Accounting history research and its diffusion in an international context

Drawing on extensive evidence gathered from all accounting history papers published in major research journals during the 1990s, it is argued that extant patterns of dissemination of accounting history research in international contexts are less than efficient, which in turn results in a glaring neglect of the 'majority' in 'international' journals in the English language. My understanding of the term majority refers to the subjects who conduct research (i.e., men and women affiliated to non-Anglo-Saxon institutions), the research settings (i.e., non-Anglo-Saxon environments), and the observation periods (i.e., those different from 1850-1940). At best, some of historiographies have a superficial visibility in the international arena, whereas most of them are fully neglected. I shall argue that accounting history research would gain in strength if other scholars, settings, and periods of study were added to those regularly reflected in 'international' journals. I contend that such broadening of the discipline represents the most important challenge for accounting historians in the years to come

High temperature Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model for general spins

Francesco Guerra and Fabio Toninelli have developped a very powerful technique to study the high temperature behaviour of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick mean field spin glass model. They show that this model is asymptoticaly comparable to a linear model. The key ingredient is a clever interpolation technique between the two different Hamiltonians describing the models. This paper contribution to the subject are the following: (1) The replica-symmetric solution holds for general spins, not just $\pm 1$ valued. (2) The proof does not involve cavitation but only first order differential calculus and Gaussian integration by parts

A 750 GeV graviton from holographic composite dark sectors

We show that the 750 GeV di-photon excess can be interpreted as a spin-2 resonance arising from a strongly interacting dark sector featuring some departure from conformality. This spin-2 resonance has negligible couplings to the SM particles, with the exception of the SM gauge bosons which mediate between the two sectors. We have explicitly studied the collider constraints as well as some theoretical bounds in a holographic five dimensional model with a warp factor that deviates from AdS$_5$. In particular, we have shown that it is not possible to decouple the vector resonances arising from the strong sector while explaining the di-photon anomaly and keeping the five dimensional gravity theory under perturbative control. However, vector resonances with masses around the TeV scale can be present while all experimental constraints are met.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures; v2: revised and improved analysis, discussion on the interplay with the radion dynamics added, matches version accepted in Physics Letters

Sex-related differences in chromatic sensitivity

Generally women are believed to be more discriminating than men in the use of colour names and this is often taken to imply superior colour vision. However, if both X-chromosome linked colour deficient males (~8%) and females (<1%) as well as heterozygote female carriers (~15%) are excluded from comparisons, then differences between men and women in red-green colour discrimination have been reported as not being significant (e.g., Pickford, 1944; Hood et al., 2006). We re-examined this question by assessing the performance of 150 males and 150 females on the Colour Assessment and Diagnosis (CAD) test (Rodriguez-Carmona, 2005). This is a sensitive test that yields small colour detection thresholds. The test employs direction-specific, moving, chromatic stimuli embedded in a background of random, dynamic, luminance contrast noise. A four-alternative, forced-choice procedure is employed to measure the subject’s thresholds for detection of colour signals in 16 directions in colour space, while ensuring that the subject cannot make use of any residual luminance contrast signals. In addition, we measured the Rayleigh anomaloscope matches in a subgroup of 111 males and 114 females. All the age-matched males (30.8 ± 9.7) and females (26.7 ± 8.8) had normal colour vision as diagnosed by a battery of conventional colour vision tests. Females with known colour deficient relatives were excluded from the study. Comparisons between the male and female groups revealed no significant differences in anomaloscope midpoints (p=0.709), but a significant difference in matching ranges (p=0.040); females on average tended to have a larger mean range (4.11) than males (3.75). Females also had significantly higher CAD thresholds than males along the red-green (p=0.0004), but not along the yellow-blue discrimination axis. The differences between males and females in red-green discrimination may be related to the heterozygosity in X-linked cone photopigment expression common among females