Aggregate eco-efficiency indices for New Zealand – a Principal Components Analysis

Eco-efficiency has emerged as a management response to waste issues associated with current production processes. Despite the popularity of the term in both business and government circles, limited attention has been paid to measuring and reporting eco-efficiency to government policy makers. Aggregate measures of eco-efficiency are needed, to complement existing measures and to help highlight important patterns in eco-efficiency data. This paper aims to develop aggregate measures of eco-efficiency for use by policy makers. Specifically, this paper provides a unique analysis by applying principal components analysis (PCA) to eco-efficiency indicators in New Zealand. This study reveals that New Zealand's overall eco-efficiency improved for two out of the five aggregate measures over the period 1994/95 to 1997/98. The worsening of the other aggregate measures reflects, among other things, the relatively poor performance of the primary production and related processing sectors. These results show PCA is an effective approach for aggregating eco-efficiency indicators and assisting decision makers by reducing redundancy in an eco-efficiency indicators matrix.Policy development, policy evaluation, Aggregate indices, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

Accounting scandals: Beyond corporate governance

Accounting scandals are becoming perpetual in nature. They range from the ancient Mesopotamia, to the South Sea Bubble of 1720, to the famous Enron of 2001, down to Parmalat, Tesco and Toshiba of today. The series of accounting scandals that have occurred in the last two decades calls for a greater concern by the accounting profession. The accounting scandals that have occurred in this 21st century alone have shown that there is a need to look beyond corporate governance in the fight against financial deception. In this paper we argue that even in the face of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 and other regulations around the world that are targeted towards effective corporate governance, accounting scandals have never ceased to occur. Most of the legislation that has been passed in recent times was targeted at corporate governance, forgetting the crucial role that audit play within the agency relationship. And whenever there is any revelation of fraudulent financial reporting, investors don’t ask who are the directors, but the first question they ask is who are the auditors? Hence, there is a need to improve audit quality by approaching it from a forensic accounting perspective in order, to reduce the incidence of financial statement frauds in this era of information revolution. Thus, restoring investors’ confidence back in the financial reporting process and corporate governance. In this paper, we propose a forensic accounting paradigm as a viable option for reducing accounting scandals, since this will compliment corporate governance systems

Trust: The critical factor in theory and practice, from banks to cakes

This paper suggests that due to the incidence of leadership behaviours that are detrimental to many organisational stakeholders', more should be done in terms of corporate governance and auditing to address this. For stakeholders (such as pensioners, staff, and creditors) their relationship with organisational leaders is built on implicit trust. Any damage to that trust can have catastrophic repercussions for many stakeholders, be it emotional through stress or financial. Agency Theory provides a rationale for a basis on which trust can be broken. Rebuilding trust can be a herculean task, so it is important to seek ways in which any potential risk to trust can be avoided. Good governance practice is essential in the quest to maintain trust and protect stakeholders. Tighter guidelines for the content of Annual Reports, more insightful information on the skills, background, and behaviours of organisation leaders, and the use of forensic accounting techniques in the preparation of Audit reports will all facilitate maintaining trust and avoiding risks

Semi-automatic selection of summary statistics for ABC model choice

A central statistical goal is to choose between alternative explanatory models of data. In many modern applications, such as population genetics, it is not possible to apply standard methods based on evaluating the likelihood functions of the models, as these are numerically intractable. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a commonly used alternative for such situations. ABC simulates data x for many parameter values under each model, which is compared to the observed data xobs. More weight is placed on models under which S(x) is close to S(xobs), where S maps data to a vector of summary statistics. Previous work has shown the choice of S is crucial to the efficiency and accuracy of ABC. This paper provides a method to select good summary statistics for model choice. It uses a preliminary step, simulating many x values from all models and fitting regressions to this with the model as response. The resulting model weight estimators are used as S in an ABC analysis. Theoretical results are given to justify this as approximating low dimensional sufficient statistics. A substantive application is presented: choosing between competing coalescent models of demographic growth for Campylobacter jejuni in New Zealand using multi-locus sequence typing data

Status Report on Acrylamide in Potato Products

End of Project ReportThis status report was conducted as part of Task 1 of a research project (RMIS No. 5265) on the development and quantification of acrylamide in potatoes and potato products funded under the Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM) of the Department of Agriculture and Food as part of the National Development Plan. Teagasc acknowledges the support of theDepartment of Agriculture and FoodAcrylamide is a toxin that can potentially occur in high concentrations in heated starchy foods especially potato products such as crisps and french fries. In model systems isotopic substitution studies have demonstrated that acrylamide is formed via the Maillard type reaction between the amino acid aspargine and a carbonyl source such as the reducing sugars glucose and fructose. Levels of acrylamide in cooked potato products are primarily influenced by the levels of reducing sugars in the product and this in turn is influenced by storage time, temperature and variety of potato used. During cooking acrylamide formation begins to occur at temperatures above 100°C and increases up to temperatures of 220°C but decreases thereafter due to thermal degradation of the compound. Risk assessment studies on acrylamide intakes have been conducted in a number of countries and mg/kg body weight daily intakes have been estimated to be between 0.2-0.8. Adequate analytical techniques exist for quantification of acrylamide in potato and are mainly based around liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) techniquesDepartment of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

Accounting scandals: beyond corporate governance

Accounting scandals are becoming perpetual in nature. They range from the ancient Mesopotamia, to the South Sea Bubble of 1720, to the famous Enron of 2001, down to Parmalat, Tesco, and Toshiba of today. The series of accounting scandals that have occurred in the last two decades calls for a greater concern by the accounting profession. The accounting scandals that have occurred in this 21st century alone have shown that there is a need to look beyond corporate governance in the fight against financial deception. In this paper, we argue that even in the face of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) of 2002 and other regulations around the world that are targeted towards effective corporate governance, accounting scandals have never ceased to occur. Most of the legislations that have been passed in recent times were targeted at corporate governance, forgetting the crucial role that audit plays within the agency relationship. And whenever there is any revelation of fraudulent financial reporting, investors do not ask who are the directors, but the first question they ask is who are the auditors? Hence, there is a need to improve audit quality by approaching it from a forensic accounting perspective in order to reduce the incidence of financial statement frauds in this era of information revolution, thus restoring investors’ confidence back in the financial reporting process and corporate governance. In this paper, we propose a forensic accounting paradigm as a viable option for reducing accounting scandals, since this will compliment corporate governance systems

A Substrate-Independent Benthic Sampler (SIBS) for Hard and Mixed-Bottom Marine Habitats: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Sea cage fish farms are increasingly situated over hard and mixed substrate habitats for production and waste-dispersion reasons; yet in many cases, these installations are not being effectively managed with respect to benthic impacts due to the lack of a practical sampling method. This study presents the first set of results from a newly developed Substrate Independent Benthic Sampler (SIBS) device that captures the unconsolidated organic and inorganic matter that overlies almost all substrates. The contents of the samples were analyzed using extracted environmental DNA (eDNA) followed by metabarcoding of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. SIBS microbial assemblages reliably changed with proximity to farm and concurred with visual assessments of impact. Moreover, the approach appeared to be very sensitive with respect to the enrichment gradient, being able to discern influences at distances of 500–1500 m from the impact source. Other spatial differences, due to region and farm, were small in comparison, and the effect of the underlying substrate type was minor. The samples contained sufficient previously described bacterial bioindicator taxa from enriched sediments, such that a meaningful biotic index could be calculated, thereby placing them on a well-established benthic enrichment spectrum with established environmental thresholds. SIBS-derived bacterial data provide a powerful new approach for mapping spatial boundaries of farm effects irrespective of substrate type and topography. More importantly, the tool should also permit quantitative assessment of benthic enrichment levels irrespective of substrate type from depths of at least 100 m. It therefore has the potential to solve the hard-bottom problem that has until now prohibited effective environmental monitoring at mixed and hard-bottom locations.publishedVersio

The role of experienced practitioners in engineering education : the end of an era?

Delivering excellence in higher engineering education is dependent on many variables. This includes programme design, delivery and content, university support and the knowledge, experience and enthusiasm of faculty members. Over the past decade there has been a notable shift in engineering faculty recruitment policy. No longer is the professional and industrial experience of the engineering practitioner revered as a co-opted member of the engineering department. Despite their potential contribution as grounded, practical and relevant engineering lecturers, their impoverished knowledge of research funding mechanisms and lack of research capital is an acute disadvantage. This is a discussion paper exploring the marginalization of experienced practitioners in engineering education and the changing role of the educator as a career academic. The career academic is highly qualified and typically well versed in research activity; however, unlike their industrial counterparts they are devoid of any meaningful practical engineering experience. This changing role of the educator in engineering education has far-reaching consequences for teaching and learning and future industry skills. Given the longstanding connection between theory and practice in engineering education, this departure in pedagogical policy arguably signals the end of an era. The systematic fragmentation of engineering theory from industrial practice within higher education institutes arguably needs to be challenged. Recent government rhetoric to focus on the pedagogical aspects through a Teaching Excellence Framework is arguably aiming at the wrong target. Instead, reconstructing engineering programmes fit for the twenty-first century will require alternative teaching strategies, revitalised industrial advisory boards and uncommon leadership within engineering faculties

Total or Partial Knee Arthroplasty Trial - TOPKAT : study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

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