Auditing the PCAOB: A Test to the Accountability of the Uniquely Structured Regulator of Accountants

After a slew of highly publicized corporate accounting scandals during the early 2000s at prominent companies-including Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco-public confidence in the integrity of financial reporting by public companies was undoubtedly shaken. Several major financial reporting frauds demonstrated serious weaknesses with the then self-regulated accounting profession, including the failure of auditors to detect those companies that were cooking their books. The collapse of several prominent companies not only affected top executives, who often were subjected to civil and criminal charges, but also produced harsh consequences for several other constituencies who relied on the integrity of the accounting firms to detect these discrepancies in financial reporting. As one scholar phrased it: The growing number of accounting and corporate governance scandals had sounded an alarm, which was made all the more deafening by the staggering sums of money lost by shareholders, employees, and retirees of the companies involved. Reacting swiftly to the public concern, Congress passed landmark legislation in 2002. Congress designed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ( SOX ) to regulate the conduct of public accounting firms and to revive investors\u27 confidence in the integrity of public companies\u27 financial reporting and disclosures. After signing SOX into law, President George W. Bush declared that SOX included some of the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. SOX represented a radical departure from the previously self- regulated accounting profession. As a central part of SOX, Congress created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board ( PCAOB ) and provided it with extensive authority to ensure that SOX\u27s lofty objectives were met. Among the PCAOB\u27s significant powers and responsibilities is the authority to promulgate rules and regulations governing the standards and issuance of audit reports, to conduct inspections and investigations of registered public accounting firms, and to impose monetary sanctions on registered firms for noncompliance with its standards

State of play : the gatekeeping of micro-documentaries

July 2013.A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri--Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts.Thesis supervisor: Dr. Timothy Vos.The micro-documentary is a digital subgenre emerging from the overlap of longform documentary film, broadcast news, home video, advertising, and photojournalism. Despite technological advancements that have made video production and publication tools more accessible and less expensive, a wide spectrum of gatekeeping forces affect micro-documentaries in a variety of production contexts, including broadcast, web journalism, agency-driven commercial work, direct-to-client commercial work, self-publishing and film festivals. Through semi-structured interviews with six microdocumentary theorists and fifteen micro-documentary producers, this study uncovered an extensive (but by no means exhaustive) catalogue of gatekeeping forces affecting microdocumentary production at five levels of analysis: individual, routine, organizational, social institutional and social systems. After the analysis of twenty-one interviews, five phenomena emerged as primary findings: the existence of unacknowledged gatekeeping forces, the erosion of the auteur mentality, the value of qualitative returns, "share-ability" as a guiding production principle, and the decorporealization of gatekeeping online. This study offers practical and theoretical value by mapping gatekeeping forces reported by micro-documentarians and examining the relevance of an established journalistic theory to an emerging subgenre. In addition, this study could also establish a foundation for future study of micro-documentaries.Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-147)

CALIPSO Observations of Volcanic Aerosol in the Stratosphere

In the stratosphere, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) has observed the presence of aerosol plumes associated with the eruptions several volcanoes including Montserrat (May 2006), Chaiten (May 2008), and Kasatochi (August 2008). While the dense ash plumes from these eruptions dissipate relatively quickly, CALIPSO continued to detect an enhanced aerosol layer from the Montserrat eruption from the initial observations in June 2006 well into 2008. Solar occultation missions were uniquely capable of monitoring stratospheric aerosol. However, since the end of long-lived instruments like the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE II), there has been no clear space-based successor instrument. A number of active instruments, some employing new techniques, are being evaluated as candidate sources of stratospheric aerosol data. Herein, we examine suitability of the CALIPSO 532-nm aerosol backscatter coefficient measurements

CALIPSO Observations of Stratospheric Aerosols: A Preliminary Assessment

We have examined the 532-nm aerosol backscatter coefficient measurements by the Cloud- Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) for their use in the observation of stratospheric aerosol. CALIPSO makes observations that span from 82 S to 82 N each day and, for each profile, backscatter coefficient values reported up to approx. 40 km. The possibility of using CALIPSO for stratospheric aerosol observations is demonstrated by the clear observation of the 20 May 2006 eruption of Montserrat in the earliest CALIPSO data in early June as well as by observations showing the 7 October 2006 eruption of Tavurvur (Rabaul). However, the very low aerosol loading within the stratosphere makes routine observations of the stratospheric aerosol far more difficult than relatively dense volcanic plumes. Nonetheless, we found that averaging a complete days worth of nighttime only data into 5-deg latitude by 1-km vertical bins reveals a stratospheric aerosol data centered near an altitude of 20 km, the clean wintertime polar vortices, and a small maximum in the lower tropical stratosphere. However, the derived values are clearly too small and often negative in much of the stratosphere. The data can be significantly improved by increasing the measured backscatter (molecular and aerosol) by approximately 5% suggesting that the current method of calibrating to a pure molecular atmosphere at 30 km is most likely the source of the low values

Monochromatic triangles in three-coloured graphs

In 1959, Goodman determined the minimum number of monochromatic triangles in a complete graph whose edge set is two-coloured. Goodman also raised the question of proving analogous results for complete graphs whose edge sets are coloured with more than two colours. In this paper, we determine the minimum number of monochromatic triangles and the colourings which achieve this minimum in a sufficiently large three-coloured complete graph.Comment: Some data needed to verify the proof can be found at http://www.math.cmu.edu/users/jcumming/ckpsty

The DP Color Function of Clique-Gluings of Graphs

DP-coloring (also called correspondence coloring) is a generalization of list coloring that has been widely studied in recent years after its introduction by Dvo\v{r}\'{a}k and Postle in 2015. As the analogue of the chromatic polynomial of a graph $G$, $P(G,m)$, the DP color function of $G$, denoted $P_{DP}(G,m)$, counts the minimum number of DP-colorings over all possible $m$-fold covers. Formulas for chromatic polynomials of clique-gluings of graphs are well-known, but the effect of such gluings on the DP color function is not well understood. In this paper we study the DP color function of $K_p$-gluings of graphs. Recently, Becker et. al. asked whether $P_{DP}(G,m) \leq (\prod_{i=1}^n P_{DP}(G_i,m))/\left( \prod_{i=0}^{p-1} (m-i) \right)^{n-1}$ whenever $m \geq p$, where the expression on the right is the DP-coloring analogue of the corresponding chromatic polynomial formula for a $K_p$-gluing of $G_1, \ldots, G_n$. Becker et. al. showed this inequality holds when $p=1$. In this paper we show this inequality holds for edge-gluings ($p=2$). On the other hand, we show it does not hold for triangle-gluings ($p=3$), which also answers a question of Dong and Yang (2021). Finally, we show a relaxed version, based on a class of $m$-fold covers that we conjecture would yield the fewest DP-colorings for a given graph, of the inequality holds when $p \geq 3$.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2104.1226

Characterization of Polar Stratospheric Clouds With Spaceborne Lidar: CALIPSO and the 2006 Antarctic Season

The role of polar stratospheric clouds in polar ozone loss has been well documented. The CALIPSO satellite mission offers a new opportunity to characterize PSCs on spatial and temporal scales previously unavailable. A PSC detection algorithm based on a single wavelength threshold approach has been developed for CALIPSO. The method appears to accurately detect PSCs of all opacities, including tenuous clouds, with a very low rate of false positives and few missed clouds. We applied the algorithm to CALIPSO data acquired during the 2006 Antarctic winter season from 13 June through 31 October. The spatial and temporal distribution of CALIPSO PSC observations is illustrated with weekly maps of PSC occurrence. The evolution of the 2006 PSC season is depicted by time series of daily PSC frequency as a function of altitude. Comparisons with virtual solar occultation data indicate that CALIPSO provides a different view of the PSC season than attained with previous solar occultation satellites. Measurement-based time series of PSC areal coverage and vertically-integrated PSC volume are computed from the CALIPSO data. The observed area covered with PSCs is significantly smaller than would be inferred from a temperature-based proxy such as TNAT but is similar in magnitude to that inferred from TSTS. The potential of CALIPSO measurements for investigating PSC microphysics is illustrated using combinations of lidar backscatter coefficient and volume depolarization to infer composition for two CALIPSO PSC scenes

Diagnosis and Initial Management of Blunt Pancreatic Trauma: Guidelines From a Multiinstitutional Review

OBJECTIVE: The authors' objective was to resolve the current controversies surrounding the diagnosis and management of blunt pancreatic trauma (BPT). SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: The diagnosis of BPT is notoriously difficult: serum amylase has been claimed to be neither sensitive nor specific, and recent anecdotal reports have suggested a role for computed tomography. The therapy of BPT has been controversial, with some suggesting selective observation and others advocating immediate exploration to prevent a delay-induced escalation in morbidity and death. METHODS: The authors conducted a retrospective chart review of documented BPT from six institutions, using a standardized binary data form composed of 187 items and 237 data fields. RESULTS: A significant correlation between pancreas-specific morbidity and injury to the main pancreatic duct (MPD) was noted. Patients requiring delayed surgical intervention after an unsuccessful period of observation demonstrated notably higher pancreas-specific mortality and morbidity rates, principally because of the incidence of unrecognized injuries to the MPD. Although detection of MPD injuries by computed tomography was no better than flipping a coin, endoscopic pancreatography was accurate in each of the five cases in which it was used. CONCLUSIONS: The principal cause of pancreas-specific morbidity after BPT is injury to the MPD. Parenchymal pancreatic injuries not involving the ductal system rarely result in pancreas-specific morbidity or death. Delay in recognizing MPD injury leads to increased mortality and morbidity rates. CT is unreliable in diagnosing MPD injury and should not be used to guide therapy. Initial selection of patients with isolated BPT for observation or surgery can be based on the determination of MPD integrity

Relative Riemann-Zariski spaces

In this paper we study relative Riemann-Zariski spaces attached to a morphism of schemes and generalizing the classical Riemann-Zariski space of a field. We prove that similarly to the classical RZ spaces, the relative ones can be described either as projective limits of schemes in the category of locally ringed spaces or as certain spaces of valuations. We apply these spaces to prove the following two new results: a strong version of stable modification theorem for relative curves; a decomposition theorem which asserts that any separated morphism between quasi-compact and quasi-separated schemes factors as a composition of an affine morphism and a proper morphism. (In particular, we obtain a new proof of Nagata's compactification theorem.)Comment: 30 pages, the final version, to appear in Israel J. of Mat