Why do employees commit fraud? Theory, measurement, and validation

Previous research on corporate governance has extensively explored the motives of corporate fraud. However, this research has paid little attention to employees, the real executors of fraud, resulting in the psychological and behavioral decision-making process of employees who commit fraud in enterprises becoming a black box that has not yet been opened. Based on the theory of planned behavior, our study integrates the existing research findings on driving factors of employee fraud and anti-fraud practical experience, extracts the key factors of employee fraud motive, and develops a multidimensional scale of employee fraud motive. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) generates three subscales, comprising 14 items, measuring attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control of employee fraud motive. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supports the reliability, discriminant validity and convergent validity of the new scale. The multiple regression results show that the score of employee fraud motive is positively correlated with the amount of employee fraud occurrence, indicating that the predictive validity of the scale holds. Overall, the scale developed in our study displays good reliability and validity, and is worth spreading

Online synchronous inspection and system optimization of flexible food packaging bags by using machine vision and sensing technique

Flexible food packaging in the market is increasingly favored, and its quality is essential and indispensable for safety and convenience.  However, quality inspection still stays in the manual stage, or partially manual inspection remains, in production, leading low efficiency, lack and even false inspection, hardly meeting the requirements of the modern output.  This paper proposes and optimizes the design of an automatic detection system with intelligence for flexible food packaging bag, which can effectively be adopted to check the quality of packaging trademark patterns, fillers, and sealing quality.  The inspection system runs with two-stage structure, machine vision, pressure sensing and synchronization to improve efficiency and ensure the normal production beat. Simplex Method is adopted to determine the best synchronous speeds online to achieve the best expectation. Comparison has been made between the manual inspection and our automatic operation, the sample of 10000 was statistically analyzed and results have shown that two workers were saved and the correctness rate of inspection raised up to 999.8‰

Comparative study of MCe0.75Zr0.25Oy (M = Cu, Mn, Fe) catalysts for selective reduction of NO by CO: Activity and reaction pathways

Basic oxygen furnace steelmaking leads to the production of CO-rich off-gas. When CO and NO are combined in off-gas, selective catalytic reduction by CO (CO-SCR) effectively achieves the synergistic removal of both pollutants. In this paper, CuCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y, MnCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y, and FeCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y catalysts are prepared and evaluated for their CO-SCR activity, and the results show that the reaction system needs to be anaerobic; thus, the CO-SCR reaction can be dominant. The T 90 values of CuCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y and FeCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y are 200 °C and 223 °C, respectively. The activities of these two catalysts are higher than that of MnCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y (T 90 = 375 °C). Linear nitrate and bridged bidentate nitrate are the main intermediate species involved in NO conversion on the catalyst surface, and bidentate CO 3 2− coordination is the main intermediate species involved in CO conversion on the catalyst surface. CuCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y has high lattice oxygen mobility and is more likely to react with NO and CO. In the presence of oxygen, most CO is oxidized by O 2, which increases continuously to 100%, 100%, and 98% for CuCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y, FeCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y, and MnCe 0.75Zr 0.25O y, respectively; additionally, CO is oxidized by O 2, and the CO-SCR reaction cannot be carried out

Progress in upscaling Miscanthus biomass production for the European bio-economy with seed-based hybrids

Funded by UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Grant Number: LK0863 BBSRC strategic programme Grant on Energy Grasses & Bio-refining. Grant Number: BBS/E/W/10963A01 OPTIMISC. Grant Number: FP7-289159 WATBIO. Grant Number: FP7-311929 Innovate UK/BBSRC ‘MUST’. Grant Number: BB/N016149/1Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Breeding progress and preparedness for mass‐scale deployment of perennial lignocellulosic biomass crops switchgrass, miscanthus, willow and poplar

UK: The UK‐led miscanthus research and breeding was mainly supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the BBSRC CSP strategic funding grant BB/CSP1730/1, Innovate UK/BBSRC “MUST” BB/N016149/1, CERES Inc. and Terravesta Ltd. through the GIANT‐LINK project (LK0863). Genomic selection and genomewide association study activities were supported by BBSRC grant BB/K01711X/1, the BBSRC strategic programme grant on Energy Grasses & Bio‐refining BBS/E/W/10963A01. The UK‐led willow R&D work reported here was supported by BBSRC (BBS/E/C/00005199, BBS/E/C/00005201, BB/G016216/1, BB/E006833/1, BB/G00580X/1 and BBS/E/C/000I0410), Defra (NF0424) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) (B/W6/00599/00/00). IT: The Brain Gain Program (Rientro dei cervelli) of the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research supports Antoine Harfouche. US: Contributions by Gerald Tuskan to this manuscript were supported by the Center for Bioenergy Innovation, a US Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science, under contract number DE‐AC05‐00OR22725. Willow breeding efforts at Cornell University have been supported by grants from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Contributions by the University of Illinois were supported primarily by the DOE Office of Science; Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER); grant nos. DE‐SC0006634, DE‐SC0012379 and DE‐SC0018420 (Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation); and the Energy Biosciences Institute. EU: We would like to further acknowledge contributions from the EU projects “OPTIMISC” FP7‐289159 on miscanthus and “WATBIO” FP7‐311929 on poplar and miscanthus as well as “GRACE” H2020‐EU.3.2.6. Bio‐based Industries Joint Technology Initiative (BBI‐JTI) Project ID 745012 on miscanthus.Peer reviewedPostprintPublisher PD

Supporter or Supervisor? The Role of Chief Financial Officers in Corporate Innovation

Like the chief executive officer (CEO), the chief financial officer (CFO) is an important corporate player. However, compared to the role of CEOs, research on the factors influencing corporate innovation has paid very little attention to the role of CFOs. Based on the perspective of role theory, we measure CFO role performance by organizational identification to explore the role of CFOs in corporate innovation. Employing the availability of CFO organizational identification data from a survey of listed firms in China, we find that: (1) CFO organizational identification is negatively associated with innovation output in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and positively associated with innovation output in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs); (2) corporate misconduct experience positively moderates the relationship between CFO organizational identification and innovation in SOEs; (3) CFO financial industry experience positively moderates the relationship between CFO organizational identification and innovation in non-SOEs. Our results show that CFOs play the supervisor role in innovation in SOEs and the supporter role in innovation in non-SOEs. Our research provides theoretical and practical references for companies to sustainably drive innovation

Research on Performance and Safety of Composite Inorganic Phase-Change Materials (NaNO3/SiO2/C) under Low-temperature Cold Shock

This article studies the cold shock resistance and safety performance of NaNO3/SiO2/C composite inorganic phase-change thermal storage materials at extremely low temperatures. A low-temperature cold shock test system is built, and the composite inorganic phase-change thermal storage materials of different raw material particle sizes are carried out through the static cold shock and dynamic cold shock at - 40, - 60, - 80 and - 196 degrees C. The changes in quality, volume, surface morphology phase and thermal properties of the phase-change thermal storage materials are respectively analyzed by means of characterization methods such as scale, vernier caliper, DSC, SEM, and XRD. The results show that the thermal performance of phase-change thermal storage materials with different particle sizes is only 1.97-8.89%, especially under cryogenic shock at - 196 degrees C. The cold shock resistance is better with the increase in particle size. The physical properties, chemical properties and thermal storage capacity of the material under impact are basically stable, and it has good cold shock resistance. The cold shock of the two methods does not affect the thermal storage function of the material and does not cause thermal energy waste, and the safety performance is better