Independent Inventors and Innovation: An Empirical Study

Independent inventors have generally been overlooked in research on innovation. This study helps fill the knowledge gap. A survey of independent inventors in the USA showed that their inventions tended towards hardware/tool, household products, industrial/commercial products, novelty items and toys/games/hobbies. Thirty-nine per cent of the respondents generated sales from their inventions and approximately 20% profited from them. Inventors who established a company to commercialize their inventions were most likely to achieve sales. However, inventors who licensed their inventions were more likely to achieve higher sales levels than those who commercialized them only via their own company, or by selling their inventions outright

Integrating Tax Law into the Business Law Classroom: A Corporate ‘Cradle to Grave’ Case Study

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing

Student Ratings and Evaluation in Undergraduate Business Law Courses: A Modest Correlative Study

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre

The Role of the Auditor in Managing Public Disclosures: Audit Opinion Modifications for Potentially Misleading Information in Documents Containing Audited Financial Statements

We investigate empirically the incidence of auditor modification of audit reports for misleading information included in other documents containing audited financial statements. Professional standards (specifically, SAS No. 8) require modification of the auditor\u27s report for annual report information considered to be materially inconsistent in content or in manner of disclosure with information contained in the financial statements. Exhaustive data base key word searches for phrases that would be associated with such report modifications did not reveal a single instance in which other information accompanying audited financial statements was considered materially misleading since the implementation of SAS No. 8 (1975). Despite this finding, numerous examples from recent research identify what appear to be potentially misleading disclosures in annual reports. Using examples from these studies, we surveyed CPAs and financial statement users and found that that four of the five issues presented were seen as misleading. More authoritative guidance and/or more awareness on the part of auditors may be in order

Multiplatform Analysis of 12 Cancer Types Reveals Molecular Classification within and across Tissues of Origin

Recent genomic analyses of pathologically-defined tumor types identify “within-a-tissue” disease subtypes. However, the extent to which genomic signatures are shared across tissues is still unclear. We performed an integrative analysis using five genome-wide platforms and one proteomic platform on 3,527 specimens from 12 cancer types, revealing a unified classification into 11 major subtypes. Five subtypes were nearly identical to their tissue-of-origin counterparts, but several distinct cancer types were found to converge into common subtypes. Lung squamous, head & neck, and a subset of bladder cancers coalesced into one subtype typified by TP53 alterations, TP63 amplifications, and high expression of immune and proliferation pathway genes. Of note, bladder cancers split into three pan-cancer subtypes. The multi-platform classification, while correlated with tissue-of-origin, provides independent information for predicting clinical outcomes. All datasets are available for data-mining from a unified resource to support further biological discoveries and insights into novel therapeutic strategies