Board structure and supplementary commentary on the primary financial statements

Purpose: This research investigates the relationship between the extent and focus of supplementary narrative commentary (SNC) on amounts reported in the primary financial statements and board structure variables. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses the disclosure index methodology to measure the extent of SNC in annual reports of 167 FTSE 250 companies. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis is employed to examine the association between the extent and focus of SNC and board structure variables. Findings: The findings show that the extent of SNC on amounts reported in the primary financial statements is about 30%, suggesting that companies provide commentary on a small number of amounts reported in the financial statements. In terms of focus of SNC, companies provide greater SNC on amounts in the income statement relative to the balance sheet. The regression results indicate that the extent of SNC is negatively associated with board size, and positively associated with audit committee independence and financial expertise. Focus of SNC is negatively related to audit committee independence and finance expertise. Originality/Value: The research contributes to both the voluntary disclosure and impression management literature streams. The findings provide evidence of the extent and focus of SNC on amounts in the financial statements. They also demonstrate that board structure variables are related to the extent and focus of SNC on amounts in primary financial statements. These findings have implications for policy makers who have responsibilities for ensuring that users of annual reports receive adequate information to make decisions

Capital market pressures and the format of intellectual capital disclosure in intellectual capital intensive firms

Purpose - A number of studies have examined firms’ intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practices. However, the presentation format of IC disclosure (text, numerical and graphs/pictures) is yet to be examined. In addition, there is little evidence on the impact of capital market pressures on IC disclosure. This study aims to examine the relation between presentation format of IC disclosures and three market factors (market-to-book ratio, share price volatility and multiple listing. Design/methodology/approach - Using content analysis, we examine the level of IC disclosure provided in the annual reports of 100 IC-intensive listed UK firms. A 61-IC-item research instrument is used to measure IC disclosure and regression analysis is employed to examine the relation between disclosure and the market factors, controlling for corporate governance and firm specific variables. Findings - Text is the most commonly used format for IC disclosure, whilst the use of graphs/pictures is very low. The findings of the relation between market factors and IC disclosure are mixed. Market-to-book ratio is significantly related to disclosure in text and numerical, but not to graphs/pictures. Share price volatility is only associated with graphs/pictures, whilst multiple listing is only related to text. Originality/value - Our findings suggest that the impact of capital market pressures on IC disclosure might differ with presentation format. In this context, the study makes a significant contribution to the IC disclosure literature

Structural Modulation and Phase Transitions in Melilites

Crystals can often be seen in our daily life and a variety of high-tech aspects. The ideal crystal has three-dimensional lattice periodicity, which can be described by the developed space group. The existence of a lattice periodicity is apparent in the diffraction pattern which consists of sharp spots located on points of a reciprocal lattice. Half century ago, the crystal with a diffraction pattern involving sharp spots not belonging to a reciprocal lattice was founded. These sharp spots, so-called satellite reflections, are not simple fractions with respect to the lattice of main reflections. Those fractional indices are interpreted as due to a long-period ordering. The observation of satellite peaks showing a continuous temperature dependency leads to the concept of an incommensurate crystal structure. Since then, many more incommensurate crystal phases have been observed, including quasi-one-dimensional conductors (Comes et al., 1976), ferroelectrics (Dmitriev et al., 1998), alloys (Portier and Gratias, 1980), minerals (Hemingway et al., 1986; Seifert et al., 1987), composite crystal (Heimann et al., 1979), and so on. According to the origin of the incommensurability, the incommensurate crystals have been divided into different types. An important class is that of the modulated structures. These crystals can be described in terms of a basic structure with three-dimensional space group symmetry and a periodic derivation (the modulation) which in the incommensurate case has a period that does not belong to the lattice of the basic space group. The melilite families, occurring as solid solution minerals in natural rock assemblages, are observed independently with the incommensurately modulated features by Hemingway et al. (Hemingway et al., 1986) and Seifert et al. (Seifert et al., 1987) in synthetic end-member of Ca2MgSi2O7 åkermanite. The reason for the formation of the modulated structure is the misfit between the large X cations and the sheet-like tetrahedral framework. Changing the structural misfit by substitution of other cations or by temperature variation affects the amplitude of the modulation and the length of the modulation vector (Böhm, 1983; Iishi et al., 1990; Jiang et al., 1998; Röthlishberger et al., 1990; Schosnig et al., 2000). X-ray refinement in the (3+2)-dimensional space suggests that the modulation is mainly caused by a displacive shift of the constituent atoms resulting in a rotation and deformation of the T1 and T2 tetrahedra (Brown et al., 1994; Hagiya and Ohmasa, 1993). These changes are accompanied by changes of the interlayer X-cation environment in a way that reduces the coordination number of X from eight to seven or even six (Bagautdinov et al., 2000; Bindi et al., 2001; Riester et al., 2000; Tamura et al., 1996). It is further assumed that the flattened T1-tetrahedra surrounded by low-coordinated X cations show the tendency to form octagonal clusters, and that the arrangement of these clusters determines the strength of the overall modulation (Kusaka et al., 2001; Kusaka et al., 1998; Riester et al., 2000). The investigations of their composition and properties play an important role to understand the formation of rocks and furthermore, the evolution of the earth. It Synthetic melilite solid solutions extended this family and made it possible to study their structure features and other properties. Special end-members of melilite like Ca2Al2SiO7 and Ca2MgSi2O7 have potential applications as laser active materials (Le Boulanger et al., 2000) and (Foing et al., 1998) and long-lasting phosphorescent materials (Kodama et al., 1999), (Yamaga et al., 2002) and (Jiang et al., 2003). On the other hand, an interesting feature is that many melilites exhibit at room temperature a two-dimensional modulated structure. The modulation depends on temperature and composition. Although it is now clear that the general reason causing the modulation is due to the misfit between the intermediate large X cations and the sheet-like tetrahedral framework, the detailed nature of the modulation is not clear completely. Single crystal X-ray diffraction and the developing (3+2)-dimensional refinement provide evidence that the modulation attributes to the displacement of the constituent atoms as well as to the formation of the octagonal clusters arranging by four low coordinated Ca polyhedra and one T1-tetrahedron. Further, the modulation in melilites varies with composition. For example, an occupational modulation is observed in Sr/Ca-melilites. The transition from the incommensurate to the commensurate lock-in phase accompanying the formation of domains in melilites is not clear until now. Also, the studies of the structural modulated features of Co/Zn-melilite series are still lack till now. In this work, the first aim is to grown a series of high-quality single crystals including Ca2Mg1-xZnxSi2O7, Ca2Co1-xZnxSi2O7 and (Ca1-xSrx)2CoSi2O7 by the floating zone melting technique. The second aim is to investigate the variations of the modulation with composition and temperature, and to find out the transition features from the incommensurate phase to the low-temperature commensurate phase and the details of microdomains formed during the phase transition. Transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction as well as XRD and DSC as compensatory way are used to study the structural modulation in selected melilites

LittleDarwin: a Feature-Rich and Extensible Mutation Testing Framework for Large and Complex Java Systems

Mutation testing is a well-studied method for increasing the quality of a test suite. We designed LittleDarwin as a mutation testing framework able to cope with large and complex Java software systems, while still being easily extensible with new experimental components. LittleDarwin addresses two existing problems in the domain of mutation testing: having a tool able to work within an industrial setting, and yet, be open to extension for cutting edge techniques provided by academia. LittleDarwin already offers higher-order mutation, null type mutants, mutant sampling, manual mutation, and mutant subsumption analysis. There is no tool today available with all these features that is able to work with typical industrial software systems.Comment: Pre-proceedings of the 7th IPM International Conference on Fundamentals of Software Engineerin

Company specific determinants of greenhouse gases disclosures

Findings - The results indicate that company size, gearing, financial slack and two industries (consumer services and industrials) are significantly associated with GHG disclosures while profitability, liquidity and capital expenditure are not. When the authors disaggregate GHG disclosures into qualitative and quantitative, the results suggest that the effect of some company factors differ depending on the type of GHG disclosures

API-constrained genetic improvement

ACGI respects the Application Programming Interface whilst using genetic programming to optimise the implementation of the API. It reduces the scope for improvement but it may smooth the path to GI acceptance because the programmer’s code remains unaffected; only library code is modified.We applied ACGI to C++ software for the stateof-the-art OpenCV SEEDS superPixels image segmentation algorithm, obtaining a speed-up of up to 13.2% (±1.3%) to the $50K Challenge winner announced at CVPR 2015

Reinforcing users’ confidence in statutory audit during a post-crisis period : An empirical study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that are perceived as important for the statutory audit function to restore confidence in the financial statements, its value relevance and decision usefulness in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach – This research used a structured questionnaire to collect data from practising accountants, auditors and accounting academics within the UK. A factor analysis was undertaken to examine the potential inter-correlations that could exist between different factors obtained from the literature. The analysis reduced these variables into the more important factors which were subsequently modelled in a logistic regression analysis. Findings – The paper identified, as critical factors for enhancing statutory audits, “a continuously updated accounting curriculum”, “expansion of the auditor's role”, “frequent meetings between regulators and auditors”, “mandatory rotation of auditors”, “limiting the provision of non-audit services”, “knowledge requirements from disciplines other than accounting” and “encouraging joint audits”. It is hoped that addressing these issues might improve confidence in the audit profession, thereby reinforcing its value relevance. Research limitations/implications – The study's findings imply that professional accountancy bodies, accounting educators and accounting firms will need to incorporate the key factors identified in this study into their curriculum and training schemes. However, the generalisability of these findings might be limited as the research data were primarily obtained from UK accountants alone. Originality/value – This study extends the frontiers of knowledge on critical factors that could reinforce users’ confidence in the statutory audit function and have implications for policy and practice.N/

Prevalence of Severe Anxiety among Elective Caesarean Section Mothers and their Perceived Complications of Anaesthesia in Malaysia

Introduction: Many women experience psychological problems during pregnancy. One of the major psychological problems is anxiety. Pregnancy related anxiety can lead to various negative effects not only on mother’s health, but also on their socio-dynamic factors as well as the infant’s development. Preoperative anxiety among obstetric patients is known to be much higher compared to other surgical patients. Aim: In this study we assessed the prevalence of severe anxiety among elective caesarean section mothers and their perceived complications of anaesthesia in Malaysia. Method: This study was conducted among 280 pregnant women in the obstetrics and gynaecology department in a tertiary hospital in Malaysia. The pregnant women’s level of anxiety was assessed using the 20-item S-anxiety scale, preoperative and postoperative. Results: Pre-operative, out of the 280 respondents, 70 (25%) were classified as having severe anxiety. Among those with previous SVD, 41.7% had severe level of anxiety compared to only 21.2% among those with previous LSCS (p=0.008). At post-operative assessment, 27 (9.6%) were classified as having severe anxiety. Overall, there was a significant reduction in the level of anxiety from pre to post operative (p <0.001). The perceived complications from general anaesthesia were death (34.3%), coma (32.1%) and postoperative pain (30%) and the perceived complications from regional anaesthesia were back pain (27.9%) and paralysis (27.9%). Conclusion: Preoperative anxiety in women undergoing caesarean section is high. Preoperative anxiety should be evaluated for further planning of coping strategies to overcome their anxiety and fear

INFLUENCE OF CALCULATION PARAMETERS ON NONLINEAR DYNAMICS MEASURES

Nonlinear analysis methods based on a dynamical systems approach have become more prevalent in recent biomechanics studies. The aim of this study is to identify the range of time delay and embedding dimension values estimated for gait data, and how sensitive Lyapunov exponent and correlation dimension are to the range of these values. A participant walked at 3 km/h and ran at 9 km/h on a treadmill for 2 minutes. Lyaponuv exponent and correlation dimension were calculated based on a combination of the optimal and mean average time delay (TD) and embedding dimension (ED) for both angle and marker data. In the majority of literature, only one ED and TD is considered for LyE estimation, based on an average across data or values suggested in previous papers. However, the results of our study show that every angle or position, has an optimum ED and TD, and the use of these values affects the nonlinear dynamics values in non-trivial ways

Molecular Evolution of the Rice Blast Resistance Gene Pi-ta in Invasive Weedy Rice in the USA

The Pi-ta gene in rice has been effectively used to control rice blast disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae worldwide. Despite a number of studies that reported the Pi-ta gene in domesticated rice and wild species, little is known about how the Pi-ta gene has evolved in US weedy rice, a major weed of rice. To investigate the genome organization of the Pi-ta gene in weedy rice and its relationship to gene flow between cultivated and weedy rice in the US, we analyzed nucleotide sequence variation at the Pi-ta gene and its surrounding 2 Mb region in 156 weedy, domesticated and wild rice relatives. We found that the region at and around the Pi-ta gene shows very low genetic diversity in US weedy rice. The patterns of molecular diversity in weeds are more similar to cultivated rice (indica and aus), which have never been cultivated in the US, rather than the wild rice species, Oryza rufipogon. In addition, the resistant Pi-ta allele (Pi-ta) found in the majority of US weedy rice belongs to the weedy group strawhull awnless (SH), suggesting a single source of origin for Pi-ta. Weeds with Pi-ta were resistant to two M. oryzae races, IC17 and IB49, except for three accessions, suggesting that component(s) required for the Pi-ta mediated resistance may be missing in these accessions. Signatures of flanking sequences of the Pi-ta gene and SSR markers on chromosome 12 suggest that the susceptible pi-ta allele (pi-ta), not Pi-ta, has been introgressed from cultivated to weedy rice by out-crossing