Settlement-date Accounting for Equity Share Options – Conceptual Validity and Numerical Effects

This paper shows that settlement-date accounting for equity share options can be seen as an accounting method which implements a shareholder focused residually rewarded partners’ equity view. This equity view represents a simple, natural extension of the shareholder proprietary view. It implicates an equity and income sharing model for accounting which is characterized by specification of both shareholders’ and non-shareholders’ parts of total equity and income. When using this equity and income sharing model, the remeasurements of equity share option obligations made by settlement-date accounting are fully conceptually valid. They represent measurements of one partner group’s share of total equity with effect for another group’s share of total equity and income: the shareholders’ part. Partially, this equity and income sharing model is already the basis for existing accounting standards. It is shown that an intriguing implication of the equity and income sharing model is the fact that treasury shares can hedge present shareholders’ share price risk from the obligation to holders of equity share options. A special hedge accounting construct is needed to account for this hedge effect, and the construct of this model is shown. Numerical simulations are used to illustrate the long run expense effects for shareholders from equity share options by settlement-date accounting both when the expense effects are unhedged and when they are hedged with treasury share holdings. The results demonstrate that the expenses resulting from settlement-date accounting for equity share option awards are significantly higher on average than the expenses resulting from grant-date accounting. And they show that the cost of equity, the share price volatility and the lifetime of the equity share options are important determinants for the size of the differences in total expenses, which in a long run perspective is to be expected from the use of these two alternative accounting models for equity share options. The simulation results demonstrate that hedging with treasury share holdings is very effective to stabilize expenses resulting from options granted to employeesNo keywords;

DATFAP: A Database of Primers and Homology Alignments for Transcription Factors from 13 Plant Species

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many well-known transcription factor databases do not provide PCR primers for the sequences. Often, transcription factors from the same family have a very high sequence similarity, and so specific primer sets that only amplify their targets and none of the other family members may be hard to design manually. Also, it may often be useful to have one general primer set targeting the slightly different homologs of some transcription factor from several species.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>DATFAP is a free, web-based, very user-friendly browsing tool based on a new database of more than 55,000 EST sequences from 13 plant species, classified as transcription factors. Further, the database offers primers designed for RealTime-PCR as well as homology alignments and phylogenies for the sequences. The provided PCR primers are designed so that they have a perfect sequence alignment to their target only and not to any other sequences in the database from the same species. Via a direct link to a helper tool, the user may also design a general primer set targeting all sequences in any hand-picked group of homologs. A sophisticated search facility enables the user to find exactly the relevant sequences which subsequently may be easily downloaded. All homologies among the more than one billion possible pairwise sequence comparisons of DATFAP have been charted in advance. Thus, the user may quickly display the alignment of any sequence and all its database homologs.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Because of the comprehensive homology analysis, it is very easy to find related transcription factors from different species, i.e. to navigate the network of inter-related transcription factors from the different species, and to find specific or general primers for them. DATFAP is found at the project homepage.</p

HIV Case Reporting In Cambodia - Monitoring The Elimination Of HIV

Cambodia is preparing a scale-up of the Continuum of Care for people living with HIV with the goal of eliminating new HIV infections by 2020. To measure if Cambodia is reaching its goal it is necessary to obtain high-quality strategic information. This case study looked into how HIV Case Reporting, as one component of strategic information, facilitates the monitoring of the epidemic. Doing so, it was the ambition to provide inspiration for countries with concentrated and low-level epidemics. The purpose of the study was to explore challenges and opportunities of using case reporting in HIV surveillance, and to analyze the linkages between case reporting and healthcare access. This was done by comparing the Cambodian reporting system with global recommendations. National reporting tools were reviewed and later supplemented by expert’s inputs from workshops, published and un-published literature and questions addressed to key management personnel. It was concluded that Cambodian HIV case reporting largely implements globally recommended practices, however a major constraint is that individual-level data is not reported. This limits the utilization of data for monitoring purposes. Future developments should go hand in hand with stigma-reducing efforts as this could improve healthcare access, which is a prerequisite for valid case reporting

I Show You How I Like You: Human-Robot Interaction through Emotional Expression and Tactile Stimulation

We report work on a LEGO robot capable of displaying several emotional expressions in response to physical contact. Our motivation has been to explore believable emotional exchanges to achieve plausible interaction with a simple robot. We have worked toward this goal in two ways. First, acknowledging the importance of physical manipulation in children's interactions, interaction with the robot is through tactile stimulation; the various kinds of stimulation that can elicit the robot's emotions are grounded in a model of emotion activation based on different stimulation patterns.Second, emotional states need to be clearly conveyed. We have drawn inspiration from theories of human basic emotions with associated universal facial expressions, which we have implemented in a caricaturized face. We have conducted experiments on both children and adults to assess the recognizability of these expressions

Primique: automatic design of specific PCR primers for each sequence in a family

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In many contexts, researchers need specific primers for all sequences in a family such that each primer set amplifies only its target sequence and none of the others, e.g. to detect which transcription factor out of a family of very similar proteins that is present in a sample, or to design diagnostic assays for the identification of pathogen strains.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This paper presents primique, a new graphical, user-friendly, fast, web-based tool which solves the problem: It designs specific primers for each sequence in an uploaded set. Further, a secondary set of sequences <it>not </it>to be amplified by any primer pair may be uploaded. Primers with high sequence similarity to non-target sequences are selected against. Lastly, the suggested primers may be checked against the National Center for Biotechnology Information databases for possible mis-priming.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Results are presented in interactive tables, and various primer properties are listed and displayed graphically. Any close match alignments can be displayed. Given 30 sequences, the running time of primique is about 20 seconds.</p> <p>primique can be reached via this web address: <url>http://cgi-www.daimi.au.dk/cgi-chili/primique/front.py</url></p

IAS 39 og konverterbar gæld

No abstractNo; keywords

Truly Subquadratic Exact Distance Oracles with Constant Query Time for Planar Graphs

We present a truly subquadratic size distance oracle for reporting, in constant time, the exact shortest-path distance between any pair of vertices of an undirected, unweighted planar graph G. For any ? > 0, our distance oracle requires O(n^{5/3+?}) space and is capable of answering shortest-path distance queries exactly for any pair of vertices of G in worst-case time O(log (1/?)). Previously no truly sub-quadratic size distance oracles with constant query time for answering exact shortest paths distance queries existed