Predicting Audit Opinion by a new Metaheuristic Algorithm: Water Cycle Algorithm

An auditor evaluates if financial statements which the firms issue in public, present fairly and are free from material misstatement. The audit report is a written letter containing independent verification of the quality of financial statements used for making economic decisions. Hence, the issuance of such a report can lead to the transmission news and information about the firm and to enhance the degree of confidence in the financial statements. This study predicts audit opinion of the firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2018-2020 by a new metaheuristic algorithm named Water Cycle Algorithm (WCA) and compares its results with one of the most popular methods called logistic regression (LG). 24 variables were extracted from the literature and used for this prediction. 4 evaluating criteria were used to compare the predictions of two methods. According to findings, the superiority of the criteria in the WCA was confirmed in comparison to LG. Since WCA was more appropriate, users of financial reports can use it to predict the type of audit opinion in the unaudited interim financial statements, and also, auditors can use it while evaluating and accepting clients and achieving an acceptable level of audit risk, as a quality control tool

Bank lending, macroeconomic conditions and financial uncertainty: Evidence from Malaysia

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the interrelations between bank lending, macroeconomic conditions and financial uncertainty for an emerging economy, Malaysia. Adopting time series techniques of cointegration, causality and vector autoregressions (VARs), we arrive at the following main results. We note long run positive relations between real output and both real bank credits and real stock prices. However, with slow adjustment of real output in responses to credit expansion or stock price increase and weak exogeneity of the latter two variables, both credits and stock prices can be persistently higher than their fundamental values. The phenomenon can be detrimental since it heightens market uncertainty. Our results suggest that heightened market uncertainty is negatively related to output in the long run and, on the basis of dynamics analysis, it is likely to depress real output, real credit and real stock prices. At the same time, we note significant dynamic impacts of interest rate shocks on other variables. Taken together, these results have important implications for macroeconomic performance and stability for the case of Malaysia

Bank lending, macroeconomic conditions and financial uncertainty: Evidence from Malaysia

Abstract In this paper, we examine the interrelations between bank lending, macroeconomic conditions and financial uncertainty for an emerging economy, Malaysia. Adopting time series techniques of cointegration, causality and vector autoregressions (VARs), we arrive at the following main results. We note long run positive relations between real output and both real bank credits and real stock prices. However, with slow adjustment of real output in responses to credit expansion or stock price increase and weak exogeneity of the latter two variables, both credits and stock prices can be persistently higher than their fundamental values. The phenomenon can be detrimental since it heightens market uncertainty. Our results suggest that heightened market uncertainty is negatively related to output in the long run and, on the basis of dynamics analysis, it is likely to depress real output, real credit and real stock prices. At the same time, we note significant dynamic impacts of interest rate shocks on other variables. Taken together, these results have important implications for macroeconomic performance and stability for the case of Malaysia

Institutional Ownership and Investment Efficiency: Evidence from Iran

Investment efficiency shows how well a company invests its assets. Although institutional shareholders play undeniable roles in companies, it is not clear whether they are able to monitor managers and make investment decisions or not. This study gives answers to stakeholders, ad-dresses concerns about the effect of the owners on investment efficiency, and aims to add to the literature on emerging markets by investigating the relationship in Iran, a different environment from developed ones. Based on monitoring power, the shareholders are divided into two types: active and passive ones. Investment problems are classified into two types: over- and un-der-investment problems. The sample consists of 101 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange between 2010 and 2016. Some regression models are used. The results illustrated that institutional owners have a positive effect on investment efficiency and decrease both over- and un-der-investment problems and so, the efficient monitoring school is approved. Additionally, active ones are positively correlated with investment efficiency and decrease both investment ineffi-ciency problems. Institutional ownership is the cause of investment efficiency, not the reverse. Based on findings, in emerging markets like Iran’s market, investors are recommended to give notice to the level of active ownership in firms; ownership structure is a good sign of efficiency

Representational capacity of a set of independent neurons

The capacity with which a system of independent neuron-like units represents a given set of stimuli is studied by calculating the mutual information between the stimuli and the neural responses. Both discrete noiseless and continuous noisy neurons are analyzed. In both cases, the information grows monotonically with the number of neurons considered. Under the assumption that neurons are independent, the mutual information rises linearly from zero, and approaches exponentially its maximum value. We find the dependence of the initial slope on the number of stimuli and on the sparseness of the representation.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, Phys. Rev. E, vol 63, 11910 - 11924 (2000

The effect of high altitude on endothelial and vascular dysfunction markers in preeclamptic patients

Placental hypoxia, a major component of the pathophysiology of preeclampsia, is associated with various maternal vascular and endothelial dysfunctions. The higher incidence of preeclampsia at high altitude remains incompletely explained. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of high altitude on some endothelial and vascular dysfunction markers in normal and preeclamptic pregnancies. Eighty pregnant women (Paras 2–4) were enrolled in this study, which included four groups (each n = 20): normal pregnancies at low altitude (NL), normal pregnancies at high altitude (NH), preeclamptic pregnancies at low altitude (PL), and preeclamptic pregnancies at high altitude (PH). In normal pregnancies at high altitude serum ET-1, plasma TXA2, and serum TNF-α levels increased significantly with a significant reduction in plasma PGI2 (66.81 ± 7.36, 122.86 ± 13.37, 102.23 ± 13.31, 191.57 ± 19.68, respectively) compared with the NL group (48.92 ± 4.58, 89.03 ± 10.67, 69.86 ± 7.97, 238.01 ± 24.55, respectively). In preeclampsia at low altitude serum ET-1, plasma TXA2, and serum TNF-α levels increased significantly with a significant reduction in plasma PGI2 (88.39 ± 9.54, 162.73 ± 15.92, 142.39 ± 15.37, 149.155 ± 15.66, respectively) compared with both NL and NH groups. High altitude significantly augmented these changes in preeclamptic patients (117.75 ± 12.96, 211.01 ± 22.69, 196.86 ± 17.64, 111.92 ± 10.74) compared with PL, NH and NL groups. In conclusion hypoxia at high altitude aggravated the disturbances in the levels of ET-1, TXA2, PGI2 and TNF-α associated with preeclampsia. This may contribute to the higher risk of preeclampsia at high altitude

Variability and anatomical specificity of the orbitofrontothalamic fibers of passage in the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS): precision care for patient-specific tractography-guided targeting of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical procedure that can reduce symptoms in medically intractable obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Conceptually, DBS of the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) region targets reciprocal excitatory connections between the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and thalamus, decreasing abnormal reverberant activity within the OFC-caudate-pallidal-thalamic circuit. In this study, we investigated these connections using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) on human connectome datasets of twenty-nine healthy young-adult volunteers with two-tensor unscented Kalman filter based tractography. We studied the morphology of the lateral and medial orbitofrontothalamic connections and estimated their topographic variability within the VC/VS region. Our results showed that the morphology of the individual orbitofrontothalamic fibers of passage in the VC/VS region is complex and inter-individual variability in their topography is high. We applied this method to an example OCD patient case who underwent DBS surgery, formulating an initial proof of concept for a tractography-guided patient-specific approach in DBS for medically intractable OCD. This may improve on current surgical practice, which involves implanting all patients at identical stereotactic coordinates within the VC/VS region

Contributions of the PPC to online control of visually guided reaching movements assessed with fMRI-Guided TMS

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an important role in controlling voluntary movements by continuously integrating sensory information about body state and the environment. We tested which subregions of the PPC contribute to the processing of target- and body-related visual information while reaching for an object, using a reaching paradigm with 2 types of visual perturbation: displacement of the visual target and displacement of the visual feedback about the hand position. Initially, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to localize putative target areas involved in online corrections of movements in response to perturbations. The causal contribution of these areas to online correction was tested in subsequent neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiments. Robust TMS effects occurred at distinct anatomical sites along the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) and the anterior part of the supramarginal gyrus for both perturbations. TMS over neighboring sites did not affect online control. Our results support the hypothesis that the aIPS is more generally involved in visually guided control of movements, independent of body effectors and nature of the visual information. Furthermore, they suggest that the human network of PPC subregions controlling goal-directed visuomotor processes extends more inferiorly than previously thought. Our results also point toward a good spatial specificity of the TMS effects. © 2010 The Author