Management practices in retail trade companies in the east region of the city of Porto Alegre (RS)

Purpose: To identify the managerial accounting practices used in retail organizations in the Eastern Region of the city of Porto Alegre (RS). In a complementary way, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and the importance attributed to financial reports and management instruments and data analysis systems for decision making are investigated. Methodology: Descriptive research with a quantitative approach, by means of a survey through a questionnaire carried out with owners/partners, administrators and employees of retail organizations in the region object of the study, totaling a non-probabilistic and accessibility sample of 26 companies. The questionnaire contemplated the profile of the respondents;management data;importance and use of management instruments and financial reports;and open questions to collect additional information. Results: Companies are on average micro-companies, with centralized decisions, little use of managerial instruments and understand accounting as a support to the tax area. The least used management tools are the Balanced Scorecard and product life cycle, and some companies do not even use basic operational and financial controls, such as inventories, accounts payable and receivable, and strategic planning. Still, they attach greater importance to managerial instruments than they use them. Contributions of the Study: based on the perception of importance of financial reports and management tools, low level of training of managers, little knowledge and use of management practices, it is inferred that the greater the complexity of management tools, the less importance attributed by managers to them. This was reflected in the face of the pandemic, there were few managerial changes to ensure business performance.

Evolution of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma diagnosis during the last decade

Background: Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has historically been an important diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. The multidisciplinary approach and new diagnostic techniques' implementation have modified this process. Method(s): We conducted a retrospective analysis based on clinical data of patients with PDAC between the years 2010 to 2021, analyzing the diagnosis and initial treatment evolution. Result(s): 673 patients between 2010-2021 with a suspected diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma were reviewed. Most of them were metastatic (n=362;53.8%), followed by locally advanced unresectable (n=166;24.7%) and resectable or borderline resectable (n=145;21.5%). Regarding the pathological diagnosis, it was not possible in 62 patients (9.2%), varying over time from 21.2%in 2010-2012 to 1% in 2019-2021 (p<0,0001). Moreover, the number of biopsies has decreased with a mean number of biopsies to obtain a pathological diagnosis of 1.55 (2010-2012) vs 1.31 (2019-2021). During this last period, most of the diagnoses were made by cytological analysis (61.4%;n=121). Specifically in the 2019-2021 patients subgroup, we found that 18 NGS (9,1%) were performed in this period (solid tumor), with 4 patients having actionable mutations (22.2%;3 KRAS G12C). Germline (g) mutational panels were carried out in 89 patients, finding only 9 positive cases (10.1%), being 3 of them gBRCA1/2 mutated (3,4%). In our study, a decrease in palliative management was evidenced over time. In 2010-2012, 28,8% of patients received exclusively palliative care against 9,6% in 2019-21 (p, 0.0001). An increase in PDAC diagnosis was observed since 2010, 44 patients/year in 2010-12 vs. 66 patients/year in 2019-21 (including COVID-19 pandemic period). All previous results are summarized. Conclusion(s): The diagnosis of PDAC has changed throughout the last decade, increasing the percentage of patients with a pathological diagnosis without increasing the number of invasive procedures. The number of patients suitable for anti-cancer therapy has also increased among time. In our cohort, the implementation of molecular testing would change the therapeutic approach in more than 20% of patients.

DISTANCE LEARNING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC: ITALIAN TEACHERS’ WELL-BEING AND THE ROLE OF AGE ON ICT ADOPTION

Italy has been severely affected by the initial spread of Covid-19. To mitigate the pressure on the national health system, the government established several measures promoting social distancing. The suspension of teaching in attendance forced teachers to embrace telework, posing unprecedented challenges, such as implementing ICT in daily professional activities. Previous research underlined teachers’ widespread resistance toward ICT and high computer anxiety, which could be exacerbated by age. Moreover, teaching is associated with several negative outcomes, such as burnout, that can be boosted by a negative work-family balance, impacting teachers’ well-being. During the first lockdown, 244 Italian teachers aged 32 to 66 (m: 50.73;sd: 7.93;80.6% females) answered an online survey measuring psychosocial and ICT-related measures. We performed a full SEM analysis confirming that computer anxiety and work-family balance are positively associated with burnout and the negative impact of burnout on well-being dimensions. Also, results from univariate ANOVA showed differences in teachers’ attitudes toward ICT and computer anxiety according to age. © 2021, ASA Associazione per la Statistica Applicata. All rights reserved.

Governing a Pandemic: Assessing the Role of Collaboration on Latin American Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis

How do governments address complex, cross-sectoral problems, like the COVID-19 pandemic? Why were some Latin American countries more successful at containing the pandemic's most devastating health outcomes? We argue that national governments that were more collaborative in their response to COVID-19 were more successful in reducing death rates. Our original dataset offers a novel attempt to operationalise collaborative governance (CG). We undertake simple statistical tests to measure the relationship between CG and COVID-19-related mortality rates in Latin America. We then choose three case studies to assess whether collaboration was meaningful in practice. Initial evidence suggests governments that pursued CG were more effective at containing mortality rates early on in the pandemic. The collaboration helped to foster cooperation over resources;buy time to prepare for a potential case surge;and produce a unified message regarding what citizens should do to prevent viral spread.

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 triggers a consistent cross-variant humoral and cellular response.

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic continues to rage worldwide, the emergence of numerous variants of concern (VOC) represents a challenge for the vaccinal protective efficacy and the reliability of commercially available high-throughput immunoassays. Our study demonstrates the administration of two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine that elicited a robust SARS-CoV-2-specific immune response which was assessed up to 3 months after full vaccination in a cohort of 37 health care workers (HCWs). SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody response, evaluated by four commercially available chemiluminescence immunoassays (CLIA), was qualitatively consistent with the results provided by the gold-standard in vitro neutralization assay (NTA). However, we could not observe a correlation between the quantity of the antibody detected by CLIA assays and their neutralizing activity tested by NTA. Almost all subjects developed a SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell response. Moreover, vaccinated HCWs developed a similar protective neutralizing antibodies response against the EU (B.1), Alpha (B.1.1.7), Gamma (P.1), and Eta (B.1.525) SARS-CoV-2 variants, while Beta (B.1.351) and Delta (B.1.617.2) strains displayed a consistent partial immune evasion. These results underline the importance of a solid vaccine-elicited immune response and a robust antibody titre. We believe that these relevant results should be taken into consideration in the definition of future vaccinal strategies.