancer, 2375 with ovarian borderline tumors, and with the others (226 vulvar cancer, 161 vaginal cancer, 437 uterine sarcoma, 47 uterine adenosarcoma, 160 trophoblastic diseases). This clinicopathological information was summarized as the Patient Annual Report. The 5‐year survival rates of the patients with cervical cancer were 92.3%, 77.0%, 56.1%, and 30.3% for stages I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The 5‐year survival rates for the patients with endometrial cancer were 94.1%, 88.8%, 71.2%, and 24.5% for stages I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The 5‐year survival rates for the patients with ovarian cancer (surface epithelial‐stromal tumors) were 91.3%, 78.8%, 54.3%, and 36.8% for stages I, II, III, and IV, respectively.The annual tumor report is an important survey that provides knowledge on gynecological malignancy trends in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Japanese National Clinical Database (NCD) is a large‐scale, nationwide, web‐based data entry system that covers the majority of surgical cases performed in Japan. An NCD specializing in urological surgery was launched based on the NCD system in 2018. Methods: All urological surgeries performed at more than 1000 institutions were registered from 2018. We herein report the number of surgeries conducted as stipulated in the "Certified Urology Surgeon Training Curriculum" between April 2018 and December 2021. Results: A total of 1 377 677 cases were registered from 1185 facilities nationwide under the initiative of the Japanese Urological Association. We examined the number of procedures performed every year for each of the 10 categories. Conclusions: The NCD system sustainably provides important information relating to the preoperative status, operational outcome, and best practice for urological surgery in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivery platforms use algorithmic control mechanisms to control couriers' work. Despite studies looking at how algorithmic control manifests on different delivery platforms, there is a dearth of research exploring how delivery platforms communicate their approaches to algorithmic control, what kinds of strategies delivery workers adopt to mitigate algorithmic control, and to what extent information regarding such 'algoactivistic approaches' is shared among communities of delivery couriers who in many cases are in direct competition with one another. To that end, two studies are conducted. Study 1 analyses five publicly listed delivery companies' annual reports (n = 14), highlighting a lack of transparency on how the platforms' algorithms function. In Study 2, a netnographic approach is used to conduct interviews (n = 12) and a qualitative analysis of delivery workers' online discussion forum posts (n = 830) on the discussion forum Reddit. Four approaches to mitigating algorithmic control are found, and the way these are shared among couriers is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study argues that different definitions/perceptions of risk information could affect investors' decisions differently. Using a sample of 328 non‐financial UK firms and departing from existing literature, this study measures corporate risk disclosure (RD) via computerized content analysis to capture four different perspectives of defining RD. This study investigates (i) the effects of these RD measures on the Cost of Capital (COC), (ii) the influence of analysts' coverage on the relationship between RD and COC, and (iii) whether the RD nature (favourable/unfavourable) might affect COC differently. Lenders and equity holders are found not to consider any risk information expressed as a variation around a target, while only lenders consider risk information that reveals negative outcomes. However, lenders and equity holders consider risk information that expresses negative and positive outcomes together. Besides, firms that disclose extra risk information and have a large analyst following suffer from a higher Cost of Equity (COE) compared with those with fewer analysts following. Additionally, lenders impose a lower interest rate on firms with a higher unfavourable RD, while equity holders ask for lower returns from the firms with a higher favourable RD. The study has significant implications for capital market participants, researchers, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the proper functioning of the capital markets it is essential to provide users faithful and relevant information, about the company financial position, its performance, and cash-flows, which to be available in time for the decision-making process. In order to increase the transparency of the financial information communicated by the companies traded on a regulated market, the European Union (EU) gave digitalization a special position by requiring the use of a single electronic format for the annual financial reports prepared for years beginning on or after 1 January 2020. The European Single Electronic Format (ESEF), which draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) were prepared by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), implies that issuers prepare their entire annual financial reports in eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) format and use eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for the consolidated financial statements prepared under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). It is well known that digital technologies facilitate the process of collecting, preparing, analyzing, and interpreting information, and in this study the authors concentrate on the extent which the Romanian companies traded on Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), Regulated Market, introduced the new digital technologies in the reporting process, on a mandatory or a voluntary base, trying to capture specific aspects of the auditor’s reporting on the new statutory requirements in the context of ESEF implementation.

Does good news cover bad news? We present evidence from the Chinese stock market, in which the fiscal year is always the same as the calendar year. Listed firms are required to announce their annual report by the end of April, coinciding with the deadline for the release of their first‐quarter reports. We find that firms with negative earnings surprises in the previous year are more likely to postpone the announcement of their annual report until they announce their first‐quarter report. However, we find no evidence to suggest that this bundling disclosure weakens market responses to information in annual reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAn easy-to-read report may carry positive information for decision making and conversely. In that spirit, this paper investigates the relationship between the readability of companies’ annual reports, defined as the easiness to read, understand, and extract information from the reports, and investment decisions of Singapore companies. Empirical results with an DGMM analysis on 251 domestic companies listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) show a positive relationship between the readability of annual reports this year and investments next year. As such, reports’ readability can serve as a signal significant to predict companies’ future investments. Our findings are consistent with signaling theory and contribute significantly to the literature for empirical investigations on the relationship of annual reports’ readability and firms’ investment decisions.

Based on the best-track dataset from the Shanghai Typhoon Institute/China Meteorological Administration, the paper provides a comprehensive summary and analysis of tropical cyclone (TC) activities in the Western North Pacific (WNP) and the South China Sea (SCS) for 2022. Using the historical climatology from 1951 to 2020, the anomalous conditions during 2022 in TC frequency, origin locations, tracks, intensity, and duration for the entire ocean basin as well as landfall events in China are examined. Results show that the overall TC frequency is slightly lower than normal, but the multiple TC events have a very high frequency of occurrence. Origin locations of TCs, which mark the starting points of their paths, show a large westward and northward deviation from climatology. Around 40% of the named TCs exhibit a shift in their direction of movement from westerly to easterly. Additionally, comparisons of the means, medians, upper and lower quartiles all indicate that the intensity of TCs in 2022 is generally lower than the climatology, with the duration of TCs at tropical storm intensity or above being shorter than usual. A notable observation is the fewer incidence of TC landfalls in China, but with a geographical concentration in Guangdong Province. These anomalous annual TC activities are influenced by related atmospheric and oceanic environmental conditions modulated by multi-scale climate variability. The findings provide useful information for enhancing disaster mitigation strategies in the Asia-Pacific region.

As an important political resource of the enterprise, enterprise party building affects all aspects of the enterprise. Scientific and technological innovation is the key to the success of enterprises. This paper creates a new index to quantify the Party building of enterprises, and then discusses the influence of Party building on enterprise science and technology innovation. This paper first analyzes the central government's policy on enterprise party building through the LDA model, and then analyzes the central government's policy on enterprise party building from the perspectives of "study and education (E)," "problem orientation (Q)," "service to the public (S)," and "leadership demonstration (L)."We created a Party building dictionary with four themes: "E", "Q", "S", and "L", and then we measured the extent of corporate Party building activities by comparing the segmented text with the words in the dictionary. We found that Party building has a positive effect on science and technology innovation, both in general and in terms of sub-themes. The results of this study can help enterprises to further understand the importance and necessity of party building and provide a new way of thinking for the healthy development of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political influence has been proved to have an undeniable impact on firms' operation. As the ruling party in China, CPC plays a political role in engaging in firms' daily performance. However, little has been done to examine the influence of party building on bank failure risk. This article is aiming at creating a new metric to describe the effort that banks make on party building and then to explore its relationship with banks failure risk. Trough researching in 15 formal documents published on the official website of Communist Party of China (CPC), we find that they mainly focus on three perspectives of party building, including development, governance and education. We also notice the textual message in banks' annual reports that also mentions party building. Therefore, this article first use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model and official party building documents to create party building topic corpuses from three perspectives, including development, governance, and education. Secondly, we measure the degree of banks' party building activity by comparing segmented text with words in topic corpuses. Then we define a new metric DGE to comprehend three aspects of party building, in which D denotes development, G denotes governance and E denotes education. We discover that the strengthening of CPC building in a bank has a positive impact on its performance of reducing bank failure risk. Both in terms of the overall DGE score and sub-DGE scores, namely development (D) score, governance (G) score, and education (E) score, they all decrease the bank failure risk. The findings have important policy implications in motivating banks to engage more in party building activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the effect of ex‐military Chief Executive Officers (CEO)s on the readability of 10‐Ks. Using the Bog Index as a measure of readability, we find that firms run by ex‐military CEOs have much more readable financial reports, mainly because of the words used in these financial reports. Ex‐military CEOs also have a moderating effect—we find that their leadership lessens the adverse effects of loss and business complexity on the 10‐K's readability. These results are consistent with the view that ex‐military CEOs resist the temptation to obfuscate negative news and may communicate complexity in operations more clearly. Overall, our findings indicate a possible behavioral explanation for why some firms have more readable annual reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Magazine of Historical Studies & Archaeology is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Investors are one of the primary target audiences for corporate communication; they seek non-financial as well as financial information from the companies they invest in, and they consider the social and environmental sustainability of these companies in addition to their economic sustainability. Because of this, as a tool for investor relations, annual reports now routinely and regularly incorporate non-financial information. This study examined thirty annual reports from six public airline firms issued between 2018 and 2022. A total of 8115 expressions on social, economic, and environmental sustainability issues—divided into 125 themes—were coded and analyzed in Maxqda 2020. Among the conclusions was the fact that, in 2022, all of the examined companies devoted 9% of their pages to sustainability statements and included them as an individual topic in their reports. It was found that 64% of both the sustainability-related pages of the reports and the messages of the company managers included in the report consisted of social sustainability statements, with the theme of governance playing an important role in these explanations. Additionally, it was revealed that the topics of governance issues (22.6%), the natural environment (21.7%), and human resources development (15.5%) are the most frequently discussed social, environmental, and economic sustainability themes in corporate annual reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are placing greater importance on utilizing Information Technology (IT), and efficiently administrating IT resources is crucial for attaining strategic objectives and minimizing IT-related hazards. Nevertheless, there needs to be more comprehension regarding the current status of transparency in IT governance among Indonesian organizations. This study aims to examine the present condition of IT governance disclosure and analyze how the level of IT usage and ownership structure influence the transparency of IT governance in Indonesia. The data collection process will comprise conducting content research on the 2021 annual reports of different organizations using the qualitative analysis approach. This method will investigate high-tier listed corporations, non-listed companies, and low-tier non-listed companies. The study's discoveries will offer significant perspectives for policymakers, managers, and academics, aiding businesses in formulating effective strategies to enhance transparency and IT governance practices. Consequently, this will result in improved organizational performance.

This research paper aims to analyze and predict fraud patterns among failed companies in Malaysia. The approach involves utilizing textual analysis on the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section within the annual reports. The dataset is subjected to text clustering to group companies based on similar financial characteristics. This clustering process entails several steps, including data conversion, collation, and summarization into a structured format, followed by text pre-processing to cleanse the dataset. Notably, RapidMiner Studio software was utilized to extract data for the study. Subsequently, the documents are clustered using both the K-means and latent dirichlet allocation (LDA) methods. Upon examining a sample of 22 failed companies in the year 2020, the study reveals that financially distressed companies exhibit prominent financial negativity and utilize litigious financial terms within their MD&A sections. These linguistic traits are found to be closely associated with seven distinct characteristics of fraudulent firms. This preliminary findings provide compelling evidence that financial pressure may serve as a triggering factor for fraudulent activities within companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering debates surrounding the usefulness of integrated reporting for decision‐making, this exploratory study uses objective measures to investigate the quality of disclosures other than financial in the basic materials industry of South Africa. Annual and integrated reports for the basic materials and consumer discretionary industries are evaluated over 12 years, from 2008 to 2020 for a total of 1204 firm‐year observations to investigate whether (1) integrated reporting brought positive change and (2) whether reporting improved over time. Readability and narrative tone analyses are conducted, and non‐parametric Kruskal‐Wallis tests are used to investigate the development of these measures over time. The results show that corporate reports in the basic materials industry decreased in quality over time in that the reports have become longer, less readable, and use specific narrative tones, which can create biases. The findings reveal that the declining quality of reports in the basic materials industry could mislead or deter investors, challenge regulatory oversight, and ultimately, impact firms' social licence to operate. Thus, they offer actionable insights for firms to improve disclosure by reducing complexity and length and adopting a neutral narrative tone to mitigate biases, thereby making these reports more accessible and useful for a wider stakeholder audience. In addition, investors ought to demand better reporting, and regulators should tighten guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese Breast Cancer Society initiated the breast cancer registry in 1975, which transitioned to the National Clinical Database-Breast Cancer Registry in 2012. This annual report presents data from 2020 and analyzes the ten-year mortality rates for those aged 65 and older. We analyzed data from 93,784 breast cancer (BC) cases registered in 2020 and assessed 10-year mortality rates for 36,279 elderly patients diagnosed between 2008 and 2012. In 2020, 99.4% of BC cases were females with a median age of 61. Most (65%) were diagnosed at early stages (Stage 0 or I). Breast-conserving surgery rates varied with stages: 58.5% at cStage I, 30.8% at cStage II, and 13.1% at cStage III. Sentinel lymph node biopsy was done in 73.6% of cases, followed by radiotherapy in 70% of those post-conserving surgery and chemotherapy in 21.1% post-surgery. Pathology showed that 63.4% had tumors under 2.0 cm, 11.7% had pTis tumors, and 77.3% had no axillary lymph node metastasis. ER positivity was seen in 75.1%, HER2 in 14.3%, and 30% had a Ki67 positivity rate above 30%. Across all stages and subtypes, there was a trend where the 10-year mortality rates increased for individuals older than 65 years. In Stage I, many deaths were not directly linked to BC and, for those with HER2-type and triple-negative BC, breast cancer-related deaths increased with age. Within Stage II, patients older than 70 years with luminal-type BC often experienced deaths not directly linked to BC, whereas patients below 80 years with HER2-type and triple-negative BC, likely had breast cancer-related deaths. In Stage III, breast cancer-related deaths were more common, particularly in HER2 and triple-negative BC. Our prognostic analysis underscores distinct mortality patterns by stage, subtype, and age in elderly BC patients. It highlights the importance of personalized treatment strategies, considering subtype-specific aggressiveness, age-related factors, and comorbidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the capital market response to the publication of annual reports shortlisted for corporate reporting awards. We find weaker capital market reactions to the publication of shortlisted annual reports compared with a matched sample of non-shortlisted annual reports, consistent with shortlisted reports containing similar or less price sensitive information relative to non-shortlisted reports. Further analysis shows that firms publishing shortlisted reports are more likely to release information to investors in a timelier manner throughout the financial year. We complement our archival empirical analysis with interview evidence from FTSE350 executives and consultants to shed light on the motives for investing in high-quality annual reports. Collectively, our results support the view that high quality annual reporting reflects superior firm-level investor communication processes and that the broader corporate reporting cycle shapes the information role of firm reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the internal, annual report of the Austrian Library Network's main office, this article presents projects and services from April 2023 to April 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to share lessons learned by the author as an organizational ombuds working with data while striving to effectively communicate the value of ombuds work. The article begins with a presentation of how the author transitioned from a faculty researcher to an ombuds working with data with the goal to demystify ombuds work and create opportunities for visitor voices to be heard. This discussion includes both quantitative and qualitative data. The author shares strategies implemented, and decisions made as an ombuds to operationalize data collection, analysis, and reporting. The article ends with final thoughts for organizational ombuds to consider while reflecting on their professional practice with data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the annual state of the journal report for Advancements in Agricultural Development. This report: (a) highlights key accomplishments from 2023, (b) discusses changes beginning in 2024, (c) shares journal statistics from 2023, (d) presents goals for 2024, and (e) lists reviewers for the year. 2023 (Volume 4) was a banner year for Advancements in Agricultural Development (AAD), with several milestones reached. First, we published our 100th article in August. Second, AAD was accepted for inclusion in AGRICOLA, the National Library of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (https://www.nal.usda.gov/agricola). Third, AAD was also selected for inclusion in the Cabells directory (https://cabells.com/), which will allow for generating journal analytics for citations and mentions. We also introduced a new style sheet for published articles, adding the submitted, accepted, and published dates for transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a dataset constructed from the EDGAR database, this study investigates whether the timing of filing 10‐Ks contains useful information to investors. We argue and find that firms with better earnings news are more likely to file their 10‐Ks early. We further show that firms experience earnings increase would accelerate the filing of their 10‐Ks. We explore whether the timeliness measure is useful for predicting future financial performance and stock returns. We find that firms filing 10‐Ks early in the current year are more likely to have better earnings and higher stock returns in future years. Our results are robust to different measures of timeliness, before and after the statutory filing deadline changes, and subsamples of firms with large or small market capitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an annual report by the Japanese Breast Cancer Society regarding the clinical data on breast cancer extracted from the National Clinical Database-Breast Cancer Registry (NCD-BCR) of Japan. Here, we present an updated summary of 98,300 breast cancer cases registered in 2019. The median age at cancer diagnosis was 61 years (interquartile range 49–72 years), and 30.6% of the breast cancer patients were premenopausal. Of the 93,840 patients without distant metastases, 14,118 (15.0%) and 42,047 (44.8%) were diagnosed with stage 0 and I disease, respectively. Breast-conserving surgery was performed in 42,080 (44.8%) patients. Regarding axillary procedures, 62,677 (66.8%) and 7371 (7.9%) patients underwent sentinel node biopsy and axillary node dissection after biopsy, respectively. Whole breast irradiation was administered to 29,795 (70.8%) of the 42,080 patients undergoing breast-conserving surgery. Chest wall irradiation was administered to 5524 (11.1%) of the 49,637 patients who underwent mastectomy. Of the 6912 clinically lymph node-negative patients who received preoperative therapy, 5250 (76.0%) and 427 (6.2%) underwent sentinel node biopsy and axillary node dissection after biopsy, respectively; however, 602 (8.7%) patients initially underwent axillary node dissection without biopsy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, the Wits Transplant Unit performed 57 liver transplants: 33/57 adult (58%) and 24/57 paediatric (42%) recipients. At the beginning of 2022, 28 candidates were on the adult waitlist. Forty-six candidates were added to the waitlist during the year. Sixty-five percent of waitlisted candidate were transplanted. Adult candidates remained on the waitlist for longer than previous years, with 52% of them waitlisted for less than one year before undergoing liver transplantation. There was a decrease in adult pretransplant mortality to 9% in 2021 from 25% in 2020. The most common aetiology in waitlist candidates was alcoholic steatohepatitis (ASH)/non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) (36%) and in recipients cholestatic (primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and primary biliary sclerosis (PBC)) (40%). Most adult recipients received a deceased donor graft (79%). Unadjusted recipient one- and three-year survivals were 75% (95% confidence interval (CI) 65 - 83) and 74% (95% CI 65 - 81), respectively. In the paediatric population, the most common aetiologies for both pretransplant candidates and transplant recipients remained cholestatic disease and acute liver failure. There was a decrease in paediatric pretransplant mortality from 27% in 2017 to 6% in 2021. Unlike the adult cohort, most paediatric recipients received a living donor graft (79%). Unadjusted one-year and three-year survival rates were 85% (95% CI 75 - 92) and 68% (95% CI 56 - 77), respectively.

This study examines the perceived usefulness of several components of the annual reports in the decision-making process of investors in making investment decisions. Corporations provided their financial information i.e financial result, financial conditions, and distributions to shareholders etc. to the users through corporate annual report. The main objective of the study is to measure the level importance of the several parts of annual report in providing useful information to the investors. A well-organized questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. Descriptive statistics, reliability tests, correlation, regression, etc., were applied to detect the result of the study. The development of the survey indicates that the annual report provides the required information to the investors for their rational investment decision, but some components of the annual report are not helpful at all to the investors. Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flow, Notes to the Financial Statements, Auditors Report, Five Years Financial Highlights, and Income statement were providing more valuable information regarding investment. The findings of the study will encourage preparers to provide reliable information as well as encourage users in using yearly report of corporations.

The article considers the verbal representation elements of perfectionism in annual reports. The study is intended to analyze the perfectionist principle as an integral annual reports’ characteristic of companies with high rating positions. The material for the research consisted of 2.882 contextual uses of keywords with the superlative semantics – “best”, “maximum”, “high”, as well as those with the meaning of progressive development – “increase”, “improvement”, “upgrading”, “growth”, which reflect the semantics of the concept “perfectionism” and characterize the companies’ own activity. The research was conducted with the following methods: continuous sampling in the reports’ documents on the listed keywords, semantic selection, quantitative analysis, contextual analysis, semantic classification, data comparison. On average the coefficient of the presence of perfectionism elements in the volume of annual reports varies from 0.66 to 2.15. The data obtained can be considered high, given that many report pages contain numerical and illustrative data. Among the studied contextual uses, the most frequent were words with broader semantics: “increase”, “high”, “best”, “increase”, which can be used both from the standpoint of performance and from the point of view of the process of performing production activities. The usage of the keywords has a systemic character as it embraces all types of companies’ activities: the increase of the ecological and corporate social responsibility levels; business process improvement; product quality enhancement; the board of directors’ activity improvement, the increase in profits and company value, and some others. The perfectionism principle is oriented to maintaining long-term relationships with external and internal categories of users by ensuring that the performance of activities meets the expectations of interested groups of users.

Background. Based on an analysis of legislation, annual reports of the Russian Ombudsman, and legal literature, issues of the legal nature and content of the principle of accessibility as one of the basic principles of the activities of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation are considered. The authors focus not only on the norma-tive components of this principle, but also on the discretionary powers of the Russian Om-budsman in terms of filling the principle with appropriate content. Materials and methods. To achieve these goals, the authors used formal legal and comparative legal methods. Re-sults. Based on the analysis, the authors have identified the structure and content of the principle of accessibility in the activities of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. Conclusions. The principle of accessibility in the activities of the Om-budsman can be considered as an opportunity guaranteed by law, as well as provided by the Ombudsman himself, for every person to freely apply to the Ombudsman for assistance in restoring their violated rights. The accessibility of the service is thus based both on those legislative guarantees that are provided to citizens when contacting the service, and on the discretionary powers of the Ombudsman himself, who often independently determines pri-orities in ways to receive complaints and other information from citizens (through informa-tional, physical and partly legal accessibility).

This is the annual state of the journal report for Advancements in Agricultural Development. This report: (a) highlights key accomplishments from 2023, (b) discusses changes beginning in 2024, (c) shares journal statistics from 2023, (d) presents goals for 2024, and (e) lists reviewers for the year. 2023 (Volume 4) was a banner year for Advancements in Agricultural Development (AAD), with several milestones reached. First, we published our 100th article in August. Second, AAD was accepted for inclusion in AGRICOLA, the National Library of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (https://www.nal.usda.gov/agricola). Third, AAD was also selected for inclusion in the Cabells directory (https://cabells.com/), which will allow for generating journal analytics for citations and mentions. We also introduced a new style sheet for published articles, adding the submitted, accepted, and published dates for transparency.

Aim: To provide information including the trend of gynecological malignancies in Japan, we hereby present the annual patient report for 2020 and the Annual Treatment Report for 2015, on the outcomes of patients who started treatment in 2015. Methods: The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology maintains an annual tumor registry, where information on gynecological malignancies from various participating institutions is gathered. The data of patients whose treatment with gynecologic malignancies was initiated in 2020 were analyzed retrospectively. Survival of the patients who started treatment with cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancer in 2015 was analyzed by using the Kaplan–Meier, log‐rank, and Wilcoxson tests. Results: Treatment was initiated in 2020 for 7689 patients with cervical cancer, 13 113 with endometrial cancer, 8004 with ovarian, tubal, and peritoneal cancer, 2152 with ovarian borderline tumors, and with the others (260 vulvar cancer, 157 vaginal cancer, 464 uterine sarcoma, 50 uterine adenosarcoma, 136 trophoblastic diseases). This clinicopathological information was summarized as the patient annual report. The 5‐year survival rates of the patients with cervical cancer were 92.3%, 76.2%, 56.5%, and 32.2% for Stages I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The 5‐year survival rates for the patients with endometrial cancer were 93.9%, 87.6%, 71.4%, and 29.3% for Stages I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The 5‐year survival rates for the patients with ovarian cancer (surface epithelial‐stromal tumors) were 91.7%, 80.6%, 50.8%, and 39.7% for Stages I, II, III, and IV, respectively. Conclusion: The annual tumor report is an important survey that provides knowledge on gynecological malignancy trends in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1994, the Ukrainian Phase Diagrams and Thermodynamics Commission has been a part of the Alloy Phase Diagram International Commission (APDIC), in which 18 representatives from 26 countries of the world participate in its activities. The exchange of scientific information and coordination of activities of the international scientific community, mainly in the field of phase diagrams and thermodynamics, promoting the application of phase diagrams in industry and fundamental science, and dissemination of the methodology of critical evaluation of scientific information in world science are among the priority tasks of the APDIC's activity. As part of the annual report of the Ukrainian Commission, at the APDIC meeting on June 30, 2023, information was presented on the results of the activities of Ukrainian scientists in this field in 2022. It is presented in the form of a table with data on the studied systems and obtained results and a list of references to published papers. Scientists from the Frantsevich Institute for Problems of Materials Science (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Kyiv), and Donbas State Engineering Academy (Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Kramatorsk) provided relevant information to the Ukrainian Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 40th National Poison Data System Annual Report from America's Poison Centers is published in this issue of Clinical Toxicology. This Commentary will focus on changes that have occurred over the years and emerging trends while highlighting some of the strengths and weaknesses of the system. The National Poison Data System now receives poison exposure data from all 50 states and territories of the United States, representing all levels of care and medical outcomes, and is collected in near real-time. The 2022 report is double in size from the 1983 report and shows changes in the distribution of exposure substances and at least a doubling in the percentage of calls from a health care facility, intentional exposures, and fatalities. There was also a more modest increase in cases managed in a health care facility, and a 40% drop in the percentage of cases managed in those under age 6. While total reported poison center cases have been decreasing since 2008, cases with more serious medical outcomes have steadily increased. To address the decline in the total number of less serious cases, an online tool was initiated for consumers to obtain simple individualized poisoning recommendations as an alternative to directly contacting a poison center. Fentanyl exposures reported to the National Poison Data System have increased rapidly since 2019, driven by non-prescription fentanyl. Reporting of this was facilitated by the granularity of the generic coding schema and the ability to develop new generic codes rapidly, unlike some other national data sets. Total fentanyl exposures and those with more serious outcomes show a good correlation with national data on fentanyl deaths, demonstrating the ability of the National Poison Data System to function as a surveillance tool. Fentanyl concentrations reported to the National Poison Data System Fatality module showed antemortem concentrations to be slightly lower than postmortem concentrations, little difference between postmortem peripheral and central concentrations, and single substance concentrations slightly higher than cases with multiple substances. Strengths include the breadth of the database, granularity, contemporaneous data collection, near-real-time data submission allowing for automated toxicosurveillance activities, ability to rapidly activate emergency product codes for emerging situations, a robust web-based query tool, mapping of generic codes and clinical effects to other data dictionaries, and review by toxicologists of fatalities to assign a relative contribution. Weaknesses include voluntarily reported, non-verified exposures, interpreting reported medical outcomes (non-toxic and fatalities), lag-time in collecting data on new therapeutic modalities, and mortality data varying from that reported by other sources. Poison center data gives a robust, reproducible image of the populations that utilize poison center resources and seems to mirror trends noted from other data sources. This supports the continued need for poison centers in the information age to support the management of patients potentially exposed to poisons and those who are more severely poisoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Aim The National Clinical Database (NCD) of Japan is a nationwide data entry system for surgery, and it marked its 10th anniversary in 2020. The aim was to present the 2020 annual report of gastroenterological surgery of the NCD. Methods The data of the surgical procedures stipulated by the training curriculum for board‐certified surgeons of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery in the NCD from 2011 to 2020 were summarized. Results In total, 5 622 845 cases, including 593 088 cases in 2020, were extracted from the NCD. The total number of gastroenterological surgeries increased gradually in these 10 years, except for the year 2020 due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The annual number of surgeries of each organ, except the pancreas and liver, decreased by 0.4%–13.1% in 2020 compared to 2019. The surgical patients were consistently aging, with more than 20% of all gastroenterological surgeries in 2020 involving patients aged 80 years or older. The participation of board‐certified surgeons increased for each organ (75.9%–95.7% in 2020). The rates of endoscopic surgery also increased constantly. Although the incidences of postoperative complications of each organ increased by 0.7%–7.9% in these 10 years, postoperative mortality rates decreased by 0.2%–1.5%. Conclusions We present here the short‐term outcomes of each gastroenterological operative procedure in 2020. This review of the 10‐years of NCD data of gastroenterological surgery revealed a consistent increase of the number of surgeries (except for in 2020), especially endoscopic procedures, and aging of the Japanese population. The good safety of Japanese gastroenterological surgeries was also indicated.

A firm's public disclosure, such as its annual report, usually carries information of what it has done and/or will do. Since brand equity is a result of a firm's branding efforts resulting from its long-term culture, strategy, and execution, an interesting but understudied issue is whether the information revealed in the text of a firm's public disclosure predicts its brand equity. In this study, we propose that how managers think and therefore what the firm behind a brand does will help predict brand equity, with the thoughts and deeds of concern reflected in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) component of the firm's annual reports (i.e., 10-K filings). Through text analysis and regression analysis on annual reports, we empirically demonstrate that a firm's degree of customer orientation and a set of word categories as inferred from its MD&A component in the annual reports significantly predict its brand equity (as measured by the four dimensions of Young & Rubicam's Brand Asset Valuator, i.e., BAV). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]