Standard Costing Variances: Potential Red Flags of Fraud?

This article focuses on how standard cost variances can be used in detecting potential fraudulent activities. Each primary type of variance (material, labor, and overhead) is addressed with a discussion of possible inappropriate causal factors. Additionally, internal controls, graphic techniques, and other methods that can be implemented to combat fraud are provided

Marine Science and Technology

Our oceans surround us, and we depend upon them for food, transportation, and recreation. They affect us daily as they shape our climate and rattle our world with unexpected events. Current headlines indicate that they are in flux and perhaps in trouble. Coral reefs are dying due to rising ocean temperatures. Fisheries throughout the world are collapsing, threatening ecosystems and livelihoods. Hypoxic zones suggest that ocean conditions are either shifting from one cycle to another or perhaps into a very different status. Increasing acidification raises concerns for the future of marine life. Are the oceans actually dying or just changing? Inquiring minds want to know. Librarians serving these inquiring minds face a range of distinct questions. Research scientists examine the problems and explore solutions or answers. The general populace wonders how the shifting ocean environment affects the present and future of the earth. Students want help tackling difficult questions. The marine environment is complex, and its literature is multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and highly specialized. Much of the research focuses on the four classic oceanographic disciplines-physical, biological, chemical, and geological. However, general audiences want information that crosses all disciplines. The audience and the questions being asked should help shape the local collection. A university with a marine engineering program will need different journals than do universities focused on teaching marine biology or high school libraries attempting to cover all of the sciences. Even the core academiccollection, once simple to identify, eludes us as more specialized titles emerge; the general titles expand coverage, causing users to be overwhelmed with i information on multiple scales. Librarians need to take particular care in marine science to recognize the scope of their collection. Such considerations include I geographic focus, discipline segmentation, teaching needs, and research requirements. Breadth and depth are possible in a marine science collection, but at costs typical to many scientific fields. There is a dearth of quality, focused marine science titles for the general public, yet the subject is covered in National Geographic, Scientqc American, and other general science and environmental periodicals. The ocean environment intrigues many, so the issues and questions appear frequently throughout the print and electronic media. As with any environmental field, bias can be an issue, making balanced selection essential. Identifying marine science information is also challenging because not one index covers the field comprehensively. Web of Science provides adequate general access. For the subfields of oceanography, the academic librarian will need access to resources such as SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts) or GeoRef, depending on the research question. Biosis and Zoological Record cover the biological aspects well. Aquatic Science and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) is an essential resource for the applied science of the marine and estuarine environments. Policy and management information remains more difficult to access and requires multiple indexes including ASFA, Google Scholar, and relevant social sciences databases. For general public and basic academic collections, an index such as EBSCO's Academic Search Premier is adequate. Our relationship with the ocean will not disappear. People will continue to want timely information on ocean conditions, its inhabitants, and its problems. The scientists continue their exploration. New journals emerge to address the timely issues in new and traditional ways. The American Fisheries Society will launch its open-access journal, Marine and Coastal Fisheries, sometime in late 2008 or early 2009. A new annual review is due in late 2008 as well, Annual Review of Marine Science. The ever-changing and dynamic nature of the ocean is well reflected in the information that describes it

Best practice strategies for process studies designed to improve climate modeling

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101(10), (2020): E1842-E1850, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0263.1.Process studies are designed to improve our understanding of poorly described physical processes that are central to the behavior of the climate system. They typically include coordinated efforts of intensive field campaigns in the atmosphere and/or ocean to collect a carefully planned set of in situ observations. Ideally the observational portion of a process study is paired with numerical modeling efforts that lead to better representation of a poorly simulated or previously neglected physical process in operational and research models. This article provides a framework of best practices to help guide scientists in carrying out more productive, collaborative, and successful process studies. Topics include the planning and implementation of a process study and the associated web of logistical challenges; the development of focused science goals and testable hypotheses; and the importance of assembling an integrated and compatible team with a diversity of social identity, gender, career stage, and scientific background. Guidelines are also provided for scientific data management, dissemination, and stewardship. Above all, developing trust and continual communication within the science team during the field campaign and analysis phase are key for process studies. We consider a successful process study as one that ultimately will improve our quantitative understanding of the mechanisms responsible for climate variability and enhance our ability to represent them in climate models.We gratefully acknowledge U.S. CLIVAR for supporting the PSMI panel, as well as all the principal investigators that contributed to our PSMI panel webinars. JS was inspired by participation in the process studies funded by NASA NNH18ZDA001N-OSFC and NOAA NA17OAR4310257; GF was supported by base funds to NOAA/AOML’s Physical Oceanography Division; and HS was supported by NOAA NA19OAR4310376 and NA17OAR4310255.2021-04-0

Does gender matter? A cross-national investigation of primary class-room discipline.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupFewer than 15% of primary school teachers in both Germany and the UK are male. With the on-going international debate about educational performance highlighting the widening gender achievement gap between girl and boy pupils, the demand for more male teachers has become prevalent in educational discourse. Concerns have frequently been raised about the underachievement of boys, with claims that the lack of male ‘role models’ in schools has an adverse effect on boys’ academic motivation and engagement. Although previous research has examined ‘teaching’ as institutional talk, men’s linguistic behaviour in the classroom remains largely ignored, especially in regard to enacting discipline. Using empirical spoken data collected from four primary school classrooms in both the UK and in Germany, this paper examines the linguistic discipline strategies of eight male and eight female teachers using Interactional Sociolinguistics to address the question, does teacher gender matter?Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Synthesis of deuterium-labelled analogues of NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitor MCC950

This study describes the syntheses of di, tetra and hexa deuterated analogues of the NOD-like receptor pyrin domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome inhibitor MCC950. In di and tetra deuterated analogues, deuteriums were incorporated into the 1,2,3,5,6,7-hexahydro-s-indacene moiety, whereas in the hexa deuterated MCC950 deuteriums were incorporated into the 2-(furan-3-yl)propan-2-ol moiety. The di deuterated MCC950 analogue was synthesised from 4-amino-3,5,6,7-tetrahydro-s-indacen-1(2H)-one 5. Tetra deuterated analogues were synthesised in 10 chemical steps starting with 5-bromo-2,3-dihydro-1H-inden-1-one 9, whereas the hexa deuterated analogue was synthesised in four chemical steps starting with ethyl-3-furoate 24. All of the compounds exhibited similar activity to MCC950 (IC50 = 8 nM). These deuterated analogues are useful as internal standards in LC-MS analyses of biological samples from in vivo studies

PTF10nvg: An Outbursting Class I Protostar in the Pelican/North American Nebula

During a synoptic survey of the North American Nebula region, the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) detected an optical outburst (dubbed PTF10nvg) associated with the previously unstudied flat or rising spectrum infrared source IRAS 20496+4354. The PTF R-band light curve reveals that PTF10nvg brightened by more than 5 mag during the current outburst, rising to a peak magnitude of R~13.5 in 2010 Sep. Follow-up observations indicate PTF10nvg has undergone a similar ~5 mag brightening in the K band, and possesses a rich emission-line spectrum, including numerous lines commonly assumed to trace mass accretion and outflows. Many of these lines are blueshifted by ~175 km/s from the North American Nebula's rest velocity, suggesting that PTF10nvg is driving an outflow. Optical spectra of PTF10nvg show several TiO/VO bandheads fully in emission, indicating the presence of an unusual amount of dense (> 10^10 cm^-3), warm (1500-4000 K) circumstellar material. Near-infrared spectra of PTF10nvg appear quite similar to a spectrum of McNeil's Nebula/V1647 Ori, a young star which has undergone several brightenings in recent decades, and 06297+1021W, a Class I protostar with a similarly rich near--infrared emission line spectrum. While further monitoring is required to fully understand this event, we conclude that the brightening of PTF10nvg is indicative of enhanced accretion and outflow in this Class-I-type protostellar object, similar to the behavior of V1647 Ori in 2004-2005.Comment: Accepted to the Astronomical Journal; 21 pages, 11 figures, 6 tables in emulateapj format; v2 fixes typo in abstract; v3 updates status to accepted, adjusts affiliations, adds acknowledgmen

Bovine Tuberculosis in Free-Ranging Carnivores from Michigan

During a survey of carnivores and omnivores for bovine tuberculosis conducted in Michigan (USA) since 1996, Mycobacterium bovis was cultured from lymph nodes pooled from six coyotes (Canis latrans) (four adult female, two adult male), two adult male raccoons (Procyon lotor), one adult male red fox (Vulpes vulpes), and one 1.5-yr-old male black bear (Ursus americanus). One adult, male bobcat (Felis rufus) with histologic lesions suggestive of tuberculosis was negative on culture but positive for organisms belonging to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex when tested by polymerase chain reaction. All the tuberculous animals were taken from three adjoining counties where M. bovis is known to be endemic in the free-ranging white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) population. There were two coyotes, one raccoon, one red fox, and one bobcat infected in Alpena county. Montmorency County had two coyotes and one raccoon with M. bovis. Two coyotes and a bear were infected from Alcona County. These free-ranging carnivores/omnivores probably became infected with M. bovis through consumption of tuberculous deer. Other species included in the survey were opossum (Didelphis virginiana), gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), and badger (Taxidea taxus); these were negative for M. bovis

Immunotherapy biomarkers 2016: overcoming the barriers.

This report summarizes the symposium, \u27Immunotherapy Biomarkers 2016: Overcoming the Barriers\u27, which was held on April 1, 2016 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. The symposium, cosponsored by the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), focused on emerging immunotherapy biomarkers, new technologies, current hurdles to further progress, and recommendations for advancing the field of biomarker development

Measurement of tibial nerve excursion during ankle joint dorsiflexion in a weight-bearing position with ultrasound imaging

The ability of peripheral nerves to stretch and slide is thought to be of paramount importance to maintain ideal neural function. Excursion in peripheral nerves such as the tibial can be measured by analysis of ultrasound images. The aim of this study was to assess the degree of longitudinal tibial nerve excursion as the ankle moved from plantar flexion to dorsiflexion in a standardised weight-bearing position. The reliability of ultrasound imaging to measure tibial nerve excursion was also quantified

Sex steroid metabolism polymorphisms and mammographic density in pre- and early peri-menopausal women

Abstract Introduction We examined the association between mammographic density and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes encoding CYP1A1, CYP1B1, aromatase, 17β-HSD, ESR1, and ESR2 in pre- and early perimenopausal white, African-American, Chinese, and Japanese women. Methods The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation is a longitudinal community-based cohort study. We analyzed data from 451 pre- and early perimenopausal participants of the ancillary SWAN Mammographic Density study for whom we had complete information regarding mammographic density, genotypes, and covariates. With multivariate linear regression, we examined the relation between percentage mammographic breast density (outcome) and each SNP (primary predictor), adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, parity, cigarette smoking, and body mass index (BMI). Results After multivariate adjustment, the CYP1B1 rs162555 CC genotype was associated with a 9.4% higher mammographic density than the TC/TT genotype (P = 0.04). The CYP19A1 rs936306 TT genotype was associated with 6.2% lower mammographic density than the TC/CC genotype (P = 0.02). The positive association between CYP1A1 rs2606345 and mammographic density was significantly stronger among participants with BMI greater than 30 kg/m2 than among those with BMI less than 25 kg/m2 (Pinteraction = 0.05). Among white participants, the ESR1 rs2234693 CC genotype was associated with a 7.0% higher mammographic density than the CT/TT genotype (P = 0.01). Conclusions SNPs in certain genes encoding sex steroid metabolism enzymes and ESRs were associated with mammographic density. Because the encoded enzymes and ESR1 are expressed in breast tissue, these SNPs may influence breast cancer risk by altering mammographic density.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78273/1/bcr2340.xmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78273/2/bcr2340.pdfPeer Reviewe