Ethical and compliance-competence evaluation: a key element of sound corporate governance

Motivated by the ongoing post-Enron refocusing on corporate governance and the shift by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK to promoting compliance- competence within the financial services sector, this paper demonstrates how template analysis can be used as a tool for evaluating compliance-competence. Focusing on the ethical dimension of compliance-competence, we illustrate how this can be subjectively appraised. We propose that this evaluation technique could be utilised as a starting point in informing senior management of corporate governance issues and be used to monitor and demonstrate key compliance and ethical aspects of an institution to external stakeholders and regulators

Spatial Heterogeneity in the Abundance and Fecundity of Arctic Mosquitoes

The abundance of mosquitoes is strongly influenced by biotic and abiotic factors that act on the immature (aquatic) and adult (terrestrial) life stages. Rapid changes in land use and climate, which impact aquatic and terrestrial mosquito habitat, necessitate studying the ecological mechanisms, and their interplay with the changing environment, that affect mosquito abundance. These data are crucial for anticipating how environmental change will impact their roles as pests, disease vectors, and in food webs. We studied a population of Arctic mosquitoes (Aedes nigripes, Diptera: Culicidae) in western Greenland, a region experiencing rapid environmental change, to quantify spatial variation in adult abundance and reproduction. Using sweep nets, we collected about sevenfold more mosquitoes within the town of Kangerlussuaq and within a low‐elevation tundra valley compared to three other tundra locations. Dissections of adult female mosquitoes revealed that only 17% were gravid overall, with a range of 7–43% among sites. If gravid, mosquitoes matured an average of 60 eggs per individual—more in larger females. We found no indication of autogenous egg development. Analyses using our field data indicated that spatial variation in adult fecundity and survival of immatures could each account for a 10‐fold range in the per capita growth of mosquito populations. The availability of vertebrate hosts and aquatic habitat is changing in many parts of the Arctic and can be expected to influence Arctic mosquito abundance. In the Arctic, and elsewhere, life‐history data from natural populations of mosquitoes will significantly aid in understanding controls on the abundance of these globally ubiquitous insects

Cranial Neuralgias in Children and Adolescents A review of the literature

Cranial neuralgias are a well-established cause of headache-related morbidity in the adult population. These disorders are poorly studied in general due to their relative rarity, particularly in children and adolescents, and they are likely underdiagnosed in these populations. Recognizing these disorders and differentiating them from more common headache disorders, such as migraine, is important, as secondary disease is common. This review will cover the basic epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of trigeminal, occipital, glossopharyngeal and other, less common, cranial neuralgias. We have reviewed pediatric case reports of these conditions. For trigeminal neuralgia, the most common of these disorders, we have compiled the clinical features and treatment response of previous reports

Forecasting the Probability of Large Rates of Change of the Geomagnetic Field in the UK: Timescales, Horizons and Thresholds

Large Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) pose a risk to ground based infrastructure such as power networks. Large GICs may be induced when the rate of change of the ground magnetic field is significantly elevated. We assess the ability of three different machine learning model architectures to process the time history of the incoming solar wind and provide a probabilistic forecast as to whether the rate of change of the ground magnetic field will exceed specific high thresholds at a location in the UK. The three models tested represent feed forward, convolutional and recurrent neural networks. We find all three models are reliable and skillful, with Brier skill scores, ROC scores and PR scores of approximately 0.25, 0.95 and 0.45, respectively. When evaluated during two example magnetospheric storms we find that all scores increase significantly, indicating that the models work better during active intervals. The models perform excellently through the majority of the storms, however they do not fully capture the ground response around the initial sudden commencements. We attribute this to the use of propagated solar wind data not allowing the models notice to forecast impulsive phenomenon. Increasing the volume of solar wind data provided to the models does not produce appreciable increases in model performance, possibly due to the fixed model structures and limited training data. However, increasing the horizon of the forecast from 30 minutes to 3 hours increases the performance of the models, presumably as the models need not be as precise about timing

Life Beyond the Solar System: Space Weather and Its Impact on Habitable Worlds

The search of life in the Universe is a fundamental problem of astrobiology and a major priority for NASA. A key area of major progress since the NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015 (NAS15) has been a shift from the exoplanet discovery phase to a phase of characterization and modeling of the physics and chemistry of exoplanetary atmospheres, and the development of observational strategies for the search for life in the Universe by combining expertise from four NASA science disciplines including heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary science and Earth science. The NASA Nexus for Exoplanetary System Science (NExSS) has provided an efficient environment for such interdisciplinary studies. Solar flares, coronal mass ejections and solar energetic particles produce disturbances in interplanetary space collectively referred to as space weather, which interacts with the Earth upper atmosphere and causes dramatic impact on space and ground-based technological systems. Exoplanets within close in habitable zones around M dwarfs and other active stars are exposed to extreme ionizing radiation fluxes, thus making exoplanetary space weather (ESW) effects a crucial factor of habitability. In this paper, we describe the recent developments and provide recommendations in this interdisciplinary effort with the focus on the impacts of ESW on habitability, and the prospects for future progress in searching for signs of life in the Universe as the outcome of the NExSS workshop held in Nov 29 - Dec 2, 2016, New Orleans, LA. This is one of five Life Beyond the Solar System white papers submitted by NExSS to the National Academy of Sciences in support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy for the Search for Life in the Universe.Comment: 5 pages, the white paper was submitted to the National Academy of Sciences in support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy for the Search for Life in the Univers

Estimating the frequency of extremely energetic solar events, based on solar, stellar, lunar, and terrestrial records

The most powerful explosions on the Sun [...] drive the most severe space-weather storms. Proxy records of flare energies based on SEPs in principle may offer the longest time base to study infrequent large events. We conclude that one suggested proxy, nitrate concentrations in polar ice cores, does not map reliably to SEP events. Concentrations of select radionuclides measured in natural archives may prove useful in extending the time interval of direct observations up to ten millennia, but as their calibration to solar flare fluences depends on multiple poorly known properties and processes, these proxies cannot presently be used to help determine the flare energy frequency distribution. Being thus limited to the use of direct flare observations, we evaluate the probabilities of large-energy solar explosions by combining solar flare observations with an ensemble of stellar flare observations. We conclude that solar flare energies form a relatively smooth distribution from small events to large flares, while flares on magnetically-active, young Sun-like stars have energies and frequencies markedly in excess of strong solar flares, even after an empirical scaling with the mean activity level of these stars. In order to empirically quantify the frequency of uncommonly large solar flares extensive surveys of stars of near-solar age need to be obtained, such as is feasible with the Kepler satellite. Because the likelihood of flares larger than approximately X30 remains empirically unconstrained, we present indirect arguments, based on records of sunspots and on statistical arguments, that solar flares in the past four centuries have likely not substantially exceeded the level of the largest flares observed in the space era, and that there is at most about a 10% chance of a flare larger than about X30 in the next 30 years.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures (in press as of 2012/06/18); Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), 201