Accountants on the UK boards of directors and the market for accountancy and audit services

Several previous studies have provided empirical evidence concerning the pricing of audit services among different accountancy firms. These studies have examined the form of the auditor fee function by generally performing cross-sectional regressions of audit fees on a set of explanatory variables. This study is the first to investigate whether an "alumni effect" prevails the UK audit market and whether any "alumni effect" influences the pricing of audit services. The "alumni effect" has been defined in this study as the association between the auditor of the company where the director/chartered accountant is currently employed and the accounting firm that the director/chartered accountant originally qualified with, as a chartered accountant. The study has constructed an alumni network by matching the current director of the UK public company with the accountancy firm s/he qualified with as chartered accountant. By doing this, the "alumni effect" variable has been created which is a non-price factor conjectured to translate into price effects. The study provides a theoretical analysis and explanation of the "alumni effect" by combining several theories in microeconomics, organisational behaviour and socialisation of accountants. Using chi-square tests it provides evidence that an "alumni effect" does prevail the UK audit market for publicly traded companies. A classical regression model was constructed for the functional relationship between external audit fee and independent variables measuring the "alumni effect" and audit firm size. Other factors such as client size and complexity, client risk to fail, etc. are controlled for in the cross-sectional models. The findings show that the "alumni effect" leads to higher audit fees when a finance director, chairman or/and chief executive is/are alumni of the incumbent auditor in the large companies segment of the audit market. The findings also indicate that when the audit firm size is partitioned into three classes then a price premium is revealed

Cross-layer design for OFDMA wireless networks with finite queue length based on game theory

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.In next generation wireless networks such as 4G- LTE and WiMax, the demand for high data rates, the scarcity of wireless resources and the time varying channel conditions has led to the adoption of more sophisticated and robust techniques in PHY such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and the corresponding access technique known as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA). Cross-layer schedulers have been developed in order to describe the procedure of resource allocation in OFDMA wireless networks. The resource allocation in OFDMA wireless networks has received great attention in research, by proposing many different ways for frequency diversity exploitation and system’s optimization. Many cross-layer proposals for dynamic resource allocation have been investigated in literature approaching the optimization problem from different viewpoints i.e. maximizing total data rate, minimizing total transmit power, satisfying minimum users’ requirements or providing fairness amongst users. The design of a cross-layer scheduler for OFDMA wireless networks is the topic of this research. The scheduler utilizes game theory in order to make decisions for subcarrier and power allocation to the users with the main concern being to maintain fairness as well as to maximize overall system’s performance. A very well known theorem in cooperative game theory, the Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS), is employed and solved in a close form way, resulting in a Pareto optimal solution. Two different cases are proposed. The first one is the symmetric NBS (S-NBS) where all users have the same weight and therefore all users have the same opportunity for resources and the second one, is the asymmetric NBS (A-NBS), where users have different weights, hence different priorities where the scheduler favours users with higher priorities at expense of lower priority users. As MAC layer is vital for cross-layer, the scheduler is combined with a queuing model based on Markov chain in order to describe more realistically the incoming procedure from the higher layers

Translation textual cultural heritage: The translation of 27 Italian jokes of Domenichi in Greek in an 1812 Paris edition located in Kozani’s library

This article presents a textual cultural heritage case study. In particulate, in this study we describe an 1812 Paris edition produced by the typographer J. M. Eberhart that contains a collection of jokes. The title of the book is “Ιεροκλέους φιλοσόφου αστεία” that means “Ierokles philosopher’s jokes” and contains two parts:a collection of the philosopher’s jokes created by M. from Chios,a 1574 published collection of 27 Italian jokes translated from Italian to Greek in 1812 by M. from Chios.The text was located in Kozani’s public library “Kοβεντάρειος Δημοτική Βιβλιοθήκη της Κοζάνης” from now on Kozani’s public library. We argue that the presence of this small collection of 16th century Italian jokes translation in a Greek library constitutes an element of Italian-greek intercultural influence and relations, many years before the Greek and the Italian independence movements and the foundation of the Greek (1830) and Italian (1861) national States

Trichoderma pers. ex fr. and its efficacy as a biological control agent of basal stem rot of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis jacq.)

This study evaluated the potential of species of Trichoderma as a bio-control agent against Ganoderma boninense Pat., the causal pathogen of 'basal stem rot' of oil palms. Out of 102 Trichoderma colony-forming units (CFU) isolated from oil palm rhizospheres, 39 were T. harzianum Rifai, 38 were T. aureoviride Rifai, 19 were T. longibrachiatum Rifai and 5 were T. virens (Miller, Giddens and A. A. Foster) von Arx. Isolate T43 showed overlapping characteristics between T. hamatum and T. harzianum and was termed 'indeterminable' taxonomically. All isolates were screened for their antagonistic properties against G. boninense (isolate PP28) by dual culture studies, from which isolates T32 (T. harzianum) and T128 (T. virens) were selected as the two most effective antagonists. In vitro non-mycelial studies by normal and bilayer poison agar techniques and of culture filtrates, showed that secondary metabolites produced by the two selected isolates were able to suppress growth of Ganoderma on agar as well. In greenhouse trials using Trichoderma-incorporated mulch, all 5 control plants were killed by Ganoderma at 24 weeks after infection, whereas the survival rates were 60% and 20% when treated with T32 and T128 respectively. These were 80% for T32 and 40% for T128 using clonal plants for the same experiment. Two out of 4 modes showed very good disease control when Trichoderma was used as conidial suspension. As a root coating supplemented by Trichoderma-incorporated mulch at the start of experiment, the survival rate was 90% when treated with T32 and 70% with T128. When applied directly (1 L/plant once every fortnight for 12 weeks), a survival rate of 90% using T32 and 80% using T128 were obtained. In the use of its secondary metabolites, 2 out of 3 modes of application gave very good results. The first was by direct application of secondary metabolites (300 ml/plant at fortnightly intervals for 6 times), which resulted in a survival rate of 70% when treated with T32 and 60% when treated with T128. The second was its application as root coating followed by a single boost of 300 ml of the metabolite given only once at the start of the experiment, which resulted in a survival rate of 70% using T32 and 40% using T128. Trichoderma treatments were found to be effective when applied at the start of experiment but were no longer effective in delayed treatments of 6 to 8 weeks after infection. T32 (T. harzianum) showed better efficacy than T128 (T. virens) for all experiments. Trichoderma treatments which gave good survival rates and which could be commercially exploited were its use in the form of conidial suspension, whether applied indirectly as a root coating or poured directly on to soils of infected plants

Structural aspects of the network of Greek cities: A methodological note

[Δε διατίθεται περίληψη / no abstract available][Δε διατίθεται περίληψη / no abstract available

Pressure treatment of fresh and ponded Heritiera mirror (Roxb.) logs with Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA)

Sundri (Heritiera minor Roxb.) is a hardwood species which exhibits good strength qualities. They have potential for use as electric poles but their short service life posed a problem. This study examined whether treatment with the preservative Chromated Capper Arsenate (CCA) by full cell pressure method at 15.40 - 16.10 kg/cm2 for 8 hours could extend their service life. The samples tested were processed fresh and ponded H. minor logs of approximately 1 m length and 0.25 m diameter. Results showed that that the preservative treatment gave a mean penetration value of 23.84% log radius for fresh specimens and 32.29% for ponded logs, which were short of the standard requirement of 44% log radius penetration. The preservative retention of ponded logs was within the acceptable standard values of 20 kg/cm2of dry oxide basis, but that offresh logs did not meet the standard requirement. Thus, the full pressure treatment can extend the service life of H. minor to a certain extent in which ponded logs gave encouraging response to the preservative treatment