Form over substance, the politics of international accounting setting

This paper lays the foundation of the move towards international standards and an international body being dependent upon the involvement of politics. Callon\u27s translation model is adapted to develop the concept that the underling purposes and objectives that international bodies have been established by would not be achieved as a result of powerful players. According to Robson (1991, p.552) the process of translation is common to many instances of accounting problematisation and accounting chang

Accounting for Intellectual Property: inconsistencies and challenges

The recognition of the rights attached to some forms of intellectual property is a contested domain in legal frameworks, such as the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement. The same can be said of economic frameworks, such as accounting which attempt to recognise and value intellectual property for the purposes of providing information for decision making. In this paper we explore the discourse of accounting in the recognition of intellectual property as an asset according to the new International Accounting Standards. We then contrast the legal and accounting discourses in which intellectual property rights are acknowledged, concluding that these discourses are not necessarily aligned. The effects and implications of the development of a global regime for accounting for intangibles may eventually harmonise the accounting treatment for intellectual property but does not resolve the contentious issue of the inconsistencies in the recognition of intellectual property rights under different frameworks and the implications for economic decision making

Image Analysis of the Fat Dispersion in a Comminuted Meat System

In a series of experiments on a comminuted meat system, image analyses were conducted to quantify changes in structure as affected by polyphosphate, fat level, and chopping time and temperature. Four batches of comminuted meat were investigated which contained neck beef, pig head meat, rino, ice, salt (2%), fat at a level of either 27 or 40%, and polyphosphate at a level of either 0 or 0. 5%. Structural changes in different stages of comminution coincided with a shift in size distribution, shape factor, density and area percentage of fat particles. The density of the protein matrix (matrix defined as all disintegrated tissues, without intact pieces of muscle fibres, connective tissue and fat cell clusters) was markedly affected by polyphosphate. Polyphosphate led to a fine dispersion of the fat, as reflected by the formation of a larger proportion of fat droplets smaller than 3.5 um2. Results indicate that in meat batters physical entrapment of larger fat particles as well as emulsification of smaller droplets occur simultaneously in the course of fat stabilization

Design and prototype of a train-to-wayside communication architecture

Telecommunication has become very important in modern society and seems to be almost omnipresent, making daily life easier, more pleasant and connecting people everywhere. It does not only connect people, but also machines, enhancing the efficiency of automated tasks and monitoring automated processes. In this context the IBBT (Interdisciplinary Institute for BroadBand Technology) project TRACK (TRain Applications over an advanced Communication networK), sets the definition and prototyping of an end-to-end train-to-wayside communication architecture as one of the main research goals. The architecture provides networking capabilities for train monitoring, personnel applications and passenger Internet services. In the context of the project a prototype framework was developed to give a complete functioning demonstrator. Every aspect: tunneling and mobility, performance enhancements, and priority and quality of service were taken into consideration. In contrast to other research in this area, which has given mostly high-level overviews, TRACK resulted in a detailed architecture with all different elements present

Review of applications of SIMDEUM, a stochastic drinking water demand model with small temporal and spatial scale

Many researchers have developed drinking water demand models with various temporal and spatial scales. A limited number of models are available at a temporal scale of one second and a spatial scale of a single home. Reasons for building these models were described in the papers in which the models were introduced, along with a discussion on potential applications. However, the predicted applications are seldom re-examined. As SIMDEUM, a stochastic end-use model for drinking water demand, has often been applied in research and practice since it was developed, we are reexamining its applications in this paper. SIMDEUM’s original purpose was to calculate maximum demands in order to be able to design self-cleaning networks. Yet, the model has been useful in many more applications. This paper gives an overview of the many fields of application of SIMDEUM and shows where this type of demand model is indispensable and where it has limited practical value. This overview also leads to an understanding of requirements on demand models in various applications

Voicing quantification is more relevant than period perturbation in substitution voices: an advanced acoustical study

Quality of substitution voicing—i.e., phonation with a voice that is not generated by the vibration of two vocal folds—cannot be adequately evaluated with routinely used software for acoustic voice analysis that is aimed at ‘common’ dysphonias and nearly periodic voice signals. The AMPEX analysis program (Van Immerseel and Martens) has been shown previously to be able to detect periodicity in irregular signals with background noise, and to be suited for running speech. The validity of this analysis program is first tested using realistic synthesized voice signals with known levels of cycle-to-cycle perturbations and additive noise. Second, exhaustive acoustic analysis is performed of the voices of 116 patients surgically treated for advanced laryngeal cancer and recorded in seven European academic centers. All of them read out a short phonetically balanced passage. Patients were divided into six groups according to the oscillating structures they used to phonate. Results show that features related to quantification of voicing enable a distinction between the different groups, while the features reporting F0-instability fail to do so. Acoustic evaluation of voice quality in substitution voices thus best relies upon voicing quantification