Bryophytes of conservation concern decline and traits change in retention patches during two decades following forest harvest

Setting aside tree retention patches at final harvest is a common forest conservation measure, but the long-term responses of species of conservation concern to different types of forest retention remain unknown. This is the first long-term study of the dynamics of bryophytes of conservation concern and associated traits in small forest retention patches (0.01-0.53 ha) over almost two decades and in relation to environmental drivers. We applied joint species distribution models to compare how bryophytes changed in terms of occurrence, abundance, species richness and traits between year 2000, 2006 and 2018, and in relation to five different retention patch types, patch area, retained living tree volume per hectare, structural heterogeneity, and surrounding habitat openness. Bryophytes responded mostly negatively to the long-term environmental change, although with considerable variation depending on retention patch type. Only negative trends were detected for individual species. Still, no regional extinctions (loss of species from all local patches) occurred and there was a tendency for recovery of a few species. Bryophytes with predominantly asexual reproductive modes and small colony size (< 100 cm(2)) increased in occurrence probability over time, indicating that these traits were beneficial for the long-term persistence of species in small and exposed forest patches. We recommend forest managers to create large (preferably up to 0.5 ha) and variable retention patches, both in terms of patch type (i.e. buffer zones and free-standing groups of different dominant tree species and ground moisture) and structural heterogeneity (i.e. living tree volumes, large and small trees, and deadwood)

Pyramidula tetragona (Brid.) Brid. rediscovered in Fennoscandia and new to Norway

The threatened moss Pyramidula tetragona is rediscovered in Fennoscandia and found for the first time in Norway. The species has recently been classified as regionally extinct both in Sweden and Finland, and it is thus highly surprising that we can present four new localities from southeast Norway. All localities are or have been influenced by agriculture through grazing or cereal crop production.publishedVersion© 2012 The Authors. This is an Open Access article

Patient-reported outcomes one year after positive sentinel lymph node biopsy with or without axillary lymph node dissection in the randomized SENOMAC trial

Introduction: This report evaluates whether health related quality of life (HRQoL) and patient-reported arm morbidity one year after axillary surgery are affected by the omission of axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Methods: The ongoing international non-inferiority SENOMAC trial randomizes clinically node-negative breast cancer patients (T1-T3) with 1-2 sentinel lymph node (SLN) macrometastases to completion ALND or no further axillary surgery. For this analysis, the first 1181 patients enrolled in Sweden and Denmark between March 2015, and June 2019, were eligible. Data extraction from the trial database was on November 2020. This report covers the secondary outcomes of the SENOMAC trial: HRQoL and patient-reported arm morbidity. The EORTC QLQC30, EORTC QLQ-BR23 and Lymph-ICF questionnaires were completed in the early postoperative phase and at one-year follow-up. Adjusted one-year mean scores and mean differences between the groups are presented corrected for multiple testing.Peer reviewe

A survey of models for determining optimal audit strategies

The problem studied in this survey is how to optimize the allocation of audit resources over an auditee population with respect to available population statistics. The auditees are assumed to optimize their expected utility based on information about the audit strategy. This survey is limited to models where the auditee can vary the fraud amount along a continuous scale. If the auditor is not able or willing to announce the audit strategy, a Nash equilibrium can be derived in which the auditor and auditee correctly anticipate each others strategies. If the auditor announces the audit strategy in advance, the problem is formulated as a sequential game with perfect information which is solved as an optimization problem. Early models in the literature resulted in unrealistically high degrees of fraud. Later models have incorporated a split into one group of inherently honest auditees and another group of potentially dishonest auditees. The fraction of inherently honest auditees is exogenous. In this paper, the four combinations of non-announcing/pre-announcing the strategy and all potentially dishonest/some inherently honest auditees are studied. For the case of pre-announcing the strategy with some inherently honest auditees, two new solution methods are presented. Two main conclusions are as follows. First, models with some inherently honest auditees have greater external validity. Second, when a pre-announced strategy is feasible, as it often is with tax and benefit audits, the pre-announced strategy is preferred by the auditor over the non-announced strategy. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Funding Agencies|Linkoping University; Swedish Social Insurance Inspectorate</p

The Effect of Audit Strategy Information on Tax Compliance - An Empirical Study

   </p

The Effect of Audit Strategy Information on Tax Compliance – An Empirical Study

This paper deals with an experiment by the Swedish Tax Agency to test the effect of information to taxpayers regarding different audit strategies . The experiment involved approximately 900 sole proprietors, divided into three groups, where one was informed that audits would focus on taxpayers declaring the lowest income, i.e. according to a rational audit strategy. Another group was told that audits would be made at random whereas the third was a control group. The effect of strategy information was measured as the change in declared income between years. The principal finding was that declared income increased significantly more in the rational-audit-strategy group than in the control group

Audit strategy for temporary parental benefit

The aim of this project is to study the possibility to apply audit strategies developed for taxation on fraud and involuntary errors in the social benefit sector. The efficiency of different audit strategies is compared using a computer-based optimization algorithm. Two types of audit strategies are used in this study. One is to adapt the audit intensity to the propensity for errors and fraud in different segments of the group studied. The other type of audit strategy is based on adaptation of behaviour through information concerning the audit intensity. A model for determination of optimal tax audit strategies of the latter type was developed by Erard &amp; Feinstein in 1994. This study is based on data from a large study of temporary parental benefit performed by the Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (Institutet för arbetsmarknadspolitisk utvärdering, IFAU) in 2006. The study has shown that it is possible to apply the Erard &amp; Feinstein model on benefit fraud. However, the solution method developed by Erard &amp; Feinstein has proven to be non-optimal. A new solution method based on simulation has been developed and used in the study