Search

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

Abstract: This paper looks into the clean development mechanism (CDM) projects involving energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW). The paper looks into the municipal waste management problems, regulatory framework in place and the CDM opportunities in India. A comparative assessment of the Indian CDM projects vis a vis projects worldwide is also presented. One hundred and nineteen worldwide CDM projects, including 16 from India, based on MSW and implemented across the developing countries in the world were studied to assess the various processes and methodologies used and the green house gas (GHG) reductions estimated. RDF, composting and landfill gas recovery methods have been explained in brief. Two case studies from India and Brazil have also been outlined. Brazil has the highest number of CDM projects of MSW origin (25) followed by China (16), India (16), Chile (10), Mexico (10) and Argentina (8). Rest of the non-Annex-1 countries have one, two or three projects each. It was observed that out of the 119 projects, 88 projects were using ACM0001 methodology where electricity is being produced and supplied to a grid. Out of the 16 Indian projects, only one of the projects has electricity being supplied to the grid. Nine out of the sixteen projects are based on AMS.III.E. methodology that is RDF. To conclude, India does not have well designed sanitary landfills where methane can be captured. India needs to make conscious effort towards developing more scientific landfills, capture methane and take carbon credits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the international competitiveness of exports in the emerging markets. It states that export performance of emerging economies is because of two factors including their ability to produce cheaply and their improved quality of exported products. It further states that China is showing huge competitive market of exported goods while Brazil, Chile and India are showing improvements in their competitive position in terms of exported products.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, patients who are older and residents of long-term care facilities (LTCF) are at greatest risk of worse clinical outcomes. We reviewed discharge criteria for hospitalised COVID-19 patients from 10 countries with the highest incidence of COVID-19 cases as of 26 July 2020. Five countries (Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Iran) had no discharge criteria; the remaining five (USA, India, Russia, South Africa and the UK) had discharge guidelines with large inter-country variability. India and Russia recommend discharge for a clinically recovered patient with two negative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests 24 h apart; the USA offers either a symptom based strategy—clinical recovery and 10 days after symptom onset, or the same test-based strategy. The UK suggests that patients can be discharged when patients have clinically recovered; South Africa recommends discharge 14 days after symptom onset if clinically stable. We recommend a unified, simpler discharge criteria, based on current studies which suggest that most SARS-CoV-2 loses its infectivity by 10 days post-symptom onset. In asymptomatic cases, this can be taken as 10 days after the first positive PCR result. Additional days of isolation beyond this should be left to the discretion of individual clinician. This represents a practical compromise between unnecessarily prolonged admissions and returning highly infectious patients back to their care facilities, and is of particular importance in older patients discharged to LTCFs, residents of which may be at greatest risk of transmission and worse clinical outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Household air pollution (HAP) from solid fuel use for cooking affects 2.5 billion individuals globally and may contribute substantially to disease burden. However, few prospective studies have assessed the impact of HAP on mortality and cardiorespiratory disease. OBJECTIVES: Our goal was to evaluate associations between HAP and mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and respiratory disease in the prospective urban and rural epidemiology (PURE) study. METHODS: We studied 91,350 adults 35-70 y of age from 467 urban and rural communities in 11 countries (Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe). After a median follow-up period of 9.1 y, we recorded 6,595 deaths, 5,472 incident cases of CVD (CVD death or nonfatal myocardial infarction, stroke, or heart failure), and 2,436 incident cases of respiratory disease (respiratory death or nonfatal chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, pneumonia, or lung cancer). We used Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for individual, household, and community-level characteristics to compare events for individuals living in households that used solid fuels for cooking to those using electricity or gas. RESULTS: We found that 41.8% of participants lived in households using solid fuels as their primary cooking fuel. Compared with electricity or gas, solid fuel use was associated with fully adjusted hazard ratios of 1.12 (95% CI: 1.04, 1.21) for all-cause mortality, 1.08 (95% CI: 0.99, 1.17) for fatal or nonfatal CVD, 1.14 (95% CI: 1.00, 1.30) for fatal or nonfatal respiratory disease, and 1.12 (95% CI: 1.06, 1.19) for mortality from any cause or the first incidence of a nonfatal cardiorespiratory outcome. Associations persisted in extensive sensitivity analyses, but small differences were observed across study regions and across individual and household characteristics. DISCUSSION: Use of solid fuels for cooking is a risk factor for mortality and cardiorespiratory disease. Continued efforts to replace solid fuels with cleaner alternatives are needed to reduce premature mortality and morbidity in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International students have continued to be the focus of simplistic stereotyping in media discourse where they are frequently identified as one of the forces behind declining academic standards in Australian universities. Their English language skills, in particular, have continued to be the focus of debate both in the mainstream media and in higher education research and policy. It is argued in this paper, however, that such debates do not sufficiently acknowledge the moral and affective complexity of the so-called "English problem" amongst international students in Australian universities. Drawing from an analysis of small group interviews with international students, domestic students and university staff, the beliefs and experiences of various parties about the English language skills of international students are examined. A key finding from this analysis is that the English language skills of international students, and their concomitant interactions with others, can be the object of both complaints and troubles talk. These complaints or troubles can be either ratified or resisted by those participants. The difficulties international students may experience in using English thus have complex moral and affective consequences. The way in which the so-called English problem in Australian universities is generally couched as one of objective, measurable deficiency on the part of international students arguably neglects the moral and affective complexity of the difficulties facing international students. This neglect leads, in turn, to an impoverished understanding of the English language capabilities of international students.

Promoting men's participation in unpaid care work is part of the Programme of Action for the International Conference on Population and Development. However, men's involvement in care work does not mirror the advances women have made in paid work outside the home. This mixed method study explores which men are more involved in caregiving, and what childhood and adulthood factors influence their level of involvement. Quantitative research presents findings from 1169 men across six countries with children aged 0–4, and a qualitative study presents findings from in-depth interviews with 83 men engaged in atypical caregiving practices. Survey research finds that being taught to care for children, witnessing one's father take care of one's siblings, respondents' present attitudes about gender equality and having outside help (or none, in some cases) were all also associated with men's higher level of involvement. Qualitative research reveals that men's experiences of violence, the normalisation of domestic work as children and life circumstances rather than greater-than-average beliefs in gender equality all propelled them into care work. Findings suggest that engaging more men into care work implies changes to policies and structural realities in the workplace coupled with changing gender attitudes. These insights inform policy and practice aimed at promoting greater involvement in care work by men. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduction: This paper describes the collaborative efforts of research teams from medical schools in India, Chile, Egypt, the Philippines, Brazil, and the United States to develop and implement a core protocol for household surveys on family violence and to conduct standardized training for field workers. Our objectives are to share successes and difficulties encountered in training and field work and to offer recommendations for similar undertakings., Methods: Study methods, developed by a multidisciplinary group of international investigators, were documented in a procedures manual. On-site standardized training was conducted and field workers were monitored for adherence to protocol. Special attention was given to safety and ethical issues., Results: Overall, the training protocol and field methods were successful with relatively few problems encountered. Study participants were receptive to the interview and cooperated in safety procedures. The most common problem in the field was interruptions of the interview, mostly by children. Community advisory boards were actively involved in some of the sites, providing guidance on the safety and logistical aspects of the study, facilitating access to study communities, and providing community service information that could be shared with all study participants., Conclusions: WorldSAFE successes were attributed to rigorous standardized training and monitoring of field work; meticulous protocol implementation; unflagging attention to the ethical issues and to safeguarding study participants, field workers, and data; and openness and trust developed among the collaborators during the extended developmental phase.

Background: Poverty and female gender have been found to be associated with depression and anxiety in developed countries. The rationale behind this paper was to bring together five epidemiological data sets from four low to middle income countries to examine whether key economic and development indicators such as income and poor education, and female gender, were associated with common mental disorders., Method: The paper is based on five datasets: three based on primary care attenders in Goa, India; Harare, Zimbabwe and Santiago, Chile; and two based on community samples in Pelotas, Brazil and Olinda, Brazil. All five studies estimated prevalence of common mental disorders along with variables to measure economic deprivation and education., Findings: In all five studies, female gender, low education and poverty were strongly associated with common mental disorders. When income was divided into tertiles, with the lowest tertile as a reference value, there was a significant trend for reduced morbidity for the lower two tertiles., Discussion: These findings have considerable implications since the rapid economic changes in all four societies have been associated with rising income disparity and economic inequality. Examples of population based prevention strategies based on increasing the proportion of those who complete schooling and on high-risk strategies such as providing loan facilities to the impoverished are potential outcomes of these findings. Development agencies who focus on women as a priority group have failed to recognize their unique vulnerability to common mental disorders and need to reorient their priorities accordingly.

Programmes to control Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura and hookworm infections have often been targeted at each infection separately, but the advent of benign and broad-spectrum anthelmintics suggests that combined control may be feasible. The extent to which the infections co-occur in communities will determine the need for, and potential benefits of, such a combined approach. This paper examines the comparative distribution of the three geohelminths in different geographical areas and shows that A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura have closely related distributions, while hookworm infection is largely independent of the other two. These results indicate that many communities are at risk of disease from infection by more than one species of helminth. The similar distributions and epidemiological characteristics of A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura suggest that simultaneous control of these two parasites by the same strategy would be feasible and highly beneficial to communities. Multiple species control strategies which aim to control hookworm infection may require a more complicated protocol with more precise locality targeting.