An Examination of Accounting Through Case Studies

This thesis consists of ten case studies that are focused on the principles and standards of financial accounting. The case studies were assigned by Dr. Victoria Dickinson and completed under her guidance throughout the course of Honors Accountancy 420. During the first semester of the class, Dr. Dickinson provided five unique prompts that explored current events and relevant topics within the professional world of accounting. We were able to sharpen our accounting and research skills as well as gain knowledge about potential career paths and opportunities within accounting. Throughout the second semester, we completed five more case studies pertaining to Tyson Foods, Inc, and the work was done in groups. Our group devised tax, audit, and advisory plans for Tyson in order to increase savings, decrease risk, and promote growth. At the end of the semester, we presented our findings and our strategies to tax professionals from across the country. The professionals evaluated our research and provided valuable feedback to strengthen our plans. The research and case exhibition allowed us to become extremely knowledgeable about Tyson’s business structure and operations; our work also simulated the services that professional accountants provide their clients on a daily basis. Because of this, I have gained valuable, real-world experience throughout the course of this thesis

Optimal Control of Parallel Queues for Managing Volunteer Convergence

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163497/2/poms13224.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163497/1/poms13224_am.pd

Learning discrete word embeddings to achieve better interpretability and processing efficiency

L’omniprésente utilisation des plongements de mot dans le traitement des langues naturellesest la preuve de leur utilité et de leur capacité d’adaptation a une multitude de tâches. Ce-pendant, leur nature continue est une importante limite en terme de calculs, de stockage enmémoire et d’interprétation. Dans ce travail de recherche, nous proposons une méthode pourapprendre directement des plongements de mot discrets. Notre modèle est une adaptationd’une nouvelle méthode de recherche pour base de données avec des techniques dernier crien traitement des langues naturelles comme les Transformers et les LSTM. En plus d’obtenirdes plongements nécessitant une fraction des ressources informatiques nécéssaire à leur sto-ckage et leur traitement, nos expérimentations suggèrent fortement que nos représentationsapprennent des unités de bases pour le sens dans l’espace latent qui sont analogues à desmorphèmes. Nous appelons ces unités dessememes, qui, de l’anglaissemantic morphemes,veut dire morphèmes sémantiques. Nous montrons que notre modèle a un grand potentielde généralisation et qu’il produit des représentations latentes montrant de fortes relationssémantiques et conceptuelles entre les mots apparentés.The ubiquitous use of word embeddings in Natural Language Processing is proof of theirusefulness and adaptivity to a multitude of tasks. However, their continuous nature is pro-hibitive in terms of computation, storage and interpretation. In this work, we propose amethod of learning discrete word embeddings directly. The model is an adaptation of anovel database searching method using state of the art natural language processing tech-niques like Transformers and LSTM. On top of obtaining embeddings requiring a fractionof the resources to store and process, our experiments strongly suggest that our representa-tions learn basic units of meaning in latent space akin to lexical morphemes. We call theseunitssememes, i.e., semantic morphemes. We demonstrate that our model has a greatgeneralization potential and outputs representation showing strong semantic and conceptualrelations between related words

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

China’s Intellectual Property System in the Process of Catch-up : with Patent in Focus

This thesis explores the evolution of Chinese IP mechanisms during national development and transition to becoming a well-developed country. This subject is studied from the perspective of intellectual property (IP), with a special focus on the People’s Republic of China since 1949. Internationally, the Chinese State, as a late-developing country, has adopted various mechanisms to narrow its gap in income and in technological capability in relation to developed countries. Meanwhile, internally, China itself is going through a crucial stage of social transition, and switching its economic model from labour-intensive mode to high-tech and innovation-intensive mode. During China’s international ‘catch-up’ process, and its own social transition, the role of IP has constantly changed. This research on China’s IP covers a period of the late Qing Dynasty until early June 2017, especially focusing on the period after 1949 and the modern Chinese IP system since its Reform and Opening-up Policy in 1979. The reviewed literature covers: (1) Chinese IP-related legislation and policies; (2) the domestic and international academic IP studies; (3) research reports from international organizations; (4) central reports from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, other reports and speeches from the central government with a historical period start from 1933; and (5) IP-related annual reports and statistics from the State Intellectual Property Office and the various levels of the people’s court. This thesis combines the narrative approach of Chinese IP studies, law in context, and historical perspective, and specifically studies the question: ‘what is the IP system’s role in the catch-up process of China?’ The main research question is divided into sub questions: How does the development of the IP system and the national Science and Technology (S&T) integrate with each other (Chapter 2)? How is the IP system absorbed into Chinese society? The absorption of an IP system is explored via two aspects: one imperative aspect is the evolution of IP system from the perspective of enforcement (Chapter 3); and the other is how the IP system from the state level involved has impacted on the Chinese business players (Chapter 4). The manuscript concludes: Even though external pressures played an undeniable role during Chinese IP development, which can chase back to the 19th Century, China has been constantly advancing its IP system and its implementation mainly because of its internal and developmental needs since 1949 (Chapter 5). The outcome of this thesis summarises the three decades of Chinese modern IP development and its enforcement in the following way: an advanced legislation system that goes along with the international standards, an enforcement system with Chinese characteristics, and an administrative system for registration and examination focusing mainly on the domestic industries yet taking international practices as reference. China’s adjustments of the IP policies are ultimately determined by the overall objectives for catching up and building an innovative country. China updates its IP system strictly in line with its level of national S&T development. Based on the internal and international conditions, it is a selected development model from China’s side to emphasize IP reform and modernization

Assessing China’s Environmental NGO Public Interest Litigation Against the U.S. Citizen Suit Model

This dissertation introduces the U.S. and China’s environmental governance evolution, the background of their private enforcement provisions, including each country’s environmental legislative, administrative, and judicial development before establishing private enforcement. After the introduction, the second section examines the U.S. environmental citizen suits’ origin, environmental movements during the 1960s and 1970s, and pioneer ENGOs’ legal experiences. Statutory provisions are reviewed in various aspects in order to fully present this significant U.S. private enforcement measure. The third section analyzes the trajectory of Chinese ENGO EPIL development, including the provisions and typical actions according to several scattered provisions. Section four compares the theoretical and procedural distinctions between the two. Finally, in section five, specific legislation and implementation recommendations to Chinese legislatures and growing Chinese ENGOs are also discussed. One recommendation is to comprehensively legislate an Environmental Public Interest Relief Law in China by integrating statutesto reframe a sound legal system with a rectified understanding of the U.S. environmental citizen-suit system. Another suggestion is to encourage ENGOs to positively and actively reinforce their professionalism through achievable and practical actions based on steady resources and altruistic ethical compliance. As a vital type of private enforcement, ENGO EPIL actions would be oriented to assuring environmental governance compliance to ultimately promote the fundamental and comprehensive environmental governance pattern, environmental administrative enforcement. The recommendations will help systematically realize and regulate environmental EPIL proceedings and continually promote the primary environmental administrative enforcement in an increasingly open and inclusive social context in the coming future

Exploring the Boundaries of Patent Commercialization Models via Litigation

This thesis explores direct patent commercialization via patent assertion, particularly patent infringement litigation, a complex nonmarket activity whose successful undertaking requires knowledge, creativity, and financial resources, as well as a colorable infringement case. Despite these complexities, firms have increasingly employed patents as competitive tools via patent assertions, particularly in the United States. This thesis explores the business models that have been created to facilitate the direct monetization of patents. Since secrecy underpins the patent assertion strategies studied, the thesis is based on rich and enhanced secondary data. In particular, a data chaining technique has been developed to assemble relevant but disparate data into a larger coherent data set that is amenable to combination and pairing with other forms of relevant public data. This research has discovered that one particularly successful business model that employs a leveraging strategy, known as the non-practicing entity (“NPE”), has itself spawned at least two other business models, the highly capitalized “patent mass aggregator” and the “patent privateer.” The patent privateer, newly discovered in this research, is particularly interesting because it provides a way for firms to employ patents to attack competitors by forming specialized NPEs in a manner that essentially expands the boundaries of the firm. This research has also examined plaintiff firm management processes during litigations brought under leveraging and proprietary strategies, the two patent litigation strategies in which firms affirmatively initiate infringement litigations. In particular, this research investigates the commercial contexts that drive patent assertion strategies to explore the effective limits of the patent right in a litigation context. The investigation concludes that a variety of robust business models and management processes may be quite successful in extracting value from patents in the US

Optical flow switched networks

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-279).In the four decades since optical fiber was introduced as a communications medium, optical networking has revolutionized the telecommunications landscape. It has enabled the Internet as we know it today, and is central to the realization of Network-Centric Warfare in the defense world. Sustained exponential growth in communications bandwidth demand, however, is requiring that the nexus of innovation in optical networking continue, in order to ensure cost-effective communications in the future. In this thesis, we present Optical Flow Switching (OFS) as a key enabler of scalable future optical networks. The general idea behind OFS-agile, end-to-end, all-optical connections-is decades old, if not as old as the field of optical networking itself. However, owing to the absence of an application for it, OFS remained an underdeveloped idea-bereft of how it could be implemented, how well it would perform, and how much it would cost relative to other architectures. The contributions of this thesis are in providing partial answers to these three broad questions. With respect to implementation, we address the physical layer design of OFS in the metro-area and access, and develop sensible scheduling algorithms for OFS communication. Our performance study comprises a comparative capacity analysis for the wide-area, as well as an analytical approximation of the throughput-delay tradeoff offered by OFS for inter-MAN communication. Lastly, with regard to the economics of OFS, we employ an approximate capital expenditure model, which enables a throughput-cost comparison of OFS with other prominent candidate architectures. Our conclusions point to the fact that OFS offers significant advantage over other architectures in economic scalability.(cont.) In particular, for sufficiently heavy traffic, OFS handles large transactions at far lower cost than other optical network architectures. In light of the increasing importance of large transactions in both commercial and defense networks, we conclude that OFS may be crucial to the future viability of optical networking.by Guy E. Weichenberg.Ph.D

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books