Cost information for corporate social responsibility performance

The main objective of this study is to develop an accounting and reporting system for the costs of corporate social responsibility performance. Secondary objectives of the study are: (1) to review the current issues of corporate social responsibility to be measured and reported; (2) to provide some guide-lines to help a company's management in selecting the socially relevant activities; (3) to investigate the rationale for corporate social involvement; (4) to indicate the legal minimum requirements in the major areas of corporate social performance; (5) to determine the concept of accounting for corporate social performance and the appropriate method for measuring and reporting the costs of such performance; and (6) to ascertain the current state of corporate social reporting practice in the United Kingdom. To achieve these objectives, the study begins by discussing the social activities to be covered in corporate social reporting. The rationale for initiating corporate social activities is also discussed and some guide-lines are offered. Moreover, the social actions which should be taken by all British companies, as they are legally required, are examined. Thereafter, the current development of accounting for corporate social responsibility is reviewed and it is concluded that this sort of accounting is still in its infancy. The reasons for which accountants should be concerned with corporate social responsibility accounting are then presented. The concept of accounting for corporate social performance is discussed and the scope of the concept determined. Several approaches for measuring and reporting corporate social performance are examined and it is indicated that the cost approach is the proper method to be employed in this study. Then, the cost concepts of accounting for corporate social performance are discussed from both accounting and economic points of view, and a method for measuring the social costs of a company's economic activities is presented. After reviewing the literature, an attempt is made to develop a framework for accounting and reporting of corporate social performance costs. The identification and classification of such costs are presented and the accounting treatment of these costs is discussed. Separate disclosures of such costs in the traditional financial statements are suggested and illustrated in this study. Finally, a survey of the current state of corporate' social reporting practice in the United Kingdom is given. This survey involved the analysis of corporate social responsibility disclosures in the annual reports and accounts of 207 companies extracted from the top 265 of the 1000 largest U. K. industrial companies. The results of the survey and examples of corporate social responsibility disclosures are presented. The detailed analysis is provided in an Appendix

Monthly means of daily solar irradiation over Egypt estimated from satellite database and various empirical formulae

International audienceMonthly means of daily solar irradiation retrieved from the HelioClim-3 version 3 database (HC3v3), elaborated from Meteosat satellite images, were tested at 14 Egyptian stations along with the model of Yang, Koike and Ye (YKY) and 10 empirical models (EMs) for the period 2004 to 2009. YKY and EMs were fitted to measurements from the period 1980 to 1989. Overall, HC3v3 exhibits a bias of 0.4 MJ m 2 (i.e. 2% of the mean of the observations similar to the best EMs). The root mean square error (RMSE) was 1.8 MJ m 2 (9%) for HC3v3 which is lower than for most EMs. Coefficients of determination (R2) were greater than 0.9 for most models. The regression line between estimates and observations exhibits a slope of 1.01 and an intercept of 0.09 MJ m 2 for HC3v3, reflecting a better performance than other models. HC3v3 shows remarkable constant performance as a function of irradiation or cloudiness compared with EMs and YKY. In general, HC3v3 is preferred to EMs when estimating monthly means of daily solar irradiation in Egypt. It is suggested that more effort is needed towards the validation and promotion of HC3v3 before researchers and practitioners use it rather than EMs

Teleportation two-qubit state by using two different protocols

In this contribution, two versions of teleportation protocol are considered, based on either using a single or two copies of entangled atom-field state, respectively. It is shown that, by using the first version, the fidelity of the teleported state as well as the amount of quantum Fisher information, that contains in the teleported state, are much better than using the second version. In general, one may increases the fidelity of teleported information by increasing the mean photon number and decreasing the detuning parameter. The fidelity of teleporting classical information is much better than teleporting quantum information. Moreover, teleportating classical information that initially encoded in an exited states is much better than that encodes in the ground states. However, the teleported Fisher information that initially encoded in a ground state is much larger than those initially encoded in entangled states

Structure-property relationships for polycarboxylate ether superplasticizers by means of RAFT polymerization

Hypothesis: Polycarboxylate ether (PCE) comb-copolymers are widely used as water reducing agents in the concrete industry while maintaining a high fluidity via the polymer adsorption to the cement particles. PCE copolymers with a broad range of structures are well established by Free radical polymerization, however, understanding the structure-property relationship is still complex due to the high polydispersity of PCE copolymers prepared by conventional polymerization. The influence of different structural parameters using well-defined polymeric structures is yet to be explored. Experiments: In this study, two different types of comb-like random copolymers, namely polycarboxylate ether (PCE; poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate/methacrylic acid)) and polysulfonate ether (PSE; poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate/sodium 4-styrenesulfonate)), were synthesized by RAFT polymerization to enable the synthesis of polymers with controlled features. The effect of charge types and side chain lengths on the adsorption, rheology, and dispersing ability of cement pastes have been studied. Findings: RAFT polymerization could be used to prepare PCE random copolymers with good control over the polymer molecular weight and narrow polydispersity (D < 1.3). Results revealed that the zeta-potential values depend on both the charge type and side chain lengths. Copolymers containing SO3- exhibited higher absolute negative zeta-potential values than COO- while PCE copolymers with shorter side chains developed higher absolute negative zeta-potential values. On the other hand, the adsorption study demonstrated that decreasing the side chain lengths lead to higher adsorption of PCE copolymers while Copolymers with COO- groups were found to be adsorbed more than SO3- counterparts. These results are further confirmed with the rheological studies and it is found that the shorter the side chain, the lower the yield stress and the higher the dispersion of cement pastes but to a limited effect. Additionally, the charge types have a major influence on the performance of superplasticizers. This study could make further progress in establishing superplasticizers with controlled architectures for better performance

Relationship between Hidrogenionic Potential (pH) of Protein-based Baits and Attraction of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann)

Hidrogenionic potential (pH) of the baits plays a fundamental role in attracting fruit flies. So, the purposes of this study were to study the effect of pH-level on the ability of protein-based baits to attract Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) under field conditions. Three concentrations of Buminal (2.5, 5 and 10%) in addition to three concentrations of ammonium acetate, ammonium carbonate, di-ammonium phosphate and acetic acid (1, 2 and 3%) added to Buminal 5% were tested by using the modified Nadel traps in navel orange and mandarin orchards. The obtained data showed that the highest effective treatment in attracting C. capitata adults in navel orange and mandarin orchards was that of Buminal + 3% of ammonium acetate, where, pH-levels ranged between 6.32 and 6.89. Buminal + acetic acid when used at pH-levels ranged between 3.73 and 4.43 were less attractive to C. capitata. All of the tested treatments obviously attracted females more than males. Statistically, C. capitata adults specifically were females affected by pH-level more than concentration percentage. C. capitata preferred baits which had pH-levels ranged between 5.5 and 8.5 and the highest attractive treatments were occurred between 6.32 and 8.29

A Global Convergence Result with Applications to Periodic Solutions

AbstractWe establish a global convergence result and then apply it to show that under appropriate hypotheses every positive solution of the difference equation xn+1=∑i=0mAixn−2i,n=0,1,…,converges to a period two solution