Fueling Fair Practices: A Road Map to Improved Public Policy for Used Car Sales and Financing

Examines inequalities in the used car sales and financing market and recommends federal and state reforms to protect buyers from abuse, dangerous cars, and arbitrary repossession and ensure the strongest protections

Application of mixed integer programming to a large scale logistics problem

Integer Programming;Logistics;production

Accounting Boot Camp For College Juniors

We describe a day-long introduction to new accounting majors, which we call a boot camp.  Boot camp it is an effort to make juniors more aware of their identity, career purposes and learning resources that are now parts of their world, much of which is not covered explicitly in the accounting curriculum.  This paper provides an overview of the activities included in our initial boot camp.  In addition, we provide information useful in organizing boot camp type activities at other universities.

The Relationship Between Returns And Unexpected Earnings: A Comparison Of Australia And The United States

This paper examines a relatively short-term market reaction to unexpected earnings in Australia and the United States (U.S.).  Using data from 1987 to 1998, we test the existence of a short-term market reaction to the release of earnings in both countries. Because accounting standards, stock market characteristics and culture are similar in the two countries, we expect similar market responses to earnings releases.  The results indicate that both the Australian and the U.S. markets react relatively quickly to earnings releases. We also examine the incremental explanatory power of analysts’ forecast errors over the change in earnings per share.  Both the change in earnings per share and analysts’ forecast errors are expected to provide information to the market.  The results from this hypothesis conform to expectations, as both pieces of information are associated with market returns in the two countries.  Finally, we utilize t-tests to examine if the coefficients between Australia and the U.S. are different.  If so, differences in accounting, stock markets, and/or culture alter how information is processed between the two countries.  This hypothesis is not supported.  In sum, the U.S. and Australian stock markets react similarly to the release of unexpected earnings

PoshRat? Whereto (Self) Publishing?

This essay reviews Cheryce Clayton's Low Rez and other tales from the world of self-publishing

Microplastics in a Stormwater Pond

Large amounts of microplastics (MPs) enter our environment through runoff from urban areas. This study presents results for MPs in stormwater from a wet retention pond in terms of its water, sediments, and vertebrate fauna. The analysis was done for the size range 10–500 μm, applying a focal-plane array-based µFourier transform infrared (FPA-µFTIR) imaging technique with automated data analysis. Sample preparation protocols were optimized towards this analytical method. The study revealed 270 item L−1 in the pond water, corresponding to 4.2 µg L−1. The MPs in the pond were highly concentrated in its sediments, reaching 0.4 g kg−1, corresponding to nearly 106 item kg−1. MPs also accumulated in vertebrates from the pond—three-spined sticklebacks and young newts. In terms of particle numbers, this accumulation reached levels nearly as high as in the sediments. The size of the MPs in the pond water and its fauna was quite similar and significantly smaller than the MPs in the sediments. A rough estimate on MPs retention in the pond indicated that MPs were retained at efficiencies similar to that of other particulate materials occurring in the stormwater runoff

Pyrolysis oil utilization in 50KWE gas turbine

The concept of using pyrolysis oil (PO) derived from biomass via a fast pyrolysis route for power and heat generation encounters problems due to an incompatibility between properties (physical and chemical) of bio-oil and gas turbines designed for fossil fuels. An extensive research has been performed on the production and improvement of pyrolysis oil but only few investigations were carried out on its utilization. The latter have shown a major difference in behavior of pyrolysis oil compared to fossil fuels during combustion processes. In this work, pyrolysis oil is co-fired with diesel in a 50 kWe gas turbine operating in idle mode. Stable mixtures with up to 20 wt.% of pyrolysis oil and diesel fuel were produced with utilization of a surfactant agent. To prevent feeding line deterioration due to acidic character of pyrolysis oil, a stainless steel nozzle was employed. Furthermore, the fuel emulsion was preheated up to maximum temperature of 80 oC in order to reduce the effect of high viscosity on the atomization process. Diesel distillate #2 was used as a reference fuel for a comparison of gas turbine performance and emissions with various PO content in the blends. During the combustion investigations, the amount of pyrolysis oil was gradually increased with simultaneous decrease of preheating temperature. In all investigated cases, the gas turbine was running stable at its maximum rotational speed (RPM). The CO level resulting from the study with different blends was generally slightly higher in relation to the diesel distillate fuel. NO emissions were in the range of few ppm and almost no detectable with common gas analyzing equipment. After a few hours of continuous operation, there were no signs of deterioration or contaminations inside the combustor. The study shows that pyrolysis oil gradually can be introduced in the market of fossil fuels and benefit to green power generation