Discovering indigenous peoples: Accounting and the machinery of empire

This study examines the historical usage of accounting as a technology of government within the domain of government-indigenous peoples relations in Canada. Our thesis is that accounting was salient within the chain of circumstances that influenced the discovery/identification of indigenous peoples as a governable population. By the 1830s, accounting techniques had come to occupy a central place in the military machinery of empire. When the cost-cutting and reformist sentiments prevalent in Britain during the early 1800s encouraged the reconsideration of the military costs of empire, accounting techniques were one of the methods used in the attempt to interrogate military expenditures. Partially as a result of these interrogations, indigenous peoples came to be identified as a site for cost cutting by British bureaucrats. However, it was at the level of the colonial administration in the Upper and Lower Canadas that the competing demands of government encouraged indigenous peoples to be viewed as a potential site for government. And it was once this discovery was made that accounting and other techniques were utilized in the attempt to turn indigenous peoples into a governable population. This study contributes to our understanding of accounting by documenting the ways in which techniques such as accounting were central to the military machinery of empire and British imperialism. The study also contributes to our understanding of the historical antecedents that shape current-day usages of accounting as a technology of government within the domain of government-First Nations relations

Funding Mechanisms, Cost Drivers, and the Distribution of Education Funds in Alberta: A Case Study

This article examines the impact that the 1994 funding changes introduced by the Alberta government have had on the Calgary Board of Education (CBE)—the largest urban board in Alberta and one of the largest boards in Canada. Starting from a critical financial analysis perspective we ather, examine, and recalculate key historical financial data pertaining to the CBE, contextualizing these data through the use of supplementary nonfinancial archival materials. Our analysis highlights the impact that funding changes have had on the CBE, but also indirectly tells us something about the impact on other school boards in the province, because the total amount of per-student education funding has remained relatively constant. More generally, the analysis illustrates how funding mechanisms can be and are used to govern from a distance and how seemingly neutral accounting/funding techniques function to distribute resources among different school boards. By drawing attention to these distributional effects, the current study makes visible the power of largely invisible funding mechanisms in the sphere of public education.Cet article traite de l'impact qu'ont eu les modifications de financement, introduites par le gouvernement de l’Alberta en 1994, sur le Calgary Board of Education (CBE), une des commissions scolaires urbaines les plus importantes de la province et une des commissions scolaires les plus importantes au Canada. S'appuyant sur une perspective d'analyse financière critique, les auteurs recueillent, étudient et recalculent les principales données financières qui ont touché le CBE en les contextualisant par l'apport d'informations d'archives de nature non-financière. L'analyse fait ressortir l'impact des modifications de financement sur le CBE et, puisque les subventions globales par élève ont demeuré relativement constantes, elle fournit indirectement des renseignements quant à l'impact sur les autres conseils scolaires de la province. De façon plus générale, l'analyse démontre la façon dont on se sert de mécanismes de financement pour gouverner à distance et explique le fonctionnement des stratégies de financement, en apparence neutres, dans la distribution de ressources parmi différents conseils scolaires. En mettant ces effets de distribution en relief, cette recherche rend évident le pouvoir des mécanismes de financement en grande partie invisibles dans le domaine de l'éducation publique

Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario (ICAO) and the emergence of ethical codes

Starting from the premise that ethical codes fulfil important ideological functions, we document the trajectory of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario\u27s [ICAO] ethical code since their incorporation in 1883. In the analysis that follows, we argue that shifts occurred in how the written ethical code spoke of, and conceptualized, professional ethics . We also propose that these shifts can be read as responses to changing circumstances: the ideological effect being to provide compelling reasons for the maintenance of professional privilege. The provided analysis contributes to our understanding of the role and functioning of ethical codes and highlights the political importance of memory, especially given the ahistorical nature of current day discussions of professional ethics

Visualization of membrane loss during the shrinkage of giant vesicles under electropulsation

We study the effect of permeabilizing electric fields applied to two different types of giant unilamellar vesicles, the first formed from EggPC lipids and the second formed from DOPC lipids. Experiments on vesicles of both lipid types show a decrease in vesicle radius which is interpreted as being due to lipid loss during the permeabilization process. We show that the decrease in size can be qualitatively explained as a loss of lipid area which is proportional to the area of the vesicle which is permeabilized. Three possible mechanisms responsible for lipid loss were directly observed: pore formation, vesicle formation and tubule formation.Comment: Final published versio

Public sector management accounting in emerging economies: A literature review

This paper reviews public sector management accounting (PSMA) research in emerging economies (EEs) and suggests ways forward. A political economy approach to management accounting and development is adopted to analyze the findings of the papers reviewed. Our review covers the past two decades and is based on 69 papers published in international accounting and public administration journals. We find that different development phases give rise to distinctive types of management accounting practice, which often do not live up to expectations owing to local politics and other socio-economic factors. Although the quantity of PSMA research on EEs is growing, there is a need for future research that addresses how management accounting practices in the public sector in EEs are impacted by the interplay between the public management programmes of international donor agencies and the political, economic and cultural contexts of EEs. In order to capture these complex socio-political and socio-cultural contexts, solid theoretical foundations are recommended, relying especially on critical and social theories, as well as on qualitative research such as case studies

ABC transporter architecture and regulatory roles of accessory domains

AbstractWe present an overview of the architecture of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters and dissect the systems in core and accessory domains. The ABC transporter core is formed by the transmembrane domains (TMDs) and the nucleotide binding domains (NBDs) that constitute the actual translocator. The accessory domains include the substrate-binding proteins, that function as high affinity receptors in ABC type uptake systems, and regulatory or catalytic domains that can be fused to either the TMDs or NBDs. The regulatory domains add unique functions to the transporters allowing the systems to act as channel conductance regulators, osmosensors/regulators, and assemble into macromolecular complexes with specific properties

Effect of extracellular polymeric substances on the mechanical properties of Rhodococcus

The mechanical properties of Rhodococcus RC291 were measured using force spectroscopy equipped with a bacterial cell probe. Rhodococcal cells in the late growth stage of development were found to have greater adhesion to a silicon oxide surface than those in the early growth stage. This is because there are more extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that contain nonspecific binding sites available on the cells of late growth stage. It is found that EPS in the late exponential phase are less densely bound but consist of chains able to extend further into their local environment, while the denser EPS at the late stationary phase act more to sheath the cell. Contraction and extension of the EPS could change the density of the binding sites, and therefore affect the magnitude of the adhesion force between the EPS and the silicon oxide surface. By treating rhodococcal EPS as a surface-grafted polyelectrolyte layer and using scaling theory, the interaction between EPS and a solid substrate was modelled for the cell approaching the surface which revealed that EPS possess a large capacity to store charge. Changing the pH of the surrounding medium acts to change the conformation of EPS chains

Enterobactin-Mediated Delivery of β-Lactam Antibiotics Enhances Antibacterial Activity against Pathogenic Escherichia coli

The design, synthesis, and characterization of enterobactin–antibiotic conjugates, hereafter Ent-Amp/Amx, where the β-lactam antibiotics ampicillin (Amp) and amoxicillin (Amx) are linked to a monofunctionalized enterobactin scaffold via a stable poly(ethylene glycol) linker are reported. Under conditions of iron limitation, these siderophore-modified antibiotics provide enhanced antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli strains, including uropathogenic E. coli CFT073 and UTI89, enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157:H7, and enterotoxigenic E. coli O78:H11, compared to the parent β-lactams. Studies with E. coli K-12 derivatives defective in ferric enterobactin transport reveal that the enhanced antibacterial activity observed for this strain requires the outer membrane ferric enterobactin transporter FepA. A remarkable 1000-fold decrease in minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value is observed for uropathogenic E. coli CFT073 relative to Amp/Amx, and time-kill kinetic studies demonstrate that Ent-Amp/Amx kill this strain more rapidly at 10-fold lower concentrations than the parent antibiotics. Moreover, Ent-Amp and Ent-Amx selectively kill E. coli CFT073 co-cultured with other bacterial species such as Staphylococcus aureus, and Ent-Amp exhibits low cytotoxicity against human T84 intestinal cells in both the apo and iron-bound forms. These studies demonstrate that the native enterobactin platform provides a means to effectively deliver antibacterial cargo across the outer membrane permeability barrier of Gram-negative pathogens utilizing enterobactin for iron acquisition.Pacific Southwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious DiseaseKinship Foundation. Searle Scholars ProgramMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemistr

Behind the World Bank’s ringing declarations of “social accountability”: Ghana’s public financial management reform

Accountability has become integral to many African development reforms and permeated the World Bank’s (WB) policy discourses, with “social accountability” as a major plank in its development orthodoxy. Since the 2004 Word Development Report, the Bank’s leadership has been declaring its commitment to social accountability. This paper excavates what lies behind ringing declarations of commitment to social accountability in the context of Ghana’s Public Financial Management Reform Programme. Empirically, it draws on four months’ fieldwork into the accountability practices this programme brought about and an extensive analysis of WB discourses on public sector reforms and social accountability. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucault’s governmentality and the notion of agonistic democracy central to the recent democratic accountability debate in critical accounting circles. The paper argues that WB’s social accountability crusade hinges on the neoliberal concerns of efficiency and fiscal discipline rather than creating a democratic social order, which then questions the very notion of social accountability that WB is propagating, especially its discursive and ideological “short-circuiting” of democratic processes. The paper finds that the dominant and dominating accountability forms that facilitate WB’s financial hegemony are privileged over potentially emancipatory ones. The findings highlight that as the local governments become responsible to international development agencies through the “social accountabilities” that WB is promoting they become less socially and democratically accountable to their own populace – the very place where social accountability should truly rest

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio