Impact of ASX corporate governance guidelines on sustainability reporting

© 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: This paper aims to examine the impact of the Australian Securities Exchange Corporate Governance recommendations on the breadth (amount of items covered) of (environmental and social) sustainability reporting by the firms in the Top 100, around the change from G3.1 to G4 disclosure regimes. Design/methodology/approach: This paper undertakes comparisons of means and regression models to investigate the changes between disclosure scores of 98 listed entities from the 2013 G3.1 to the 2015 G4 disclosure regimes. Findings: This paper finds that average disclosure levels did not change. Nonetheless, disclosure practices did vary by entity size and performance. Analysis of 2015 disclosures contingent on 2013 disclosure practice indicates that disclosure changes are consistent with a pattern of mean reversion. Practical implications: Evidence that low disclosers increased disclosure and high disclosers reduced disclosers is consistent with the idea that sustainability disclosure is not so much driven by any ethical considerations, but rather by a desire to not be a disclosure outlier. Reliance on voluntary disclosure to achieve a socially desired level of disclosure is unlikely to bear fruit. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the literature on sustainability by examining firm responses to change in disclosure regimes, and concluding that size and peer relativities drive the disclosure process

Predicting the Failure of Developmental Gold Mining Projects

This paper investigates firm-level financial and non-financial information and their association with project failure for a sample of pre-production gold development firms. Pre-revenue generating 'single project' mining companies are chosen, since project failure is synonymous with company failure for these firms. The setting is interesting due to the high information asymmetry and limitations of the GAAP-based Altman Z-score in this context. A definition of project failure is applied and both financial and non-financial predictors are compared. Failure is driven by whether the deposit is open pit or underground, and whether the cash cost of production is disclosed at feasibility completion. © 2011 CPA Australia

Plastic pollution as a novel reservoir for the environmental survival of the drug resistant fungal pathogen Candida auris

The WHO recently classified Candida auris as a fungal pathogen of "critical concern". Evidence suggests that C. auris emerged from the natural environment, yet the ability of this pathogenic yeast to survive in the natural environment is still poorly understood. The aim of this study, therefore, was to quantify the persistence of C. auris in simulated environmental matrices and explore the role of plastic pollution for facilitating survival and potential transfer of C. auris. Multi-drug resistant strains of C. auris persisted for over 30 days in river water or seawater, either planktonically, or in biofilms colonising high-density polyethylene (HDPE) or glass. C. auris could be transferred from plastic beads onto simulated beach sand, particularly when the sand was wet. Importantly, all C. auris cells recovered from plastics retained their pathogenicity; therefore, plastic pollution could play a significant role in the widescale environmental dissemination of this recently emerged pathogen.</p

Progression of Patient Cohorting in Response to COVID-19 at the Jefferson Methodist Emergency Department

While COVID-19 and it’s various complications are a source of a substantial number of Emergency Department (ED) visits, many patients still arrive to the ED for non-COVID-19 indications. Due to pre-existing construction which was halted by the pandemic, external space for a tent configuration was unavailable. In effort to decrease patient, staff and nurse exposure to COVID, a system of cohorting was created to assure uninterrupted service in a manner as safe as possible for all involved. Given the uncertainty of patient volumes and the potential for a high burden of disease similar to our colleagues in New York and New Jersey, this system was created in stages to dynamically flex to the needs of the department

A Novel Time Lag Method to Measure the Permeation of Vapor-Gas Mixtures

A novel time lag method was proposed to study the permeation of gas mixtures or vapor-gas mixtures. This technology, which is based on the difference in the boiling points of the components, can simultaneously measure the mass transport properties of each component. The permeation of a binary mixture of H2O(v)/CO2 was measured on a composite polymer membrane to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology. The method is low-cost and convenient for the future study of the permeation/separation of such gas mixtures as natural gas, flue gas, etc

Your Governance or Mine?

In response to criticism directed at the resource sector's corporate governance, this paper examines the corporate governance and underlying firm characteristics of resource development stage entities (DSEs) relative to a size-matched sample of non-resource firms. We find that resource DSEs have different governance characteristics in the measures of board independence, chair/CEO duality and CEO cash bonuses. Furthermore, there are differences in the information environment measures of analyst following, debt levels, stock market return and stock turnover. Considering we document substantial differences in underlying firm characteristics, corporate governance differences are likely appropriate to the mining industry and should not be uniformly labelled as 'bad'. Our results suggest that media rankings based on corporate governance scores may not accurately portray the resource sector. Overall, our results are of interest to Australian investors and regulators and contribute to a broader understanding of contextually contingent corporate governance. © 2011 CPA Australia

Effects of Steam and Alkali Treatment on Chemical Composition and in vitro Digestibility of Oil Palm Trunks

Oil palm trunks (OPT)were sawn into planks,reduced to flakes and processed for use in feeding trials to bulls. The optimum size of flakes was found to be 2cm with three different treatment for drying , streaming and alkali treatments.Chemical analysis and in vitro dry matter digestibility were determined on materials. Steam treatment decreased the neutral detergent fiber ( NDF) but did not cause considerable change in the acid detergent fiber ( ADF)content. The acid detergent lignin (ADL ) content was increased . The optimum dry matter digestibilities at steam pressures of 7. 5, 10.0, 12.5 were obtained at steaming times of 60 , 20. 10 and 5min respectively. Treatment with sodium hydroxide also decreased the NDF content.The ADF content was only lowered at concentrations of NaOH greater than 6%. The ADL content was increased due to removal of carbohydrates.Disruption of the lignin-polysaccharide bonds led to a rise in the in vitro dry matter digestibility .The optimum digestibility was obtained by treatment with 9% NaOH 14 days

Implementing a centralised pharmacovigilance service in a non-commercial setting in the United Kingdom

The implementation of a pharmacovigilance service compliant with the legal and regulatory responsibilities of clinical trial sponsors presents particular challenges for sponsors in a non-commercial setting. In this paper we examine these challenges in detail. We identify and discuss the key steps in the development of a pharmacovigilance service within a public health service and university setting in the United Kingdom. We describe how we have established a central Pharmacovigilance Office with dedicated staff and resources within our organisation. This office is supported by an electronic pharmacovigilance reporting infrastructure developed to facilitate the receipt and processing of safety information, the onward reporting in compliance with legislation and the provision of sponsor institution oversight of clinical trial participant safety. An education and training programme has also been set up to ensure that all relevant staff in the organisation are fully aware of the pharmacovigilance service and are appropriately trained in its use. We discuss possible alternatives to this approach and why we consider our solution to be the most appropriate to ensure that a non-commercial sponsor organisation and investigators are operating in a fully compliant way