Selecting The Appropriate Artificial Neural Network To Minimize Audit Costs When Assessing The Financial Viability Of Audit Clients

As part of an audit engagement, auditors must assess the financial viability of the audit client (SAS Nos. 58, 59, 96).  If the auditor thinks that the client is financially healthy, no action is required. However, if the auditor believes that the audit client will fail within a year from the financial statement date, then the auditor must include explanatory language stating that belief as part of the auditor’s report

Using Artificial Neural Networks To Examine Semiotic Theories Of Accounting Accruals

Although the primary purpose of accounting is to communicate information, few studies have investigated the communicative nature of accounting.  This study uses semiotics, a theory of signs and signals, to examine the purpose and usefulness of accounting accruals with a popular tool in forecasting--artificial neural networks.  Two primary theories are proposed by this study.  The Theory of the Functions of Accounting Accruals categories accounting accruals by their basic functions and states that two general types of accounting accruals exist: syntactic accruals and semantic accruals.  Syntactic accounting accruals reflect incomplete transactions under a system of cash receipts and cash disbursements.  Semantic accounting accruals present messages in a different format than their counterparts in a system of cash receipts and cash disbursements.  The Theory of the Pragmatic Information of Accounting Accruals states that accounting accruals contain pragmatic information (value) because of their functions.  The pragmatic information (value) of accounting accruals is examined by comparing the ability of accrual accounting data to forecast future cash flows compared to that of cash-flow accounting data.  Forecasts are made using backpropagation neural networks.  The results indicate that both syntactic  and semantic accounting accruals contain pragmatic information (have value when forecasting future cash flows).  The study provides evidence of the pragmatic information (value) of annual accounting accruals.  However, no evidence was found in support of the pragmatic information (value) of quarterly accounting accruals.  This result implies that annual accrual accounting data is a better predictor of future cash flows than cash-flow data while quarterly accrual accounting data is not

Negative Earnings In International Equity Valuation

The openness of international capital markets has encouraged investors to look beyond their own national boundary for investment opportunities.  Foreign direct investment flow has increased in recent years around the world in all major and emerging markets.  International equity valuation, as a result, has gained much attention from practitioners and academic researchers alike.  Motivated by evidence that the price-earnings relation is not homogeneous across profit and loss firms and by the growing body of international accounting literature that documents and compares the value relevance of earnings and book value across national boundaries, this study illustrates the potential impact of negative earnings (loss firms) on comparing the relative value relevance of earnings and book value across national boundaries.   Our results show that removal of negative earnings observations (1) changes the total value relevance of earnings and book value combined (2) changes the relative value relevance of earnings and book value within each country in our study, and (3) changes the relative incremental value relevance of earnings (book value) between the two countries in the study

Technology in Accounting Classrooms: An Assessment Of The Current State

As technology evolution continue to reduce the costs associated with hardware and software for classroom instructions, the instructional environment and teaching pedagogy of business faculty in many disciplines also have evolved over time.  While technology integration in accounting education has been a constant focal point of discussion in recent years, the extant and the usage pattern of various classroom technologies in accounting instructions is unclear. This paper provides an assessment of technology usage in today’s accounting classroom

Genome editing reveals a role for OCT4 in human embryogenesis.

Despite their fundamental biological and clinical importance, the molecular mechanisms that regulate the first cell fate decisions in the human embryo are not well understood. Here we use CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome editing to investigate the function of the pluripotency transcription factor OCT4 during human embryogenesis. We identified an efficient OCT4-targeting guide RNA using an inducible human embryonic stem cell-based system and microinjection of mouse zygotes. Using these refined methods, we efficiently and specifically targeted the gene encoding OCT4 (POU5F1) in diploid human zygotes and found that blastocyst development was compromised. Transcriptomics analysis revealed that, in POU5F1-null cells, gene expression was downregulated not only for extra-embryonic trophectoderm genes, such as CDX2, but also for regulators of the pluripotent epiblast, including NANOG. By contrast, Pou5f1-null mouse embryos maintained the expression of orthologous genes, and blastocyst development was established, but maintenance was compromised. We conclude that CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome editing is a powerful method for investigating gene function in the context of human development.DW was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre Programme. NK was supported by the University of Oxford Clarendon Fund. AB was supported by a British Heart Foundation PhD Studentship (FS/11/77/39327). LV was supported by core grant funding from the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council (PSAG028). J-SK was supported by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS-R021-D1). Work in the KKN and JMAT labs was supported by the Francis Crick Institute which receives its core funding from Cancer Research UK, the UK Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust (FC001120 and FC001193)

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead