Revenue Recognition: Current Practice, Historical Abuses and a Possible Solution

Users of financial statements consider revenue to be a key indicator of financial performance. Thus, proper revenue recognition is important. This paper provides a discussion of revenue recognition principles and practices. A discussion is provided of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) conceptual framework as it applies to revenue recognition. In addition, a discussion is provided on SEC guidance and specific applications of revenue recognition. According to the FASB, there are over 200 pieces of “ad hoc” guidance for revenue recognition. Because of inconsistencies in this guidance, the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have engaged in a project to create a single revenue-recognition standard. The current status of this project, which began in 2002, is analyzed in the final section of this paper

Meta-analysis reveals ammonia-oxidizing bacteria respond more strongly to nitrogen addition than ammonia-oxidizing archaea

Shifts in microbial communities driven by anthropogenic nitrogen (N) addition have broad-scale ecological consequences. However, responses of microbial groups to exogenous N supply vary considerably across studies, hindering efforts to predict community changes. We used meta-analytical techniques to explore how amoA gene abundances of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) respond to N addition, and found that N addition increased AOA and AOB abundances by an average of 27% and 326%, respectively. Responses of AOB varied by study type, ecosystem, fertilizer type, and soil pH, and were strongest in unmanaged wildland soils and soils fertilized with inorganic N sources. Increases in nitrification potential with N addition significantly correlated with only AOB. Our analyses suggest that elevated N supply enhances soil nitrification potential by increasing AOB populations, and that this effect may be most pronounced in unmanaged wildland soils

The Impact of DSS Use and Information Load on Errors and Decision Quality

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to examine the effect of DSS use on the decision maker‘s error patterns and decision quality. The DSS used in our experiments is the widely used Expert Choice (EC) implementation of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Perhaps surprisingly, our experiments do not provide general support for the often tacit assumption that the use of a DSS such as EC improves decision quality. Rather, we find that, whereas a DSS can help decision makers develop a better understanding of the essence of a decision problem and can reduce logical errors (especially if the information load is high), it is also susceptible to introducing accidental effects such as mechanical errors. In some cases, as in our study, the accidental errors may outweigh the benefits of using a DSS, leading to lower quality decisions

Design of Transgenic S. cerevisiae for Enzymatic Pretreatment

Biofuels, combustible fuel produced from fermentation of agricultural biomass by microorganisms, represent one of the best possible paths forward for sustainable energy production. However, inefficiencies in biofuel production create barriers that stand in the way of their widespread adoption. One such barrier is the breakdown of lignin, a biopolymer that exists on the edge of plant cell walls which protects the sugars that are used in fermentation. Currently, lignin is broken down in energy-intensive thermal pretreatment processes. A viable alternative is the expression of lignin-degrading enzymes by synthetic microorganisms that work at standard temperatures, eliminating the need for the high-energy input of thermal pretreatment. Four lignin-degrading enzymes were selected from termites (R. flavipes) and white rot fungus(C. fioriniae PJ7) and two helper enzymes that assist in lignin degradation were selected and then optimized for expression in yeast. The genetic devices amplified were assembled using standard DNA assembly methods. Future transformation into yeast (S. cerevisiae) cells and testing of lignin-breakdown effectiveness may open up an alternative path for thermal pretreatment of biomass

Local Cinema History at Scale: Data and Methods for Comparative Exhibition Studies

34 pagesDigital tools and digitized sources have expanded our ability to research and present regional film histories, along with the hope of conducting comparative work across both place and time. Alongside these projects are increasing calls for more deliberate coordination of tools, methods, and sources to create more meaningful comparisons. However, it remains difficult for researchers to know what digital projects exist for comparative work, and the methods, points of comparison, data structure, and sources used all considerably vary. Utilizing research data management principles, we conducted an exploratory survey of local film exhibition digital projects to document the current historiographic landscape, and to assess existing coverage of geography, time, sources, data structures, metadata schema, data accessibility and reproducibility. The dataset from the survey results can be shared by researchers to better discover each other’s work, but also to serve as a guide to best practices going forward

Oregon Theater Project: A Dataset of Oregon Cinemas from the Silent Era

7 pagesThe Oregon Theater Project (OTP) dataset is part of an ongoing collaborative research project by undergraduate students enrolled in successive iterations of “Exhibition & Audiences,” a Cinema Studies course at the University of Oregon. It will be updated with additional data each time the course is taught. The data set comprises geo/historical data about movie theaters (cinemas) and exhibition in the state from approximately 1894 to 1929. The data is presented on a public website (https://oregontheaterproject. uoregon.edu/) which includes maps and individual theater profiles produced by the students. All profiles, and the underlying data, are reviewed by the course instructors and edited as needed for clarification or accuracy. Profiles include, where available, the theater name, address, city, state, latitude, longitude, number of seats, owner/ manager names, and a narrative description. The underlying data, shared as Excel documents and tab-delimited spreadsheets, invites historical comparative analysis of film exhibition practices across time and locale, both local and global

Biophysical studies in polymer therapeutics: the interactions of anionic and cationic PAMAM dendrimers with lipid monolayers

Understanding how polymers interact with biological membranes is important for the development of polymer based therapeutics and wider biomedical applications. Here, biophysical methods (surface pressure measurements, external reflection FTIR) have been used to investigate the interaction between PAMAM dendrimers (Generation 5 or 4.5) and anionic (DPPG) or zwitterionic (DPPC) model membranes. We observed a concentration-dependent binding behaviour of both PAMAM species to both model membranes; however, equivalent levels of penetration into DPPC monolayers required approximately 10-fold higher dendrimer concentrations than for penetration into DPPG monolayers. Overall, the anionic PAMAM G4.5 showed a slightly better penetration ability which could be caused by repulsive forces towards the lipid layers. In comparison, increasing concentration of cationic PAMAM G5 leads to saturation of adsorption at the anionic lipid surface before penetration into the lipid layer likely driven by electrostatic attraction. Our studies also showed that physiologically relevant concentrations of sodium chloride (144 mM) decreased PAMAM penetration into DPPG monolayers but did not significantly affect the dendrimer-DPPC interaction. These results provide an insight into the mechanism of interaction between charged dendritic polymers with a lipid interface and show that the nature of such interactions are affected by lipid headgroup, dendrimer charge and solution salinity