Paper 28 Title: THE ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AND CONDUCTED FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE ERP (ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING) BENEFITS

This study aims to examine ERP performance at the post-implementation stage, particularly from the perspective of environmental factors and conducted factors. Specifically, we propose that both environmental factors (including external contexts and internal contexts) and conducted factors (including data quality and customization) affect ERP intermediated benefits (including coordination improvement and task efficiency), which in turn influence the overall benefits. A firm-level survey is used to collected data. Our findings support the proposed hypotheses. We also provide implications for both managers and researchers

Continuous Audit Agent System

Recently, the provision of the real-time accounting reports over the Internet for the public corporation became popular. In response to this change on the service requirement, audit professionals considered to provide “continuous auditing” to diminish or minimize the lag time of the provision of an audit opinion behind the occurrence of business events. Though has been proposed the concept at 80’s, the provided implementation models of continuous auditing are still far beyond feasible. Major obstacles to hinder wide adoption in industry lie on two issues. (1) The development of continuous auditing system should be independent to the development of client’s information system. (2) The audit procedures that could be implemented by agent base automatic audit system should not be limited to the analysis on corporation internal data. In this paper, an agent base continuous auditing model and system is proposed to tackle these two major concerns. Several kinds of mobile agents are initiated by an audit agency system to simulate the behaviors of a human auditor on the audit procedures to collect various audit evidences. Each kind of mobile agent simulates a specific kind of audit procedure and acts on behalf of a human auditor to access and to inspect audit-related information hosted in the distributed information source

The Socio-Economic Causes of Obesity

An increasing number of Americans are obese, with a body mass index of 30 or more. In fact, the latest estimates indicate that about 30% of Americans are currently obese, which is roughly a 100% increase from 25 years ago. It is well accepted that weight gain is caused by caloric imbalance, where more calories are consumed than expended. Nevertheless, it is not clear why the prevalence of obesity has increased so dramatically over the last 30 years. We simultaneously estimate the effects of the various socio-economic factors on weight status, considering in our analysis many of the socio-economic factors that have been identified by other researchers as important influences on caloric imbalance: employment, physical activity at work, food prices, the prevalence of restaurants, cigarette smoking, cigarette prices and taxes, food stamp receipt, and urbanization. We use 1979- and 1997-cohort National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data, which allows us to compare the prevalence of obesity between cohorts surveyed roughly 25 years apart. Using the traditional Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique, we find that cigarette smoking has the largest effect: the decline in cigarette smoking explains about 2% of the increase in the weight measures. The other significant factors explain less.

Penguin-induced Radiative Baryonic B Decays Revisited

Weak radiative baryonic B decays $\bar B\to B_1\bar B_2\gamma$ mediated by the electromagnetic penguin process $b\to s\gamma$ are re-examined within the framework of the pole model. The meson pole contribution that has been neglected before is taken into account in this work. It is found that the intermediate $K^*$ contribution dominates in the $\Sigma\bar p\gamma$ mode and is comparable to the baryon pole effect in $\Lambda\bar p\gamma$ and $\Xi\bar\Lambda\gamma$ modes. The branching ratios for $B^-\to\Lambda\bar p\gamma$ and $B^-\to\Xi^0\bar\Sigma^-\gamma$ are of order $2.6\times 10^{-6}$ and $6\times 10^{-7}$, respectively. The threshold enhancement effect in the dibaryon mass spectrum is responsible by the meson pole diagram. We also study the angular distribution of the baryon in the dibaryon rest frame. The baryon pole diagrams imply that the antibaryon tends to emerge in the direction of the photon in the baryon-pair rest frame. The predicted angular asymmetry agrees with experiment for $B^-\to\Lambda\bar p\gamma$. Measurements of the correlation of the photon with the baryon allow us to discriminate between different models for describing the radiative baryonic B decays. For decays $B\to\Xi\bar\Sigma\gamma$, a large correlation of the photon to the $\bar\Sigma$ and a broad bump in the dibaryon mass spectrum are predicted.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Solar Magnetic Field Signatures in Helioseismic Splitting Coefficients

Normal modes of oscillation of the Sun are useful probes of the solar interior. In this work, we use the even-order splitting coefficients to study the evolution of magnetic fields in the convection zone over solar cycle 23, assuming that the frequency splitting is only due to rotation and a large scale magnetic field. We find that the data are best fit by a combination of a poloidal field and a double-peaked near-surface toroidal field. The toroidal fields are centered at r=0.999R_solar and r=0.996R_solar and are confined to the near-surface layers. The poloidal field is a dipole field. The peak strength of the poloidal field is 124 +/- 17G. The toroidal field peaks at 380 +/- 30G and 1.4 +/- 0.2kG for the shallower and deeper fields respectively. The field strengths are highly correlated with surface activity. The toroidal field strength shows a hysteresis-like effect when compared to the global 10.7 cm radio flux. The poloidal field strength shows evidence of saturation at high activity.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in Ap

The Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph: Commissioning Results and On-sky Performance

We have recently commissioned a novel infrared ($0.9-1.7$ $\mu$m) integral field spectrograph (IFS) called the Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph (WIFIS). WIFIS is a unique instrument that offers a very large field-of-view (50$^{\prime\prime}$ x 20$^{\prime\prime}$) on the 2.3-meter Bok telescope at Kitt Peak, USA for seeing-limited observations at moderate spectral resolving power. The measured spatial sampling scale is $\sim1\times1^{\prime\prime}$ and its spectral resolving power is $R\sim2,500$ and $3,000$ in the $zJ$ ($0.9-1.35$ $\mu$m) and $H_{short}$ ($1.5-1.7$ $\mu$m) modes, respectively. WIFIS's corresponding etendue is larger than existing near-infrared (NIR) IFSes, which are mostly designed to work with adaptive optics systems and therefore have very narrow fields. For this reason, this instrument is specifically suited for studying very extended objects in the near-infrared such as supernovae remnants, galactic star forming regions, and nearby galaxies, which are not easily accessible by other NIR IFSes. This enables scientific programs that were not originally possible, such as detailed surveys of a large number of nearby galaxies or a full accounting of nucleosynthetic yields of Milky Way supernova remnants. WIFIS is also designed to be easily adaptable to be used with larger telescopes. In this paper, we report on the overall performance characteristics of the instrument, which were measured during our commissioning runs in the second half of 2017. We present measurements of spectral resolving power, image quality, instrumental background, and overall efficiency and sensitivity of WIFIS and compare them with our design expectations. Finally, we present a few example observations that demonstrate WIFIS's full capability to carry out infrared imaging spectroscopy of extended objects, which is enabled by our custom data reduction pipeline.Comment: Published in the Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018. 17 pages, 13 figure

Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction Frame Count in Single-Vessel Disease After Angioplasty

SUMMARYBackgroundWe compared the thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) frame count and examined the impact of angioplasty on the count between patients with normal coronary angiograms and those with single-vessel disease (SVD).MethodsIn 780 consecutive patients referred for coronary angiography, TIMI frame count was measured for 149 patients who had SVD and 32 patients with normal angiograms who underwent the procedure for electro-physiologic study or valvular heart disease survey.ResultsComparison of each of the three vessels in the normal vessel group with the corresponding non-stenotic vessels in the SVD group showed similar counts in each of the left anterior descending artery (LAD), left circumflex artery (LCX), and right coronary artery (RCA). For the stenotic vessels, after successful angioplasty, the counts were all reduced (LAD, 54.5 ±28.8 vs. 34.0 ±19.3; LCX, 67.3 ±31.1 vs. 34.1 ±19.0; RCA, 33.2 ±28.1 vs. 19.3 ±7.9; all p <0.05). In addition, the count in the RCA after angioplasty was lower, compared with the RCA of the normal group (19.3 ±7.9 vs. 29.1 ±14.6, p = 0.001). Multivariate analysis showed that the use of oral calcium channel blockers was the only independent predictor for the reduction in RCA after angioplasty.ConclusionIn patients with SVD, the data of TIMI frame count in the nonstenotic vessels were similar to those without the disease, suggesting that the count in the normal artery is not affected by the adjacent stenotic artery. For the stenotic vessels, angioplasty had differential effects on each of the three arteries, indicating the existence of distinct properties, which is affected by calcium channel blockers, for individual coronary arteries in response to atherosclerosis and/or angioplasty

An earthquake slip zone is a magnetic recorder

International audienceDuring an earthquake, the physical and the chemical transformations along a slip zone lead to an intense deformation within the gouge layer of a mature fault zone. Because the gouge contains ferromagnetic minerals, it has the capacity to behave as a magnetic recorder during an earthquake. This constitutes a conceivable way to identify earthquakes slip zones. In this paper, we investigate the magnetic record of the Chelungpu fault gouge that hosts the principal slip zone of the Chi-Chi earthquake (Mw 7.6, 1999, Taiwan) using Taiwan Chelungpu-fault Drilling Project core samples. Rock magnetic investigation pinpoints the location of the Chi-Chi mm-thick principal slip zone within the 16-cm thick gouge at ~1 km depth. A modern magnetic dipole of Earth magnetic field is recovered throughout this gouge but not in the wall rocks nor in the two other adjacent fault zones. This magnetic record resides essentially in two magnetic minerals; magnetite in the principal slip zone, and neoformed goethite elsewhere in the gouge. We propose a model where magnetic record: 1) is preserved during inter-seismic time, 2) is erased during co-seismic time and 3) is imprinted during post-seismic time when fluids cooled down. We suggest that the identification of a stable magnetic record carried by neoformed goethite may be a signature of friction-heating process in seismic slip zone