Practical Training and the Audit Expectations Gap:The Case of Accounting Undergraduates of Universiti Utara Malaysia

The accounting profession has long faced the issue of an audit expectations gap; being the gap between the quality of the profession’s performance, its objectives and results, and that which the society expects. The profession believes that the gap could be reduced over time through education. Studies have been carried out overseas and in Malaysia to determine the effect of education in narrowing the audit expectations gap. Extending the knowledge acquired, this paper investigates whether academic internship programs could reduce the audit expectations gap in Malaysia. Using a pre-post method, the research instrument adapted from Ferguson et al. (2000) is administered to the Universiti Utara Malaysia’s accounting students at the beginning and end of their internship program. The results show there is a significant change in perceptions among students after the internship program. However, changes in perceptions do not warrant an internship program as a means of reducing the audit expectations gap as misperceptions are still found among respondents on issues of auditing after the completion of the internship program. Nevertheless, an internship program can still be used to complement audit education in a university as it is an ideal way to expose students to professional issues and enables them to have a better insight of the actual performance and duties of auditors

Managing Electrotechnology Innovation in the USA

In 1982, IIASA initiated an Innovation Management Task that brought together many leading managers from the electrotechnology industry as well as researchers and policy makers. This endeavor resulted in several meetings with the active participation and support of representatives from industry from both East and West. The first of these meetings, of which Electrosila was one of the supporting organizations, took place in Leningrad in May 1982. This meeting also identified the focus of those future activities that were esteemed to be of predominant importance for managers in the electrotechnology industry. These included the strategic development of a company, and the human and organizational factors in managing innovation. In this paper, the author presents an overview of innovation management in the United States electrotechnology industry from an historical perspective. He touches on all three factors that were recommended at the Leningrad meeting and describes them from the point of view of his many years of first-hand experience and direct involvement. Further, he describes the role of the user in as much as it significantly affects the technical development of the industry. The paper describes in clear, concise scientific terms the interaction of new technologies and the economy of industrial performance as well as national policy and its impact on the overall development. This paper will be of interest not only to policy researchers, but also to managers from industry and decision makers in government. It is also a welcome sign to all former participants in the innovation management meetings that IIASA strongly supports this activity

Green Spaces as Healthy Places: Correlates of Urban Green Space Use in Singapore

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when stress levels were heightened and social connections were threatened, a spike in green space visits was observed. Drawing upon the value–belief–norm (VBN) theory, which explains the influence of personal values and world view on perceived obligations to the environment and to action, relevant correlates were examined in relation to people’s psychological wellbeing in a bid to better elucidate this phenomenon. We aimed to explore the associations amongst a number of protective factors for psychological wellbeing and to examine the applicability of the VBN theory to wellbeing rather than environmental behaviour. Our research aim was to understand some of the correlates of the use of urban green spaces in Singapore during COVID-19. In total, 268 adult residents of Singapore completed an online survey measuring proximity/frequency of visits to green space, value orientations, nature connectedness, social connectedness, religious belief, spirituality and psychological wellbeing, along with sociodemographic variables such as age and gender. As predicted by the VBN theory, biospheric value orientation and spirituality were positively associated with nature connectedness. The nature connectedness association with psychological wellbeing was completely mediated by spirituality. Frequency of visits to nature was also positively associated with nature connectedness. Neither proximity to nature nor social connectedness were associated with nature connectedness. An altruistic value orientation was associated only with religious belief. Our results indicate that during uncertain times, people are drawing on either social or nature connections as coping mechanisms to fulfil psychological needs and enhance psychological wellbeing. Spirituality mediates this pathway for nature connectedness but not for social connectedness

A scale-dependent cosmology for the inhomogeneous Universe

A scale-dependent cosmology is proposed in which the Robertson-Walker metric and the Einstein equation are modified in such a way that $\Omega_0$, $H_0$ and the age of the Universe all become scale-dependent. Its implications on the observational cosmology are discussed.Comment: 7 pages, in RevTex. To be appeared in TAUP '9

Treatment of mixed (fresh and salt) wastewater

Hong Kong has the geographical advantage of being situated on the coast and therefore it is possible to use dual water supply systems (fresh + sea water systems in two separate distribution networks) for potable and non-potable uses. From the sea water supply system, about three quarters of the population in Hong Kong is supplied with salt water for toilet flushing. The seawater is extracted from the sea directly and pumped by pumping stations located near the shore and supplied to the households. The used toilet flushing water (saline wastewater) is discharged into the sewerage system which conducts the mixed (fresh + salt) wastewater into the STW (sewage treatment works). The salt concentration of the mixed wastewater is between 5,000 mg/l to 6,000 mg/l, about one-fifth of seawater salt concentration, in Hong Kong

Thermal Dileptons from a Nonperturbative Quark-Gluon Phase

Assuming that gluon condensates are important even above the deconfining phase transition, we develop a model for the dilepton yield from a quark gluon plasma. Using a simple fire ball description of a heavy ion collision, and various estimates of the strengths of the gluon condensates, we compare our predicted dilepton yields with those observed in the CERES and HELIOS experiments at CERN. The simple model gives an adequate description of the data, and in particular it explains the observed considerable enhancement of the yield in the low mass region.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, reference adde

Magnetic properties of neutrinos in high temperature SU(2)XU(1) gauge theory

We calculate the finite temperature self-energy for neutrinos in the presence of a constant magnetic field in a medium in the unbroken $SU(2) \otimes U(1)$ model. We obtain the exact dispersion relation for such neutrinos and find that the thermal effective mass is modified by the magnetic field. We also find a simple analytic expression for the dispersion relation and obtain the index of refraction for large neutrino momentum.Comment: 13 pp, RevTeX, no figure