The Impact of Corporate Governance and external audit on controlling discretionary accruals: A study of impacts on earnings management based on FTSE350, UK.

While the interest of shareholders contradicts with the interests of the managers, agency problem appears. However, the principle of the agency theory is to establish the relationship between the shareholders and managers; and this thesis relies on the involvement of corporate governance and external audit who can resolve the issues between them. The main aim of this study is to identify the impact of corporate governance and external audit on controlling the discretionary accrual based on the FTSE350, in the UK. This study has considered the performance matched discretionary accruals to measure the magnitude of the discretionary accruals. The monitoring devices are established in the segmenting the models in two different categories; these are corporate governance and external audit. There are two models; first model and second model, formed and the hypotheses are created based on those attributes of the corporate governance and external audit. This study has considered the data from FTSE350 index of the UK; from 2014 – 2019. The variables of the first model; non-executive director’s fees and block holders are positively associated while managerial ownership and non-executive director’s meeting are negatively associated at 0.05 significant level. Further, remuneration committee independence is posi- tively associated with earnings management at P-value<0.1. On the other hand, the variables of second model, non-audit fee is positively associated whereas audit fee, Auditors with industrial specialism, audit expertise are negatively associated at P-value<0.05

Neural Network Forecasting of the Production Level of Chinese Construction Industry

Increased efforts have been devoted over the past several decades to the development and improvement of time series forecasting models. In this paper, we determine whether the forecasting performance of variables under study can be improved using neural network models. Among the best 10 retained networks, an MLP 3- layer network: 1:1-31-1:1 is selected as the ANN model with the minimum RMSE. The performance of the model is evaluated by comparing it with the ARIMA model. The root mean squared forecast error of the best neural network model is 49 per cent lower than the ARIMA model counterpart. It shows that the neural network yields significant forecast improvements. The gains in forecast accuracy seem to originate from the ability of neural networks to capture asymmetric relationships. This methodology has been applied to forecast the Chinese construction industry (CI). Since CI contributes to GDP considerably, it has an important and supportive role in the national economy of China. The empirical results show that the trend of steadily increasing production levels of CI implies a strong potential for future growth

Application of the Truncated Skew Laplace Probability Distribution in Maintenance System

A random variable X is said to have the skew-Laplace probability distribution if its pdf is given by f(x) = 2g(x)G(λx), where g (.) and G (.), respectively, denote the pdf and the cdf of the Laplace distribution. When the skew Laplace distribution is truncated on the left at 0 it is called it the truncated skew Laplace (TSL) distribution. This article provides a comparison of TSL distribution with twoparameter gamma model and the hypoexponential model, and an application of the subject model in maintenance system is studied

Review of stormwater quality, quantity and treatment methods part 2: Stormwater: Quality modelling

In this paper, review of stormwater quality and quantity in the urban environment is presented. The review is presented in three parts. This second part reviews the mathematical techiques used in the stromwater quality modelling and has been undertaken by examining a number of models that are in current use. The important features of models are discussed

Electronic structure and physical properties of the spinel-type phase of BeP2N4 from all-electron density functional calculations

Using density-functional-theory-based ab initio methods, the electronic structure and physical properties of the newly synthesized nitride BeP2N4 with a phenakite-type structure and the predicted high-pressure spinel phase of BeP2N4 are studied in detail. It is shown that both polymorphs are wide band-gap semiconductors with relatively small electron effective masses at the conduction-band minima. The spinel-type phase is more covalently bonded due to the increased number of P-N bonds for P at the octahedral sites. Calculations of mechanical properties indicate that the spinel-type polymorph is a promising superhard material with notably large bulk, shear, and Young’s moduli. Also calculated are the Be K, P K, P L3, and N K edges of the electron energy-loss near-edge structure for both phases. They show marked differences because of the different local environments of the atoms in the two crystalline polymorphs. These differences will be very useful for the experimental identification of the products of high-pressure syntheses targeting the predicted spinel-type phase of BeP2N4

Properties of Cu(In,Ga) Se2 Thin Films and Solar Cells Deposited by Hybrid Process

Cu(In,Ga)Se-2 solar cells were fabricated using a hybrid cosputtering/evaporation process, and efficiencies as high as 12.4% were achieved. The films were characterized by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, glancing incidence X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, auger electron spectroscopy, and transmittance and reflectance spectroscopy, and their properties were compared to the ones of films deposited by coevaporation. Even though the films were relatively similar, the ones deposited by the hybrid process tend to have smaller grains with a slightly preferred orientation along the (112) axis and a rougher surface. Both types of films have uniform composition through the depth. Characterization of these films by variable angle of incidence spectroscopic ellipsometry allowed for the calculation of the position of the critical points, via calculation of the second derivative of the dielectric function and fit with critical points parabolic band oscillators. The solar cells were then characterized by current-voltage and quantum efficiency measurements. An analysis of the diode parameters indicates that the cells are mostly limited by a low fill factor, associated mostly with a high diode quality factor (A - 1.8) and high series resistance (R-s similar to 1.1 Omega-cm(2))