Some Accounting and Tax Aspects of LDC Debt Provisioning

SUMMARY Mitchell Hogg's article takes a detailed look at tax and provisioning requirements from the point of view of an accountant and bank auditor. RESUME De nouvelles directives pour l'approvisionnement L'article de Mitchell Hogg examine en détail les demandes de taxes et d'approvisionnement, vu par un comptable et expert?comptable. RESUMEN Nuevos cambios en previsión Este artículo proporciona una revisión pormenorizada de los requerimientos tributarios y de aprovisionamiento desde el punto de vista del contador y auditor bancario

Transplant recipients’ motivational orientation towards sport participation and physical activity enjoyment at the 2019 World Transplant Games in Newcastle-Gateshead UK

This study adopted a descriptive correlational design to identify organ transplant athletes’ motivational behaviour and level of physical activity enjoyment during the 2019 World Transplant Games. The causal relationship between motivational behaviour and enjoyment was also determined. Data was collected through questionnaires during the event that tapped participants’ demographic information and responses to the Task and Ego Orientation Questionnaire, Sport Motivation Scale-2 and Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale. Descriptive statistics revealed that transplant athletes (n = 119; Mage = 52.92 years, SD = 13.51) find sport mostly enjoyable whilst holding a strong task-oriented approach towards sport participation with high approximations of intrinsic, integrated and identified motivation. Male and female athletes also shared a relatively similar motivational profile with male athletes reporting significantly higher levels of sport enjoyment compared to their female counterparts. Inferential statistics further revealed significant associations between most dimensions of motivation and level of enjoyment, of which gender and certain aspects of motivation were exposed as significant predictors of athletes’ reported enjoyment in sport. It is advised that autonomous regulatory behaviours be garnered in transplant recipients looking to start/continue sport participation as it proved to be prime correlates and determinants of enjoyment in sport

An Affine-Invariant Sampler for Exoplanet Fitting and Discovery in Radial Velocity Data

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proves to be powerful for Bayesian inference and in particular for exoplanet radial velocity fitting because MCMC provides more statistical information and makes better use of data than common approaches like chi-square fitting. However, the non-linear density functions encountered in these problems can make MCMC time-consuming. In this paper, we apply an ensemble sampler respecting affine invariance to orbital parameter extraction from radial velocity data. This new sampler has only one free parameter, and it does not require much tuning for good performance, which is important for automatization. The autocorrelation time of this sampler is approximately the same for all parameters and far smaller than Metropolis-Hastings, which means it requires many fewer function calls to produce the same number of independent samples. The affine-invariant sampler speeds up MCMC by hundreds of times compared with Metropolis-Hastings in the same computing situation. This novel sampler would be ideal for projects involving large datasets such as statistical investigations of planet distribution. The biggest obstacle to ensemble samplers is the existence of multiple local optima; we present a clustering technique to deal with local optima by clustering based on the likelihood of the walkers in the ensemble. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the sampler on real radial velocity data.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap

I never realised that I don’t breathe correctly’: understanding experiences of postural tachycardia syndrome and the challenges of altered breathing for intervention development

Background: I aimed to develop an Ocean Breathing intervention for Postural Tachycardia Syndrome [PoTS], a debilitating condition characterised by an increase in standing heart rate (>30bpm). Few interventions exist for supporting patients with their day-to-day symptom management. Methods: A mixed-methods intervention development process. A scoping review of the PoTS literature was undertaken to examine the breadth of published works dedicated to diagnosis, symptomology and treatment. Narrative analysis of 20 online video diagnostic stories from people with PoTS was then undertaken to examine their diagnostic and symptom experiences. Finally, interviews across three key stakeholder groups– people with PoTS (n=15), healthcare professionals experienced in PoTS treatment (n=7), and yoga instructors (n=3)– were held to collate feedback on the Ocean Breathing intervention, as analysed through NPT. Findings: Review findings demonstrated that a paucity of qualitative literature within this research field had led to limited exploration of people with PoTS’ day-to-day challenges with PoTS symptoms. The YouTube work identified that storytellers communicated their understandings of their PoTS to others by drawing upon socio-medical ontologies-surrounding the autonomic nervous system- to legitimise the nature of their symptom experiences. Stakeholder feedback showed how alterations in patients’ regular breathing patterns presented difficulties for identifying an agreed, ‘right’ intervention format. Notably, understandings of how to make sense of the potential therapeutic effects of Ocean Breathing on PoTS symptoms varied within and across the stakeholders, as they drew on alternate, differing ontological frameworks. Conclusion: This thesis provides critical insights into people living with PoTS’ communication and sense-making. It highlights how the PoTS symptom discussion between individuals with PoTS and medical practitioners- through a shared autonomic framework- can enable patients’ illness experiences to be validated across healthcare contexts. Through the intervention development work, the perceived complexity of the Ocean Breath was a barrier to the diverse, patterns of breathing exhibited by people with PoTS. The further the efforts to untangle others’ Ocean Breath perceptions, the more questions were left about my own understandings of the intervention I was developing. To accommodate these issues and the multiple ways breathwork could impact people with PoTS, a ‘toolkit-like’ strategy with a range of breath-related practices should be explored

A Behavior-Based Approach To Securing Email Systems

The Malicious Email Tracking (MET) system, reported in a prior publication, is a behavior-based security system for email services. The Email Mining Toolkit (EMT) presented in this paper is an offline email archive data mining analysis system that is designed to assist computing models of malicious email behavior for deployment in an online MET system. EMT includes a variety of behavior models for email attachments, user accounts and groups of accounts. Each model computed is used to detect anomalous and errant email behaviors. We report on the set of features implemented in the current version of EMT, and describe tests of the system and our plans for extensions to the set of models

Nonlinear Hamiltonian dynamics of Lagrangian transport and mixing in the ocean

Methods of dynamical system's theory are used for numerical study of transport and mixing of passive particles (water masses, temperature, salinity, pollutants, etc.) in simple kinematic ocean models composed with the main Eulerian coherent structures in a randomly fluctuating ocean -- a jet-like current and an eddy. Advection of passive tracers in a periodically-driven flow consisting of a background stream and an eddy (the model inspired by the phenomenon of topographic eddies over mountains in the ocean and atmosphere) is analyzed as an example of chaotic particle's scattering and transport. A numerical analysis reveals a nonattracting chaotic invariant set $\Lambda$ that determines scattering and trapping of particles from the incoming flow. It is shown that both the trapping time for particles in the mixing region and the number of times their trajectories wind around the vortex have hierarchical fractal structure as functions of the initial particle's coordinates. Scattering functions are singular on a Cantor set of initial conditions, and this property should manifest itself by strong fluctuations of quantities measured in experiments. The Lagrangian structures in our numerical experiments are shown to be similar to those found in a recent laboratory dye experiment at Woods Hole. Transport and mixing of passive particles is studied in the kinematic model inspired by the interaction of a jet current (like the Gulf Stream or the Kuroshio) with an eddy in a noisy environment. We demonstrate a non-trivial phenomenon of noise-induced clustering of passive particles and propose a method to find such clusters in numerical experiments. These clusters are patches of advected particles which can move together in a random velocity field for comparatively long time

Tricritical Points in Random Combinatorics: the (2+p)-SAT case

The (2+p)-Satisfiability (SAT) problem interpolates between different classes of complexity theory and is believed to be of basic interest in understanding the onset of typical case complexity in random combinatorics. In this paper, a tricritical point in the phase diagram of the random $2+p$-SAT problem is analytically computed using the replica approach and found to lie in the range $2/5 \le p_0 \le 0.416$. These bounds on $p_0$ are in agreement with previous numerical simulations and rigorous results.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, RevTeX, to appear in J.Phys.

Phase coexistence and finite-size scaling in random combinatorial problems

We study an exactly solvable version of the famous random Boolean satisfiability problem, the so called random XOR-SAT problem. Rare events are shown to affect the combinatorial ``phase diagram'' leading to a coexistence of solvable and unsolvable instances of the combinatorial problem in a certain region of the parameters characterizing the model. Such instances differ by a non-extensive quantity in the ground state energy of the associated diluted spin-glass model. We also show that the critical exponent $\nu$, controlling the size of the critical window where the probability of having solutions vanishes, depends on the model parameters, shedding light on the link between random hyper-graph topology and universality classes. In the case of random satisfiability, a similar behavior was conjectured to be connected to the onset of computational intractability.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, to appear in J. Phys. A. v2: link to the XOR-SAT probelm adde

ISCEV guidelines for calibration and verification of stimuli and recording instruments (2023 update)

This document developed by the International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision (ISCEV) provides guidance for calibration and verification of stimulus and recording systems specific to clinical electrophysiology of vision. This guideline provides additional information for those using ISCEV Standards and Extended protocols and supersedes earlier Guidelines. The ISCEV guidelines for calibration and verification of stimuli and recording instruments (2023 update) were approved by the ISCEV Board of Directors 01, March 2023

Readmission and overstay after day case nasal surgery

BACKGROUND: A readmission is classified as a patient necessitating readmission to hospital due to a post-operative complication following discharge. An overstay however, is classified as a patient having to stay longer than the planned duration in hospital (not having been discharged in the interim) due to a post-operative complication. This study aims to investigate patient-related factors that predispose to readmission or overstay and thus make recommendations to decrease the likelihood of readmission or overstay. METHOD: In this retrospective study 312 'day-case nasal procedures', were selected from a total cohort of 4274 ENT patients over a 17-month period. This sub-group was investigated for a range of demographic factors including, age, gender and ethnicity with regards to their relationship to readmission rates and overstay frequency and duration. RESULTS: The rates were 2.88% and 9.62% for readmission and overstay respectively. The total number of days spent in hospital as a result of readmission was 27. Epistaxis was the leading cause for readmission/overstay (28.9%) followed by high levels of post-operative pain preventing them from being discharged (23.7%). All procedures in this study had readmission rates that were below those recommended in the guidelines set by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Women overstayed significantly longer (t = 1.65, p < 0.05) than men. CONCLUSIONS: Suitable candidates for day-case ENT surgery highlighted by this study include healthy individuals between the ages of 20 and 60. Operating in the morning would increase the immediate post-operative recovery time, which may reduce the numbers of patients who complain of high levels of pain at the time of discharge. Procedures such as septorhinoplasty being performed routinely in the ambulatory setting require additional research into more effective methods of pain control. Standards need to be improved so that the causes of overstay and readmission are clearly identifiable in patient records