The impact of cash flows and accruals on belief asymmetry

We examine the market-relevance of disaggregating earnings into cash flow and accrual components. Unlike the majority of capital markets accounting research to-date, which has restricted analysis to price effects (returns), we focus on belief asymmetry as our measure of market-relevance. Specifically we examine the effect, which the earnings component disclosure has on the level of belief asymmetry in the market. Our measure of belief asymmetry is based on the model developed by Kim and Verrecchia (1991). Cross-sectional ordinary least square regression models are used to analyse the market response to measures of cash flow and accrual surprise

The ART of IAM: The Winning Strategy for the 2006 Competition

In many dynamic open systems, agents have to interact with one another to achieve their goals. Here, agents may be self-interested, and when trusted to perform an action for others, may betray that trust by not performing the actions as required. In addition, due to the size of such systems, agents will often interact with other agents with which they have little or no past experience. This situation has led to the development of a number of trust and reputation models, which aim to facilitate an agent's decision making in the face of uncertainty regarding the behaviour of its peers. However, these multifarious models employ a variety of different representations of trust between agents, and measure performance in many different ways. This has made it hard to adequately evaluate the relative properties of different models, raising the need for a common platform on which to compare competing mechanisms. To this end, the ART Testbed Competition has been proposed, in which agents using different trust models compete against each other to provide services in an open marketplace. In this paper, we present the winning strategy for this competition in 2006, provide an analysis of the factors that led to this success, and discuss lessons learnt from the competition about issues of trust in multiagent systems in general. Our strategy, IAM, is Intelligent (using statistical models for opponent modelling), Abstemious (spending its money parsimoniously based on its trust model) and Moral (providing fair and honest feedback to those that request it)

Greening hotels: does motivating hotel employees promote in-role green performance? The role of culture

In the new global economy, environmentally friendly policies have become a central issue for firms. The increasing attention given to the benefits of those policies has prompted research on the development of environmental management systems that encourage employees to engage in environmental activities. However, there is limited evidence concerning the relationship between employee motivation and employees’ in-role green performance, in addition to the potential impact of culture and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. Through a quantitative study of 301 managerial and non-managerial employees working in three- to five-star hotels, this study makes a major contribution by demonstrating that practices aimed at motivating hotel employees (e.g. green reward and performance management) are significantly linked with employees’ in-role green performance and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. The findings also indicate that the influence of green rewards on employees’ in-role green performance and organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment is stronger when hotels are managed by Western corporations. Conversely, the study showed that the effect of green performance management on these two dependent variables is not moderated by culture. This article supports efforts to widen national cultural perspectives in the development and application of green human resource management

Suppression of backward scattering of Dirac fermions in iron pnictides Ba(Fe1−x_{1-x}Rux_xAs)2_2

We report electronic transport of Dirac cones when Fe is replaced by Ru, which has an isoelectronic electron configuration to Fe, using single crystals of Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Ru$_x$As)$_2$. The electronic transport of parabolic bands is shown to be suppressed by scattering due to the crystal lattice distortion and the impurity effect of Ru, while that of the Dirac cone is not significantly reduced due to the intrinsic character of Dirac cones. It is clearly shown from magnetoresistance and Hall coefficient measurements that the inverse of average mobility, proportional to cyclotron effective mass, develops as the square root of the carrier number (n) of the Dirac cones. This is the unique character of the Dirac cone linear dispersion relationship. Scattering of Ru on the Dirac cones is discussed in terms of the estimated mean free path using experimental parameters.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, To be published in Phys. Rev.

The ATLAS 9.0 GHz Survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: The Faint 9.0 GHz Radio Population

We present a new image of the 9.0 GHz radio emission from the extended Chandra Deep Field South. A total of 181 hours of integration with the Australia Telescope Compact Array has resulted in a 0.276 square degree image with a median sensitivity of $\sim$20 $\mu$Jy/beam rms, for a synthesised beam of 4.0 $\times$ 1.3 arcsec. We present a catalogue of the 9.0 GHz radio sources, identifying 70 source components and 55 individual radio galaxies. Source counts derived from this sample are consistent with those reported in the literature. The observed source counts are also generally consistent with the source counts from simulations of the faint radio population. Using the wealth of multiwavelength data available for this region, we classify the faint 9 GHz population and find that 91% are radio loud AGN, 7% are radio quiet AGN and 2% are star forming galaxies. The 9.0 GHz radio sources were matched to 5.5 and 1.4 GHz sources in the literature and we find a significant fraction of flat or inverted spectrum sources, with 36% of the 9 GHz sources having $\alpha_{5.5GHz}^{9.0GHz}$ $>$ -0.3 (for $S \propto \nu^\alpha$). This flat or inverted population is not well reproduced by current simulations of radio source populations.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Damage assessment of concrete gravity dams using vibration characteristics

Vibration-based Structural Health Monitoring (VBSHM) has emerged as a feasible technique in long-term monitoring, structural performance evaluation and damage assessment of civil structures. As an important as-pect of the complete VBSHM system, over the last three decades, many vibration-based damage detection methods have been developed for buildings and bridges. However, the application of these techniques to con-crete gravity (CG) dams has been limited. In the present study, damage indices based on changes in modal flexibility and modal strain energy are suitably enhanced to be applicable for plane-strain structures. They are then used to investigate the feasibility of detecting and locating damage in a finite element CG dam model without noise effects. Results show that the enhanced damage indices can be promising for locating damage in the upstream part of CG dams by using only the first lateral mode of vibration. In addition, it is necessary to monitor both horizontal and vertical mode shape components and use these for structural damage diagnoses in CG dams

Average Cross-Sectional Area of DebriSat Fragments Using Volumetrically Constructed 3D Representations

Debris fragments from the hypervelocity impact testing of DebriSat are being collected and characterized for use in updating existing satellite breakup models. One of the key parameters utilized in these models is the ballistic coefficient of the fragment which is directly related to its areatomass ratio. However, since the attitude of fragments varies during their orbital lifetime, it is customary to use the average crosssectional area in the calculation of the areatomass ratio. The average crosssectional area is defined as the average of the projected surface areas perpendicular to the direction of motion and has been shown to be equal to onefourth of the total surface area of a convex object. Unfortunately, numerous fragments obtained from the DebriSat experiment show significant concavity (i.e., shadowing) and thus we have explored alternate methods for computing the average crosssectional area of the fragments. An imaging system based on the volumetric reconstruction of a 3D object from multiple 2D photographs of the object was developed for use in determining the size characteristic (i.e., characteristics length) of the DebriSat fragments. For each fragment, the imaging system generates N number of images from varied azimuth and elevation angles and processes them using a spacecarving algorithm to construct a 3D point cloud of the fragment. This paper describes two approaches for calculating the average crosssectional area of debris fragments based on the 3D imager. Approach A utilizes the constructed 3D object to generate equally distributed crosssectional area projections and then averages them to determine the average crosssectional area. Approach B utilizes a weighted average of the area of the 2D photographs to directly compute the average crosssectional area. A comparison of the accuracy and computational needs of each approach is described as well as preliminary results of an analysis to determine the "optimal" number of images needed for the 3D imager to accurately measure the average cross sectional area of objects with known dimensions

The link between SCUBA and Spitzer: cold galaxies at z lt 1

We show that the far-IR properties of distant Luminous and UltraLuminous InfraRed Galaxies (LIRGs and ULIRGs, respectively) are on average divergent from analogous sources in the local Universe. Our analysis is based on Spitzer Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) and Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) data of LIR > 1010 L⊙, 70 μm selected objects in the 0.1 1 SubMillimetre Galaxies (SMGs) discovered in blank-field submillimetre surveys. The Herschel Space Observatory is well placed to fully characterize the nature of these objects, as its coverage extends over a major part of the far-IR/sub-mm SED for a wide redshift range

DebriSat - A Planned Laboratory-Based Satellite Impact Experiment for Breakup Fragment Characterization

DebriSat is a planned laboratory ]based satellite hypervelocity impact experiment. The goal of the project is to characterize the orbital debris that would be generated by a hypervelocity collision involving a modern satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO). The DebriSat project will update and expand upon the information obtained in the 1992 Satellite Orbital Debris Characterization Impact Test (SOCIT), which characterized the breakup of a 1960 's US Navy Transit satellite. There are three phases to this project: the design and fabrication of an engineering model representing a modern, 50-cm/50-kg class LEO satellite known as DebriSat; conduction of a laboratory-based hypervelocity impact to catastrophically break up the satellite; and characterization of the properties of breakup fragments down to 2 mm in size. The data obtained, including fragment size, area ]to ]mass ratio, density, shape, material composition, optical properties, and radar cross ]section distributions, will be used to supplement the DoD fs and NASA fs satellite breakup models to better describe the breakup outcome of a modern satellite. Updated breakup models will improve mission planning, environmental models, and event response. The DebriSat project is sponsored by the Air Force fs Space and Missile Systems Center and the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office. The design and fabrication of DebriSat is led by University of Florida with subject matter experts f support from The Aerospace Corporation. The major milestones of the project include the complete fabrication of DebriSat by September 2013, the hypervelocity impact of DebriSat at the Air Force fs Arnold Engineering Development Complex in early 2014, and fragment characterization and data analyses in late 2014