The Financial Report of the Universities: maintaining academic standards? An empirical research to the size with explanation of the differences.

This paper describes research done concerning the size, level and explanation of the financial reports of 14 Dutch universities. Based on earlier research in the USA concerning the financial report of niversities, 14 Dutch financial reports are examined. See the Tables. In spite of the regulations the quantity and quality of the financial university reports diverge much, in particular the information provided about costs and output of education and research varies from university to university. For an explanation of the data a number well-known hypothesis such as Zimmerman''s size, debt/equity hypothesis were tested first. After that a disclosure index was developed for expressing the several information items in a unique report mark per university. The results can be explained by the kind of university, the size (number of students and revenues) and the long-term liabilities, in accordance with the research abroad. Therefore the main conclusion is that the findings of the research outside the Netherlands such as the importance of size and long-term liabilities hold largely in the Netherlands, too.accounting and auditing ;

Truncation of the NS1 protein converts a low pathogenic avian influenza virus into a strong interferon inducer in duck cells

The NS1 protein of influenza A viruses is known as a nonessential virulence factor inhibiting type I interferon (IFN) production in mammals and in chicken cells. Whether NS1 inhibits the induction of type I IFNs in duck cells is currently unknown. In order to investigate this issue, we used reverse genetics to generate a virus expressing a truncated NS1 protein. Using the low pathogenic avian influenza virus A/turkey/Italy/977/1999 (H7N1) as a backbone, we were able to rescue a virus expressing a truncated NS1 protein of 99 amino acids in length. The truncated virus replicated poorly in duck embryonic fibroblasts, but reached high titers in the mammalian IFN-deficient Vero cell line. Using a gene reporter system to measure duck type I IFN production, we showed that the truncated virus is a potent inducer of type I IFN in cell culture. These results show that the NS1 protein functions to prevent the induction of IFN in duck cells and underline the need for a functional NS1 protein in order for the virus to express its full virulence

Deeply-Virtual Compton Scattering on Deuterium and Neon at HERMES

We report the first observation of azimuthal beam-spin asymmetries in hard electroproduction of real photons off nuclei. Attributed to the interference between the Bethe-Heitler process and the deeply-virtual Compton scattering process, the asymmetry gives access to the latter at the amplitude level. This process appears to be the theoretically cleanest way to access generalized parton distributions. The data presented here have been accumulated by the HERMES experiment at DESY, scattering the HERA 27.6 GeV positron beam off deuterium and neon gas targets.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures. Talk given by F. Ellinghaus at the "15th International Spin Physics Symposium", SPIN 2002, September 9-14, 2002, BNL, Upton, NY, USA. To be published in the proceeding

Critical behavior of interacting surfaces with tension

Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization and Monte Carlo simulations. The critical behavior arising from thermally-excited shape fluctuations is determined both for global quantities such as the mean separation of these surfaces and for local quantities such as the probabilities for local contacts.Comment: 13 pages, 17 figures; accepted for publication in The European Physical Journa

Van der Waals Interaction between Flux Lines in High-T_c Superconductors: A Variational Approach

In pure anisotropic or layered superconductors thermal fluctuations induce a van der Waals attraction between flux lines. This attraction together with the entropic repulsion has interesting consequences for the low field phase diagram; in particular, a first order transition from the Meissner phase to the mixed state is induced. We introduce a new variational approach that allows for the calculation of the effective free energy of the flux line lattice on the scale of the mean flux line distance, which is based on an expansion of the free energy around the regular triangular Abrikosov lattice. Using this technique, the low field phase diagram of these materials may be explored. The results of this technique are compared with a recent functional RG treatment of the same system.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

New governance modes for Germany's financial reporting system

The question raised in this paper is whether changes over the last 20 years in the German financial accounting system signal a retreat of the nation state from this policy field. Using a comprehensive perspective on accountancy we consider the steps in the accounting process, i.e. standard setting, enforcement and disclosure, and analyse whether significant privatisation tendencies can be observed in accounting, whether and how the state safeguards its scope for interventions in the public interest and how these changes compare to the ongoing globalisation in accounting. We find that changes in all these areas are first of all driven by the application of European legislation, but also by voluntary harmonisation and an increased involvement of private actors. Altogether, a shift towards a (more) societal governance mode can be witnessed. However, the State increases its interventions at the same time by regulating arenas in which it was previously not active. --

Towards a statistical theory of solid dry friction

Wearless dry friction of an elastic block of weight N, driven by an external force F over a rigid substrate, is investigated. The slider and substrate surfaces are both microscopically rough, interacting via a repulsive potential that depends on the local overlap. The model reproduces Amontons's laws which state that the friction force is proportional to the normal loading force N and independent of the nominal surface area. In this model, the dynamic friction force decays for large velocities and approaches a finite static friction for small velocities if the surface profiles are self-affine on small length scales.Comment: Latex, 10 pages. Jounal reference adde

Van der Waals interaction between flux lines in High-T_c Superconductors

In anisotropic or layered superconductors thermal fluctuations as well as impurities induce a van der Waals (vdW) attraction between flux lines, as has recently been shown by Blatter and Geshkenbein in the thermal case [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 4958 (1996)] and by Mukherji and Nattermann in the disorder dominated case [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 139 (1997)]. This attraction together with the entropic or disorder induced repulsion has interesting consequences for the low field phase diagram. We present two derivations of the vdW attraction, one of which is based on an intuitive picture, the other one following from a systematic expansion of the free energy of two interacting flux lines. Both the thermal and the disorder dominated case are considered. In the thermal case in the absence of disorder, we use scaling arguments as well as a functional renormalization of the vortex-vortex interaction energy to calculate the effective Gibbs free energy on the scale of the mean flux line distance. We discuss the resulting low field phase diagram and make quantitative predictions for pure BiSCCO (Bi_2-Sr_2-CaCu_2-O_8). In the case with impurities, the Gibbs free energy is calculated on the basis of scaling arguments, allowing for a semi-quantitative discussion of the low-field, low-temperature phase diagram in the presence of impurities.Comment: 19 pages EPJ style, 9 PostScript figures. Minor additions to the first submission. Accepted for publication in EPJ

Pion electromagnetic form-factor with domain wall fermions

Motivated by recent measurements at J-Lab, the pion electromagnetic form-factor is investigated with quenched domain wall fermions and a renormalization group improved gauge action called DBW2. We see that quark mass dependence of the form-factor with finite momentum transfers is rather small.Comment: Lattice2003(matrix), 3 pages, 5 figure

Dry-transferred CVD graphene for inverted spin valve devices

Integrating high-mobility graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) into spin transport devices is one of the key tasks in graphene spintronics. We use a van der Waals pickup technique to transfer CVD graphene by hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) from the copper growth substrate onto predefined Co/MgO electrodes to build inverted spin valve devices. Two approaches are presented: (i) a process where the CVD-graphene/hBN stack is first patterned into a bar and then transferred by a second larger hBN crystal onto spin valve electrodes and (ii) a direct transfer of a CVD-graphene/hBN stack. We report record high spin lifetimes in CVD graphene of up to 1.75 ns at room temperature. Overall, the performances of our devices are comparable to devices fabricated from exfoliated graphene also revealing nanosecond spin lifetimes. We expect that our dry transfer methods pave the way towards more advanced device geometries not only for spintronic applications but also for CVD-graphene-based nanoelectronic devices in general where patterning of the CVD graphene is required prior to the assembly of final van der Waals heterostructures.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure