1,263 research outputs found
The microfoundations of audit quality
The three essays collected in this dissertation relate to the microfoundations of audit quality. The first essay shows how auditors prioritize easy tasks and how this affects their judgment performance, and by extension audit quality. The second essay deals with how auditors learn in the workplace. The third essay investigates how auditors’ usage of automated tools and techniques affects their professional skepticism. Together, these essays shed light on how individual auditor behaviors, judgments, and decision-making can impact audit quality. By examining auditing from an operational perspective, these findings provide a more realistic understanding of the complexities of modern audit engagements and shed light on the microfoundations of audit quality. As regulators and policymakers continue to express concerns about audit quality, these studies offer actionable interventions that can help improve audit quality.<br/
Atom gravimeters and gravitational redshift
In a recent paper, H. Mueller, A. Peters and S. Chu [A precision measurement
of the gravitational redshift by the interference of matter waves, Nature 463,
926-929 (2010)] argued that atom interferometry experiments published a decade
ago did in fact measure the gravitational redshift on the quantum clock
operating at the very high Compton frequency associated with the rest mass of
the Caesium atom. In the present Communication we show that this interpretation
is incorrect.Comment: 2 pages, Brief Communication appeared in Nature (2 September 2010
Observation of Ground-State Two-Neutron Decay
Neutron decay spectroscopy has become a successful tool to explore nuclear
properties of nuclei with the largest neutron-to-proton ratios. Resonances in
nuclei located beyond the neutron dripline are accessible by kinematic
reconstruction of the decay products. The development of two-neutron detection
capabilities of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) at NSCL has opened up the
possibility to search for unbound nuclei which decay by the emission of two
neutrons. Specifically this exotic decay mode was observed in 16Be and 26O.Comment: To be published in Acta Physica Polonica
Exploring the neutron dripline two neutrons at a time: The first observations of the 26O and 16Be ground state resonances
The two-neutron unbound ground state resonances of O and Be
were populated using one-proton knockout reactions from F and B
beams. A coincidence measurement of 3-body system (fragment + n + n) allowed
for the decay energy of the unbound nuclei to be reconstructed. A low energy
resonance, 200 keV, was observed for the first time in the O + n + n
system and assigned to the ground state of O. The Be ground state
resonance was observed at 1.35 MeV. The 3-body correlations of the Be +
n + n system were compared to simulations of a phase-space, sequential, and
dineutron decay. The strong correlations in the n-n system from the
experimental data could only be reproduced by the dineutron decay simulation
providing the first evidence for a dineutron-like decay.Comment: Invited Talk given at the 11th International Conference on
Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1,
2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference
Series (JPCS
Discovery of Sexual Dimorphisms in Metabolic and Genetic Biomarkers
Metabolomic profiling and the integration of whole-genome genetic association data has proven to be a powerful tool to comprehensively explore gene regulatory networks and to investigate the effects of genetic variation at the molecular level. Serum metabolite concentrations allow a direct readout of biological processes, and association of specific metabolomic signatures with complex diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular and metabolic disorders has been shown. There are well-known correlations between sex and the incidence, prevalence, age of onset, symptoms, and severity of a disease, as well as the reaction to drugs. However, most of the studies published so far did not consider the role of sexual dimorphism and did not analyse their data stratified by gender. This study investigated sex-specific differences of serum metabolite concentrations and their underlying genetic determination. For discovery and replication we used more than 3,300 independent individuals from KORA F3 and F4 with metabolite measurements of 131 metabolites, including amino acids, phosphatidylcholines, sphingomyelins, acylcarnitines, and C6-sugars. A linear regression approach revealed significant concentration differences between males and females for 102 out of 131 metabolites (p-values<3.8 x 10(-4); Bonferroni-corrected threshold). Sex-specific genome-wide association studies (GWAS) showed genome-wide significant differences in beta-estimates for SNPs in the CPS1 locus (carbamoyl-phosphate synthase 1, significance level: p<3.8 x 10(-10); Bonferroni-corrected threshold) for glycine. We showed that the metabolite profiles of males and females are significantly different and, furthermore, that specific genetic variants in metabolism-related genes depict sexual dimorphism. Our study provides new important insights into sex-specific differences of cell regulatory processes and underscores that studies should consider sex-specific effects in design and interpretation
Thermoelectric properties of lead chalcogenide core-shell nanostructures
We present the full thermoelectric characterization of nanostructured bulk
PbTe and PbTe-PbSe samples fabricated from colloidal core-shell nanoparticles
followed by spark plasma sintering. An unusually large thermopower is found in
both materials, and the possibility of energy filtering as opposed to grain
boundary scattering as an explanation is discussed. A decreased Debye
temperature and an increased molar specific heat are in accordance with recent
predictions for nanostructured materials. On the basis of these results we
propose suitable core-shell material combinations for future thermoelectric
materials of large electric conductivities in combination with an increased
thermopower by energy filtering.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure
- …