Search results

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

The interaction between formaldehyde and urea or thiourea has been reported by Richard and Gourdenne who used G.P.C. columns packed with reticular polystyrene gel of pore sizes 3×104, 3×103, 103, 500, 200, 100, 60 and 60 A and which were eluted with N, N‐dimethylformamide at 50°C. These authors prepared precursors such as monomethylolurea and N, N‐dimethylolurea in aqueous base at 4°C which prevented their autocondensation. These materials were positively identified by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, but they were not resolved from one another nor from urea itself on the G.P.C. columns on account of the fact that the strong solvation by the eluent dimethyl‐formamide was not affected by the substitution of one or two methylol groups into the urea molecule. Using an acid solution at room temperature, it was found that the reaction between formaldehyde and urea or disubstituted urea produced substances such as methylene diurea and methylene di (N, N‐dimethylurea) which, respectively, eluted before and after urea itself. When urea or thiourea was reacted with formaldehyde at a molar ratio of 1:1.8 in a 30% aqueous solution of pH 8 at 95°C, it was shown by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy that the individual urea residues were linked by ether bridges only and that methylenic linkages were totally absent. The degree of cross‐linking of the products was expressed in terms of the ratio of the number of protons included in these bridges to the total number of protons in the various methylene groups as determined by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Five samples were taken from such a reaction between urea and formaldehyde. Their G.P.C. curves were obtained and they were shown to display a wider molecular size distribution as the calculated degree of cross‐linking increased. The initial sample was found to be comprised of a mixture of mono‐ and dimethylolurea, but the samples taken later on during the reaction were more highly polymerised and could not be assigned individual molecular structures. A similar conclusion was reached using a mixture of thiourea and formaldehyde in the preparation of a resin.

This case is taught in Darden's Investments elective but could be used in introductory Finance classes to explore the concept of diversification of investments or in a portfolio management course as a means to explore optimal portfolio allocation. It is accompanied by several teaching tools including a teaching note for instructors, student and instructor spreadsheets, student and instructor videos, and a PowerPoint deck for class debrief. The case would work well in a module sequenced between CornerStone Partners (UVA-F-1677) used before and Pravda Asset Management (UVA-F-1602) used after.

The global head of investment research at the World Gold Council (WGC) has finished his presentation “The Strategic Case for Gold as an Asset Class” at the 2012 Bloomberg Precious Metals Conference in New York. As a result of the market collapse in 2008 and the ongoing euro-area crisis, investors worldwide have safety and security on their minds, and many in the room were wondering whether gold would provide capital preservation and improve the overall risk-return tradeoff of their portfolios. At the same time, the sustained run-up in the price of gold since 2001 that was mentioned in the presentation was a cause for concern. Was gold the safe haven that it had proved to be in 2008 and 2009, or was it an asset class at the peak of a bubble? The investment case for gold deserved closer examination.

A YEAR AGO, NEVER WAS HEARD THE discouraging “R” word. But “recession” is on everybody's lips these days. For good reason. Asian economies are crippled and show no signs of regaining their agility in the near term; Russia's is in almost complete disarray. And the U.S. stock market, dominated for years by rampaging bulls, is reflecting worries that the malaise afflicting the East will prove contagious, as well as the realization that earnings growth rates no longer justify high stock prices.

To emphasize the importance of assessing impacts, rather than focusing on probabilities, in strategy.

The paper presented is a viewpoint/opinion/column.

This column attempts to demonstrate that attempts to predict certain types of outcomes through complicated mathematical models can actually be dangerous, because they induce in decision‐makers a false sense of security and take their focus off of the potentially huge impacts of the prediction being wrong.

The paper presents an alternative way of viewing future uncertainty to the dominant spreadsheet‐model quantitative predictive approach.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the rise in crossbred cow numbers in the US dairy herd. Methods used look at well managed herds to see if crossbreeding provides a management tool that producers are using to maintain profitability.

The authors estimate a Translog stochastic production frontier (SPF) for US dairy farms to examine the competitiveness of crossbred and non-crossbred dairy herds by system and region.

The bottom-line conclusion is that WM or highly efficient crossbred herds solidly compete on a financial basis with larger WM Western Holstein herds, the most technically efficient managed group, based on the SPF results in the authors’ study. The study finds that net return on assets for crossbred herds are not different from Western Holstein herds and that there is no significant difference in amount of milk per cow produced annually.

Because of a need to unmask the advantages of crossbreeding as a technology it was necessary to separate WM herds from poorly managed herds. That was done by frontier estimates that robustly ranked operation and corrected for endogeneity, tested for selectivity bias, and incorporated the NASS survey design.

For the first time, the 2010 Dairy Cost and Returns questionnaire version of the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (Dairy CAR) design allows researchers to expand survey observations to represent the vast majority of the US dairy farm population and to sort dairy farms into crossbred/non-crossbred herds.

This paper reviews an array of psycholinguistic techniques that auditors can deploy to explore written and oral language for signs of deception. The review is drawn upon to propose some elements of a forward research agenda.

Relevant literature across several disciplines is identified through keyword searches of major bibliographic databases.

The techniques highlighted have considerable potential for use by auditors to identify audit contexts which merit closer audit investigation. However, the techniques need further contextual empirical investigation in audit contexts. Seven specific propositions are presented for empirical testing.

This paper assembles literature on deceptive communication from a wide range of disciplines and relates it to the audit context. Auditors’ attention is directed to potential linguistic signals of fraud risk, and opportunities for future research are suggested. The paper is consciousness-raising, has pedagogic purpose and suggests critical elements for a future research agenda.

The duties of the Public Analyst necessarily bring him more or less into contact with the members of his local authority. His work, like that of the other chief officers, is dealt with by one or more Committees before the results as a whole are submitted to the Council. The actual part played by the Committee or Committees depends on the will of the Council, and is in no way laid down by law. One thing is quite clear, namely, that the jurisdiction of the Committee and of the Council only extends the proceedings prior, and subsequent to the analysis of the samples. The nature of the analyses, the scientific methods employed, and the opinions based on the analytical results are entirely in the hands of the Public Analyst himself. The authority may not agree with him, and may not follow his advice, but unless there is very strong reason for doubting his competence, it is their duty to avail themselves of his expert knowledge and experience, and he is obliged to place his services at their disposal in these directions however inadequately he may be paid.