Stable Infrastructure-based Routing for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) have been instrumental in reshaping transportation towards safer roads, seamless logistics, and digital business-oriented services under the umbrella of smart city platforms. Undoubtedly, ITS applications will demand stable routing protocols that not only focus on Inter-Vehicle Communications but also on providing a fast, reliable and secure interface to the infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a novel stable infrastructure- based routing protocol for urban VANETs. It enables vehicles proactively to maintain fresh routes towards Road-Side Units (RSUs) while reactively discovering routes to nearby vehicles. It builds routes from highly stable connected intersections using a selection policy which uses a new intersection stability metric. Simulation experiments performed with accurate mobility and propagation models have confirmed the efficiency of the new protocol and its adaptability to continuously changing network status in the urban environment

Composition and Characteristic of the Surficial Sediments in the Southern Corniche of Jeddah, Red Sea Coast

This work discusses the composition and characteristic of the surficial sediments in the southern corniche of Jeddah, Saudi Red Sea coast, in an attempt to infer the surficial distribution pattern of minerals and provenance of sediments. Twenty-six superficial sediments samples were collected from backreef and forereef areas and were analyzed for grain size, CaCO3 content, and mineralogy. The textural of grain size range from gravel to mud fraction. The mud-dominated substrates (<63 µm) occur generally in the back-reef area near the shoreline (sheltered area) and in the lagoon. Gravel rich-sediments are mostly found in forereef regions. The highest content of aragonite and Mg-calcite occur in the forereef area, probably because to suitability the forereef region for chemical and biochemical precipitation of these minerals. High Mg-calcite and Dolomite are low in both the regions. The pyrite occurs in lagoon; this indicates the reductive conditions in this part. However, on the contrary the percentage of carbonate minerals were low in the backreef-flat area, which could be attributed to the supply of non-carbonate terrigenous materials. The terrigenous material contains quartz, k-feldspar, plagioclase and amphibole minerals and are dominant in backreef-flat area with averages of 12.7%, 7.13%, 2.93% and 0.65%, respectively. Their abundance could be attributed to the supply of terrigenous materials by Aeolian deposits and intermittent Wadis

Load Balancing Objective Function in RPL draft-qasem-roll-rpl-load-balancing-00

This document proposes an extended Objective Function(OF) that balances the number of children nodes of the parent nodes to avoid the overloading problem and ensure node lifetime maximization in the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). The standard OFs are used to build a Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG) where the bottleneck nodes may suffer from unbalanced traffic load. As a result, a part of the network may be disconnected as the energy of the overloaded preferred parent node will drain much faster than other candidate parents. Thus, a new RPL metric has been introduced to balance the traffic load over the network. The potential extra overhead has been mitigated using a new utilization technique. Finally, the proposed OF amends the DODAG Information Object (DIO) message format. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79

Accountants’ perceptions on the adoption of international financial reporting standards in Yemen

Developments in the global capital market have made the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRSs) more significant than ever before.The purpose of this study is to examine the accountants’ perception of IFRSs adoption in Yemen. We also seek the accountants’ view on whether Yemen should adopt the IFRSs or not, and on the expected time taken to adopt the accounting standards. We also examine the difference in opinion between academicians and practitioners regarding the adoption of IFRSs. In this regard, this study carries out a survey of 48 Yemeni accounting postgraduate students in Malaysian public universities.We find that a majority of the respondents acknowledge the benefits of adopting IFRSs in Yemeni companies. Moreover, a majority of the respondents (82.9%) agree that Yemeni companies should adopt IFRSs. About 58.6% of respondents expect the period of IFRSs adoption in Yemen to be within three to 10 years, while 41.5% expect it to be more than 10 years.The results of this study may help policy-makers and the Yemeni Association of Certified Public Accountants (YACPA) make more precise decisions regarding IFRSs adoption in Yemen

Accountants' Perceptions on the Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in Yemen

Developments in the global capital market have made the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRSs) more significant than ever before. The purpose of this study is to examine the accountants' perception of IFRSs adoption in Yemen. We also seek the accountants' view on whether Yemen should adopt the IFRSs or not, and on the expected time taken to adopt the accounting standards. We also examine the difference in opinion between academicians and practitioners regarding the adoption of IFRSs. In this regard, this study carries out a survey of 48 Yemeni accounting postgraduate students in Malaysian public universities. We find that a majority of the respondents acknowledge the benefits of adopting IFRSs in Yemeni companies. Moreover, a majority of the respondents (82.9%) agree that Yemeni companies should adopt IFRSs. About 58.6% of respondents expect the period of IFRSs adoption in Yemen to be within three to 10 years, while 41.5% expect it to be more than 10 years. The results of this study may help policy-makers and the Yemeni Association of Certified Public Accountants (YACPA) make more precise decisions regarding IFRSs adoption in Yemen.    Keywords: IFRSs, accounting standard convergence, Yemen JEL Classifications: M4, M4

Family involvement in ownership, management, and firm performance: Moderating and direct-effect models

This study aims to provide an empirical evidence on the moderating effect of family involvement in management(family CEO and founder CEO) on the relationship between family ownership and firm’s performance. From a sample of 75 public listed companies (375 firm-year observations) in Saudi Arabia, we use a five-year interval (2007-2011) and two firm performance indicators (market to book value (MBV) and return on assets (ROA)) to test five hypotheses.The hypotheses that there is a direct impact of family ownership and founder CEO on ROA and MBV were supported respectively.The hypothetical moderating impact of family CEO and founder CEO have been partially confirmed with MBV.Overall, the findings highlight the importance of occupying CEO positions in family firms by family members, especially the founders for gaining better performance.However, the results are robust when only family firms are examined separately

Family business definition: A matter of concern or a matter of convenience?

This paper attempts to examine the impact of adopting multiple family ownership cut-offs in defining family businesses, family ownership measurements, and conducting differen types of analyses.For achieving this goal we have focus on the relationship between family ownership and firm performance (ROA) in the context of emerging market (Saudi Arabia), controlling for firm's debt, age, size and industry sectors, with three family ownership cut-offs: 5%,10% and 20% and two types of family ownership measures (ratio and dummy), we fond that the relationship between the two variables is consistent despite of the level of family ownership cut-off, analysis type, and measurement.This indicates that family business definition is not a matter of concern for researchers, but rather a matter of convenience

Does family involvement on board of the directors contribute to firm profitability? An empirical evidence from Saudi Arabia

Literatures view board of the directors as the cornerstone of firm’s success.Therefore, family involvement on the board and its impact on firm profitability is an issue of interest and need to be addressed.The purpose of this paper lies in the fact that it extracts new empirical evidence from a promising area in the world.The study proceeds with a cross-sectional time-series analysis based on a data of 75 Saudi non-financial public listed firms from 2007-2011(375 firm-year observations) to examine family representing on board of the directors, family chairman, and founder chairman and its impact on firm performance (ROA).The study concludes the out performance of firms in which family represents heavily on the board.In addition, the results suggest that not all family members are good stewards.Strictly speaking, founder chairman only found to be beneficial to the firm profitability rather than others. However, the results confirmed its robustness against different indicator (EPS) and when family firms only being selected

Involvement of board chairmen in audit committees and earnings management: Evidence from Malaysia

This paper investigates the effect of the involvement of the board chairman in the audit committee (AC) on earnings management (EM). It examines Bursa Malaysia-listed companies with the lowest positive earnings for the years 2013 to 2015. The Modified Jones Model by Kasznik (1999) was used to determine discretionary accruals. An AC that includes its board chairman as an ordinary member is associated with greater discretionary accruals. However, a board chairman who is also the chairman of the AC does not seem to influence discretionary accruals. This paper supports the agency theory and policy-makers’ efforts to prevent board chairmen from sitting on ACs. It is the first study that uses the agency theory to describe the association between the board chairman’s involvement in the both AC and EM. This study alerts policy-makers, stakeholders and researchers to the influence of a board chairman serving on the AC in curbing EM. Furthermore, it provides empirical evidence that the majority of Malaysian companies whose board chairmen are involved in the AC appoint the chairman as an ordinary member of the AC. This indicates that executive directors may affect such actions. Hence, more policies are needed to improve AC independence