An economic assessment of a proposed dry land Leucaena development within the Brigalow Belt of Central Queensland: An operational case study perspective

This following case study focuses on beef production using dry land leucaena to increase production on a property of alluvial scrub flats south of Biloela, Queensland. The investment proposal is for development of the property through the growing of the fodder legume tree crop leucaena. The benefit of finishing cattle on leucaena is estimated using partial budgeting techniques. The case study reports on aspects of agronomic, managerial, production and economic considerations for 174 hectares of dry land leucaena development, staged over four years. A discounted cash flow approach was applied in order to model expected returns over time. Net cash flows between the existing grass based operation and the proposed leucaena supplemented operation are estimated. Comparison between grass only and leucaena supplemented gross margins provide the marginal benefit from developing leucaena. These future cash flows were discounted to assign their present values. Productive capacity estimates were used in the analysis. Expected yields and weight gain from grass fed operations were available from detailed management records. However, given the lack of scientifically verified data on expected leucaena production across land types, production estimates were based on localised production results and sourced from technical extension experts. The use of adult equivalents and accounting for the opportunity cost of maintaining particular herd structures allows for direct comparison of gross margins across different land types and herd structures. By choosing to plant leucaena, the owner is $144,939 better off, achieves a 22% internal rate of return, a benefit-cost ratio of 3.2:1, and breaks even on the investment in seven years.Production Economics,

Continuous Fraud Detection in Enterprise Systems through Audit Trail Analysis

Enterprise systems, real time recording and real time reporting pose new and significant challenges to the accounting and auditing professions. This includes developing methods and tools for continuous assurance and fraud detection. In this paper we propose a methodology for continuous fraud detection that exploits security audit logs, changes in master records and accounting audit trails in enterprise systems. The steps in this process are: (1) threat monitoringsurveillance of security audit logs for ‘red flags’, (2) automated extraction and analysis of data from audit trails, and (3) using forensic investigation techniques to determine whether a fraud has actually occurred. We demonstrate how mySAP, an enterprise system, can be used for audit trail analysis in detecting financial frauds; afterwards we use a case study of a suspected fraud to illustrate how to implement the methodology

Pressure-varying CO 2 distribution affects the ultrasonic velocities of synthetic sandstones

We performed a novel experiment in which three synthetic sandstones – manufactured using a common method but having different porosities – were saturated with brine and progressively flooded with CO2 under constant confining pressure. The fluid pressure was varied around the critical pressure of CO2 and repeated measurements were made of resistivity, in order to assess the saturation, and elastic wave velocity during the flood. The measured saturated bulk moduli were higher than those predicted by the Gassmann–Wood theory, but were consistent with behaviour described by a recently derived poroelastic model which combines “patch” and “squirt” effects. Measurements on two of the samples followed a patch-based model while those on the highest porosity sample showed evidence of squirt-flow behaviour. Our analysis suggests that the appropriate fluid mixing law is pressure dependent, which is consistent with the notion that the effective patch size decreases as fluid pressure is increased. We derive simple empirical models for the patch dependence from fluid pressure which may be used in seismic modelling and interpretation exercises relevant to monitoring of CO2 injection

The HiZELS/UKIRT large area survey for bright Lyman-alpha emitters at z~9

We present the largest area survey to date (1.4 deg2) for Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) at z~9, as part of the Hi-z Emission Line Survey (HiZELS). The survey, which primarily targets H-alpha emitters at z < 3, uses the Wide Field CAMera on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and a custom narrow-band filter in the J band to reach a Lyman-alpha luminosity limit of ~10^43.8 erg/s over a co-moving volume of 1.12x10^6 Mpc^3 at z = 8.96+-0.06. Two candidates were found out of 1517 line emitters, but those were rejected as LAEs after follow-up observations. This improves the limit on the space density of bright Lyman-alpha emitters by 3 orders of magnitude and is consistent with suppression of the bright end of the Lyman-alpha luminosity function beyond z~6. Combined with upper limits from smaller but deeper surveys, this rules out some of the most extreme models for high-redshift Lyman-alpha emitters. The potential contamination of narrow-band Lyman-alpha surveys at z>7 by Galactic brown dwarf stars is also examined, leading to the conclusion that such contamination may well be significant for searches at 7.7 < z < 8.0, 9.1 < z < 9.5 and 11.7 < z < 12.2.Comment: To appear in proceedings of "UKIRT at 30: A British Success Story