Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationIn this dissertation I investigate management perceptions of audit quality. Despite management's key stakeholder role in the audit process, their impact in assessing and evaluating audit quality has been overlooked in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment. Although audit committees are charged with governance over the audit process, management influences auditors, and by extension audit quality, management both influences day-to-day interactions between the auditor and the audit client and exerts significant influence on the audit committee's decision to retain an auditor for future engagements. Thus, auditors are incentivized to understand how their actions are perceived by management. For my overall research question, I ask what factors influence management perceptions of audit quality. I provide two major contributions to the literature. First, I surveyed management about their perceptions of audit quality and how auditors are able to demonstrate audit quality on their engagements. After coding these responses according to academic and regulatory frameworks of audit quality, I find that management focuses most heavily on input and process characteristics of the auditor and audit engagement when evaluating audit quality. Output characteristics are important when defining audit quality, but are considerably less important to management in evaluating auditors. Additionally, academics have typically overlooked the impact of interpersonal relationships between stakeholders in the audit process, but these relationships are important to management intheir evaluations of auditors. Second, I conducted an experiment that investigates how management views an auditor's use of industry norms as a justification method for an audit adjustment under imprecise accounting standards. I find that under more precise accounting standards, management evaluates audit quality based on the underlying accounting attributes of the transaction. When accounting standards are less precise, management rates audit quality higher when auditors justify a decision using an industry norm regardless of the underlying attributes of the transaction. Thus, when accounting standards are less precise (i.e., more principles-based), auditors may have an incentive to engage in herding behavior at the expense of their professional judgment

Life Water

A rainwater harvesting and treatment system was designed and constructed for the Hope for Life Ministry\u27s home for street boys, located outside of Kigali, Rwanda. This system included two different components: a showering system and a potable system. The design and construction of the shower system utilized the roof space of the property\u27s main building to capture water in two separate 10,000-liter tanks on either side of the building. Manual hand pumps were then installed in shower rooms located on either side of the building and were connected to the tanks with piping. 55-gallon barrels were placed in the shower rooms to collect pumped water and a thorough bucket showering plan was set in place to allow for sufficient water supply throughout the year. The design and construction of the potable system utilized the existing roof spaces of the kitchen and outdoor bathrooms to collect rainwater, which is then piped to a slow-sand filter and ultimately stored in a 3,000-liter tank. These systems will allow up to 85% of the home\u27s annual water demand to be supplemented by harvested rainwater, reducing the home\u27s utility water costs, increasing its self-sufficiency, and promoting funds to be used for other purposes

Symbolic dynamics and the stable algebra of matrices

We give an introduction to the "stable algebra of matrices" as related to certain problems in symbolic dynamics. We consider this stable algebra (especially, shift equivalence and strong shift equivalence) for matrices over general rings as well as various specific rings. This algebra is of independent interest and can be followed with little attention to the symbolic dynamics. We include strong connectionsto algebraic K-theory and the inverse spectral problem for nonnegative matrices. We also review key features of the automorphism group of a shift of finite type, and the work of Kim, Roush and Wagoner giving counterexamples to Williams' Shift Equivalence Conjecture.Comment: 121 pages. Main changes from version 1: Author and subject indices were added. Various citations were added, with commentary. Bibliography items are now listed with internal references (i.e., pages of the paper on which they are cited

The vow delivered? Experts respond to the publication of theSmith Commission’s recommendations

The Smith Commission, the body tasked with recommending reforms to the governance of Scotland recently released its final report. Democratic Audit asked Scottish constitutional and political experts John Curtice, Katie Boyle and Stephen Tierney, and Sionaidh Douglas-Scott to respond. (Part 1 can be found here

Endocardial cells are a distinct endothelial lineage derived from Flk1+ multipotent cardiovascular progenitors

Identification of multipotent cardiac progenitors has provided important insights into the mechanisms of myocardial lineage specification, yet has done little to clarify the origin of the endocardium. Despite its essential role in heart development, characterization of the endocardial lineage has been limited by the lack of specific markers of this early vascular subpopulation. To distinguish endocardium from other vasculature, we generated an BAC transgenic mouse line capable of labeling this specific endothelial subpopulation at the earliest stages of cardiac development. To further characterize endocardiogenesis, embryonic stem cells (ESCs) derived from blastocysts were utilized to demonstrate that endocardial differentiation recapitulates the close temporal–spatial relationship observed between myocardium and endocardium seen . Endocardium is specified as a cardiac cell lineage, independent from other vascular populations, responding to BMP and Wnt signals that enhance cardiomyocyte differentiation. Furthermore, a population of Flk1+ cardiovascular progenitors, distinct from hemangioblast precursors, represents a mesodermal precursor of the endocardial endothelium, as well as other cardiovascular lineages. Taken together, these studies emphasize that the endocardium is a unique cardiac lineage and provides further evidence that endocardium and myocardium are derived from a common precursor

No Enough Evidence In Support Of Correlation Between Gamma-ray Bursts And Foreground Galaxiy Clusters In the Swift Era

The correlation between distant Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and foreground galaxy clusters is re-examined by using the well localized (with an accuracy down to a few arcseconds) Swift/XRT GRBs. The galaxy clusters are compiled from both X-ray selected ROSAT brightest cluster sample (BCS) and BCS extension by requiring \delta \geq0\degr and b\geq20\degr. The Swift/XRT GRBs fulfilling the above selection criteria are cross-correlated with the clusters. Both Nearest-Neighbor Analysis and angular two-point cross-correlation function show that there is no enough evidence supporting the correlation between the GRBs and foreground clusters. We suggest that the non-correlation is probably related to the GRB number-flux relation slope.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted by RA