Economic Consequences of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Adoption: Evidence from a Developing Country

Drawing on extant literature in accounting and financial economics, this study sought to analyze the economic consequences of the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by Nigeria through an examination of the major obstacles, benefits and attitudes towards its adoption. As an exploratory study, we drew a sample from the population of Nigerian academics and practitioners who are familiar with the phenomenon of interest. We examined three research questions on the perceptions of Nigerian academics and practitioners about IFRS adoption in Nigeria. The hypotheses were tested using frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis (K-W) and Chi-square tests. Our findings identified (i) lack of education, understanding and experience by preparers of financial reports with the use of IFRS; and (ii) lack of coverage of IFRS in financial accounting/auditing textbooks as the major obstacles towards its adoption in Nigeria. The results further revealed that: (1) effective IFRS adoption would be valuable to preparers, users, auditors, analysts, and standard setters; and (2) a proper plan to convert all Nigerian companies to IFRS would require training for management, auditors, and investors, along with the pipeline incorporation of IFRS education into accounting curriculum. The policy implication of the study’s findings is the urgent need to integrate IFRS into the accounting curriculum in Nigeria’s higher education system. It also calls for financial regulators and professional accountancy bodies to update their IFRS knowledge in order to maintain their professional competence.   Keywords: Accounting Standards, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Economic Consequences, Developing Country, Politics, Lobbying, Nigeria.

Measurement and simulation of anisotropic magnetoresistance in single GaAs/MnAs core/shell nanowires

We report four probe measurements of the low field magnetoresistance in single core/shell GaAs/MnAs nanowires synthesized by molecular beam epitaxy, demonstrating clear signatures of anisotropic magnetoresistance that track the field-dependent magnetization. A comparison with micromagnetic simulations reveals that the principal characteristics of the magnetoresistance data can be unambiguously attributed to the nanowire segments with a zinc blende GaAs core. The direct correlation between magnetoresistance, magnetization and crystal structure provides a powerful means of characterizing individual hybrid ferromagnet/semiconductor nanostructures.Comment: Submitted to Applied Physics Letters; some typos corrected and a defective figure replace

Lambda's, V's and optimal cloning with stimulated emission

We show that optimal universal cloning of the polarization state of photons can be achieved via stimulated emission in three-level systems, both of the Lambda and the V type. We establish the equivalence of our systems with coupled harmonic oscillators, which permits us to analyze the structure of the cloning transformations realized. These transformations are shown to be equivalent to the optimal cloning transformations for qubits discovered by Buzek and Hillery, and Gisin and Massar. The down-conversion cloner discovered previously by some of the authors is obtained as a limiting case. We demonstrate an interesting equivalence between systems of Lambda atoms and systems of pairwise entangled V atoms. Finally we discuss the physical differences between our photon cloners and the qubit cloners considered previously and prove that the bounds on the fidelity of the clones derived for qubits also apply in our situation.Comment: 10 page

Use of ERTS-1 data in identification, classification, and mapping of salt-affected soils in California

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Rapidity Gap Events in Squark Pair Production at the LHC

The exchange of electroweak gauginos in the $t-$ or $u-$channel allows squark pair production at hadron colliders without color exchange between the squarks. This can give rise to events where little or no energy is deposited in the detector between the squark decay products. We discuss the potential for detection of such rapidity gap events at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Our numerical analysis is divided into two parts. First, we evaluate in a simplified framework the rapidity gap signal at the parton level. The second part covers an analysis with full event simulation using PYTHIA as well as Herwig++, but without detector simulation. We analyze the transverse energy deposited between the jets from squark decay, as well as the probability of finding a third jet in between the two hardest jets. For the mSUGRA benchmark point SPS1a we find statistically significant evidence for a color singlet exchange contribution. The systematical differences between current versions of PYTHIA and HERWIG++ are larger than the physical effect from color singlet exchange; however, these systematic differences could be reduced by tuning both Monte Carlo generators on normal QCD di--jet data.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure

Casimir Effects in Renormalizable Quantum Field Theories

We review the framework we and our collaborators have developed for the study of one-loop quantum corrections to extended field configurations in renormalizable quantum field theories. We work in the continuum, transforming the standard Casimir sum over modes into a sum over bound states and an integral over scattering states weighted by the density of states. We express the density of states in terms of phase shifts, allowing us to extract divergences by identifying Born approximations to the phase shifts with low order Feynman diagrams. Once isolated in Feynman diagrams, the divergences are canceled against standard counterterms. Thus regulated, the Casimir sum is highly convergent and amenable to numerical computation. Our methods have numerous applications to the theory of solitons, membranes, and quantum field theories in strong external fields or subject to boundary conditions.Comment: 27 pp., 11 EPS figures, LaTeX using ijmpa1.sty; email correspondence to R.L. Jaffe ; based on talks presented by the authors at the 5th workshop `QFTEX', Leipzig, September 200

Promoting the achievement of looked after children and young people across Cardiff

As of March 2017, there were 5,955 children and young people in care in Wales. Across the Central South Consortium (Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynonn Taf and Vale of Glamorgan) there were 2,170 children and young people looked after. The majority of these children are in care as a result of birth families being unable to provide a level of care that meets their emotional and well-being needs. Children and young people who are in or have experienced care remain one of the lowest performing groups in terms of educational outcomes. In 2016, eleven per cent of young people in Wales achieved A* to C grade at GCSE. Care leavers can experience poorer employment and health outcomes after leaving school compared to their peers; for example, 45% of young people who were looked after were not engaged in education, training or employment (NEET) or not in touch with their local authority on their 19th birthday in 2015. This compares with around 4.9% of all other children who leave school at the end of Year 13. However, the education and achievement of children and young people in care is currently the focus of renewed policy, research and practice attention across Wales. The Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014 provides the legal framework for improving the well-being of people who need care and support. A national strategic approach to improving outcomes for children looked after is underway with a focus on promoting and improving collaborative working across agencies, identifying and sharing good practice and making improvements where they are needed. The purpose of this report is to share practice in selected in Cardiff schools that is contributing to improved outcomes and school experiences for children and young people in care

Monotonic properties of the shift and penetration factors

We study derivatives of the shift and penetration factors of collision theory with respect to energy, angular momentum, and charge. Definitive results for the signs of these derivatives are found for the repulsive Coulomb case. In particular, we find that the derivative of the shift factor with respect to energy is positive for the repulsive Coulomb case, a long anticipated but heretofore unproven result. These results are closely connected to the properties of the sum of squares of the regular and irregular Coulomb functions; we also present investigations of this quantity.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Domino tilings and the six-vertex model at its free fermion point

At the free-fermion point, the six-vertex model with domain wall boundary conditions (DWBC) can be related to the Aztec diamond, a domino tiling problem. We study the mapping on the level of complete statistics for general domains and boundary conditions. This is obtained by associating to both models a set of non-intersecting lines in the Lindstroem-Gessel-Viennot (LGV) scheme. One of the consequence for DWBC is that the boundaries of the ordered phases are described by the Airy process in the thermodynamic limit.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure