Investigating presentational change in UK annual reports: a longitudinal perspective

This article examines structural and format changes in annual reports of U.K. listed companies from 1965 to 2004 with a particular focus on graph use. The article compares a new sample of 2004 annual reports with preexisting samples by Lee and by Beattie and Jones. Lee's identified trends continue. There has been a sharp increase in page length, voluntary information, and narrative information, particularly among large listed companies. A detailed analysis of voluntary disclosure indicates changes in the incidence and pattern of generic sections. Graph usage is now universal. However, key financial graph use has slightly declined, replaced by graphs depicting other operating issues. Impression management through selectivity, graphical measurement distortion, and manipulation of the length of time series graphed are common. Overall, annual reports continue to exhibit many features of public relations documents rather than financially driven, statutory documents, and the analysis of graph usage suggests a need for policy guidelines to protect users

Popular benchmark problems for geometric nonlinear analysis of shells

In most, if not all, of the previous work on finite element formulation and nonlinear solution procedures, results of geometric nonlinear benchmark problems of shells are presented in the form of load-deflection curves. In this paper, eight sets of popularly employed benchmark problems are identified and their detailed reference solutions are obtained and tabulated. It is hoped that these solutions will form a convenient basis for subsequent comparison and that the tedious yet inaccurate task of reconstructing data points by graphical measurement of previously reported load-deflection curves can be avoided. Moreover, the relative convergent difficulty of the problems are revealed by the number of load increments and the total number of iterations required by an automatic load incrementation scheme for attaining the converged solutions under the maximum loads. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

Image-Based Collection and Measurements for Construction Pay Items

Prior to each payment to contractors and suppliers, measurements are made to document the actual amount of pay items placed at the site. This manual process has substantial risk for personnel, and could be made more efficient and less prone to human errors. In this project a customized software tool package has been developed to address these concerns. The Pay Item Measurement (PIM) tool package is provided as two complementary tools, the Orthophoto Generation Tool and the Graphical Measurement Tool. PIM has been developed in close cooperation with the advisory committee and field engineers from INDOT, and is specifically designed to incorporate the typical actions that INDOT personnel follow. PIM is intended to generate orthophotos for measurements on a planar surface. User guidelines explain the process of how to collect suitable high-quality images, which is a critical step for successful orthophoto construction. INDOT will also use PIM to identify features and make annotations, and to readily compute distances, perimeters, and areas for documenting and recording. This customized tool package will be most useful, and accurate, when the user guidelines are followed. Several examples are included to demonstrate the characteristics of high-quality image sets that will be successful, and to also provide examples of sets that would fail. Step-by-step instructions are provided to demonstrate the correct use of the tool. An instructional video and sample digital image sets complement this report and tool package

Integration of multiple data types in 3-D immersive virtual reality (VR) environments

Intelligent sensors have begun to play a key part in the monitoring and maintenance of complex infrastructures. Sensors have the capability not only to provide raw data, but also provide information by indicating the reliability of the measurements. The effect of this added information is a voluminous increase in the total data that is gathered. If an operator is required to perceive the state of a complex system, novel methods must be developed for sifting through enormous data sets. Virtual reality (VR) platforms are proposed as ideal candidates for performing this task-- a virtual world will allow the user to experience a complex system that is gathering a multitude of sensor data and are referred as Integrated Awareness models. This thesis presents techniques for visualizing such multiple data sets, specifically - graphical, measurement and health data inside a 3-D VR environment. The focus of this thesis is to develop pathways to generate the required 3-D models without sacrificing visual fidelity. The tasks include creating the visual representation, integrating multi-sensor measurements, creating user-specific visualizations and a performance evaluation of the completed virtual environment

PERMEABILITY PREDICTION IN WELLS USING FLOW ZONE INDICATOR (FZI)

Estimation of permeability values in uncored wells but logged intervals is a worldwide challenge usually encountered in all reservoirs. Permeability estimation is a major risk task in petroleum engineering, as it is a necessity for reservoir description and performance (fluid flow). Permeability obtained from core measurement is usually limited due to the high cost of getting core samples and toilsome analysis required, scoring only being done for certain good sections and well logs are used for predicting permeability in sections where core permeability are unavailable. This makes core derived permeability cost effective and feasible. For this work, statistical and graphical measurement was considered for estimating permeability. Statistical methods employing regression model and flow zone indicator (FZI) were utilized in esta-blishing a mathematical correlation between core data and well logs using equations obtained from plotted graphs. FZImean values obtained from the log-log plot of RQI against Φz, was used to classify the well into different hydraulic flow units (HFUs). Statistical methods were tested using a sample size of over 960 measured permeability data gotten from five wells in an oil field, located in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Results obtained from classifying data into hydraulic flow unit using FZI showed better correlation R2 compared to the regression model

The Logic of Contextuality

Contextuality is a key signature of quantum non-classicality, which has been shown to play a central role in enabling quantum advantage for a wide range of information-processing and computational tasks. We study the logic of contextuality from a structural point of view, in the setting of partial Boolean algebras introduced by Kochen and Specker in their seminal work. These contrast with traditional quantum logic \`a la Birkhoff and von Neumann in that operations such as conjunction and disjunction are partial, only being defined in the domain where they are physically meaningful. We study how this setting relates to current work on contextuality such as the sheaf-theoretic and graph-theoretic approaches. We introduce a general free construction extending the commeasurability relation on a partial Boolean algebra, i.e. the domain of definition of the binary logical operations. This construction has a surprisingly broad range of uses. We apply it in the study of a number of issues, including: - establishing the connection between the abstract measurement scenarios studied in the contextuality literature and the setting of partial Boolean algebras; - formulating various contextuality properties in this setting, including probabilistic contextuality as well as the strong, state-independent notion of contextuality given by Kochen-Specker paradoxes, which are logically contradictory statements validated by partial Boolean algebras, specifically those arising from quantum mechanics; - investigating a Logical Exclusivity Principle, and its relation to the Probabilistic Exclusivity Principle widely studied in recent work on contextuality as a step towards closing in on the set of quantum-realisable correlations; - developing some work towards a logical presentation of the Hilbert space tensor product, using logical exclusivity to capture some of its salient quantum features.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in Proceedings of 29th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2021

Measurement distortion of graphs in corporate reports: an experimental study

Graphs in corporate annual reports are a double-edged sword. While they offer the potential for improved communication of accounting information to users, the preparers of the annual reports can easily manipulate the graphs for their own interests. For over a decade, the empirical financial graphics literature has focused on examining company reporting practices. A particular concern has been measurement distortion, which violates a fundamental principle of graph construction. Unfortunately, it is not yet known whether observed levels of measurement distortion are likely to affect users' perceptions of financial performance. This study uses an experimental approach to address this issue. Pairs of graphs are shown to establish the level of difference that is just noticeable to graph readers. Six levels of "distortion" are investigated (5 per cent, 10 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 40 per cent and 50 per cent). Results indicate that if financial graphs are to avoid distorting the perceptions of users, then no measurement distortions in excess of 10 per cent should be allowed. Users with lower levels of financial understanding appear to be most at risk of being misled by distorted graphs. Further research will be necessary to investigate whether this impact upon perceptions subsequently affects users' decisions in specific contexts

An investigation into alternative human-computer interaction in relation to ergonomics for gesture interface design

Recent, innovative developments in the field of gesture interfaces as input techniques have the potential to provide a basic, lower-cost, point-and-click function for graphic user interfaces (GUIs). Since these gesture interfaces are not yet widely used, indeed no tilt-based gesture interface is currently on the market, there is neither an international standard for the testing procedure nor a guideline for their ergonomic design and development. Hence, the research area demands more design case studies on a practical basis. The purpose of the research is to investigate the design factors of gesture interfaces for the point-andclick task in the desktop computer environment. The key function of gesture interfaces is to transfer the specific body movement into the cursor movement on the two-dimensional graphical user interface(2D GUI) on a real-time basis, based in particular on the arm movement. The initial literature review identified limitations related to the cursor movement behaviour with gesture interfaces. Since the cursor movement is the machine output of the gesture interfaces that need to be designed, a new accuracy measure based on the calculation of the cursor movement distance and an associated model was then proposed in order to validate the continuous cursor movement. Furthermore, a design guideline with detailed design requirements and specifications for the tilt-based gesture interfaces was suggested. In order to collect the human performance data and the cursor movement distance, a graphical measurement platform was designed and validated with the ordinary mouse. Since there are typically two types of gesture interface, i.e. the sweep-based and the tilt-based, and no commercial tilt-based gesture interface has yet been developed, a commercial sweep-based gesture interface, namely the P5 Glove, was studied and the causes and effects of the discrete cursor movement on the usability was investigated. According to the proposed design guideline, two versions of the tilt-based gesture 3 interface were designed and validated based on an iterative design process. Most of the phenomena and results from the trials undertaken, which are inter-related, were analyzed and discussed. The research has contributed new knowledge through design improvement of tilt-based gesture interfaces and the improvement of the discrete cursor movement by elimination of the manual error compensation. This research reveals that there is a relation between the cursor movement behaviour and the adjusted R 2 for the prediction of the movement time across models expanded from Fitts’ Law. In such a situation, the actual working area and the joint ranges are lengthy and appreciably different from those that had been planned. Further studies are suggested. The research was associated with the University Alliance Scheme technically supported by Freescale Semiconductor Co., U.S

FACTORS AFFECTING WELFARE GAINS FROM FISHING GEAR RESTRICTIONS

While the use of gear restrictions to regulate fishing activity seldom has the objective of improving economic efficiency, it is capable of achieving that result under some conditions. It can also reduce economic efficiency. This paper explores the way several factors affect the sign and magnitude of welfare gains from fishing gear restrictions. These factors include, among others: the fixity or variability of the price of fish and the presence or absence of diminishing short-run average product of effort. Some generalizations are offered regarding the characteristics of fisheries in which gear restrictions are most likely to produce welfare gains.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Finsler geometry modeling and Monte Carlo study of skyrmion shape deformation by uniaxial stress

Skyrmions in chiral magnetic materials are topologically stable and energetically balanced spin configurations appearing under the presence of ferromagnetic interaction (FMI) and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). Much of the current interest has focused on the effects of magneto-elastic coupling on these interactions under mechanical stimuli, such as uniaxial stresses for future applications in spintronics devices. Recent studies suggest that skyrmion shape deformations in thin films are attributed to an anisotropy in the coefficient of DMI, such that $D_{x}\!\not=\!D_{y}$, which makes the ratio $\lambda/D$ anistropic, where the coefficient of FMI $\lambda$ is isotropic. It is also possible that $\lambda_{x}\!\not=\!\lambda_{y}$ while $D$ is isotropic for $\lambda/D$ to be anisotropic. In this paper, we study this problem using a new modeling technique constructed based on Finsler geometry (FG). Two possible FG models are examined: In the first (second) model, the FG modeling prescription is applied to the FMI (DMI) Hamiltonian. We find that these two different FG models' results are consistent with the reported experimental data for skyrmion deformation. We also study responses of helical spin orders under lattice deformations corresponding to uniaxial extension/compression and find a clear difference between these two models in the stripe phase, elucidating which interaction of FMI and DMI is deformed to be anisotropic by uniaxial stresses.Comment: 42 pages, 23 figure