Support for graphicacy: a review of textbooks available to accounting students

This Teaching Note reports on the support available in textbooks for graphicacy that will help students understand the complexities of graphical displays. Graphical displays play a significant role in financial reporting, and studies have found evidence of measurement distortion and selection bias. To understand the complexities of graphical displays, students need a sound understanding of graphicacy and support from the textbooks available to them to develop that understanding. The Teaching Note reports on a survey that examined the textbooks available to students attending two Scottish universities. The support of critical graphicacy skills was examined in conjunction with textbook characteristics. The survey, which was not restricted to textbooks designated as required reading, examined the textbooks for content on data measurement and graphical displays. The findings highlight a lack of support for graphicacy in the textbooks selected. The study concludes that accounting educators need to scrutinize more closely the selection of textbooks and calls for more extensive research into textbooks as a pedagogic tool

A new method for ranking academic journals in accounting and finance

Given the many and varied uses to which journal rankings are put, interest in ranking journal 'quality' is likely to persist. Unfortunately, existing methods of constructing such rankings all have inherent limitations. This paper proposes a new (complementary) approach, based on submissions to RAE 2001, which is not restricted to a pre-defined journal set and, importantly, is based on quality choice decisions driven by economic incentives. For three metrics, submissions to RAE 2001 are compared with the available set of publications to provide evidence on the perception of journal quality, a fourth metric is based on the overall RAE grades, and an overall ranking is produced

Avoimen systeemin magmaattisten prosessien diagnosointi Magmakammiosimulaattorilla. Osa I: pääalkuaineet ja faasitasapainot

The Magma Chamber Simulator (MCS) is a thermodynamic tool for modeling the evolution of magmatic systems that are open with respect to assimilation of partial melts or stoped blocks, magma recharge + mixing, and fractional crystallization. MCS is available for both PC and Mac. In the MCS, the thermal, mass, and compositional evolution of a multicomponent-multiphase composite system of resident magma, wallrock, and recharge reservoirs is tracked by rigorous self-consistent thermodynamic modeling. A Recharge-Assimilation (Assimilated partial melt or Stoped blocks)-Fractional Crystallization (R(n)AS(n)FC;n(tot) The trace element and isotope MCS computational tool (MCS-Traces) is described in a separate contribution (part II).Peer reviewe

Air entrainment through free-surface cusps

In many industrial processes, such as pouring a liquid or coating a rotating cylinder, air bubbles are entrapped inside the liquid. We propose a novel mechanism for this phenomenon, based on the instability of cusp singularities that generically form on free surfaces. The air being drawn into the narrow space inside the cusp destroys its stationary shape when the walls of the cusp come too close. Instead, a sheet emanates from the cusp's tip, through which air is entrained. Our analytical theory of this instability is confirmed by experimental observation and quantitative comparison with numerical simulations of the flow equations

Bias Correction of Hydrologic Projections Strongly Impacts Inferred Climate Vulnerabilities in Institutionally Complex Water Systems

Water-resources planners use regional water management models (WMMs) to identify vulnerabilities to climate change. Frequently, dynamically downscaled climate inputs are used in conjunction with land-surface models (LSMs) to provide hydrologic streamflow projections, which serve as critical inputs for WMMs. Here, we show how even modest projection errors can strongly affect assessments of water availability and financial stability for irrigation districts in California. Specifically, our results highlight that LSM errors in projections of flood and drought extremes are highly interactive across timescales, path-dependent, and can be amplified when modeling infrastructure systems (e.g., misrepresenting banked groundwater). Common strategies for reducing errors in deterministic LSM hydrologic projections (e.g., bias correction) can themselves strongly distort projected climate vulnerabilities and misrepresent their inferred financial consequences. Overall, our results indicate a need to move beyond standard deterministic climate projection and error management frameworks that are dependent on single simulated climate change scenario outcomes

Theoretical studies of the historical development of the accounting discipline: a review and evidence

Many existing studies of the development of accounting thought have either been atheoretical or have adopted Kuhn's model of scientific growth. The limitations of this 35-year-old model are discussed. Four different general neo-Kuhnian models of scholarly knowledge development are reviewed and compared with reference to an analytical matrix. The models are found to be mutually consistent, with each focusing on a different aspect of development. A composite model is proposed. Based on a hand-crafted database, author co-citation analysis is used to map empirically the entire literature structure of the accounting discipline during two consecutive time periods, 1972–81 and 1982–90. The changing structure of the accounting literature is interpreted using the proposed composite model of scholarly knowledge development

From ‘rock stars’ to ‘hygiene factors’:teachers at private accountancy tuition providers

In this paper, we examine the role, status and autonomy of teachers at English private accountancy tuition providers from 1980 to the present. We argue that, during this period, teachers transformed from ‘rock stars’ who enjoyed significant status and autonomy over their work to ‘hygiene factors’ in a largely standardised and commodified teaching environment. Growing cost pressures on tuition providers and an increasing emphasis on the quality and consistency of the learning experience are identified as significant factors in this transformation. We discuss these findings with reference to current developments towards corporatisation and marketisation in the English higher education sector

Wave instabilities in the presence of non vanishing background in nonlinear Schrodinger systems

We investigate wave collapse ruled by the generalized nonlinear Schroedinger (NLS) equation in 1+1 dimensions, for localized excitations with non-zero background, establishing through virial identities a new criterion for blow-up. When collapse is arrested, a semiclassical approach allows us to show that the system can favor the formation of dispersive shock waves. The general findings are illustrated with a model of interest to both classical and quantum physics (cubic-quintic NLS equation), demonstrating a radically novel scenario of instability, where solitons identify a marginal condition between blow-up and occurrence of shock waves, triggered by arbitrarily small mass perturbations of different sign