Search

Organizational management should not disregard the contribution that organizations make to the development of a sustainable environment; on the other hand, it should coexist with the creation of value for companies and society. For this reason, this article aims at describing the current state of the concept of creation of shared value in the academic and scientific fields. A literary revision and the corresponding bibliometric analysis of this concept are made, including international documents and making key considerations that contrast its performance with social responsibility and determine its essence from a corporate sustainability perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of manually georeferencing or aligning historic or illustrated maps with contemporary maps can be a difficult and time consuming task (Fleet et al., 2012). It is generally accepted that the level of understanding necessary to correctly georeference a single image can be rather daunting (Bajcsy and Alumbaugh, 2003). This is especially challenging in an open environment where there is no previous information to help approximating the real coordinates. Over the last couple of decades there have been advances in the automatic georeferencing of map images, aerial photographs or raster maps (Chen et al., 2004), (Desai et al., 2005), (Kim et al., 2010), (Cléry et al., 2014). However, there has been little discussion dealing with heterogeneous maps. For instance, some algorithms apply fixed image processing techniques to find features within the map images, and then try to match these patterns of features to a database of geographical information (Chen et al., 2004). The drawback with this approach is that the image processing operations used in a particular style may not work for a map created using a different style. Other techniques only work for a specific kind of map, like street maps (Desai et al., 2005) or aerial photographs (Kim et al., 2010). Furthermore, the artistic vision of the creator or the theme of the map can also result in these features being represented in different ways (Fiori, 2005). For instance, some styles or themes may highlight some roads or completely ignore others. Finally, historic but inaccurate cartography or contemporary illustrated maps can suffer from distortion or unusual perspective (Cajthaml, 2011). In this paper, we present a novel algorithm to automatically help start the georeferencing of historic and illustrated maps based on the text found in the map image. To accomplish this, we leverage the power of modern OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and geocoding services on the cloud. The proposed algorithm is able to calculate the area covered by the map, and where north is located in the image, with a precision greater than 80%. This information obtained represents a great help to inexpert users performing the alignment and georeference of maps for the first time. We also propose an optional machine learning module to speed up the process in dynamic environments in which the time required to obtain a result is an important factor. Figure 1 shows some examples of heterogeneous maps processed with the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm contains five modules as shown in Figure 2. The first module applies an OCR process to extract the text contained within the input image. The results pass through a processing step to filter the text using heuristics to remove incorrect and ambiguous entries. The next module (optional) is a bidirectional LSTM (Long shortterm memory) recurrent neural network (Graves and Schmidhuber, 2005) that takes text and orders it according to likelihood of useful geocoding result return. The third module takes the text (ordered or not) and searches for each line in a geocoding service 1. The output is a list of locations, each one with its real world latitude and longitude and its coordinates within the image. The fourth module calculates a matrix of distances between locations. Each distance contains the real life geodesic distance (Karney, 2013) in meters, the Euclidean distance between each piece of text in pixels, the calculated meters per pixel (MPP), and the rotation. We define rotation as the difference in angle between real life location and the text in the image. Using the MPP and rotation as dimensions, the module finds clusters of corresponding locations. Lastly, the largest cluster is selected as the best. The fifth and final module uses the best cluster of locations and calculates the georeference information. This output information contains the northeast and southwest corners of the map, a list of mapping points, as well as the angle of north in the image (counter-clockwise, where 0 degrees is pointing up). The proposed algorithm has approximately twelve hyper-parameters that can be tuned. We found that one of the most important is the minimum size of the cluster used to calculate the georeference information. In other words, the minimum number of corresponding locations the algorithm needs to converge. In Table 1 we show the results of executing the algorithm against a set of 359 illustrated maps obtained from Stroly's database (Vermeulen et al., 2011). The maps were manually georeferenced, and this information is used as ground truth. The georeference information returned by the algorithm is considered correct when two conditions are met. First, the width of the calculated area is between 50% and 200% of the width of the real area. Second, there is an intersection between both areas. Figure 3 shows the visualization of some results, executing the algorithm against several kinds of maps. The map area delimited in blue is the ground truth, while the one in orange is the one calculated by the presented algorithm. The markers in blue are the locations that are part of the cluster used to calculate the information. In conclusion, we offer a novel solution to start and in some cases to complete the georeferencing process for heterogeneous historic and illustrated maps based on the text contained within them. The algorithm does not need vector information or geographical databases, nor image preprocessing. We have proven that even with a small cluster of locations the precision of this method is greater than 80%. The precision increases when the hyper-parameter is set to need larger clusters to converge (98.86% for a minimum of six locations). In future iterations we aim to improve the algorithm to increase the precision for smaller clusters and to improve the recall in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: In patients diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), relapse remains the main cause of mortality after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). The detection of measurable residual disease (MRD) by multiparameter flow cytometry in AML patients undergoing HSCT is a powerful predictor of outcome. The aim of this study was performed a retrospective multicenter study to evaluate the prognostic value of MRD by second generation of MFC among patients undergoing HSCT, using recommendations from the Euroflow consortium. MRD levels prior to transplantation significantly influenced outcomes irrespective of the conditioning regimen. Positive MRD on day +100 after transplantation was associated with an extremely poor prognosis. Detection of positive MRD prior to and after transplantation performed with standardized technical conditions has prognostic value in real life. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) represents the best therapeutic option for many patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, relapse remains the main cause of mortality after transplantation. The detection of measurable residual disease (MRD) by multiparameter flow cytometry (MFC) in AML, before and after HSCT, has been described as a powerful predictor of outcome. Nevertheless, multicenter and standardized studies are lacking. A retrospective analysis was performed, including 295 AML patients undergoing HSCT in 4 centers that worked according to recommendations from the Euroflow consortium. Among patients in complete remission (CR), MRD levels prior to transplantation significantly influenced outcomes, with overall (OS) and leukemia free survival (LFS) at 2 years of 76.7% and 67.6% for MRD-negative patients, 68.5% and 49.7% for MRD-low patients (MRD < 0.1), and 50.5% and 36.6% for MRD-high patients (MRD ≥ 0.1) (p < 0.001), respectively. MRD level did influence the outcome, irrespective of the conditioning regimen. In our patient cohort, positive MRD on day +100 after transplantation was associated with an extremely poor prognosis, with a cumulative incidence of relapse of 93.3%. In conclusion, our multicenter study confirms the prognostic value of MRD performed in accordance with standardized recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study systematically reviews the current state of aquatic treatment of neck pain and assesses the scientific evidence of its benefits. The databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and PEDro were searched for relevant reports published from January 1, 2008, to November 7, 2017, using the keywords "neck pain" in addition to "balneotherapy", "spa treatment", "spa", "thalassotherapy", "hydrotherapy", "aquatic therapy" or "aquatic". Inclusion criteria were full-text articles published in journals included in Journal Citation Reports in English and Spanish describing human studies. Case studies, letters to the editor and meeting presentations or other contributions were excluded. Of 367 articles identified, only 13 fulfilled the inclusion criteria: 5 randomized trials, 1 single blind controlled study, 2 pilot studies, 2 observational retrospective studies, 1 prospective study, 1 clinical study and 1 not specified. Participants were 658 subjects with chronic neck pain. Main symptoms and signs treated were neck pain, disability, cervical disc herniation and compromised quality of life. Evidence that aquatic treatment improves quality of life in affected individuals was good in four studies, fair in eight and weak in one. Treatment of neck pain using different waters and techniques reduced pain and disability, and improved functional capacity, quality of life, joint mobility, balance, relaxation and mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study related to the effect of Therapeutic Horseback Riding (THR) on the balance and gait of ambulatory patients with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). As per the study, 27 PwMS were analyzed and divided in two groups including 12 undergoes THR and 15 with physiotherapy. The study highlights several outcome measures including Extended Disability Status Scale (EDSS) and Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment (POMA).The study concludes that THR have positive effect on PwMS.

This article reviews the literature related to the concepts of social innovation and non-profit organizations, applying a bibliometric analysis to the last five years of publications in the Scopus platform and Web of Science. The results suggest that these concepts complement rather than exclude each other, as social innovation can add to the social value of this type of organization. The social commitment of non-profit organizations and its relevance to integrating an innovative approach in their management is also discussed as a way to confront social problems through innovation and promote more participation and development in the social sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]