Detecting Fraud in Chinese Listed Company Balance Sheets

This study investigates the links between accounting values in Chinese listed companies’ balance sheets and the exposure of their fraudulent activities. Every balance sheet account is proposed to be a potential vehicle to manipulate financial statements. Other receivables, inventories, prepaid expenses, employee benefits payables and long-term payables are important indicators of fraudulent financial statements. These results confirm that asset account manipulation is frequently carried out and cast doubt on earlier conclusions by researchers that inflation of liabilities is the most common source of financial statement manipulation. Prior practices of solely scaling balance sheet values by assets are revealed to produce spurious relationships, while scaling by both assets and sales effectively detects fraudulent financial statements and provides a useful fraud prediction tool for Chinese auditors, regulators and investors

A general method for designing the transformer of flyback converters based on nonlinear FEA of electromagnetic field coupled with external circuit

This paper presents a general method for designing the transformer of flyback switching AC-DC converters based on nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) of electromagnetic field coupled with external circuit. For that, the variation patterns of the PWM duty ratio and the current flowing through the windings of transformer versus the input voltage are introduced first, and then several important principles for the design of the transformer are given by using analytical method. As the magnetic saturation and control delay possess heavy influence on the safety of the operation, a MATLAB/Simulink based simulation model, in which both the nonlinear differential inductance and the control delay are included, is built to predict the converter transient performance. The nonlinear differential inductance is calculated by a general program of nonlinear 2-D FEA in Matlab/Simulink surrounding. By running the model, the performances of the converter with different loads and input voltages are obtained. Simulation results are in good agreement with theoretical analysis

A unified hybrid model with two level networks for peak current mode controlled buck-boost converters operating in DCM and CCM

Theis paper presents a unified hybrid model with two level networks for peak current mode controlled buck-boost converters operating in continuous conduction mode (CCM) and discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). It is a network model with two levels in which both a detailed switching model and a small signal average model are included correspondingly. The nonlinearity of some electronic components and the parasitical effects of circuit elements are considered. The nonlinear inductance is calculated by finite element analysis (FEA). The dynamical performance of the buck-boost converter can be obtained from the detailed switching model in the first level network, and then the frequency domain performance can be obtained from the average model in the second level network. As an automatic mechanism of exchanging data between two models is proposed, all the performances can be obtained automatically. By implementing the proposed model in Simulink surrounding, both the large signal transient performance and the frequency domain behavior of converters are obtained efficiently

Band structure engineering in (Bi1-xSbx)2Te3 ternary topological insulators

Three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TI) are novel quantum materials with insulating bulk and topologically protected metallic surfaces with Dirac-like band structure. The spin-helical Dirac surface states are expected to host exotic topological quantum effects and find applications in spintronics and quantum computation. The experimental realization of these ideas requires fabrication of versatile devices based on bulk-insulating TIs with tunable surface states. The main challenge facing the current TI materials exemplified by Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3 is the significant bulk conduction, which remains unsolved despite extensive efforts involving nanostructuring, chemical doping and electrical gating. Here we report a novel approach for engineering the band structure of TIs by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of (Bi1-xSbx)2Te3 ternary compounds. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and transport measurements show that the topological surface states exist over the entire composition range of (Bi1-xSbx)2Te3 (x = 0 to 1), indicating the robustness of bulk Z2 topology. Most remarkably, the systematic band engineering leads to ideal TIs with truly insulating bulk and tunable surface state across the Dirac point that behave like one quarter of graphene. This work demonstrates a new route to achieving intrinsic quantum transport of the topological surface states and designing conceptually new TI devices with well-established semiconductor technology.Comment: Minor changes in title, text and figures. Supplementary information adde

A general electromagnetic field-circuit coupling method based on time-stepping finite element analysis for performance analysis of pulse-width modulated switching converters considering hysteresis effects

Considering the special characteristics existing in the pulse-width modulated (PWM) switching converter, a general method for the time-stepping finite element analysis based electromagnetic field coupling with its feeding circuit used in the analysis of PWM switching converter considering hysteresis effects is introduced in this paper. Comparing with the electromagnetic field-circuit indirect coupling method (ICM), the proposed method has overcome the drawback that the ICM cannot take the hysteresis effects into account. Compared with the electromagnetic field-circuit direct coupling method (DCM), the proposed method has the similar accuracy but higher efficiency. Furthermore, like the ICM, the proposed method also divides the system with higher state dimensions produced by the DCM into two subsystems with lower state dimensions; this may reduce the algorithm convergence problem which often happens in high dimensional systems. © 2008 American Institute of Physics

Experimental study on strain distribution in externally bonded FRP for shear strengthening of RC beams

2003-2004 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Fluid and Diffusion Limits for Bike Sharing Systems

Bike sharing systems have rapidly developed around the world, and they are served as a promising strategy to improve urban traffic congestion and to decrease polluting gas emissions. So far performance analysis of bike sharing systems always exists many difficulties and challenges under some more general factors. In this paper, a more general large-scale bike sharing system is discussed by means of heavy traffic approximation of multiclass closed queueing networks with non-exponential factors. Based on this, the fluid scaled equations and the diffusion scaled equations are established by means of the numbers of bikes both at the stations and on the roads, respectively. Furthermore, the scaling processes for the numbers of bikes both at the stations and on the roads are proved to converge in distribution to a semimartingale reflecting Brownian motion (SRBM) in a $N^{2}$-dimensional box, and also the fluid and diffusion limit theorems are obtained. Furthermore, performance analysis of the bike sharing system is provided. Thus the results and methodology of this paper provide new highlight in the study of more general large-scale bike sharing systems.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure

Ultra-low carrier concentration and surface dominant transport in Sb-doped Bi2Se3 topological insulator nanoribbons

A topological insulator is a new state of matter, possessing gapless spin-locking surface states across the bulk band gap which has created new opportunities from novel electronics to energy conversion. However, the large concentration of bulk residual carriers has been a major challenge for revealing the property of the topological surface state via electron transport measurement. Here we report surface state dominated transport in Sb-doped Bi2Se3 nanoribbons with very low bulk electron concentrations. In the nanoribbons with sub-10nm thickness protected by a ZnO layer, we demonstrate complete control of their top and bottom surfaces near the Dirac point, achieving the lowest carrier concentration of 2x10^11/cm2 reported in three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators. The Sb-doped Bi2Se3 nanostructures provide an attractive materials platform to study fundamental physics in topological insulators, as well as future applications.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Ambipolar Field Effect in Topological Insulator Nanoplates of (BixSb1-x)2Te3

Topological insulators represent a new state of quantum matter attractive to both fundamental physics and technological applications such as spintronics and quantum information processing. In a topological insulator, the bulk energy gap is traversed by spin-momentum locked surface states forming an odd number of surface bands that possesses unique electronic properties. However, transport measurements have often been dominated by residual bulk carriers from crystal defects or environmental doping which mask the topological surface contribution. Here we demonstrate (BixSb1-x)2Te3 as a tunable topological insulator system to manipulate bulk conductivity by varying the Bi/Sb composition ratio. (BixSb1-x)2Te3 ternary compounds are confirmed as topological insulators for the entire composition range by angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements and ab initio calculations. Additionally, we observe a clear ambipolar gating effect similar to that observed in graphene using nanoplates of (BixSb1-x)2Te3 in field-effect-transistor (FET) devices. The manipulation of carrier type and concentration in topological insulator nanostructures demonstrated in this study paves the way for implementation of topological insulators in nanoelectronics and spintronics.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Evidence for stable square ice from quantum Monte Carlo

Recent experiments on ice formed by water under nanoconfinement provide evidence for a two-dimensional (2D) “square ice” phase. However, the interpretation of the experiments has been questioned and the stability of square ice has become a matter of debate. Partially this is because the simulation approaches employed so far (force fields and density functional theory) struggle to accurately describe the very small energy differences between the relevant phases. Here we report a study of 2D ice using an accurate wave-function based electronic structure approach, namely diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC). We find that at relatively high pressure, square ice is indeed the lowest enthalpy phase examined, supporting the initial experimental claim. Moreover, at lower pressures, a “pentagonal ice” phase (not yet observed experimentally) has the lowest enthalpy, and at ambient pressure, the “pentagonal ice” phase is degenerate with a “hexagonal ice” phase. Our DMC results also allow us to evaluate the accuracy of various density functional theory exchange-correlation functionals and force field models, and in doing so we extend the understanding of how such methodologies perform to challenging 2D structures presenting dangling hydrogen bonds