Efficient contracting, earnings smoothing and managerial accounting discretion

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the contracting incentives (i.e. bonus plans, debt covenants, political costs hypotheses), and income smoothing can explain accounting choices in an emerging country, Egypt. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses the ordinary least square regression model to examine the relationship between earnings management and reporting objectives. A sample of 438 non-financial firms listed on the Egyptian Exchange over the period 2005-2007 is used. Findings – The paper finds that the contracting objectives explain little of the variations in accounting choices (i.e. discretionary accruals) in the Egyptian context. However, the paper finds that mangers are likely to smooth the reported earnings by managing the accrual component in an attempt to reduce the fluctuation in reported earnings by increasing (decreasing) earnings when earnings are low (high) in attempt to reduce the variability of the reported earnings. Research limitations/implications – The empirical results rely on the ability of earnings management proxies to adequately capture earnings manipulation activities. Practical implications – The findings of the study should be of substantial interest to regulators and policy makers. The results implicitly contribute to the ongoing argument in relation to the optimal flexibility permitted by standard setting and the argument that tightening the accounting standards and mandating International Financial Reporting Standards are likely to improve reporting quality and reduce opportunistic earnings management. The results reveal that many of the weaknesses related to corporate reporting in emerging countries may result from the inadequate enforcement of the law and the weak legal protection of minority shareholders. The results also highlight the crucial role of understanding the reporting incentives, which is mainly shaped by institutional and market forces and the legal environment, in explaining accounting choices. Originality/value – Unlike previous studies that tested an individual objective, this study examines the trade-offs among various reporting objectives in an emerging economy

Study On Effect Of Nanosilica Sand Addition On Physical And Mechanical Properties Of Alumina Powder

Ceramic Matrix Composites is becoming more and more reliable materials in the industry. Advanced Ceramic Engineering development has been done making the process as well as cost in producing the Ceramic Matrix Composites become lesser and more reliable. The study is being done to observe the effects or differences that occur due to variation of alumina and silica sand nanoparticle to the alumina-silica sand nanoparticles composites. The objective of the study is to establish the effect of silica sand nanoparticles addition on the mechanical and physical properties of alumina based composites. The problem of the study is to find the most optimum or suitable composition in order to enhance the composites usage in the industry. The powder metallurgy technique was used with an uniaxial dry pressing. The green samples were sintered at 1100 °C temperature in argon atmosphere for two, four and six hours of sintering time according to the sample set. It was observed that the green and sintered density of the samples decreased along with the increase in the silica-sand nanoparticles content. The hardness of the sintered composites increased with the increased of silica sand nanoparticles content. The sintered density of the samples was increased with the sintering time up to four hours and decreased at six hours sintering time. The sintered microstructure analysis indicated that the diffusion of silica sand nanoparticles to the pores was formed. The maximum density produced is 3.367 g/cm3. The maximum hardness produced is 70.8 HRB. As a conclusion to this, the experiment proves that different composition of alumina powder and silica sand nanoparticles mixture will produced different mechanical and physical properties of the alumina-silica sand nanoparticles composites produced

Existence of Conformal Metrics on Spheres with Prescribed Paneitz Curvature

In this paper we study the problem of prescribing a fourth order conformal invariant (the Paneitz curvature) on the $n$-sphere, with $n\geq 5$. Using tools from the theory of critical points at infinity, we provide some topological conditions on the level sets of a given positive function under which we prove the existene of a metric, conformally equivalent to the standard metric, with prescribed Paneitz curvature.Comment: 20 page

Modularity-Based Clustering for Network-Constrained Trajectories

We present a novel clustering approach for moving object trajectories that are constrained by an underlying road network. The approach builds a similarity graph based on these trajectories then uses modularity-optimization hiearchical graph clustering to regroup trajectories with similar profiles. Our experimental study shows the superiority of the proposed approach over classic hierarchical clustering and gives a brief insight to visualization of the clustering results.Comment: 20-th European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning (ESANN 2012), Bruges : Belgium (2012

The Paneitz Curvature Problem on Lower Dimensional Spheres

In this paper we prescribe a fourth order conformal invariant 9the Paneitz Curvature) on five and six spheres. Using dynamical and topological methods involving the study of critical points at infinity of the associated variational problem, we prove some existence results.Comment: 34 page

Crypto Embedded System for Electronic Document

In this paper, a development of low-cost RSA-based Crypto Embedded System targeted for electronic document security is presented. The RSA algorithm is implemented in a re-configurable hardware, in this case Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The 32-bit soft cores of AlteraÂ’s Nios RISC processor is used as the basic building blocks of the proposed complete embedded solutions. AlteraÂ’s SOPC Builder is used to facilitate the development of crypto embedded system, particularly in hardware/software integration stage. The use of Cryptographic Application Programming Interface (CAPI) to bridge the application and the hardware, and the associated communication layer in the embedded system is also discussed. The result obtained shows that the crypto embedded system provides a suitable compromise between the constraints of speed, space and required security level based on the specific demands of targeted applications