Which Math Skill Matters the Most in Accounting Learning?

Accounting has been one of the most popular business majors in the United States and is a subject that requires substantial quantitative and analytical skills. At many universities and colleges, accounting courses typically require a certain level of mathematics preparation. However, it is still unclear which branches of mathematics contribute most to students' accounting learning. We collect data on students’ math ability and accounting performance to investigate the relation between three mathematics skills (arithmetic, algebra, and word problems) and accounting learning. Our results have implications on college curriculum design, showing that an emphasis should be on word problems for accounting students

Chinese Corporate Profiles Translation: A German Functionalist Perspective

With the trend of economic globalization, more and more Chinese companies are using bilingual webpage as a new channel to penetrate into international markets. Online English corporate profiles play a very important role in the establishment of a company’s public image on international economic stages. However the quality of C-E translation is far from satisfactory as a result of ignoring target readers’ habit of expression and cultural differences, which has a negative impact on the penetration of Chinese products into international markets. Based on 24 authentic and reliable samples of corporate profiles, the paper analyzes the Chinese corporate profiles’ different features from that of companies of English speaking countries and classifies the translation errors into three categories: pragmatic translation errors, cultural translation errors and linguistic translation errors. Error samples and suggested versions are given to analyze the types and causes of errors. With the German functionalist approaches as its framework, the paper puts forward some strategies to avoid the translation errors and improve the C-E translation quality of Chinese corporate profiles.Key words: Functionalist approaches; Corporation profiles; Translation strategies; Skopostheori

An Integrated Approach to Business English Teaching in China

Chinese Business English Teaching (BET) has developed more rapidly since China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, traditional BET has its problems such as too much emphasis on business knowledge and professional vocabularies, which leads to learners’ lower practical language ability. There is a great necessity to solve the problems to meet the increasing demand for high quality business talents being able to work competently in the context of economic globalization. Based on sound language teaching theories and practices, this paper proposed an integrated approach to BET which aims to cultivate business expertise rather than just teach professional terms and knowledge.Key words: Business English Teaching (BET); Integrated approach; Task-based teaching; Application of video; Text structure analysisRésumé L’enseignement de l’anglais des affaire en Chine (BET) s’est développé au plus rapidement depuis la Chine est entré dans l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC). Toutefois, BET traditionnelle a ses problèmes qui sont trop l’accent sur la connaissance des affaires et des vocabulaires professionnels, ce qui conduit à la capacité des apprenants de langue inférieure pratique. Il ya une grande nécessité de résoudre les problèmes afin de répondre à la demande croissante pour les hauts talents d’affaires de qualité étant capable de travailler avec compétence dans le contexte de la mondialisation économique. Basé sur de solides théories d’enseignement des langues et des pratiques, ce document propose une approche intégrée de BET qui vise à cultiver l’expertise d’affaires plutôt que de simplement enseigner des conditions professionnelles et de connaissances.Mots clés: L’enseignement de l’anglais des affaires (BET); L’approche intégrée; basée sur les tâches d’enseignement; L’application de la vidéo; Analyse de la structure du text

Lean Accounting, Fat Problem? A Critical Analysis of Lean Accounting’s Value

Lean accounting is an accounting system that is designed specifically to facilitate the application of lean manufacturing. It is considered a new tool among the various accounting methods available to management. As a managerial accounting method, the purpose of lean accounting should be to provide valuable, insightful information to management for decision-making. However, lean accounting sometimes fails to serve this ultimate purpose as a managerial accounting alternative. We conduct a case study of Toyota to examine lean accounting’s value. The analysis shows that lean accounting tends to be short-term focused, which may jeopardize a company’s long-term growth prospective. Lean accounting is also incapable of providing accurate product cost information, and therefore is unable to support a strategic decision-making process. Traditional standard costing and activity-based costing may be superior to lean accounting for long-term planning and decision-making. The potential exists for a dual system with lean accounting for tactical short-term information and either standard costing or activity-based costing for strategic long-term information

An Empirical Study on Speaking Proficiency Training for Chinese EFL Learners

Improving students’ speaking proficiency has always been a challenge for Chinese EFL teachers. With the traditional training mode students had low motivation to speak, insufficient exposure to authentic language input, inadequate teachers’ instruction on social strategies and no collaborative learning environment to find a partner to practice English with. Aiming at solving the above-mentioned problems of traditional training mode, the research proposes a multi-dimensional training mode with DV as its media, task as its center, cooperative learning as its form, campus English native speakers as its resources, textbooks as its content. Results of the empirical study prove the mode to be effective in increasing the students’ levels of speaking proficiency, social strategy and motivation.Key words: EFL teaching in Chinese context; Speaking proficiency training; Task-based learning; Cooperative learning; D

Recent Progress in Understanding the Mechanism of Action of Lactic Acid Bacteria in Promoting Calcium Absorption in the Human Body

More and more evidence shows that lactic acid bacteria play an important role in improving calcium absorption and promoting bone health. However, there is a lack of systematic research on the mechanism by which lactic acid bacteria promote calcium absorption. In this article, the calcium absorption mechanism, the effect of lactic acid bacteria on calcium absorption and its mechanism are reviewed. Lactic acid bacteria promote calcium absorption mainly by 1) increasing intestinal absorption of vitamin D, thereby affecting the transcellular pathway of calcium absorption; 2) secreting phytase to increase the intestinal concentration of free calcium ions; 3) metabolizing prebiotics to produce short-chain fatty acids, thus reducing intestinal pH, increasing the surface area of microvilli, and affecting the signaling pathway of mineral absorption; 4) transforming lactose into lactic acid and short-chain fatty acids to increase the body’s absorption of calcium; 5) producing bioactive substances, increasing the content of soluble calcium in the intestinal tract and improving the bioavailability of calcium; and 6) directly or indirectly regulating bone metabolism and affecting bone homeostasis through the gut-bone axis. Lactic acid bacteria play an important role in promoting calcium absorption and maintaining bone metabolic balance, suggesting the potential of supplementation of lactic acid bacteria as a novel method to promote calcium absorption and prevent osteoporosis. This review lays the theoretical foundation for developing more efficient and targeted calcium supplements based on lactic acid bacteria

Effect of confinement on the vapor-liquid-liquid three-phase equilibrium during CO2 utilization and sequestration in shale reservoirs

With the rising global energy demand, shale gas and oil emerge as pivotal resources. Recent innovations utilizing CO2 as an injectant can effectively enhance shale oil and gas recovery and facilitate CO2 storage within shale reservoirs. However, low-temperature CO2 injection may result in the coexistence of three hydrocarbon phases, while the abundant nanopores in shale formations also notably influence the phase behavior of reservoir fluids. To optimize shale oil recovery and CO2 sequestration in shale formations, it is a prerequisite for precisely capturing the effect of confinement on the phase behavior of reservoir fluids within nanopores during CO2 injection. In this work, we introduce a novel three-phase vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium calculation algorithm, which is designed to handle the unique phase behavior challenges presented by CO2 utilization and storage in shale reservoirs. To improve the robustness and efficiency, the proposed algorithm integrates a trust region-based stability test with a hybrid flash calculation algorithm that combines the Newton-Raphson and trust-region methods. Our thermodynamic model incorporates the capillarity effect and shifts in the critical points due to molecule-wall interactions, which are essential for accurate phase behavior simulation under confinement. Initial validations against experimental bulk phase data show promising results, and further investigations indicate that confinement alters three-phase vapor-liquid-liquid equilibria by suppressing two-phase and three-phase regions and shifting boundaries in the phase diagrams. The proposed algorithm not only advances our understanding of multiphase equilibrium in nanoporous media but also enhances the practicality of CO2 sequestration and improved oil recovery strategies in shale formations.Document Type: Original articleCited as: Chen, Z., Li, R., Du, Y., Ma, S., Zhang, X., Shi, J. Effect of confinement on the vapor-liquid-liquid three-phase equilibrium during CO2 utilization and sequestration in shale reservoirs. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2025, 16(3): 199-210. https://doi.org/10.46690/ager.2025.06.0

Expecting Floods: Firm Entry, Employment, and Aggregate Implications

Flood events and flood risk have been increasing in the past few decades and have important consequences on the economy. Using county-level and ZIP-code-level data during 1998–2018 from the U.S., we document that (1) increased flood risk has large negative impacts on firm entry, employment and output in the long run; (2) flood events reduce output in the short run while their impact on firm entry and employment is limited. Motivated by these findings, we construct a spatial equilibrium model to characterize how flood risk shapes firms’ location choices and workers’ employment, which we use to estimate the aggregate impact of increased flood risk on the economy. We find that flood risk reduced U.S. aggregate output by 0.52 percent in 2018, 80% of which stemmed from expectation effects and 20% from direct damages. We also apply our model to studying the distributional consequences and forecasting the impact of future changes in flood risk. Our results highlight the importance of considering the adjustment of firms and workers in response to risk in evaluating the consequences of natural disasters

A new model construction based on the knowledge graph for mining elite polyphenotype genes in crops

Identifying polyphenotype genes that simultaneously regulate important agronomic traits (e.g., plant height, yield, and disease resistance) is critical for developing novel high-quality crop varieties. Predicting the associations between genes and traits requires the organization and analysis of multi-dimensional scientific data. The existing methods for establishing the relationships between genomic data and phenotypic data can only elucidate the associations between genes and individual traits. However, there are relatively few methods for detecting elite polyphenotype genes. In this study, a knowledge graph for traits regulating-genes was constructed by collecting data from the PubMed database and eight other databases related to the staple food crops rice, maize, and wheat as well as the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. On the basis of the knowledge graph, a model for predicting traits regulating-genes was constructed by combining the data attributes of the gene nodes and the topological relationship attributes of the gene nodes. Additionally, a scoring method for predicting the genes regulating specific traits was developed to screen for elite polyphenotype genes. A total of 125,591 nodes and 547,224 semantic relationships were included in the knowledge graph. The accuracy of the knowledge graph-based model for predicting traits regulating-genes was 0.89, the precision rate was 0.91, the recall rate was 0.96, and the F1 value was 0.94. Moreover, 4,447 polyphenotype genes for 31 trait combinations were identified, among which the rice polyphenotype gene IPA1 and the A. thaliana polyphenotype gene CUC2 were verified via a literature search. Furthermore, the wheat gene TraesCS5A02G275900 was revealed as a potential polyphenotype gene that will need to be further characterized. Meanwhile, the result of venn diagram analysis between the polyphenotype gene datasets (consists of genes that are predicted by our model) and the transcriptome gene datasets (consists of genes that were differential expression in response to disease, drought or salt) showed approximately 70% and 54% polyphenotype genes were identified in the transcriptome datasets of Arabidopsis and rice, respectively. The application of the model driven by knowledge graph for predicting traits regulating-genes represents a novel method for detecting elite polyphenotype genes