Are Accounting Firms Breaching the Age Discrimination Act with the Inclusion of Mandatory Retirement Provisions

Age is just a number. This phrase has been murmured time after time in history. From famous movie scenes, song lyrics, pages in books, and wisdom from mothers, everyone has heard this at least once in their lives. Some joke that age only matters in wine and cheese. Some argue that age is all a limitation that the mind gives you. People are taught to never ask a woman how old she is, and as a society we celebrate certain ages such as twenty-one and sixteen, yet shun and deny those such as thirty and fifty. There are rules for dating between certain ages, and we are granted new rights and responsibilities as our eternal clocks tick on longer and longer. Society has created its own formula for finding appropriate dating ages, dividing the older person’s age by two and adding seven, producing the youngest age they can “rightfully” date. There are psychological studies based on age. Clothing choices are made based on “age appropriateness”. As a society, we tell each other that “age is just a number”, but box ourselves in with rules and traditions based around that very thing, age. In every realm of life, age is relevant. In some aspects of life, age is everything. However, with our changing world, the rights and beliefs on age are changing. The United States has passed laws to protect those of certain age groups, and works to give help and aid to those in age groups that are more vulnerable than others. In our changing world, age is changing too. “Forty is the new thirty” these days. Couples are getting married and having children older than they used to. Education is taking more time. Life expectancy is rising exponentially with daily scientific findings and revelations. The world is changing, but many of our laws and traditions are not keeping up the pace. A very specific example that is gaining momentum among the business sector of the United States is the question of weather accounting firms are breaking the law by forcing mandatory retirement clauses in the contracts of their partners. This hot topic has two very distinct sides and is progressively being brought forward to the media and in court trials. Though the whispers are turning to shouts, there still is no legal presidency that has been set to answer if these firms are being unethical. Is mandatory retirement wrong? Unethical? Are mandatory retirement provisions that are increasingly being added into the contracts that accounting firm partners are expected to sign violating the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act

Pentahedral volume, chaos, and quantum gravity

We show that chaotic classical dynamics associated to the volume of discrete grains of space leads to quantal spectra that are gapped between zero and nonzero volume. This strengthens the connection between spectral discreteness in the quantum geometry of gravity and tame ultraviolet behavior. We complete a detailed analysis of the geometry of a pentahedron, providing new insights into the volume operator and evidence of classical chaos in the dynamics it generates. These results reveal an unexplored realm of application for chaos in quantum gravity.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, small revisions made and typos fixed, updated to include appendice

Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis, The

The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, it is necessary to understand exactly what happened and why from both a political and an economic perspective. In this study, renowned political scientist Stephan Haggard examines the political aspects of the crisis in the countries most affected--Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. * Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, as well as the politics of crisis management and the political fallout that ensued. He looks at the degree to which each government has rewoven the social safety net and discusses corporate and financial restructuring and greater transparency in business-government relations. Professor Haggard provides a counterpoint to the analysis by examining why Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines escaped financial calamity.

Heterosternuta sulphuria (Coloptera: Dytiscidae) Occurence in the Sulphur Springs Headwater System and in Buffalo National River Tributaries (Arkansas, USA): Current Distribution, Habitat Conditions, and Biomonitoring Framework

Heterosternuta sulphuria is an endemic aquatic species of concern in Arkansas, with a priority score of 80 out of 100 and a conservation rank of S1and G1. A need of the Arkansas Wildlife Action Plan (AWAP) was to obtain baseline information on distribution and population status of H. sulphuria. Here, we report new H. sulphuria records for 39 sites across 10 counties in the Ozark Highlands and Boston Mountain ecoregions and a determined habitat type of shallow margins and small bedrock pools of perennial streams and spring seeps. Few habitat patches were observed per site because detection was typically rapid and (unconfirmed) field identifications were possible because of the unique coloration of the pronotum, therefore only a small portion of the total available habitat was surveyed. We conclude that from our surveys and information gathered from other sources that in Arkansas H. sulphuria is probably ubiquitous among permanently wet aquatic habitats (primarily in upland headwater systems) throughout the Ozark Highlands and Boston Mountain ecoregions. Based on the number of occurrences, we recommend a downgrade of conservation status to S3 or S4. While some locations provide protection for current H. sulphuria populations (e.g., Buffalo National River, Hobbs State Park – Conservation Area, Sherfield Cave effluent stream, and USFS Richland Creek Wilderness), populations on unprotected lands in urban and agricultural settings probably have a much greater risk of population decline. A final determination of conservation status should consider several factors including dispersal capacity, population sizes, and genetic differentiation among populations. Furthermore, determining if existing H. sulphuria populations are isolated subpopulations or an interacting metapopulation and the habitat area required for population persistence are key for developing effective conservation actions. Monitoring existing populations should involve revisiting current H. sulphuria sites, and this is especially important for potentially fragmented populations in unprotected streams. Bioassessment programs could benefit from monitoring these easily observed populations that might positively relate to the overall physical and biological integrity of permanent Ozark streams and riparian corridors

Fuels research: Combustion effects overview

The effects of broadened property fuels on gas turbine combustors were assessed. Those physical and chemical properties of fuels that affect aviation gas turbine combustion were isolated and identified. Combustion sensitivity to variations in particular fuel properties were determined. Advanced combustion concepts and subcomponents that could lessen the effect of using broadened property fuels were also identified

Water Quality Monitoring and Constituent Load Estimation in the Upper Illinois River Watershed, 2009

The Arkansas Water Resources Center (AWRC) monitored water quality at eight sites in the Upper Illinois River Watershed (UIRW) during base flow conditions and storm events from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010. Water samples were collected manually with an alpha or Kemmerer style sampler and analyzed for nitrate-nitrogen (NO₃-N), sulfate (SO₄), chloride (Cl), soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), total phosphorus (TP), dissolved ammonia (NH₃-N), total N (TN), total suspended solids (TSS), and turbidity. Physico-chemical parameters were measured in the field including pH, conductivity, water temperature, and dissolved oxygen concentration. The selected sites were at established discharge monitoring stations maintained by the US Geological Survey or AWRC, and constituent loads were determined using regression models between constituent concentrations, discharge, and seasonal factors to estimate daily loads, which were then summed to produce monthly and annual load estimates. The constituent loads and annual flow-weighted concentrations for the 2009 calendar year are summarized in the tables below, using the data collected in this study. The regression models were applied throughout the discharge record of the entire calendar year to estimate loads. Summary of calculate

Illinois River Volunteer Monitoring

Understanding how water quality conditions change along a land use gradient and over time is important for sustainable watershed management. Therefore, a volunteer monitoring program was created to measure water chemistry at 37 established sites within the Upper Illinois River Watershed and to evaluate changes in water chemistry over the past 15 years. The Illinois River Watershed Partnership (IRWP), a non‐profit organization subcontracted with the Arkansas Water Resources Center at the University of Arkansas, to manage the volunteer monitoring project, train volunteers to collect samples following EPA approved methods, and to analyze the collected samples. The AWRC trained 27 volunteers to collect water samples at 37 sites that were previously sampled in 1993 and 1994. Samples were collected during baseflow conditions during September and December 2008 and February and May 2009 and analyzed for soluble reactive phosphorus, nitrate‐nitrogen, sulfate, chloride, fluoride, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, total suspended solids, and turbidity. Geomean concentrations were calculated and compared to the concentrations observed during the 1993‐1994 study. Overall, total phosphorus and soluble reactive phosphorus concentrations significantly increased at 14% and 11% of the sampled sites, respectively, between the previous and current studies, while respective concentrations significantly decreased at 8% and 16% of sampled sites. The greatest reductions in phosphorus concentrations occurred at sites downstream of effluent discharges, and both total phosphorus and soluble reactive phoshporus concentrations were positevely correlated to pasture and urban land use within the catchment (R²= 0.11, P=0.045; R²= 0.16, P=0.015, respectively). Similarly,both total nitrogen and nitrate‐nitrogen concentrations were positvely correlated to urban and pasture land use (R²= 0.38, P \u3c 0.0001; R²=0.29, P=0.0006, respectively), and 5% and 14% of the sampled sites significantly increased in total nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen concentrations, respectively, between the two study periods. Overall, very few significant changes in water quality (i.e., water chemistry) were observed over the last 15 years; those changes that were most noticeable resulted from either improvements in the phosphorus mangement of waterwater treatment facilities or the introdiction of effluent discharge into a new receiving stream. Volunteer monitoring programs are an excellent way to promote environmental education and stewardship, and these programs can be useful in documenting changes in watershed conditions over time

What can and what cannot be adjusted in the movement patterns of cerebellar patients?

This commentary reviews the case of a patient who could alter the coordination of her prehensile movements when removal of visual feedback reduced her kinetic tremor, but could not coordinate her hand aperture with her hand transport within a single movement. This suggests a dissociation between different subtypes of cerebellar context-response linkage, rather than a single, general association function

The Future of X-ray Time Domain Surveys

Modern X-ray observatories yield unique insight into the astrophysical time domain. Each X-ray photon can be assigned an arrival time, an energy and a sky position, yielding sensitive, energy-dependent light curves and enabling time-resolved spectra down to millisecond time-scales. Combining those with multiple views of the same patch of sky (e.g., in the Chandra and XMM-Newton deep fields) so as to extend variability studies over longer baselines, the spectral timing capacity of X-ray observatories then stretch over 10 orders of magnitude at spatial resolutions of arcseconds, and 13 orders of magnitude at spatial resolutions of a degree. A wealth of high-energy time-domain data already exists, and indicates variability on timescales ranging from microseconds to years in a wide variety of objects, including numerous classes of AGN, high-energy phenomena at the Galactic centre, Galactic and extra-Galactic X-ray binaries, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, stellar flares, tidal disruption flares, and as-yet unknown X-ray variables. This workshop explored the potential of strategic X-ray surveys to probe a broad range of astrophysical sources and phenomena. Here we present the highlights, with an emphasis on the science topics and mission designs that will drive future discovery in the X-ray time domain.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, Conference proceedings for IAU Symposium 285, "New Horizons in Time Domain Astronomy," Oxford, UK, Sep 19-23, 2011. To be published by IA