A Comparison of Information Systems Coverage in the CPA, CIA and CMA Examinations for the Period 1987-1991

In recent years, three major accounting professional organizations, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and Internal Auditors Institute (IIA) have considered and issued statements on the body of knowledge deemed necessary for practice as a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Management Accountant and Certified Internal Auditor. In each instance, knowledge and skills in information systems technology were included. This is not surprising, in view of the fact that changes in technology have dramatically altered the way in which accounting data is gathered, processed, stored, accessed and reported. Each of these professional organizations also requires or recommends the passing of an organization-sponsored certification examination for entry into or recognition within the various practice areas. While the examinations are not the only means of assessing the knowledge and skills necessary for certification, they are an important tool in evaluating the extent of the qualifications presented by a candidate. In view of the above, one may postulate that the certification examination, in each instance, would include coverage of the areas of knowledge included in the prerequisite body of knowledge. In particular, since each of the professional groups cite information systems (IS) knowledge as an important knowledge component, one would expect to observe test items addressing current IS in each exam

Towards a framework for cooperation:spatial public diplomacy on the island of Ireland

European spatial planning arguments advocate a blend of strategic thinking, coordination and related initiatives to promote and secure territorial cohesion. These ambitions embrace a set of normative agendas around economic, social and environmental convergence, competitiveness, policy coordination and efficient infrastructure provision across space. In practice, territorial management then involves devising interventions across inter-connecting scales of governance which comprise complex agency relations, differentiated places and defined communities. In transnational contexts, attempts to foster appropriate spatial governance arrangements and relations across sovereign borders necessitate re-crafting planning and development cultures and service delivery practices to advance territorial cohesion. Transnational working necessarily involves cooperation across an extended range of institutions, interests, influences and potential actors. This paper examines attempts to secure bi-lateral commitment to a joint planning framework for the two distinct territories on the island of Ireland. Specifically, it traces the formal and informal activities involved in the development of the 2013 Framework for Cooperation between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Informed by ideas of cross-border regionalism, it discusses the necessary spatial public diplomacy involved in the social reconstruction of strategic spatial planning to improve policy coordination and cross-border working

The left must stop indulging anti-EU sentiment and get behind Remain

Those on the British left who believe the EU is their enemy are giving sustenance to the nationalist right, argues Michael Lloyd. They misrepresent the workings of the European Union and have created a myth that it was EU institutions that foisted austerity on Greece. In fact, the EU is not a barrier to democratic socialism but simply another political arena in which the battle against neoliberalism can be fought

Efficient Bayesian Nonparametric Modelling of Structured Point Processes

This paper presents a Bayesian generative model for dependent Cox point processes, alongside an efficient inference scheme which scales as if the point processes were modelled independently. We can handle missing data naturally, infer latent structure, and cope with large numbers of observed processes. A further novel contribution enables the model to work effectively in higher dimensional spaces. Using this method, we achieve vastly improved predictive performance on both 2D and 1D real data, validating our structured approach.Comment: Presented at UAI 2014. Bibtex: @inproceedings{structcoxpp14_UAI, Author = {Tom Gunter and Chris Lloyd and Michael A. Osborne and Stephen J. Roberts}, Title = {Efficient Bayesian Nonparametric Modelling of Structured Point Processes}, Booktitle = {Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI)}, Year = {2014}

Prohibiting public drinking in an urban area: determining the impacts on police, the community and marginalised groups

With public drinking laws proliferating across urban areas over the past 15 years, this project evaluated the implementation of these laws, their effectiveness, and their impact on a range of target groups including police, residents, traders, local health and welfare workers, and potentially marginalised groups. Overview Public drinking laws have proliferated across urban areas over the past 15 years; however, there have been very few evaluations of their impacts and effectiveness. The purpose of this project was to evaluate public drinking laws across three diverse inner-urban local government areas (LGAs) of Melbourne: the Cities of Yarra, Darebin and Maribyrnong. The objectives of this project were to evaluate the implementation of public drinking laws, the effectiveness of these laws and the impact of these laws on a range of target groups including police, residents, traders, local health and welfare workers, and potentially marginalised groups. The evaluation produced equivocal findings in relation to whether public drinking laws reduced congregations of drinkers (with differing findings across municipalities) and there was no evidence that these laws reduced alcohol-related crime or harm. However, public drinking laws do make residents feel safer and improve the amenity of an area from the perspective of residents and traders. The evaluation found that public drinking laws often result in negative impacts to marginalised individuals and this requires more consideration in the implementation and enforcement of these laws. It is important that public drinking laws are carefully considered, implemented and enforced (with local council officers and police liaising collaboratively to respond to the needs of the individual community) and are coupled with community-specific social inclusion strategies

Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert. I. Upper Scorpius

We present the results of a survey for stellar and substellar companions to 82 young stars in the nearby OB association Upper Scorpius. This survey used nonredundant aperture mask interferometry to achieve typical contrast limits of ΔK ~5-6 at the diffraction limit, revealing 12 new binary companions that lay below the detection limits of traditional high-resolution imaging; we also summarize a complementary snapshot imaging survey that discovered seven directly resolved companions. The overall frequency of binary companions (~35 +5 -4% at separations of 6-435 AU) appears to be equivalent to field stars of similar mass, but companions could be more common among lower mass stars than for the field. The companion mass function has statistically significant differences compared to several suggested mass functions for the field, and we suggest an alternate lognormal parameterization of the mass function. Our survey limits encompass the entire brown dwarf mass range, but we only detected a single companion that might be a brown dwarf; this deficit resembles the so-called brown dwarf desert that has been observed by radial velocity planet searches. Finally, our survey’s deep detection limits extend into the top of the planetary mass function, reaching 8-12 MJup for half of our sample. We have not identified any planetary companions at high confidence (≳99.5%), but we have identified four candidate companions at lower confidence (≳97.5%) that merit additional follow-up to confirm or disprove their existence