Accountants as Change Agents

The results of a field study of 48 manufacturing firms illustrates the change issues that accountants should consider when implementing changes within an organization. The primary purposes of the field study were to determine: 1. the product costing method being used for external reporting purposes, 2. the product costing method being used for internal financial reporting and budgeting, and 3. reasons for the methods used internally. The results indicate that most of the chief financial officers and controllers of the participating firms have not implemented the prescription that organizations should use variable costing for internal purposes. The accountants of those firms that were successful in implementing variable costing were able to do so because they recognized that successful change requires both human relations skills and technical expertise

Reasoning About the Transfer of Control

We present DCL-PC: a logic for reasoning about how the abilities of agents and coalitions of agents are altered by transferring control from one agent to another. The logical foundation of DCL-PC is CL-PC, a logic for reasoning about cooperation in which the abilities of agents and coalitions of agents stem from a distribution of atomic Boolean variables to individual agents -- the choices available to a coalition correspond to assignments to the variables the coalition controls. The basic modal constructs of DCL-PC are of the form coalition C can cooperate to bring about phi. DCL-PC extends CL-PC with dynamic logic modalities in which atomic programs are of the form agent i gives control of variable p to agent j; as usual in dynamic logic, these atomic programs may be combined using sequence, iteration, choice, and test operators to form complex programs. By combining such dynamic transfer programs with cooperation modalities, it becomes possible to reason about how the power of agents and coalitions is affected by the transfer of control. We give two alternative semantics for the logic: a direct semantics, in which we capture the distributions of Boolean variables to agents; and a more conventional Kripke semantics. We prove that these semantics are equivalent, and then present an axiomatization for the logic. We investigate the computational complexity of model checking and satisfiability for DCL-PC, and show that both problems are PSPACE-complete (and hence no worse than the underlying logic CL-PC). Finally, we investigate the characterisation of control in DCL-PC. We distinguish between first-order control -- the ability of an agent or coalition to control some state of affairs through the assignment of values to the variables under the control of the agent or coalition -- and second-order control -- the ability of an agent to exert control over the control that other agents have by transferring variables to other agents. We give a logical characterisation of second-order control

Non-collinear spin states in bottom-up fabricated atomic chains

Non-collinear spin states with unique rotational sense, such as chiral spin-spirals, are recently heavily investigated because of advantages for future applications in spintronics and information technology and as potential hosts for Majorana Fermions when coupled to a superconductor. Tuning the properties of such spin states, e.g., the rotational period and sense, is a highly desirable yet difficult task. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the bottom-up assembly of a spin-spiral derived from a chain of Fe atoms on a Pt substrate using the magnetic tip of a scanning tunneling microscope as a tool. We show that the spin-spiral is induced by the interplay of the Heisenberg and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya components of the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction between the Fe atoms. The relative strengths and signs of these two components can be adjusted by the interatomic Fe distance, which enables tailoring of the rotational period and sense of the spin-spiral.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Encyclopedia of Case Study Research

Michael Pagano is a contributing author Healthcare Practice Guidelines and Case Studies . Book description: The Encyclopedia of Case Study Research provides a compendium on the important methodological issues in conducting case study research and explores both the strengths and weaknesses of different paradigmatic approaches. These two volumes focus on the distinctive characteristics of case study research and its place within and alongside other research methodologies.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/communications-books/1008/thumbnail.jp

Tsunami inundation : estimating damage and predicting flow properties

The 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tohoku tsunami events have shown the destructive power of tsunami inundation to the constructed environment in addition to the tragic loss of life. A comparable event is expected for the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) which will impact the west coast of North America. Research efforts have focused on understanding and predicting the hazard to mitigate potential impacts. This thesis presents two manuscripts which pertain to estimating infrastructure damage and determining design loads of tsunami inundation. The first manuscript estimates damage to buildings and economic loss for Seaside, Oregon, for CSZ events ranging from 3 to 25 m of slip along the entire fault. The analysis provides a community scale estimate of the hazard with calculations performed at the parcel level. Hydrodynamic results are obtained from the numerical model MOST and damage estimates are based on fragility curves from the recent literature. Seaside is located on low lying coastal land which makes it particularly sensitive to the magnitude of the events. For the range of events modeled, the percentage of building within the inundation zone ranges from 9 to 88%, with average economic losses ranging from $2 million to$1.2 billion. The second manuscript introduces a new tsunami inundation model based on the concept of an energy grade line to estimate the hydrodynamic quantities of maximum flow depth, velocity, and momentum flux between the shoreline and extent of inundation along a 1D transect. Using the numerical model FUNWAVE empirical relations were derived to tune the model. For simple bi-linear beaches the average error for the tuned model in flow depth, velocity, and momentum flux were 10, 23, and 10%, respectively; and for complex bathymetry at Rockaway Beach, Oregon, without recalibration, the errors were 14, 44, and 14% for flow depth, velocity, and momentum flux, respectively

Implications Of The Caacb Virus Contamination In Biomanufacturing Project For Cell Therapy Manufacturers

Adventitious agent contamination of cell culture-based biomanufacturing operations for the production of protein and monoclonal antibody biotherapeutics are infrequent, but when they do occur, they are very costly, impact manufacturing operations, and can potentially impact patient safety and product supply. In response to this need, the MIT Consortium on Adventitious Agent Contamination in Biomanufacturing (CAACB) began the confidential collection and analysis of industry-wide viral contamination data with an emphasis on “lessons learned”. This presentation will cover the learnings from this study, including identified industry risks and best practices to mitigate those risks. Some of the key findings which have significant implications to the emerging cell therapy industry are: 1) Raw materials, including non-animal-based raw materials, may be a potential source of viral contamination and stringent raw material testing and vendor selection and auditing programs are critical. 2) Traditional viral tests, including in vitro testing and PCR, have contributed to false-positive events, which may take extended times to resolve prior to release of raw materials, process intermediates, or final product. 3) The time frames needed for viral testing in general, and for investigation of positive viral tests, can range from weeks to months, and are not compatible with the requirements for near real-time release testing for some cell therapy products. 4) Viral testing programs, and potential investigations of positive results, are quite expensive, and application to the autologous cell therapy space will be challenging

Removal of Transition-Metal Ions by Metal-Complexing Polythiosemicarbazone Membranes

Membrane technology is one of the many strategies to remove transition-metal ions from aqueous streams because of its relatively lower costs and ease of operation. Typically, adsorbent materials are added into polymeric membranes to impart chelating/complexing properties, but this often results in a limited number of adsorption sites within the membrane. In this work, polythiosemicarbazone (pTSC) is proposed as a material to prepare polymeric membranes due to its metal-complexing ligands in the backbone, providing more adsorption sites. The polymer was easily processed into membranes via the nonsolvent-induced phase separation technique and exhibited asymmetric structures with adequate mechanical strength. The porosity of the membranes was controlled by increasing the polymer concentration in the casting solution, leading to ultrafiltration- and nanofiltration-type membranes with permeabilities ranging from 30 to 0.7 L·m-2·h-1·bar-1. The resulting pTSC membranes were applied for the removal of silver and copper ions in batch and, in the case of silver ions, also in dynamic adsorption experiments. The maximum removal rate of 17 mg·g-1 for silver and 3.8 mg·g-1 for copper ions was obtained in the batch removal experiment. Streaming potential, pH measurements, and infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were conducted to verify the anionic binding of TSC groups, while neutral binding modes were revealed by FTIR and batch removal experiments. Furthermore, the removal of silver ions was also successfully demonstrated in a flow setup operated at 4 bar of applied pressure. The streaming potential and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy conducted on the membranes after the flow tests confirmed the complexation by TSC-functional groups as the separation mechanism. Finally, partial desorption of the silver ions was successfully conducted in water to demonstrate the reusability of pTSC membranes.</p