The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Organometallic palladium reagents for cysteine bioconjugation

Reactions based on transition metals have found wide use in organic synthesis, in particular for the functionalization of small molecules. However, there are very few reports of using transition-metal-based reactions to modify complex biomolecules, which is due to the need for stringent reaction conditions (for example, aqueous media, low temperature and mild pH) and the existence of multiple reactive functional groups found in biomolecules. Here we report that palladium(II) complexes can be used for efficient and highly selective cysteine conjugation (bioconjugation) reactions that are rapid and robust under a range of bio-compatible reaction conditions. The straightforward synthesis of the palladium reagents from diverse and easily accessible aryl halide and trifluoromethanesulfonate precursors makes the method highly practical, providing access to a large structural space for protein modification. The resulting aryl bioconjugates are stable towards acids, bases, oxidants and external thiol nucleophiles. The broad utility of the bioconjugation platform was further corroborated by the synthesis of new classes of stapled peptides and antibody–drug conjugates. These palladium complexes show potential as benchtop reagents for diverse bioconjugation applications.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (GM-58160)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (GM-101762)MIT Faculty Start-up FundDamon Runyon Cancer Research FoundationSontag Foundation (Distinguished Scientist Award)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemistry (George Buchi Research Fellowship)David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT (Graduate Fellowship in Cancer Research

Ideological Labels in America

This paper extends Ellis and Stimson’s (Ideology in America. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2012) study of the operational-symbolic paradox using issue-level measures of ideological incongruence based on respondent positions and symbolic labels for these positions across 14 issues. Like Ellis and Stimson, we find that substantial numbers—over 30 %—of Americans experience conflicted conservatism. Our issue-level data reveal, furthermore, that conflicted conservatism is most common on the issues of education and welfare spending. In addition, we also find that 20 % of Americans exhibit conflicted liberalism. We then replicate Ellis and Stimson’s finding that conflicted conservatism is associated with low sophistication and religiosity, but also find that it is associated with being socialized in a post-1960s generation and using Fox News as a main news source. Finally, we show the important role played by identities, with both conflicted conservatism and conflicted liberalism linked with partisan and ideological identities, and conflicted liberalism additionally associated with ethnic identities

Search for rare quark-annihilation decays, B --> Ds(*) Phi

We report on searches for B- --> Ds- Phi and B- --> Ds*- Phi. In the context of the Standard Model, these decays are expected to be highly suppressed since they proceed through annihilation of the b and u-bar quarks in the B- meson. Our results are based on 234 million Upsilon(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected with the BABAR detector at SLAC. We find no evidence for these decays, and we set Bayesian 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions BF(B- --> Ds- Phi) Ds*- Phi)<1.2x10^(-5). These results are consistent with Standard Model expectations.Comment: 8 pages, 3 postscript figues, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications

Non-Disruptive Tactics of Suppression Are Superior in Countering Terrorism, Insurgency, and Financial Panics

BACKGROUND: Suppressing damaging aggregate behaviors such as insurgency, terrorism, and financial panics are important tasks of the state. Each outcome of these aggregate behaviors is an emergent property of a system in which each individual's action depends on a subset of others' actions, given by each individual's network of interactions. Yet there are few explicit comparisons of strategies for suppression, and none that fully incorporate the interdependence of individual behavior. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Here I show that suppression tactics that do not require the removal of individuals from networks of interactions are nearly always more effective than those that do. I find using simulation analysis of a general model of interdependent behavior that the degree to which such less disruptive suppression tactics are superior to more disruptive ones increases in the propensity of individuals to engage in the behavior in question. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, hearts-and-minds approaches are generally more effective than force in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, and partial insurance is usually a better tactic than gag rules in quelling financial panics. Differences between suppression tactics are greater when individual incentives to support terrorist or insurgent groups, or susceptibilities to financial panic, are higher. These conclusions have utility for policy-makers seeking to end bloody conflicts and prevent financial panics. As the model also applies to mass protest, its conclusions provide insight as well into the likely effects of different suppression strategies undertaken by authoritarian regimes seeking to hold on to power in the face of mass movements seeking to end them

Factors Associated with Negative Direct Sputum Examination in Asian and African HIV-Infected Patients with Tuberculosis (ANRS 1260)

OBJECTIVE: To identify factors associated with negative direct sputum examination among African and Cambodian patients co-infected by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and HIV. DESIGN: Prospective multicenter study (ANRS1260) conducted in Cambodia, Senegal and Central African Republic. METHODS: Univariate and multivariate analyses (logistic regression) were used to identify clinical and radiological features associated with negative direct sputum examination in HIV-infected patients with positive M. tuberculosis culture on Lowenstein-Jensen medium. RESULTS: Between September 2002 and December 2005, 175 co-infected patients were hospitalized with at least one respiratory symptom and pulmonary radiographic anomaly. Acid-fast bacillus (AFB) examination was positive in sputum samples from 110 subjects (63%) and negative in 65 patients (37%). Most patients were at an advanced stage of HIV disease (92% at stage III or IV of the WHO classification) with a median CD4 cell count of 36/mm³. In this context, we found that sputum AFB negativity was more frequent in co-infected subjects with associated respiratory tract infections (OR = 2.8 [95%CI:1.1-7.0]), dyspnea (OR = 2.5 [95%CI:1.1-5.6]), and localized interstitial opacities (OR = 3.1 [95%CI:1.3-7.6]), but was less frequent with CD4 ≤ 50/mm³ (OR = 0.4 [95%CI:0.2-0.90), adenopathies (OR = 0.4 [95%CI:0.2-0.93]) and cavitation (OR = 0.1 [95%CI:0.03-0.6]). CONCLUSIONS: One novel finding of this study is the association between concomitant respiratory tract infection and negative sputum AFB, particularly in Cambodia. This finding suggests that repeating AFB testing in AFB-negative patients should be conducted when broad spectrum antibiotic treatment does not lead to complete recovery from respiratory symptoms. In HIV-infected patients with a CD4 cell count below 50/mm3 without an identified cause of pneumonia, systematic AFB direct sputum examination is justified because of atypical clinical features (without cavitation) and high pulmonary mycobacterial burden

Generalised max entropy classifiers

In this paper we propose a generalised maximum-entropy classification framework, in which the empirical expectation of the feature functions is bounded by the lower and upper expectations associated with the lower and upper probabilities associated with a belief measure. This generalised setting permits a more cautious appreciation of the information content of a training set. We analytically derive the KarushKuhn-Tucker conditions for the generalised max-entropy classifier in the case in which a Shannon-like entropy is adopted

Religious affiliation modulates weekly cycles of cropland burning in Sub-Saharan Africa

Research ArticleVegetation burning is a common land management practice in Africa, where fire is used for hunting, livestock husbandry, pest control, food gathering, cropland fertilization, and wildfire prevention. Given such strong anthropogenic control of fire, we tested the hypotheses that fire activity displays weekly cycles, and that the week day with the fewest fires depends on regionally predominant religious affiliation.We also analyzed the effect of land use (anthrome) on weekly fire cycle significance. Fire density (fire counts.km-2) observed per week day in each region was modeled using a negative binomial regression model, with fire counts as response variable, region area as offset and a structured random effect to account for spatial dependence. Anthrome (settled, cropland, natural, rangeland), religion (Christian, Muslim, mixed) week day, and their 2-way and 3-way interactions were used as independent variables. Models were also built separately for each anthrome, relating regional fire density with week day and religious affiliation. Analysis revealed a significant interaction between religion and week day, i.e. regions with different religious affiliation (Christian, Muslim) display distinct weekly cycles of burning. However, the religion vs. week day interaction only is significant for croplands, i.e. fire activity in African croplands is significantly lower on Sunday in Christian regions and on Friday in Muslim regions. Magnitude of fire activity does not differ significantly among week days in rangelands and in natural areas, where fire use is under less strict control than in croplands. These findings can contribute towards improved specification of ignition patterns in regional/global vegetation fire models, and may lead to more accurate meteorological and chemical weather forecastinginfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Effect of Tuberculosis on Mortality in HIV Positive People: A Meta-Analysis

Tuberculosis is a leading cause of death in people living with HIV (PLWH). We conducted a meta analysis to assess the effect of tuberculosis on mortality in people living with HIV. Meta-analysis of cohort studies assessing the effect of tuberculosis on mortality in PLWH. To identify eligible studies we systematically searched electronic databases (until December 2008), performed manual searches of citations from relevant articles, and reviewed conference proceedings. Multivariate hazard ratios (HR) of mortality in PLWH with and without tuberculosis, estimated in individual cohort studies, were pooled using random effect weighting according to "Der Simonian Laird method" if the p-value of the heterogeneity test was <0.05. Fifteen cohort studies were systematically retrieved. Pooled overall analysis of these 15 studies estimating the effect of tuberculosis on mortality in PLWH showed a Hazard Ratio (HR) of 1.8 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.4-2.3). Subanalysis of 8 studies in which the cohort was not exposed to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) showed an HR of 2.6 (95% CI: 1.8-3.6). Subanalysis of 6 studies showed that tuberculosis did not show an effect on mortality in PLWH exposed to HAART: HR 1.1 (95% CI: 0.9-1.3). These results provide an indication of the magnitude of benefit to an individual that could have been expected if tuberculosis had been prevented. It emphasizes the need for additional studies assessing the effect of preventing tuberculosis or early diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis in PLWH on reducing mortality. Furthermore, the results of the subgroup analyses in cohorts largely exposed to HAART provide additional support to WHO's revised guidelines, which include promoting the initiation of HAART for PLWH co-infected with tuberculosis. The causal effect of tuberculosis on mortality in PLWH exposed to HAART needs to be further evaluated once the results of more cohort studies become availabl