Internal Controls in Small City Government

The flexible design multiple case study was performed to broaden the understanding of the possible rationale for city government officials\u27 failing to implement effective internal controls related to the global business problem of occupational fraud. The leadership of an organization should assume a stewardship attitude to reduce fraud risk by designing, implementing, monitoring internal controls, and testing their effectiveness. Asset misappropriation from occupational fraud results in the loss of assets and potential business failure. The research questions explored the internal control procedures implemented to prevent and detect property theft. Additionally, the research questions addressed the strategies implemented to establish segregation of duties and testing of internal controls for effectiveness. The stewardship theory was utilized to understand the leader\u27s responsibility to protect the assets. The fraud triangle theory was applied to evaluate if internal controls were designed to monitor each of the three components. Interviews of 25 participants involved with small city governments in the central United States were conducted, and coinciding city documents were reviewed. The researcher identified five themes as the result of coding the data collected. The findings included how the leadership failed to design internal controls to monitor the pressure and rationalization components of the fraud triangle theory, or test internal controls for effectiveness. The researcher also discovered the leaders’ have a stewardship attitude to protect the assets from misappropriation. The study was conducted to improve business practices based on Biblical precepts of exhibiting exceptional stewardship over God-given authority

Genetic diversity in the modern horse illustrated from genome-wide SNP data

Horses were domesticated from the Eurasian steppes 5,000-6,000 years ago. Since then, the use of horses for transportation, warfare, and agriculture, as well as selection for desired traits and fitness, has resulted in diverse populations distributed across the world, many of which have become or are in the process of becoming formally organized into closed, breeding populations (breeds). This report describes the use of a genome-wide set of autosomal SNPs and 814 horses from 36 breeds to provide the first detailed description of equine breed diversity. F(ST) calculations, parsimony, and distance analysis demonstrated relationships among the breeds that largely reflect geographic origins and known breed histories. Low levels of population divergence were observed between breeds that are relatively early on in the process of breed development, and between those with high levels of within-breed diversity, whether due to large population size, ongoing outcrossing, or large within-breed phenotypic diversity. Populations with low within-breed diversity included those which have experienced population bottlenecks, have been under intense selective pressure, or are closed populations with long breed histories. These results provide new insights into the relationships among and the diversity within breeds of horses. In addition these results will facilitate future genome-wide association studies and investigations into genomic targets of selection

Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data

Horses were domesticated from the Eurasian steppes 5,000–6,000 years ago. Since then, the use of horses for transportation, warfare, and agriculture, as well as selection for desired traits and fitness, has resulted in diverse populations distributed across the world, many of which have become or are in the process of becoming formally organized into closed, breeding populations (breeds). This report describes the use of a genome-wide set of autosomal SNPs and 814 horses from 36 breeds to provide the first detailed description of equine breed diversity. FST calculations, parsimony, and distance analysis demonstrated relationships among the breeds that largely reflect geographic origins and known breed histories. Low levels of population divergence were observed between breeds that are relatively early on in the process of breed development, and between those with high levels of within-breed diversity, whether due to large population size, ongoing outcrossing, or large within-breed phenotypic diversity. Populations with low within-breed diversity included those which have experienced population bottlenecks, have been under intense selective pressure, or are closed populations with long breed histories. These results provide new insights into the relationships among and the diversity within breeds of horses. In addition these results will facilitate future genome-wide association studies and investigations into genomic targets of selection

Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data

Peer reviewe

Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Selection for Important Traits in Domestic Horse Breeds

Peer reviewe

Genetic variance components and heritability of multiallelic heterozygosity under inbreeding

The maintenance of genetic diversity in fitness-related traits remains a central topic in evolutionary biology, for example, in the context of sexual selection for genetic benefits. Among the solutions that have been proposed is directional sexual selection for heterozygosity. The importance of such selection is highly debated. However, a critical evaluation requires knowledge of the heritability of heterozygosity, a quantity that is rarely estimated in this context, and often assumed to be zero. This is at least partly the result of the lack of a general framework that allows for its quantitative prediction in small and inbred populations, which are the focus of most empirical studies. Moreover, while current predictors are applicable only to biallelic loci, fitness-relevant loci are often multiallelic, as are the neutral markers typically used to estimate genome-wide heterozygosity. To this end, we first review previous, but little-known, work showing that under most circumstances, heterozygosity at biallelic loci and in the absence of inbreeding is heritable. We then derive the heritability of heterozygosity and the underlying variances for multiple alleles and any inbreeding level. We also show that heterozygosity at multiallelic loci can be highly heritable when allele frequencies are unequal, and that this heritability is reduced by inbreeding. Our quantitative genetic framework can provide new insights into the evolutionary dynamics of heterozygosity in inbred and outbred populations