Contrasting the accounting difficulties of small to medium entities (SMEs) with large organisations

This study aims to explore the current accounting difficulties of small to medium entities (SMEs) by contrasting them with large corporations according to the changes in financial standards with the introduction of the tier system in New Zealand. Also, the development of GAAP and IFRS adoptions relating to SMEs were examined from previous literature for a better understanding of the financial reporting system in New Zealand. This research used a qualitative approach in order to collect data, primarily through interviews, for an in-depth knowledge and experience from accountants in the field. Data was based on a convenience approach and analysed to produce results and recommendations. The study found that accountants in SMEs feel that updated financial requirements are more simplified than before, and more user friendly compared with large entities. However, it also provides insight into what skills and specific areas needs to be developed for accountants’ future directions. The research recommendation is that in the future conducting a wide range of interviews will be required to add different elements to this research and provide more clarification for distinguishing SMEs

Theory-enhanced automation of the digital publics' relationship assessments

The current dissertation aims to develop a Machine Learning (ML) method for automating the assessment of digital public relations by incorporating the Organization-Public Relationship Assessment (OPRA) developed from the public relations theory. The study targets customers/consumers and employees. For methods, Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, specifically text-embedding and classification, are used to analyze the crawled data and three survey data. The results demonstrate that TF-IDF, BERT embedding, and the SVM classification model perform best. The case study outcomes using TripAdvisor and Glassdoor review data validate the previous results. This dissertation project can serve as a pioneering effort to enhance the theoretical foundation of most current data analytics tools in public relations

The Ideological Evolution of Social Network Sites

학위논문 (석사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 언론정보학과, 2013. 2. 한규섭.In the last decade, online sphere has been extensively transformed while going through the other dimension of development. The Web 2.0 idea where people can be more actively involved on the site has been materialized through invention of a novel online platform such as microblog or Social Network Sites (e.g., Myspace, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter). Social network sites (SNSs) play the most pivotal role in changing people's contemporary lifestyle and exercise a remarkable impact on the events of the real world. Clearly the performance in civic engagement through social network sites is also very impressive and uniquely Twitter has been regarded as a key. In this study, I examine how ideological polarization among users has changed over time in Twitter by data mining and network analysis. Here I analyze followership between legislators and users and then compare the extent of political polarization and concentration in the respective years. The results show ideological polarization and concentration in Twitter has been more or less alleviated over time although its extent of change is very small. The result also indicates the liberal users are more likely to follow liberal legislators. Furthermore this liberal's like-minded followership is found to get distinctively bigger as time goes on. The findings suggest users in new media sphere do not linger at a stable status but rather dynamically changed. The current study is expected to enrich the classic debates over online group polarization and to be one of cornerstones of new media study in political communication context.Ⅰ. INTRODUCTION Ⅱ. LITERATURE 1. Ideological Polarization in Contemporary Politics 2. Polarization of Online Public Sphere 3. Twitter, the New Political Medium Ⅲ. RESEARCH QUESTIONS & HYPOTHESES 1. The Concentration Hypothesis 2. The Polarization Hypothesis Ⅳ. METHOD 1. The Network Representation 2. Measure: Classical Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) 3. Sample Ⅴ. RESULTS 1. Analysis 1 2. Analysis 2 Ⅵ. DISCUSSION 1. Over-time Change of the Ideological Polarization in the Era of Social Media 2. Discrepancy Between Elite Polarization and Mass Polarization in Twitter 3. The Elemental Factors Swaying Followership of Users and Legislators 4. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Researches Ⅶ. ReferenceMaste

All-American high school basketball star to attend University of Montana next fall

Voluntary citizen attention and actions are key to successful public-sector communication. We investigated the conditions which increase such attention and actions using the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) and government-citizen relationships (GCRs). Using three national issues consisting of an environmental issue, a social issue, and a political issue from South Korea (N=275), this study examined three hypotheses regarding public engagement effect (the effect of GCRs on political conversations on national issues), government empowerment effect (the effects of GCRs and issue-specific trust toward government on constraint recognition), and public serenity effect (the effect of issue-specific trust on problem recognition and involvement recognition). We found significant public engagement and government empowerment effects and partially significant public serenity effect. The results of the public serenity investigation found that issue-specific trust toward government was significant with problem recognition but insignificant with involvement recognition. Consequently, the findings illustrate strategic values in government-citizen relationships on public engagement, empowerment, and serenity to enable participatory democracy

An Oscillatory Path to Vaccination: The Roles of Normative and Epistemic Factors in Explaining Vaccination Hesitancy in COVID-19.

This study examined the roles of normative and epistemic factors in influencing individuals\u27 reluctance to be vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals\u27 ethical orientations (IEO; teleology vs. deontology) were introduced as normative characteristics, while COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccine knowledge were addressed as issue-specific epistemic factors. We conducted two online surveys to investigate each of these three factors\u27 influences on the level of Americans\u27 reluctance to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Combinations of these factors that predict COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy levels were also explored to provide integrated perspectives in the specific vaccination context. Our findings demonstrated the positive association between IEO and reluctance to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Significant interactions between 1) COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and IEO and 2) conspiracy beliefs and vaccine knowledge were also identified. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future study were addressed

Visual Honey Encryption: Application to Steganography

Honey encryption (HE) is a new technique to overcome the weakness of conventional password-based encryption (PBE). However, conventional honey encryption still has the limitation that it works only for binary bit streams or integer sequences because it uses a fixed distribution-transforming encoder (DTE). In this paper, we propose a variant of honey encryption called visual honey encryption which employs an adaptive DTE in a Bayesian framework so that the proposed approach can be applied to more complex domains including images and videos. We applied this method to create a new steganography scheme which significantly improves the security level of traditional steganography

Validity of physical activity monitors for assessing lower intensity activity in adults

Background: Accelerometers can provide accurate estimates of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). However, one of the limitations of these instruments is the inability to capture light activity within an acceptable range of error. The purpose of the present study was to determine the validity of different activity monitors for estimating energy expenditure (EE) of light intensity, semi-structured activities. Methods: Forty healthy participants wore a SenseWear Pro3 Armband (SWA, v.6.1), the SenseWear Mini, the Actiheart, ActiGraph, and ActivPAL monitors, while being monitored with a portable indirect calorimetry (IC). Participants engaged in a variety of low intensity activities but no formalized scripts or protocols were used during these periods. Results: The Mini and SWA overestimated total EE on average by 1.0% and 4.0%, respectively, while the AH, the GT3X, and the AP underestimated total EE on average by 7.8%, 25.5%, and 22.2%, respectively. The pattern-recognition monitors yielded non-significant differences in EE estimates during the semi-structured period (p = 0.66, p = 0.27, and p = 0.21 for the Mini, SWA, and AH, respectively). Conclusions: The SenseWear Mini provided more accurate estimates of EE during light to moderate intensity semi-structured activities compared to other activity monitors. This monitor should be considered when there is interest in tracking low intensity activities in groups of individuals.This research was funded by a grant from Bodymedia Inc. awarded to Dr. Greg Welk

Post-intervention Status in Patients With Refractory Myasthenia Gravis Treated With Eculizumab During REGAIN and Its Open-Label Extension

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether eculizumab helps patients with anti-acetylcholine receptor-positive (AChR+) refractory generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG) achieve the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) post-intervention status of minimal manifestations (MM), we assessed patients' status throughout REGAIN (Safety and Efficacy of Eculizumab in AChR+ Refractory Generalized Myasthenia Gravis) and its open-label extension. METHODS: Patients who completed the REGAIN randomized controlled trial and continued into the open-label extension were included in this tertiary endpoint analysis. Patients were assessed for the MGFA post-intervention status of improved, unchanged, worse, MM, and pharmacologic remission at defined time points during REGAIN and through week 130 of the open-label study. RESULTS: A total of 117 patients completed REGAIN and continued into the open-label study (eculizumab/eculizumab: 56; placebo/eculizumab: 61). At week 26 of REGAIN, more eculizumab-treated patients than placebo-treated patients achieved a status of improved (60.7% vs 41.7%) or MM (25.0% vs 13.3%; common OR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.1-4.5). After 130 weeks of eculizumab treatment, 88.0% of patients achieved improved status and 57.3% of patients achieved MM status. The safety profile of eculizumab was consistent with its known profile and no new safety signals were detected. CONCLUSION: Eculizumab led to rapid and sustained achievement of MM in patients with AChR+ refractory gMG. These findings support the use of eculizumab in this previously difficult-to-treat patient population. CLINICALTRIALSGOV IDENTIFIER: REGAIN, NCT01997229; REGAIN open-label extension, NCT02301624. CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: This study provides Class II evidence that, after 26 weeks of eculizumab treatment, 25.0% of adults with AChR+ refractory gMG achieved MM, compared with 13.3% who received placebo