Features affecting the quality of Sustainability Reporting: Theoretically informed insights and empirical evidence from the Global Fortune 100 (2011-2015)

Sound Corporate Governance (CG) requires business entities to take responsible regard for the equitable interests of all stakeholders and appropriately align their individual concerns. Given that society generally is one significant stakeholder, it then becomes relevant to determine how such entities take regard for and report upon the social and environmental issues that currently threaten the sustainability of our globe. Accordingly, this research focuses on such sustainability issues and how they are reported, through Sustainability Reporting (SR). Verifying corporate social and environmental activities to stakeholders through Sustainability Reporting (SR) tends to gain and maintain corporate social Legitimacy and continuity in the market. This is because, SR is an effective and efficient tool for measuring and communicating the corporate social and environmental performance, in conjunction with its economic performance to stakeholders. Despite the critical importance of Sustainability Reporting, academics and professionals claim that the Quality of Sustainability Reporting is poor. Given this poor quality, it is recognized that several Sustainability Reports do not fulfill the needs of stakeholders. Consequently, based on the theoretical foundation of Legitimacy Theory and relevant literature, this research aims at hypothesizing and testing the effect of four features on the Quality of Sustainability Reporting (QSR). These features are Adherence to Regulation (ATR), External Assurance of Report (ASR), Independence of Board (IOB) and Type of Information (TOI). QSR is determined via the Index of the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI). The GRI is regarded as the international proxy for Sustainability Reporting. Its Index identifies the performance indicators that should be included within the Sustainability Report, in order to fulfill the needs of stakeholders. The relationship between these features and QSR are tested/evaluated within 500 reports. These 500 are the Sustainability Reports of the Global Fortune 100 (G100) companies over the five-year period 2011-2015. Employing an ordinal dependent variable (QSR), the research applies an Ordinal, Logistic Regression (OLS) to statistically test hypothesized relationships. The SPSS statistical software package is used to implement that regression and to statistically analyze the collected data. The research concludes that Adherence To Regulations, External Assurance of Report, Independence of Board and Type of Information significantly affect, (representing 37.1% - 41% of the change in) the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. It also concludes that, Adherence to Regulations and External Assurance of Report have an Extremely Significant and Positive, relationship with the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. Moreover; there is a Significant and Positive, relationship between the Type of Information and Quality of Sustainability Reporting. Regarding the Independence of Board, two main phenomena are identified from the empirical results. The results identify that, there is a Non-significant relationship between Independence of Board Members and the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. However; there is a Significant, Positive, relationship between the Independence of Board Chair and the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. Therefore, Adherence to Regulations, External Assurance of Report, Independence of Board Chair and Type of Information are significant influencing factors that should be seriously considered by reporting firms in order to improve the Quality of Sustainability Reporting

Features Affecting the Quality of Sustainability Reporting: Theoretically-Informed Insights and Empirical Evidence from the Global Fortune 100 (2011-2015)

Sound Corporate Governance (CG) requires business entities to take responsible regard for the equitable interests of all stakeholders and appropriately align their individual concerns. Given that society generally is one significant stakeholder, it then becomes relevant to determine how such entities take regard for and report upon the social and environmental issues that currently threaten the sustainability of our globe. Accordingly, this research focuses on such sustainability issues and how they are reported, through Sustainability Reporting (SR). Verifying corporate social and environmental activities to stakeholders through Sustainability Reporting (SR) tends to gain and maintain corporate social Legitimacy and continuity in the market. This is because, SR is an effective and efficient tool for measuring and communicating the corporate social and environmental performance, in conjunction with its economic performance to stakeholders. Despite the critical importance of Sustainability Reporting, academics and professionals claim that the Quality of Sustainability Reporting is poor. Given this poor quality, it is recognized that several Sustainability Reports do not fulfill the needs of stakeholders. Consequently, based on the theoretical foundation of Legitimacy Theory and relevant literature, this research aims at hypothesizing and testing the effect of four features on the Quality of Sustainability Reporting (QSR). These features are Adherence to Regulation (ATR), External Assurance of Report (ASR), Independence of Board (IOB) and Type of Information (TOI). QSR is determined via the Index of the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI). The GRI is regarded as the international proxy for Sustainability Reporting. Its Index identifies the performance indicators that should be included within the Sustainability Report, in order to fulfill the needs of stakeholders. The relationship between these features and QSR are tested/evaluated within 500 reports. These 500 are the Sustainability Reports of the Global Fortune 100 (G100) companies over the five-year period 2011-2015. Employing an ordinal dependent variable (QSR), the research applies an Ordinal, Logistic Regression (OLS) to statistically test hypothesized relationships. The SPSS statistical software package is used to implement that regression and to statistically analyze the collected data. The research concludes that Adherence To Regulations, External Assurance of Report, Independence of Board and Type of Information significantly affect, (representing 37.1% - 41% of the change in) the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. It also concludes that, Adherence to Regulations and External Assurance of Report have an Extremely Significant and Positive, relationship with the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. Moreover; there is a Significant and Positive, relationship between the Type of Information and Quality of Sustainability Reporting. Regarding the Independence of Board, two main phenomena are identified from the empirical results. The results identify that, there is a Non-significant relationship between Independence of Board Members and the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. However; there is a Significant, Positive, relationship between the Independence of Board Chair and the Quality of Sustainability Reporting. Therefore, Adherence to Regulations, External Assurance of Report, Independence of Board Chair and Type of Information are significant influencing factors that should be seriously considered by reporting firms in order to improve the Quality of Sustainability Reporting

Automatic Classification of Bright Retinal Lesions via Deep Network Features

The diabetic retinopathy is timely diagonalized through color eye fundus images by experienced ophthalmologists, in order to recognize potential retinal features and identify early-blindness cases. In this paper, it is proposed to extract deep features from the last fully-connected layer of, four different, pre-trained convolutional neural networks. These features are then feeded into a non-linear classifier to discriminate three-class diabetic cases, i.e., normal, exudates, and drusen. Averaged across 1113 color retinal images collected from six publicly available annotated datasets, the deep features approach perform better than the classical bag-of-words approach. The proposed approaches have an average accuracy between 91.23% and 92.00% with more than 13% improvement over the traditional state of art methods.Comment: Preprint submitted to Journal of Medical Imaging | SPIE (Tue, Jul 28, 2017

The Political Mobilization of the Arab Minority in Israel: Shifts in Political Demands and Activities

Previous scholarly work on the demands and political activities of the Arab minority in Israel have focused on studying Arab political parties and parliamentary participation, asserting that Arab demands fall into one of two categories: radical or adaptive. That is, in studying Arab participation, or lack thereof, in parliamentary processes, one can claim that Arabs want either complete separation from the state of Israel (radical demands) or complete integration into the state of Israel (adaptive demands). However, recent trends have witnessed a decrease in Arab Israelis’ interest in political parties and parliamentary participation, such as voting in Knesset elections and attempts to pass legislation. This disinterest is a direct result of the inability and inefficiency of parliamentary processes to make practical changes in the daily lives of the Arab minority, who are underprivileged, socio-economically, politically, and legally. However, disinterest in parliamentary processes does not translate into disinterest in political mobility, and consequently, Arab Israelis have turned to other means, particularly extra-parliamentary organization, to achieve their demands. This paper then takes a different approach in that I study extra-parliamentary organizations to explore the nature of Arab demands towards the Israeli government. In studying extra-parliamentary organization, I have found that the nature of Arab demands no longer fall within the radical-adaptive dichotomy proposed by previous scholars. Rather, the Arab minority’s demands can be described as being ethnoregional in nature. That is, the Arab minority in Israel demand collective national rights based on the fragmented geographical regions they occupy

DETECTING THE EXTERNAL DEFECTS OF POTATO TUBERS USING A VISIBLE LASER

ABSTRACTPotato (Solanum tuberosum, L.) is considered as a source of the national income in Egypt, since the potato crop is exported abroad because it's high quality specifications. The aim of this study is to: Find out the potential of using the optical properties as a nondestructive quality assessment for detecting surface defects of Spunta potato tubers using a low-power Helium-Neon laser. The obtained results were as following: The percentage of reflection intensity of sound tubers (7.48%) was the highest. While, the reflection percentage of superficial shatter bruise (0.83%) was the lowest. The reflection intensity percentages of He-Ne laser light from sound and defective tubers were arranged as follow: Sound (7.48%) >, Internal black spot (4.33%) >, Greening (2.53%) >, Cuts (1.83%) >, Growth cracks (1.64%) >, Shrinkage (1.54%) >, Deep shatter bruise (1.33%) >, Rots (1.32%) >, Pressure bruise (1.09%) >, Skinning (1.07%) >, Insect damage (0.87%) >, Superficial shatter bruise (0.83%). For quality evaluation processes it was concluded that: when the percentage of reflection intensity is less than 1%, (Ref.%< 1%) then the defects may be considered superficial shatter bruise or insect damage, otherwise, when the percentage of reflection intensity greater than or equal 1% and less than 2%, (1% ≤ Ref.%< 2 %) then the defects may be considered skinning, pressure bruise, rots, deep shatter bruise, shrinkage, growth cracks or cuts, if the percentage is ranged between (2.5:4.5%) then the defects may be belonging to greening defect or internal black spot. The percentage of reflection greater than 7% the surface may be considered as sound tubers. It was concluded that the reflected laser light could be used as an indicator for the defective surface defects of potato tubers, so sorting and separating processes can be conducted according to the optical properties

Le concile de Clermont de 1095 et l'appel à la croisade. Actes du Colloque Universitaire International de Clermont-Ferrand (23-25 juin 1995) organisé et publié avec le concours du Conseil Regional d'Auvergne Rome : Ecole Française de Rome, 1997.

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Ecotypes or Genotypes? The Status of the Currently Recognized Infraspecific Taxa of Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) : Hayne Growing in the Red Sea Hills, Sudan and Egypt

This study focuses on the Acacia tortilis species complex and the taxonomic relationship among its currently recognized infraspecific (A. tortilis ssp. tortilis, ssp raddiana and ssp. spirocarpa) in the Red Sea Hills of North-East Sudan and South-East Egypt. The morphological features used in floras to differentiate among these taxa were examined on a total of 520 specimens, collected from 33 localities. It was found that there is an association between the morphological characters and their immediate environment. Of 158 specimens subjected to molecular analysis 106 showed no agreement between classes formed using morphological and / or molecular data. In spite of the great genetic polymorphism among all the 158 specimens, there was no significant difference among the three putative A. tortilis sub-taxa. Genetic diversity among the samples studied seems linked to restricted gene flow among populations, but a positive correlation was found between the genetic variation and the physical distance between A. tortilis localities studied. Discriminating morphological characters of A. tortilis such as crown shape and growth form seem to be a result of traditional human management activities such as animal browsing and pollarding at different life stages. The currently recognized infraspecific taxa of Acacia tortilis in the Red Sea Hills, Sudan and Egypt appear to be ecotypes rather than genotypes, and accordingly the A. tortilis complex in the Red Sea Hills of Sudan and Egypt comprises only one species i.e. A. tortilis

Effect of Gamma Irradiation and Coating with Jojoba Oil on Quality of Strawberry Fruits

The aim of the present study was effects of gamma radiation and Jojoba oil coating on treatment of sound and decay strawberry fruits. And also, on quality parameters of strawberry fruits which were total soluble solids, firmness and ascorbic acid of strawberry fruits during cold storage. Strawberry fruits are exposed to a gamma source at different doses ranging from 1.0 to 2.5 kGy., and coating by different concentration of Jojoba oil from 1.0 to 4%. The obtained results were summarized as following:Different concentrations of Jojoba oil (1, 2 and 4%) were used to control decay of strawberry fruits caused by Botrytis cinerea, at 13°C at different storage periods.  Jojoba oil coating (4%) significantly reduced the decay of strawberry fruits and cause increasing in fruit firmness, but TSS was decreased by increasing in storage time. Meanwhile,  vitamin C give fluctuated results by increasing storage time.For gamma irradiation at 2.5 kGy, severity percentage of infected fruits was reduced from 57.5, 100 and 100% to 30.2, 42.3 and 48.0%, respectively and in healthy fruits severity percentage was reduced from 45.2, 100 and 100% to 21.5, 24.7 and 27.8% in different storage periods 1, 2 and 3 weeks, respectively.For combination of gamma irradiation (2.5 kGy) and Jojoba oil (4%) were more effective in reducing severity percentage of strawberry fruits, since severity percentage reduced in infected fruits from 57.5, 100 and 100 to 7.8, 20.1 and 25.0%.  Healthy fruits severity percentage were reduced from 44.4, 100 and 100% to 3.5, 9.1 and 19.9% in different storage periods, respectively

Physical properties measurements of okra fruits using image processing to predict of visual maturity index

Okra is a vegetable widely grown in the tropics, sub-tropics and warmer areas of the temperate zones. Fruitquality plays an important role in marketability and it is mainly related to the characteristic pod length and diameter. Thiswork was intended to classify okra pods, according to their length and diameter by determining, the measure and image dimensions,to compare accuracy image measuring of dimensions, in order to quality attributes and to know harvest maturity index. The investigation on various main dimensions using to measure methods (Line and rectangle) by image processing  of okra pods revealed the following. The length, diameter, weight, volume, and density ranged from (2.63 to 5.50 cm), (1.43 to 2.11 cm), (2.12 to 9.72 g), (4.24 to 19.24 cm3) and (0.17 to 0.66 g/cm3), respectively of okra pods The relationship between the measure and image of the diameter of okra pods has a high correlation (R² = 0.9117). So, it can establish the standards for grades of Egyptian okra, according to image processing of the diameter of okra pods. Therefore, the standard grading according to image diameter as follows: The “very small” group includes okra pods less than 1.22 cm (<1.22 cm) in diameter; the “small”  group includes okra pods not less than 1.22 cm or more than 1.77 cm (1.22 to 1.77 cm); the “medium” class includes okra pods more than 1.77 cm and not ore than 2.52 cm (1.77 to 2.52 cm) in diameter; and the “large” group includes okra pods more than 2.52 cm (> 2.52 cm). The relationship between the measure and image of the length of okra pods has a high correlation (R² = 0.9783). So, it can establish the standards for grades of Egyptian okra, according to image processing of the length of okra pods. Therefore, the standard grading according to image length as follows: The “very small” group includes okra pods less than 2.42 cm (<2.42 cm) in length; the “small”  group includes okra pods not less than 2.42 cm or more than 4.08 cm (2.42 to 4.08 cm); the “medium” class includes okra pods more than 4.08 cm and not more than 6.10 cm (4.08 cm to 6.10 cm) in length; and the “large” group includes okra pods more than 6.10 (> 6.10 cm). The relationship between the measure and image of the L/D ratio of okra pods has a high correlation (R² = 0.9678).  So, it can establish the standards for grades of Egyptian okra, according to image processing of the L/D ratio of okra pods. Therefore, the standard grading according to image processing as follows: the “very small” group includes okra pods less than 1.98 (<1.98) in L/D ratio; the “small”  group includes okra pods not less than 1.98 or more than 2.28 (1.98 to 2.28); the “medium” class includes okra pods more than 2.28 and not ore than 2.55 (2.28 to 2.55) in length; and the “large” group includes okra pods more than 2.55 (> 2.55). ·    The difference percentage between color values, which measuried by line and rectangle pixel methods. The minimum values were of 9.09, 7.22 and 6.67 %, and for maximum values  were about 1.69, 2.94, and 6.67 %, and for average values were 6.89, 5.24 and 6.79 % for Red (R) and Green (G) and Blue (B) values, respectively. Therefore, According to measure of color and size of okra fruits, the measurements considering visual means as aMaturity index of okra fruits