Business Risks: When IS Fails to Detect Circumvention Activities

A business must recognize and address various risk factors when establishing and maintaining its information system. The overall risk to management is that the control environment does not protect proprietary business data and the financial reporting system that produces financial statements and other information used by investors, creditors and regulatory agencies. These risks require that management implement efforts to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of control procedures over business activities while being aware of additional system issues such as failing to adequately consider other risks which are more business-oriented including the risk of failing to prevent or detect fraudulent or illegal activities. Worldwide in 2008 the value of economic data stolen was estimated to be a trillion dollars. After the public outcry from the business failures such as Enron there were efforts by the U.S. government, business community and the accounting profession to strengthen business control environments to better address such risk factors and thereby improving the quality of financial data. One result of these efforts has been that businesses are guided by the features of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and efforts by COSO (2007) which indirectly allude to but do not specifically address these risk factors in a technology-based business environment. Currently almost all records maintained by a business organization are now in an electronic format with over two-thirds never converted to hard copy. The integral nature of a networked system necessitates having adequate control aspects that ensure the confidentiality of business proprietary data and to ensure this data is not stolen or misused. One aspect of this issue is that of insider hacking to transfer or misuse proprietary business data. This issue and recommendations for management and their auditors are reported in this research

Association of Over-The-Counter Pharmaceutical Sales with Influenza-Like-Illnesses to Patient Volume in an Urgent Care Setting

We studied the association between OTC pharmaceutical sales and volume of patients with influenza-like-illnesses (ILI) at an urgent care center over one year. OTC pharmaceutical sales explain 36% of the variance in the patient volume, and each standard deviation increase is associated with 4.7 more patient visits to the urgent care center (p<0.0001). Cross-correlation function analysis demonstrated that OTC pharmaceutical sales are significantly associated with patient volume during non-flu season (p<0.0001), but only the sales of cough and cold (p<0.0001) and thermometer (p<0.0001) categories were significant during flu season with a lag of two and one days, respectively. Our study is the first study to demonstrate and measure the relationship between OTC pharmaceutical sales and urgent care center patient volume, and presents strong evidence that OTC sales predict urgent care center patient volume year round. © 2013 Liu et al

Perturbation Theory with a Variational Basis: the Generalized Gaussian Effective Potential

The perturbation theory with a variational basis is constructed and analyzed.The generalized Gaussian effective potential is introduced and evaluated up to the second order for selfinteracting scalar fields in one and two spatial dimensions. The problem of the renormalization of the mass is discussed in details. Thermal corrections are incorporated. The comparison between the finite temperature generalized Gaussian effective potential and the finite temperature effective potential is critically analyzed. The phenomenon of the restoration at high temperature of the symmetry broken at zero temperature is discussed.Comment: RevTex, 49 pages, 16 eps figure

Renal ultrasound provides low utility in evaluating cardiac surgery associated acute kidney injury

Background Renal ultrasonography is part of the algorithm in assessing acute kidney injury (AKI). The purpose of this study was to assess the clinical utility of renal US in postoperative cardiac patients who develop AKI. Methods We conducted a retrospective study of 90 postoperative cardiac surgery patients at a single institution from 1/19/2010 to 3/19/2016 who underwent renal US for AKI. We reviewed provider documentation to determine whether renal US changed management. We defined change as: administration of crystalloid or colloid, addition of inotropic or vasopressor, or procedural interventions on the renal system. Results Mean age of study patients was 68 ± 13 years. 48/90 patients (53.3%) had pre-existing chronic kidney disease of varying severity. 48 patients (53.3%) had normal renal US with incidental findings and 31 patients (34.4%) had US evidence of medical kidney disease. 10 patients (11.1%) had limited US results due to poor visualization and 1 patient (1.1%) had mild right-sided hydronephrosis. No patients were found to have obstructive uropathy or renal artery stenosis. Clinical management was altered in only 4/90 patients (4.4%), which included 3 patients that received a fluid bolus and 1 patient that received a fluid bolus and inotropes. No vascular or urologic procedures resulted from US findings. Conclusion Although renal ultrasound is often utilized in the work-up of AKI, our study shows that renal US provides little benefit in managing postoperative cardiac patients. This diagnostic modality should be scrutinized rather than viewed as a universal measure in the cardiac surgery population

Cluster Expansion Approach to the Effective Potential in Φ2+14\Phi^4_{2+1}-Theory

We apply a truncated set of dynamical equations of motion for connected equal-time Green functions up to the 4-point level to the investigation of spontaneous ground state symmetry breaking in $\Phi^4_{2+1}$ quantum field theory. Within our momentum space discretization we obtain a second order phase transition as soon as the connected 3-point function is included. However, an additional inclusion of the connected 4-point function still shows a significant influence on the shape of the effective potential and the critical coupling.Comment: 1 compressed uuencoded postscript file with 5 figures included, 21 page

The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its millions of users to send and read each other's “tweets,” or short, 140-character messages. The service has more than 190 million registered users and processes about 55 million tweets per day. Useful information about news and geopolitical events lies embedded in the Twitter stream, which embodies, in the aggregate, Twitter users' perspectives and reactions to current events. By virtue of sheer volume, content embedded in the Twitter stream may be useful for tracking or even forecasting behavior if it can be extracted in an efficient manner. In this study, we examine the use of information embedded in the Twitter stream to (1) track rapidly-evolving public sentiment with respect to H1N1 or swine flu, and (2) track and measure actual disease activity. We also show that Twitter can be used as a measure of public interest or concern about health-related events. Our results show that estimates of influenza-like illness derived from Twitter chatter accurately track reported disease levels

The predictive value of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms for quality of life: a longitudinal study of physically injured victims of non-domestic violence

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Little is known about longitudinal associations between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and quality of life (QoL) after exposure to violence. The aims of the current study were to examine quality of life (QoL) and the predictive value of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for QoL in victims of non-domestic violence over a period of 12 months.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A single-group (n = 70) longitudinal design with three repeated measures over a period of 12 months were used. Posttraumatic psychological symptoms were assessed by using the Impact of Event Scale, a 15-item self-rating questionnaire comprising two subscales (intrusion and avoidance) as a screening instrument for PTSD. The questionnaire WHOQOL-Bref was used to assess QoL. The WHOQOL-BREF instrument comprises 26 items, which measure the following broad domains: physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environment. Results of the analysis were summarized by fitting Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>For each category of PTSD (probable cases, risk level cases and no cases), the mean levels of the WHOQOL-Bref subscales (the four domains and the two single items) were stable across time of assessment. Individuals who scored as probable PTSD or as risk level cases had significantly lower scores on the QoL domains such as physical health, psychological health, social relationships and environmental than those without PTSD symptoms. In addition, the two items examining perception of overall quality of life and perception of overall health in WHOQOL showed the same results according to PTSD symptoms such as QoL domains. PTSD symptoms predicted lower QoL at all three assessments. Similarly PTSD symptoms at T1 predicted lower QoL at T2 and PTSD symptoms at T2 predicted lower QoL at T3.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The presence of PTSD symptoms predicted lower QoL, both from an acute and prolonged perspective, in victims of non-domestic violence. Focusing on the individual's perception of his/her QoL in addition to the illness may increase the treatment priorities and efforts.</p