Minerva Van Peursem Letter

A letter from a former student of Theora England, Minerva Van Peursem, given to her on her retirement.https://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/theorareflections/1024/thumbnail.jp

Preparation of cholesterilene and various cholestadienes

3,5- and 4,6-Cholestadienes were prepared by the removal of two molecules of hydrogen bromide from pseudo-cholestene dibromide (4,5-dibromocholestane) and beta-cholestene dibromide (5,6-dibromocholestane) respectively. Alcoholic potassium was found to be ineffective for the complete removal of hydrogen bromide but quinoline was found to act satisfactorily for the conversion of the dibromocholestanes to the cholestadienes. The cholestadiene (3,5-cholestadiene) obtained from 4,5-dibromocholestane was found to be laevorotatory, which indicates that one of the double bonds is in the 5,6-position; the other double bond would be in conjugation in the 3,4-position. The cholestadiene (4,6-cholestadiene) obtained from 5,6-dibromocholestane was found to be dextrorotatory, which indicates that one of the double bonds is in the 4,5-position; the other double bond would be in conjugation in the 6,7-position;3,5-Cholestadiene was purified by various methods until its melting point, specific optical rotation and refractive index were unaffected by further purification. Cholesterilene was prepared by five different methods and the samples of cholesterilene obtained were purified by various methods. The melting points, specific optical rotations and refractive indices observed were compared with those of 3,5-cholestadiene and the melting points and refractive indices of these products were found to be of the same value. The numerical agreement of the two highest laevorotations observed, namely those of the products obtained by the action of hydrochloric acid upon a mixture of allo- and epi allocholesterol and by the pyrolysis of cholesteryl methyl xanthogenate, leads to the indication that the products (including 3,5-cholestadiene) obtained by other methods still contain impurities which could not be removed by the procedure employed although the specific rotations observed are higher than previously reported. The treatment of cholesterilene and 3,5-cholestadiene with chromium trioxide yielded oxycholestenone (cholesten-4-dione-3,6) isolated as the monophenyl-hydrazone, which indicated their identity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.

Public sector performance auditing: Emergence, purpose and meaning

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extant Anglo-American literature on 'performance auditing for the public sector', in order to identify the socio-economic and political themes that influenced the emergence of public sector performance auditing. The paper also seeks to develop an understanding of the role and practice of performance auditing in the public sector. Common catalysts for change appear to rest in the influence of the local governmental senior auditor (e.g. Auditor General), the existence of public sector reform and changes in standardisation generally. The traditional role of the public sector auditor has undergone significant change over time. In particular, the scope of the public sector audit now exceeds the expectation that the auditor only check for regulatory and procedural compliance. It is now expected that the auditor enhance accountability in the management of public sector resources. The perceived objectives of performance auditing (economy, efficiency and effectiveness) emerge as a strong theme, one which seems to comply with these more modern expectations of performance

A new hardware prefetching scheme based on dynamic interpretation of the instruction stream

It is well known that memory latency is a major deterrent to achieving the maximum possible performance of a today\u27s high speed RISC processors. Techniques to reduce or tolerate large memory latencies become essential for achieving high processor utilization;Many methods, ranging from software to hardware solutions, have been studied with varying amounts of success. Most techniques have concentrated on data prefetching. However, our simulations show that the CPU is stalled up to 50% of the time waiting for instructions. The instruction memory latency reduction technique typically used in CPU designs today is the one block look-ahead (OBL) method;In this thesis, I present a new hardware prefetching scheme based on dynamic interpretation of the instruction stream. This is done by adding a small pipeline to the cache that scans forward in the instruction stream interpreting each instruction and predicting the future execution path. It then prefetches what it predicts the CPU will be executing in the near future;The pipelined prefetching engine has been shown to be a very effective technique for decreasing the instruction stall cycles in typical on-chip cache memories used today. It performs well, yielding reductions in stall cycles up to 30% or more for both scientific and general purpose programs, and has been shown to reduce the number of instruction stall cycles as compared to the OBL technique as well;The idea of sub-line prefetching was also studied and presented. It was thought that prefetching full cache lines might present too much overhead in terms of bus bandwidth, so prefetches should only fill partial cache lines instead. However it was determined that prefetching partial cache lines does not show any benefit when dealing with cache lines smaller than 128 bytes

Audit committees and internal auditors: Using LMX for relationship analysis

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically-informed meaning for the ‘quality of the audit committee-internal auditor relationship’ construct and to provide a new instrument for its measure. Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX theory) is widely accepted in the management communication and management literature as one which can be used to explain the development of a leader-member relationship and the quality of such a relationship. The analysis will be grounded in the LMX literature, and in understanding of the relationship between the audit committee and internal auditors. This paper is a contribution to the literature as such application of LMX is a newly theorised initiative to enable researchers to improve our understandings of this important corporate relationship. The output of this analysis can be used for research which evaluates the quality of the audit committee-internal auditor relationship (AC-IA relationship)

Forecasting New Zealand Corporate Failures 2001-10: Opportunity Lost?

Knowing whether an organization will fail is useful information for investors and other stakeholders. Looking to 36 New Zealand corporate failures (2001-2010), we find that anticipation of their demise was not clearly signalled in the public media. The question then emerges as to whether better forecasts of impending failure could have been derived from information that was publicly available at the time. The aim of this project is to identify the potential for having better anticipated these failures, and to consider implications of that found. Selecting thirteen indicators and three models from the literature, 25 failing and a matched 25 non-failing companies are compared using data up to three years prior to failure. Findings from ANOVA and Chi-Square tests reveal a majority of significant differences which grow closer to failure dates. We conclude that while using such information would have revealed indications of problems for individual companies, definitive assertions of impending failure would not have been justified. Nonetheless, corporate failure forecasts could have been of benefit to users, as long as such forecasts had been qualified as ‘concerns’

Forecasting New Zealand Corporate Failures 2001-10: Opportunity Lost?

Knowing whether an organization will fail is useful information for investors and other stakeholders. Looking to 36 New Zealand corporate failures (2001-2010), we find that anticipation of their demise was not clearly signalled in the public media. The question then emerges as to whether better forecasts of impending failure could have been derived from information that was publicly available at the time. The aim of this project is to identify the potential for having better anticipated these failures, and to consider implications of that found. Selecting thirteen indicators and three models from the literature, 25 failing and a matched 25 non-failing companies are compared using data up to three years prior to failure. Findings from ANOVA and Chi-Square tests reveal a majority of significant differences which grow closer to failure dates. We conclude that while using such information would have revealed indications of problems for individual companies, definitive assertions of impending failure would not have been justified. Nonetheless, corporate failure forecasts could have been of benefit to users, as long as such forecasts had been qualified as ‘concerns’

Catalytic Hydrogenation of Furfural

A study was made of the possibility of producing the reduction products of furfural by passing its vapor, with an excess of hydrogen, over finely divided catalyst

Cost-Effective and Efficient Screening Guidelines for Diagnosing Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

A literature review was conducted between the months of August 2023-November 2023 to research current guidelines for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) that were both cost effective and efficient in the adult population. The purpose of this review was to provide current guidelines that could be applied in practice to screen Promise Community Health Center’s patients for the presence of NAFLD. In the review we provide guideline recommendations that are both cost effective and efficient for Promise to apply to their adult population