The effect of corruption and culture on mandatory disclosure compliance levels: goodwill reporting in Europe

While responding to calls for research and regulatory concerns regarding the influence of country level characteristics on the completeness and quality of financial statements, we examine the simultaneous influences of corruption and culture on levels of compliance with mandatory disclosure requirements. We use a panel dataset of European companies, for 2008–2011, and measure compliance with IFRS goodwill disclosure requirements utilising a disclosure index. Corruption is measured using the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and Schwartz (2008) bipolar cultural dimensions are used as measures of culture. We find that compliance levels vary significantly across sample firms, countries and over time. The level of corruption and two of the three cultural dimensions (Hierarchy and Mastery) are significantly related to these levels of compliance. These findings also hold for the changes in compliance levels over time. On that basis, the paper makes original contributions to our understanding of determinants of compliance levels with IFRS mandatory disclosure requirements

Effect of juice turbidity on fermentative volatile compounds in white wines

'Chardonnay' (n = 4), 'Pinot gris' (n = 3) and 'Müller-Thurgau' juices (n = 3), each at 6 turbidity levels (15, 45, 86, 141, 215 and 350 NTU) obtained by adding increasing amounts of their own fine juice lees, were fermented using 'Montrachet Red Star' yeast. The main volatile compounds in free form which may have a sensory role were measured using GC-FID, with a DB-WAX column, after fixing onto Isolute ENV+ resin. Changes for around 40 volatile compounds and fermentation parameters are shown. Juice turbidity levels just below 100 NTU are the best compromise for obtaining adequate fruity notes and minimising languishing fermentation and off-flavours in white wine, if correct microbiology management at the winery is guaranteed, whereas slightly higher NTU levels could contribute to a slightly more complex aroma. However, variability due to juice turbidity in the range investigated is lower than variability due to yeast strain observed in a previous experiment. Thus the choice of yeast strain to direct white wine aroma must be overriding as compared to NTU levels.

Effects of forcing in three dimensional turbulent flows

We present the results of a numerical investigation of three-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, stirred by a random forcing with a power law spectrum, $E_f(k)\sim k^{3-y}$. Numerical simulations are performed at different resolutions up to $512^3$. We show that at varying the spectrum slope $y$, small-scale turbulent fluctuations change from a {\it forcing independent} to a {\it forcing dominated} statistics. We argue that the critical value separating the two behaviours, in three dimensions, is $y_c=4$. When the statistics is forcing dominated, for $y<y_c$, we find dimensional scaling, i.e. intermittency is vanishingly small. On the other hand, for $y>y_c$, we find the same anomalous scaling measured in flows forced only at large scales. We connect these results with the issue of {\it universality} in turbulent flows.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Somatotropic gene response to recombinant growth hormone treatment in buffalo leucocytes

The use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH) to increase milk yield in cows is banned in some countries. In others, where it is authorised, it has triggered harsh debates on labelling of dairy products. If many studies have been performed on bovines, there is a lack of information on buffaloes, which are sometimes treated with rbGH and re­present an important economical resource for dairy products in some countries. Analytical methods with legal value for surveillance of rbGH treatments do not yet exist. Research on gene expression biomarkers is one of the most promising approaches to this purpose. For this reason, we treated five buffaloes for 10 weeks with a sustained-release formulation of rbGH and analysed the response of 20 somatotropic axis genes in leucocytes by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Overall changes in gene expression levels were of low magnitude and sometimes affected by the ‘time’ factor. Only the IGFBP-1 gene showed a significant under-expression (about two-fold; p &lt;0.001) in treated animals. Taken together, these results give evidence that expression analysis of the somatotropic axis genes in leuco­cytes is little helpful for discrimination of rbGH-treated buffaloes, but do not exclude that another array of genes could provide useful patterns of variation

Chemokines in hyperthyroidism

The term “hyperthyroidism” indicates a condition due to an exaggerate production of thyroid hormone; the most frequent cause is Graves’ disease (GD). We review cytokines and chemokines in hyperthyroidism, with a special focus in GD. In GD, recruited Th1 lymphocytes are responsible for enhanced IFN-γ and TNF-α production, which in turn stimulates Th1 chemokines release from thyrocytes, initiating and perpetuating the autoimmune process. Circulating levels of these chemokines are associated with the active phase of GD. Additional studies are necessary to investigate whether Th1 chemokines could be a novel therapeutic target in this disease

Rubin LSST observing strategies to maximize volume and uniformity coverage of Star Forming Regions in the Galactic Plane

A complete map of the youngest stellar populations of the Milky Way in the era of all-sky surveys, is one of the most challenging goals in modern astrophysics. The characterisation of the youngest stellar component is crucial not only for a global overview of the Milky Way structure, of the Galactic thin disk, and its spiral arms, but also for local studies. In fact, the identification of the star forming regions (SFRs) and the comparison with the environment in which they form are also fundamental to put them in the context of the surrounding giant molecular clouds and to understand still unknown physical mechanisms related to the star and planet formation processes. In 10 yrs of observations, Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (Rubin-LSST) will achieve an exquisite photometric depth that will allow us to significantly extend the volume within which we will be able to discover new SFRs and to enlarge the domain of a detailed knowledge of our own Galaxy. We describe here a metrics that estimates the total number of young stars with ages t < 10 Myr and masses >0.3M$_\odot$ that will be detected with the Rubin LSST observations in the gri bands at a 5 {\sigma} magnitude significance. We examine the results of our metrics adopting the most recent simulated Rubin-LSST survey strategies in order to evaluate the impact that different observing strategies might have on our science case.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Serie