Digital Commons Network^™

A Simple Approach To Better Distinguish Real Earnings Manipulation From Strategy Changes, Theodore E. Christensen, Adrienna Huffman, Melissa F. Lewis-Western, Kristen Valentine

Faculty Publications

Researchers typically infer real earnings management when a firm’s operating and investing activities differ from industry norms. A significant problem with classifying deviations from industry averages as myopic earnings management is that companies can change their operating and investing decisions for strategic business reasons rather than to mislead stakeholders. Using principal components analysis, we systematically evaluate existing measures and develop a comprehensive real activities measure to better capture earnings manipulation. Our measure reflects (i) deviations from industry averages across multiple activities and (ii) other signals of manipulation. This approach is promising because, although there are many sources of abnormal activities, …

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me: The Long-Term Impact Of Arthur Andersen’S Demise On Partners’ Audit Quality*, Feng Guo, Ling Lei Lisic, Jeffrey Pittman, Timothy Seidel, Mi Zhou, Ying Zhou

Faculty Publications

Although recent evidence suggests that individual audit partners explain a substantial portion of the variation in audit quality proxies, much less is known about what determines an audit partner’s quality. Psychology and behavioral economics theories hold that an individual’s experiences can have enduring impacts on subsequent behavior. We examine whether auditors’ direct exposure to Arthur Andersen’s collapse has a long-term impact on the quality of their audits. Our evidence implies that audit partners who directly experienced Andersen’s demise impose stricter monitoring evident in their clients exhibiting a lower propensity for misstatements and small profits, and paying higher audit fees. Importantly, …

Double Trouble? Irs’S Attention To Financial Accounting Restatements, Zackery D. Fox, Ryan Wilson

Faculty Publications

We examine whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses public information to obtain qualitative signals regarding the quality of firms’ financial information or management integrity. Using the procurement of public information as a proxy for IRS attention, we test whether public signals of poor information quality (restatements) lead to an increase in IRS attention. To begin, we document that the IRS is both more likely and quicker to acquire public filings announcing a restatement than any other filing of the firm. Furthermore, we examine instances in which the IRS is more likely to learn of a restatement and find an …

Ecology Of Family Experiences: Contextualizing Family Leisure For Human Development & Family Relations, Camilla Hodge, Kelly D. Chandler, Karen K. Melton, Kelly L. Hoke, Jennifer Blodgett

Faculty Publications

Research on family communication in the leisure context has been limited to retrospective survey reconstructions of perceptions of communication patterns. This study examines the validity of sociometric badges for measuring family communication in real-time. Seven families (married, two-parent families with at least one child ages 4–17 years) wore sociometric badges during a 30-minute leisure activity in a lab setting. We compared mean badge estimates of family communication duration to mean coded video data from the same 30-minute sessions. Intraclass correlation coefficients indicated sociometric badges are not as reliable as video-coded estimates of speech; however, among parents, non-significant mean comparisons partially …

Experience Journey Map: A New Experience Design Tool For Structuring Youth Activities, Gary D. Ellis, Jingxian Jiang, Darlene Locke, Patti A. Freeman, Kaylee Jorgensen

Faculty Publications

We introduce a new experience design tool, an experience journey map, to assist youth professionals in planning engagement, immersion, and absorption activities. Experience journey maps are based on customer journey maps, which are widely used in business service design. This new approach highlights strategies for engendering deep structured experiences during the activity. An experience journey map is a matrix of columns and rows. Columns represent the sequence of activity stages. Rows are experience-structuring strategies derived from the theory of structured experience. These strategies include service performance strategies, deep structured experience strategies, and engagement, immersion, and absorption strategies. We present a …

Personal Acts, Habit, And Embodied Agency In Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology Of Perception, Justin F. White

Faculty Publications

In Aspiration, Agnes Callard examines the phenomenon of aspiration, the process by which one acquires values and becomes a certain kind of person. Aspiring to become a certain type of person involves more than wanting to act in certain ways. We want to come to see the world in a certain way and to develop the dispositions, attributes, and skills that allow us to seamlessly and effectively respond to situations. The skilled athlete or musician, for example, has developed the muscle memory and the perceptual equivalent to naturally see what a situation requires and to respond well, whether playing a …

The Path Of The Righteous: Using Trace Data To Understand Fraud Decisions In Real Time, Markus Weinmann, Joe Valacich, Christoph Schneider, Jeffrey Jenkins, Martin Hibbeln

Faculty Publications

Trace data—users’ digital records when interacting with technology—can reveal their cognitive dynamics when making decisions on websites in real time. Here, we present a trace-data method—analyzing movements captured via a computer mouse—to assess potential fraud when filling out an online form. In contrast to incumbent fraud-detection methods, which analyze information after submission, mouse-movements traces can capture the cognitive dynamics of a decision to be fraudulent as it is happening. We report two controlled studies using different tasks, where participants could freely commit fraud to benefit themselves financially while we captured mouse-cursor movement data. We found that participants who entered fraudulent …

Do Privacy Assurances Work? A Study Of Truthfulness In Healthcare History Data Collection, Tamara M. Masters, Mark Keith, Rachel Hess, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

Patients often provide untruthful information about their health to avoid embarrassment, evade treatment, or prevent financial loss. Privacy disclosures (e.g. HIPAA) intended to dissuade privacy concerns may actually increase patient lying. We used new mouse trackingbased technology to detect lies through mouse movement (distance and time to response) and patient answer adjustment in an online controlled study of 611 potential patients, randomly assigned to one of six treatments. Treatments differed in the notices patients received before health information was requested, including notices about privacy, benefits of truthful disclosure, and risks of inaccurate disclosure. Increased time or distance of device mouse …

Information Filtering In Electronic Networks Of Practice: An Fmri Investigation Of Expectation (Dis)Confirmation, Kelly J. Fadel, Thomas O. Meservy, C. Brock Kirwan

Faculty Publications

Online forums sponsored by electronic networks of practice (ENPs) have become an important platform for technology-mediated knowledge exchange, yet relatively little is known about how ENP participants filter and evaluate the information they encounter on these forums. This study integrates perspectives from expectation confirmation theory, prospect theory, and neuroscience research to explore how ENP forum filtering judgments are influenced when expectations formed on the basis of contextual cues are confirmed or disconfirmed by the examination of solution quality. We summarize six different models of expectation confirmation explored in previous IS literature and report the results of a neuroimaging experiment using …

An Fmri Investigation Of The Neurocognitive Processing Of Measures And Strategic Objectives, Paul Black, C. Brock Kirwan, Thomas Meservy, William B. Tayler, Jeffrey O. Williams

Faculty Publications

A central feature of most organizations is the use of measures to represent key elements of performance across multiple strategic objectives. Prior research has demonstrated a tendency for individuals to treat these measures as though they are the higher-order strategic objectives the measures were intended to represent, as opposed to imperfect representations of those strategic objectives—a phenomenon labeled surrogation. We employ an experiment to further understand this phenomenon. In this study, we capture neural activation when processing measures and when processing strategic objectives. We find that differences in brain activity when processing measures and strategic objectives are similar to the …

The Effects Of A Second-Chance Exam Policy In A Large-Enrollment Introductory Accounting Course, Melissa Larson, William B. Tayler, Jared R. Stark

Faculty Publications

Using a quasi-experimental design, we compare two semesters of an introductory accounting course to evaluate the impact of a second-chance exam policy (SCEP) on student performance and anxiety, analyzing data from 1,986 students. The SCEP, allowing two additional attempts at exams capped at 80 percent credit, significantly improved academic outcomes and decreased perceived test anxiety. Specifically, students during the SCEP semester experienced an average increase of 4.46 percent in exam scores (p < 0.01), a 3.37 percent increase in course percentage points (p < 0.01), and a GPA increase of 0.21 (p < 0.01). Notably, women experienced greater improvements than men in measured academic outcomes. Our findings suggest that SCEPs can be an effective intervention to increase academic performance and reduce anxiety. We also examine an SCEP’s effect on preparation for exam first attempts and find that students perform better on a first attempt with an SCEP.

Drone-Based Large-Scale Particle Image Velocimetry Applied To Tidal Stream Energy Resource Assessment, Iain Fairley, Benjamin J. Williamson, Jason Mcilvenny, Nicholas King, Ian Masters, Matthew Lewis, Simon Neill, David Glasby, Daniel Coles, Ben Powell, Keith Naylor, Max Robinson, Dominic E. Reeve

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Resource quantification is vital in developing a tidal stream energy site but challenging in high energy areas. Drone-based large-scale particle image velocimetry (LSPIV) may provide a novel, low cost, low risk approach that improves spatial coverage compared to ADCP methods. For the first time, this study quantifies performance of the technique for tidal stream resource assessment, using three sites. Videos of the sea surface were captured while concurrent validation data were obtained (ADCP and surface drifters). Currents were estimated from the videos using LSPIV software. Variation in accuracy was attributed to wind, site geometry and current velocity. Root mean square …

Correction To: Epilepsy Related Multimorbidity, Polypharmacy And Risks In Adults With Intellectual Disabilities: A National Study, James J. Sun, Bhathika Perera, William Henley, Heather Angus-Leppan, Indermeet Sawhney, Lance Watkins, Kiran N. Purandare, Mogbeyiteren Eyeoyibo, Mark Scheepers, Geraldine Lines, Robert Winterhalder, Samantha Ashby, Silva R De, Jonjo Miller, David E. Philpott, Chris Ashwin, Joshua Howkins, Harriet Slater, David Medhurst, Rohit Shankar

Peninsula Medical School

Correction to: Journal of Neurology https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-021-10938-3The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. Author name Ravindu De Silva was incorrectly written as Ravi De Silva.

Can You See Me, Or Can You Smell Me? An Investigation Into Information Transfer In Betta Splendens, Alex Daniel Lynch

School of Biological and Marine Sciences Theses

Visual communication in Betta splendens has been studied in great detail. Chemical information transfer in this species has been studied less, and the interaction between chemical and visual information transfer less still. Betta may have a need for chemical information transfer; a need which is often neglected when housing this species in isolation from conspecifics. There is evidence that many fish species communicate using visual signals and spy on one another using chemical cues. Which type of information transfer is important and how they interact in which social context is less clear. Eavesdropping and mate choice has been studied extensively …

A Step Towards Automating Real-Time Collection Of Ecological Data On Observational Platforms : A Pilot Study On Deep-Sea Benthic Species Syringammina Fragilissima, Erin Browne

School of Biological and Marine Sciences Theses

Despite current efforts to study deep-sea life, there is a dependency on technological advancements to asses it at a scale and pace required to inform effective management and conservation. Data collection platforms, such as Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are routinely applied to studying the deep sea due to their ability to collect large image-based datasets. Thus, data collection in the deep sea is becoming less of a problem in comparison to data interpretation, where terabytes of video data is collected during expeditions and manual interpretation of this is currently the standard procedure. Deep learning (DL), a sub-field of artificial intelligence …

The Genetic Diversity And Distribution Of Two Endangered Pit Vipers (Bothriechis Marchi And Cerrophidion Wilsoni) Within Cusuco National Park, Honduras, Debbie Starbuck

School of Biological and Marine Sciences Theses

The current extinction rate is being increasingly recognised as an escalating issue, with observations still indicating that humans are the leading cause of a sixth mass extinction. Cloud forests in particular are home to a variety of threatened species, however, many of these forests are highly fragmented resulting in many species and populations existing in isolation. These forests have become centres of endemism for many species, leading to a high representation within global biodiversity hotspots and “irreplaceable” protected areas. This study primarily investigates the genetic diversity and distribution of two recently re-classified, sympatric pit vipers (Bothriechis marchi and Cerrophidion wilsoni) …

Smart Soft Open Point To Synergically Improve The Energy Efficiencies Of The Interconnected Electrical Railways With The Low Voltage Grids, Tamer Kamel, Zhongbei Tian, Mansoureh Zangiabadi, Neal Wade, Volker Pickert, Pietro Tricoli

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

This paper presents a novel smart soft open point (sSOP) that interconnects railway electrification system to the local low voltage (LV) distribution grid to provide additional flexibility and controllability for both networks. The proposed sSOP builds on the concept of soft open points, adding an energy storage system and embedding a rail and grid (R + G) energy management system to enable the energy transfer between the two networks at different average power levels. The smartness of the proposed soft open point is realised in the integration of an energy storage system to act as an energy buffer between these …

Loot Boxes And Problem Gambling: Investigating The “Gateway Hypothesis”, Stuart Gordon Spicer, Chris Fullwood, James Close, Laura Louise Nicklin, J Lloyd, H Lloyd

Peninsula Medical School

No abstract provided.

Cynthia Lucy Stephens, The Borges Enigma: Mirrors, Doubles, And Intimate Puzzles, David Laraway

Faculty Publications

In one of his most celebrated texts, ‘Borges y yo’, Borges describes wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, pausing to take in an unanticipated architectural detail or anything else that happens to catch his attention. That spirit of flâneurie captures something of the experience of reading Cynthia Lucy Stephens’ The Borges Enigma. It is the work of a devoted reader of Borges who accompanies us on a tour of Borges’ texts, pointing out an abundance of unexpected details even as her path seems to be marked less by any strict agenda than by the simple pleasures of exploration. Whether it …

Effect Of Post-Operative Goal-Directed Fluid Therapy (Gdft) On Organ Function After Orthotopic Liver Transplantation: Secondary Outcome Analysis Of The Colt Randomised Control Trial, Farid Froghi, Vignesh Gopalan, Zachos Anastasiou, Rahul Koti, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Christine Eastgate, Margaret Mcneil, Helder Filipe, Manuel Pinto, Jeshika Singh, Louise Longworth, Susan Mallett, Nick Schofield, Douglas Thorburn, Daniel Martin, Brian R. Davidson

Peninsula Medical School

No abstract provided.

Nursing Students' Attitudes Towards Climate Change And Sustainability: A Cross-Sectional Multisite Study, Carmen Álvarez-Nieto, Janet Richardson, M. Ángeles Navarro-Perán, Naomi Tutticci, Norma Huss, Marie Elf, Anna Anåker, Jennie Aronsson, Heather Baid, Isabel M. López-Medina

School of Nursing and Midwifery

No abstract provided.

Binary Acoustic Metasurfaces For Dynamic Focusing Of Transcranial Ultrasound, Zhongtao Hu, Yaoheng Yang, Lu Xu, Yao Hao, Hong Chen

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is a promising technique for non-invasive and spatially targeted neuromodulation and treatment of brain diseases. Acoustic lenses were designed to correct the skull-induced beam aberration, but these designs could only generate static focused ultrasound beams inside the brain. Here, we designed and 3D printed binary acoustic metasurfaces (BAMs) for skull aberration correction and dynamic ultrasound beam focusing. BAMs were designed by binarizing the phase distribution at the surface of the metasurfaces. The phase distribution was calculated based on time reversal to correct the skull-induced phase aberration. The binarization enabled the ultrasound beam to be dynamically steered …

Survival After Simultaneous Pancreas-Kidney Transplantation In Type 1 Diabetes: The Critical Role Of Early Pancreas Allograft Function, Mengmeng Ji, Mei Wang, Wenjun Hu, Mohamed Ibrahim, Krista L. Lentine, Massini Merzkani, Haris Murad, Yazen Al-Hosni, Ronald Parsons, Jason Wellen, Su-Hsin Chang, Tarek Alhamad

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation (SPK) carries about a 7%-22% risk of technical failure, but the impact of early pancreas allograft loss on subsequent kidney graft and patient survival is not well-defined. We examined national transplant registry data for type 1 diabetic patients who received SPK between 2000 and 2021. Associations of transplant type (i.e., SPK, deceased-donor kidney transplant [DDKA], living-donor kidney transplant [LDKA]) with kidney graft failure and patient survival were estimated by multivariable inverse probability of treatment-weighted accelerated failure-time models. Compared to SPK recipients with a functioning pancreas graft 3 months posttransplant (SPK,P+), LDKA had 18% (Time Ratio [TR] 0.82, …

Intraocular Human Cytomegaloviruses Of Ocular Diseases Are Distinct From Those Of Viremia And Are Capable Of Escaping From Innate And Adaptive Immunity By Exploiting Hla-E-Mediated Peripheral And Central Tolerance, Mariko Shirane, Michael Paley, Wayne M Yokoyama, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infections develop into CMV diseases that result in various forms of manifestations in local organs. CMV-retinitis is a form of CMV disease that develops in immunocompromised hosts with CMV-viremia after viruses in the peripheral circulation have entered the eye. In the HCMV genome, extensive diversification of the UL40 gene has produced peptide sequences that modulate NK cell effector functions when loaded onto HLA-E and are subsequently recognized by the NKG2A and NKG2C receptors. Notably, some HCMV strains carry UL40 genes that encode peptide sequences identical to the signal peptide sequences of specific HLA-A and HLA-C allotypes, which …

All-Cause And In-Hospital Mortality After Aspirin Use In Patients Hospitalized With Covid-19: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Nischit Baral, Joshua D Mitchell, Pramod K Savarapu, Maxwell Akanbi, Bandana Acharya, Soumya Kambalapalli, Amith Seri, Krishna P Bashyal, Arvind Kunadi, Niranjan Ojha, Annabelle Santos Volgman, Tripti Gupta, Timir K Paul

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: With the results of the largest randomized controlled trial (RECOVERY) and the most extensive retrospective cohort study on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recently published, we performed a meta-analysis on the association of aspirin with mortality of COVID-19. We aimed to investigate the role of aspirin in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We searched PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane databases for studies from 1 January 2020 until 20 July 2022, that compared aspirin versus non-aspirin use in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. We excluded case reports, review articles and studies on non-hospitalized COVID-19 infections. We used the inverse variance method and random effects …

Theta-Gamma Coupling As A Cortical Biomarker Of Brain-Computer Interface-Mediated Motor Recovery In Chronic Stroke, Nabi Rustamov, Joseph Humphries, Alexandre Carter, Eric C Leuthardt

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Chronic stroke patients with upper-limb motor disabilities are now beginning to see treatment options that were not previously available. To date, the two options recently approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration include vagus nerve stimulation and brain-computer interface therapy. While the mechanisms for vagus nerve stimulation have been well defined, the mechanisms underlying brain-computer interface-driven motor rehabilitation are largely unknown. Given that cross-frequency coupling has been associated with a wide variety of higher-order functions involved in learning and memory, we hypothesized this rhythm-specific mechanism would correlate with the functional improvements effected by a brain-computer interface. This study …

Preparing Providers For Advanced Life Support In The Prehospital Environment, David N. Reid

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death and Ambulance Victoria estimated over 30,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of hospital each year in Australia (1, 2). When an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occurs, first responders, paramedics or other clinicians attached to ambulance, industrial or aeromedical services are often the first providers on scene with the skills and equipment to implement advanced life support (ALS). Despite the essential role of prehospital advanced emergency care in the treatment of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, at the time this research was commenced, ALS training courses had been designed for those responding to cardiac arrests in …

The Influence Of Institutional Social Media And College Students' Choice, Anna Fishbein

Masters Theses

Social media has become a way of personal communication as well as a way for brands and businesses to connect with consumers. In the past twenty years, the expansion of technology into everyday life has impacted the way we interact and communication. There is a lack of information surrounding how social media is influencing prospective students’ college choice. There are studies focused on student college choice, and studies focused on how social media impacts consumers, but there is limited research focused on bridging the two concepts. This quantitative study utilized a causal-comparative survey to explore the influence of institutional social …

From Soup To Nuts - The Efficiency Of Non-Profits: Evidence From U.S. Food Banks, Mary A. Mattingly

Masters Theses

Nonprofits are a growing part of America’s economy and play an import role in fulfilling the needs of society in addition to private firms and government agencies. Economists haven’t researched nonprofits as much as other firms in the past, but this is starting to change. This project looks at the efficiency of 20 food banks in the United States using Data Envelopment Analysis. The results show that American Food Banks appear to be using their funds efficiently, but others could learn to use their inputs and outputs in a more efficient manner. As more data becomes available, this area of …

Development Of Phase Change Thermal Storage Medium: Cooking With More Power And Versatility, Martin Osei

Masters Theses

With an Insulated Solar Electric Cooker (ISEC), a 100 W solar panel directly cooks food while providing 5W off-grid electricity access; but it cooks slowly. Storing the day’s energy with phase change thermal storage allows ISEC to cook more rapidly as well as cook after sunset. The ISEC is made by sticking a 3ohm resistive to an aluminum pot (inner phase change assembly PCA) where another cooking pot fits. The resistive heater is surrounded by a bigger pot (outer PCA) that contains the PCM and is tightly sealed. The solar panel is connected to the resistive heater with a thermal …