Evolution of the Week

The purpose of this paper is to provide an intuitive explanation of the emergence and evolution of the week based on a historical precedent draw from ancient Egypt. In this paper, we view the week as a coordinating social institution that was created to resolve a fundamental problem of society - coordinating market exchange. Artificial adaptive agents are used to simulate the interactions among farmers going to market. The results show that the length of the week that emerges depends on the chosen cost and benefit specifications and random interactions.social institution, coordination games, agent based models

Deconstructing the PCAOB: Using organizational economics to assess the state of a regulator

Using the principles of organizational economics in this study we assess the quality of the organizational architecture of the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). In particular, we use the Four Pillar Framework developed in Brickley et al. (2000) to understand why—according to the SEC’s Chairman Gensler and other stakeholders—the PCAOB may not have entirely realized its mission of investor protection. Our analysis is enabled by the transcripts of the 2019 criminal trial U.S. vs. Middendorf and Wada (i.e., PCAOB-KPMG “steal the inspection data” scandal), which for the first time exposed the inner workings of the PCAOB. Our analysis of the transcripts is augmented by other publicly available documents. Our primary conclusion is that the functioning of the PCAOB has been significantly hampered by misalignment of its tasks (in particular in relation to the SEC), sub-optimally designed performance measurement and employee compensation, and weaknesses in the PCAOB’s organizational culture. These misalignments created an environment susceptible to PCAOB employee criminal misconduct which enabled the PCAOB-KPMG “steal the inspection data” scandal and other Board governance and leadership challenges

The Role of Satellites and Smart Devices: Data Surprises and Security, Privacy, and Regulatory Challenges

Strava, a popular social media platform and mobile app like Facebook but specifically designed for athletes, posts a “heatmap” with consensually-obtained details about users’ workouts and geolocation. Strava’s heatmap depicts aggregated data of user location and movement by synthesizing GPS satellite data points and movement data from users’ smart devices together with satellite imagery. In January of 2018, a 20-year-old student tweeted that Strava’s heatmap revealed U.S. forward operating bases. The tweet revealed a significant national security issue and flagged substantial privacy and civil liberty concerns. Smart devices, software applications, and social media platforms aggregate consumer data from multiple data collection sources, including device-embedded sensors, cameras, software, and GPS chips, as well as from consumer activities like social media posts, pictures, texts, email, and contacts. These devices and apps utilize satellite data, including GPS, as a fundamental component of their data collection arsenal. We call this little understood, across-device, across-platform, and multi-sourced data aggregation the satellite-smart device information nexus. Given the nature of the technology and data aggregation, no one escapes the satellite and smart device information nexus. We explain the technology behind both satellites and smart devices, and we examine how the satellite-smart device information nexus works. We also address how private industry’s aggregation of data through this nexus poses a threat to individual privacy, civil liberties, and national security. In so doing, we work to fill a marked gap in the privacy and cyber-related legal literature when it comes to analyzing the technology, surveillance capabilities, law, and regulation behind government and commercial satellites together with private industry’s aggregation, use, and dissemination of geolocation and other data from the satellite-smart device information nexus. This lack of awareness about the satellite-smart device information nexus has adverse consequences on individual privacy, civil liberties, and the security of nation states; it impedes informed legislation; and it leaves courts in the dark. A contributing factor to the lack of awareness is that commercial remote sensing and government satellites are regulated by a byzantine scheme of international laws, treaties, organizations, and domestic nation states’ laws that combine to control access to satellite data, sharing of satellite data, licensing, ownership, positioning in space, technical requirements, technical restrictions, and liability for harm caused by satellites. Although the satellite-smart device information nexus involves staggering quantities of personal information, we examine how the nexus falls outside the U.S. electronic surveillance and data legislative scheme and why it is unimpeded by privacy decisions due to a disconnect in U.S. Supreme Court decisions treating aerial surveillance differently than location tracking. We breakdown the complex yet opaque regulatory structure governing commercial remote sensing and government satellites. We examine why the Strava event and others like it are—and will continue to be—the new norm, absent significant legislative and regulatory change. We conclude by providing a suggested roadmap for that legislative and regulatory change

Generation of unique protein specifiic MRM signatures; using peptide information from alternate scanning LC-MS data to drive MRM development

Comunicaciones a congreso

Making sense of a mess: “doing” resilience in the vortex of a crisis

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to investigate how human resource professionals (HRPs), in a variety of organizations, responded to the crisis brought about by the event of COVID-19. In particular, it aims to show how organizations, across all sectors, in Western Australia responded with urgency and flexibility to the crisis and showed “resilience in practice”. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on 136 questionnaire responses, 32 interviews and 25 managerial narratives. The mixed qualitative methodology was designed to enable an investigation of the impact of COVID-19 and the response of HRPs. Findings HRPs have responded with agility and flexibility to the impact of COVID-19. They have done so through extensive trial and error, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. They have not simply activated a preconceived continuity plan. Research limitations/implications The research indicates that resilience is an ongoing accomplishment of organizations and the people in them. The objective was description rather than prescription, and the research does not offer solutions to future pandemic-like situations. Practical implications The research suggests that, given the impact of COVID-19 on organizations, HR practices, processes and policies will need to be thoroughly reconsidered for relevance in the post-COVID world. Possible future directions are highlighted. Originality/value The research considers the actions of HRPs as they responded to a global crisis as the crisis unfolded

The impact of Covid-19 on human resource management: avoiding generalisations

Many organisations are using remote working for the first time. HR professionals are having to improvise daily, write Eileen Aitken-Fox, Jane Coffey, Kantha Dayaram, Scott Fitzgerald, Chahat Gupta, Steve McKenna, and Amy Wei Tia

Plastic formulation is an emerging control of its photochemical fate in the ocean

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Walsh, A. N., Reddy, C. M., Niles, S. F., McKenna, A. M., Hansel, C. M., & Ward, C. P. Plastic formulation is an emerging control of its photochemical fate in the ocean. Environmental Science & Technology, 55(18), (2021): 12383–12392, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c02272.Sunlight exposure is a control of long-term plastic fate in the environment that converts plastic into oxygenated products spanning the polymer, dissolved, and gas phases. However, our understanding of how plastic formulation influences the amount and composition of these photoproducts remains incomplete. Here, we characterized the initial formulations and resulting dissolved photoproducts of four single-use consumer polyethylene (PE) bags from major retailers and one pure PE film. Consumer PE bags contained 15–36% inorganic additives, primarily calcium carbonate (13–34%) and titanium dioxide (TiO2; 1–2%). Sunlight exposure consistently increased production of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) relative to leaching in the dark (3- to 80-fold). All consumer PE bags produced more DOC during sunlight exposure than the pure PE (1.2- to 2.0-fold). The DOC leached after sunlight exposure increasingly reflected the 13C and 14C isotopic composition of the plastic. Ultrahigh resolution Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry revealed that sunlight exposure substantially increased the number of DOC formulas detected (1.1- to 50-fold). TiO2-containing bags photochemically degraded into the most compositionally similar DOC, with 68–94% of photoproduced formulas in common with at least one other TiO2-containing bag. Conversely, only 28% of photoproduced formulas from the pure PE were detected in photoproduced DOC from the consumer PE. Overall, these findings suggest that plastic formulation, especially TiO2, plays a determining role in the amount and composition of DOC generated by sunlight. Consequently, studies on pure, unweathered polymers may not accurately represent the fates and impacts of the plastics entering the ocean.Funding was provided by the Seaver Institute, the Gerstner Family Foundation, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (A.N.W.). The Ion Cyclotron Resonance user facility at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory is supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry and Division of Materials Research through DMR-1644779 and the State of Florida

Insight into imiquimod skin permeation and increased delivery using microneedle pre-treatment

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin cancer in humans. Topical treatment with imiquimod provides a non-invasive, self-administered treatment with relatively low treatment cost. Despite displaying excellent efficacy, imiquimod is only licensed by the FDA for superficial BCC. The current work employed HPLC and ToF-SIMS analysis to provide a novel assessment of imiquimod permeation from Aldara™ cream in skin depth and lateral distribution. Using Aldara™ cream and in vitro Franz cell studies with subsequent HPLC analysis, it is apparent that most of the topically applied imiquimod cream is left on the skin surface with more than 80% of the drug being recovered from skin wash. In addition, ToF-SIMS chemical imaging of recovered tape stripped skin samples illustrated significant detection of imiquimod signal over the entire skin area for the upper tape strips, whereas the deeper strips show large portions of the skin area without detected imiquimod. Given the limited permeation depth and non-uniform permeation observed at tape strips 6–18 when applied as a topical imiquimod cream, a permeation enhancement strategy utilising a skin pre-treatment with a microneedle device was investigated as a method to improve intradermal delivery. The recovered amount of imiquimod in tape strips and remaining skin determined by HPLC was approximately three times higher when Aldara™ was applied on microneedle pre-treated skin relative to intact skin. The ToF-SIMS ion images of the tape strips and cross-sections illustrated the existence of imiquimod in the microchannels which then laterally diffuses to peripheral epidermal strata. The current work demonstrates the first known attempt to enhance intradermal delivery of imiquimod using a microneedle device as well as underscoring the complementary role of ToF-SIMS analysis in chemically mapping imiquimod permeation into the skin with high sensitivity