The Renege Case

Schools of Business, Accounting Programs, the AACSB accreditation standards, the accounting profession and society demand that we require ethical behavior and actions from our students, faculty and administration. Therefore, accounting departments desire to integrate into their programs a serious attempt to help students develop the skills and judgment with which to analyze situations and make ethical decisions

First Records of the Adventive Pseudoanthidium nanum (Mocsáry) (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) in Illinois and Minnesota, with Notes on its Identification and Taxonomy

We report the first records of Pseudoanthidium nanum (Mocsáry) in Illinois and Minnesota in 2016 and 2018, respectively. This represents a relatively rapid expansion since P. nanum was first detected in New Jersey in 2008. In order to help monitor the spread of this bee, we provide information on how to identify P. nanum and provide images of the general habitus, diagnostic features, and male genitalia. Finally, we confirm the taxonomic identity of P. nanum in the United States and highlight potential impacts on native anthidiines

Irrevocable commitments, going private and private equity.

This paper adds to growing interest in public to private buy-outs and mechanisms to ensure bid success. Using a unique, hand-collected dataset of 155 public to private buy-outs we provide one of the first examinations of the determinants of irrevocable commitments. Irrevocable commitments involve undertakings given by existing shareholders to agree to sell their shares to the bidder before the bid to take the company private is announced. We find that, for management buy-outs, the level of irrevocable commitments is increased by the bid premium, the reputation of the private equity backer and board shareholdings. The level of irrevocable commitments is reduced by rumours of a takeover bid and bid value. We therefore find evidence that management and private equity firms' activity prior to the bid's announcement can have an important impact on the process of going private

Grip and Muscle Strength Dynamometry Are Reliable and Valid in Patients With Unhealed Minor Burn Wounds

Small burns are common and can cause disproportionate levels of disability. The ability to measure muscle impairment and consequent functional disability is a necessity during rehabilitation of patients. This study aimed to determine the reliability and validity of grip and muscle strength dynamometry in patients with unhealed, minor burn wounds. Grip and muscle strength were assessed three times on each side. Assessment occurred at presentation for the initial injury and again every other day (or every 5 days beyond 10 days post injury) until discharge from the service. Reliability was assessed using intraclass correlation. Minimum detectable differences were calculated for each muscle group. Validity was assessed using regression analysis, incorporating appropriate burn severity measures and patient demographics. Thirty patients with TBSA 515% were assessed. Both grip and muscle strength demonstrated very good reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient: 0.85-0.96). Minimum detectable differences ranged from 3.8 to 8.0 kg. Validity of both forms of dynamometry was confirmed through associations with gender for all muscle groups (

Dynamic Control Flow in Large-Scale Machine Learning

Many recent machine learning models rely on fine-grained dynamic control flow for training and inference. In particular, models based on recurrent neural networks and on reinforcement learning depend on recurrence relations, data-dependent conditional execution, and other features that call for dynamic control flow. These applications benefit from the ability to make rapid control-flow decisions across a set of computing devices in a distributed system. For performance, scalability, and expressiveness, a machine learning system must support dynamic control flow in distributed and heterogeneous environments. This paper presents a programming model for distributed machine learning that supports dynamic control flow. We describe the design of the programming model, and its implementation in TensorFlow, a distributed machine learning system. Our approach extends the use of dataflow graphs to represent machine learning models, offering several distinctive features. First, the branches of conditionals and bodies of loops can be partitioned across many machines to run on a set of heterogeneous devices, including CPUs, GPUs, and custom ASICs. Second, programs written in our model support automatic differentiation and distributed gradient computations, which are necessary for training machine learning models that use control flow. Third, our choice of non-strict semantics enables multiple loop iterations to execute in parallel across machines, and to overlap compute and I/O operations. We have done our work in the context of TensorFlow, and it has been used extensively in research and production. We evaluate it using several real-world applications, and demonstrate its performance and scalability.Comment: Appeared in EuroSys 2018. 14 pages, 16 figure

Engineering Education Collaboration: Innovative Pedagogical Methods for High School and University Environmentalists

This paper presents an innovative teaching approach, how it is implemented, student response results of the implementation, and the assessment of impact on student learning. The findings are based on surveys given to the students after each lab lesson taught in partnership with university (Project STEP) and community members. The purpose of this paper is to showcase authentic molecular technology research methods that have been incorporated into a high school level water quality study in cooperation with a watershed restoration program. Typically, water quality studies focus on chemical analysis such as pH, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, orthophosphates, nitrates, temperature, turbidity, macro-invertebrate survey and fecal coliform cultures. This paper shows that by using molecular technology, the source of pollution in the watershed can be determined. Students in these high school science classes are engaged in authentic experiences to identify and analyze human impact on the environment and local ecosystems. Students also are able to collect and analyze data using computer and molecular technology. With help from the local watershed managers, the AP high school students filter bacteria, isolate their DNA, use the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the DNA, and finally use gel electrophoresis to trace the DNA to its source (human, cow or intestinal bacteria). In this way, both AP and Physical Science students can extend the water quality study to trace the pollution to a point source. This is a unique approach to high school science laboratory activities. All watershed data is collected and organized using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and graphing software. Students are able to form conclusions using technology that is used in today\u27s workplace. Initial findings regarding student response to this innovative teaching approach indicate that the actual application of molecular technology methods, employed to solve a problem with an unknown conclusion, is very meaningful to students. Unlike other traditional classroom labs, neither the teacher nor the students know what the results of the watershed tests are before-hand. This type of innovative teaching approach, supported by research on inquiry lessons, provides a more memorable experience for the students - actually performing technology that they would otherwise only read about in textbooks and articles. This paper will provide other instructors with a kind of roadmap, but one where there are experiences of many partners and students that highlight both successes and challenges

First Records of the Adventive Pseudoanthidium nanum (Mocsáry) (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) in Illinois and Minnesota, with Notes on its Identification and Taxonomy

We report the first records of Pseudoanthidium nanum (Mocsáry) in Illinois and Minnesota in 2016 and 2018, respectively. This represents a relatively rapid expansion since P. nanum was first detected in New Jersey in 2008. In order to help monitor the spread of this bee, we provide information on how to identify P. nanum and provide images of the general habitus, diagnostic features, and male genitalia. Finally, we confirm the taxonomic identity of P. nanum in the United States and highlight potential impacts on native anthidiines

A Cooperative Backup System

We present a novel peer-to-peer backup technique that allows computers connected to the Internet to back up their data cooperatively: Each computer has a set of partner computers, which collectively hold its backup data. In return, it holds a part of each partner’s backup data. By adding redundancy and distributing the backup data across many partners, a highly-reliable backup can be obtained in spite of the low reliability of the average Internet machine. Because our scheme requires cooperation, it is potentially vulnerable to several novel attacks involving free riding (e.g., holding a partner’s data is costly, which tempts cheating) or disruption. We defend against these attacks using a number of new methods, including the use of periodic random challenges to ensure partners continue to hold data and the use of disk-space wasting to make cheating unprofitable. Results from an initial prototype show that our technique is feasible and very inexpensive: it appears to be one to two orders of magnitude cheaper than existing Internet backup services

The Monitor project: JW 380 -- a 0.26, 0.15 Msol pre main sequence eclipsing binary in the Orion Nebula Cluster

We report the discovery of a low-mass (0.26 +/- 0.02, 0.15 +/- 0.01 Msol) pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary with a 5.3 day orbital period. JW 380 was detected as part of a high-cadence time-resolved photometric survey (the Monitor project) using the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope and Wide Field Camera for a survey of a single field in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) region in V and i bands. The star is assigned a 99 per cent membership probability from proper motion measurements, and radial velocity observations indicate a systemic velocity within 1 sigma of that of the ONC. Modelling of the combined light and radial velocity curves of the system gave stellar radii of 1.19 +0.04 -0.18 Rsol and 0.90 +0.17 -0.03 Rsol for the primary and secondary, with a significant third light contribution which is also visible as a third peak in the cross-correlation functions used to derive radial velocities. The masses and radii appear to be consistent with stellar models for 2-3 Myr age from several authors, within the present observational errors. These observations probe an important region of mass-radius parameter space, where there are currently only a handful of known pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary systems with precise measurements available in the literature.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA