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The impact of geopolitical risk on the volatility of wheat futures: a quantile ARDL approach
Get PDFThis study looks at the impact of geopolitical risk on the volatility of wheat futures returns over the period 2012–2023, while controlling for inventories, shipping rates, and speculative activity. Using the volatility of CBOT first nearby futures returns, we apply a quantile regression approach to assess the impact of the variables on different parts of the volatility distribution. More specifically, we adopt the Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag (QARDL) model, which allows for examining the dynamic short- and long-run effects. We find that geopolitical risk has a non-linear, large positive effect on the top quartile of the distribution of wheat futures returns. We also show that the response of the volatility of wheat futures to shocks in the control variables is mostly non-linear across the conditional quantiles, significant in the tails and not around the median
Digital transformation impacts organisational change in the role of accountants and auditors: an exploratory study
Get PDFPurpose: This study explores the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on accounting and auditing professionals as businesses navigate digital transformation.
Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative research approach was adopted, analysing data from 10 podcasts and 17 semi-structured interviews using NVivo software. Key themes were identified to provide insights into AI’s influence on organisational change in accounting practices.
Findings: The research constructs a thematic framework comprising three aggregate dimensions: triggers of digital transformation in accounting practices, opportunities and challenges in transforming accounting practices, and changing routines for accounting professionals. The results are further interpreted using Lewin’s 3-Step Model of Organisational Change to comprehend the impact of AI and understand how accountants can adapt to these technological changes to sustain their practices.
Originality: This study provides a good understanding of the social shifts towards utilising AI in increasingly automating accounting tasks, reshaping professional roles, and creating both opportunities and challenges. AI enhances efficiency in bookkeeping, reporting,
auditing, and risk analysis but also raises concerns about data integrity and trust. Blockchain technology emerges as a potential solution, enhancing transparency, security, and reliability in AI-enabled accounting systems. To remain relevant, accounting professionals must bridge digital skill gaps and adopt interdisciplinary collaboration. As AI continues to evolve, blockchain integration could reinforce trust and accountability, shaping the future of accounting and auditing
Systematic literature review on psychological treatment methods for Substance use Disorder and food addiction
No full textSubstance use disorder (SUD) and food addiction have acquired increasing focus in recent years among researchers. The increased prevalence of anxiety, addiction, and obesity in these disorders raises the need to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment methods to alleviate their symptoms. As both SUD and food addiction share behavioural components and overlapping neural patterns, there is potential to adapt treatment approaches from one disorder to the other. This study systematically reviewed the literature in the past decade, focusing on the efficacy of various psychological treatments using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. The present research reviewed a total of 48 empirical studies. The results of this review found very limited research on food addiction treatment, with only two studies considering this issue. In contrast, the results identified two central and common psychological treatment methods for SUD: concurrent treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders using prolonged exposure and computer-assisted delivery of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Taken together, the findings suggest the need for future research on the adaptation of psychological treatments for SUD to food addiction due to the potential shared mechanisms and the limited availability of treatments for food addiction
Can compassion appeals change the world? A critical review and reconceptualization
No full textCompassion appeals are employed to mobilize prosocial actions that address global grand challenges. However, the evidence of the effectiveness of such appeals is still mixed, with studies using a multitude of persuasion appeals and examining diverse outcomes. To explain the mixed findings, we conduct an integrative, critical review of 77 articles (altogether reporting 116 empirical studies) on the role of compassion appeals in motivating prosocial behavior. This review explains the conditions that determine the relative effectiveness of compassion appeals. First, we identify the appeal components and contextual factors that elicit compassion. Successful elicitation is a prerequisite for the effectiveness of compassion appeals. Second, we reveal that compassion often is elicited with distress, an emotion actively regulated by audiences. Consequently, persuasive compassion appeals are most effective when elicited compassion is maintained within an area of acceptability, demarcated by elicitation and backfiring thresholds. Third, we show that mixed findings are often due to a mismatch between the motivation elicited by compassion and the prosocial action encouraged by the appeal. Compassion motivates the relief of immediate suffering but is not suited to drive sustained commitment toward promoting structural social change. To address this limitation of compassion, we conceptualize the need for compassion blends, mixed emotions where compassion is elicited along with guilt and/or moral anger. We explain why and how compassion blends can motivate transformative prosocial behavior. The results from our critical review inform an agenda for future research and offer actionable insights for the design of effective compassion appeals
Brown, Browsers, Back-ends, Boards, Beards, and a Bibliography: A Festschrift in Honour of Geoffrey Bilder
Get PDFGeoffrey Bilder has made immense contributions to scholarly communications infrastructure over many decades, and his career shows no signs of slowing down. This volume is a collection of writings by a wide range of contributors to showcase the range and diversity of his enduring legacy
“Contains Scenes of Mild Peril”: Illuminating the Catalogues of Dark Archives
No full textIn this chapter, I shine some light on the catalogues-as-data of the dark archives used in the preservation of scholarly communications. I begin by outlining the recent project work that I undertook with the goal of understanding how much scholarly material really is safely preserved. In turn, this leads me to a number of criticisms of the state of digital preservation catalogues; infrastructural deficiencies that are hindering our knowledge of what work can be saved and can form the basis of responsible future research corpora. In the second part of the chapter, I then turn to the preservation and cataloguing of computer viruses, attempting to think through the analogies to conventional knowledge destruction in this space, while also acknowledging that any form of credit – say in the form of a catalogue – can bring with it damaging incentives to create further malware. This exemplar discussion serves to highlight, again, the infrastructural deficiencies of a cataloguing system that focused primarily on the academic journal article and built itself outwards, but without adequate metadata profiles for “works” of this kind
Recreational substance use is linked with difficulty in recalling personal experiences
Get PDFRecreational use of substances such as cannabis, MDMA and cocaine is thought to harm the
neurotransmitter communication networks that coordinate many memory processes that support
autobiographical memory (AM). Research on the impact of substance use on AM is limited and
primarily focused on cannabis use or individuals with substance dependence. Additionally, previous
studies mainly examined broad AM characteristics (e.g., specific vs. non-specific memories)
without exploring the specific characteristics of recalled memories. In the present study, the
possible consequences of recreational substance use on AM were investigated to provide a better
understanding of the specific aspects of AM that are most vulnerable to substance use. The study
included 100 participants aged 18–55, consisting of 47 individuals who did not use substances and
53 individuals who reported substance use. All participants completed self-report questionnaires and
participated in a lab-based autobiographical memory test. The results revealed that participants who
reported recreational substance use recalled significantly fewer specific personal event memories than
participants who did not use substances and were also more likely to omit a response within the time
limit. The results remained significant after controlling for covariates, such as general health, sleep
routine, alcohol use and age. This research contributes to the body of knowledge on substance-related
impairments in AM and suggests that even occasional recreational substance use may impair specific
AM retrieval
Minimizers in semi-dynamic strings
No full textMinimizers sampling is one of the most widely-used mechanisms for sampling strings.
Let be a string over an alphabet .
Further, let and be two integers and be a total order on .
The minimizer of window X=S[i\dd i+w+k-2] is the smallest position in where the smallest length- substring of based on starts.
The set of minimizers for all is the set \Minimizers(S) of the minimizers of . The set \Minimizers(S) can be computed in \cO(n) time. The folklore algorithm computes the minimizer of every window in \cO(1) amortized time using \cO(w) working space.
It is thus natural to pose the following two questions:
%
\begin{enumerate}
\item \emph{Can we efficiently support other dynamic updates on the window?}
\item \emph{Can we improve on the \cO(w) working space?}
\end{enumerate}
\noindent We answer both questions in the affirmative:
\begin{enumerate}
\item We term a string \emph{semi-dynamic} when one is allowed to insert or delete a letter at any of its ends. We show a data structure that maintains a semi-dynamic string and supports minimizer queries in in \cO(1) time with \cO(1) amortized time per update operation.
\item We show that this data structure can be modified to occupy strongly sublinear space without increasing the time complexity of its operations. To the best of our knowledge, this yields the first algorithm for computing \Minimizers(S) in \cO(n) time \emph{using \cO(\sqrt{w}) working space}.
\end{enumerate
Cultural work and creative subjectivity: Recentralising the Artist Critique and Social Networks in the Cultural Industries by Xin Gu, Abingdon: Routledge, 2024, 226 pp., £39.99 (paperback), ISBN 9780367771218
No full text“If you want to make the world better, you’ve got to be prepared to put the groundwork in”: An Interview with Martin Eve on Social Justice and Design Justice in Open Access
Get PDFThis interview with Professor Martin Eve explores Open Access, social justice, and design justice in scholarly publishing. Eve discusses barriers in academic publishing, highlighting the exclusionary nature of paywalls and Article Processing Charges, advocating for consortial funding models. He recounts the founding of the Open Library of Humanities and the development of the Janeway platform to enable equitable access to research
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