Corporate Governance and Director Accountability: an Institutional Comparative Perspective*

This paper examines the role of boards of directors in light of institutional contingencies and recent best practice governance guidelines and regulation such as the United Kingdom Higgs Review and the United States Sarbanes‐Oxley Act 2002. Particular attention is paid to discussing the role of independent directors across countries, and the implications for corporate governance innovation. It concludes by posing questions about recent corporate governance transformations and providing suggestions for future research.     

Design optimization using ANOVA

This paper describes the design optimization of a robot sensor used for locating 3-D objects employing the Taguchi method in a computer simulation scenario. The location information from the sensor is to be utilized to control the movements of an industrial robot in a 'pick-and-place' or assembly operation. The Taguchi method, which is based on the Analysis-of-Variance (ANOVA) approach, is utilized to improve the performance of the sensor over a wider operating range. A review of the Taguchi method is presented along with step-by-step implementation details to identify and optimize the design parameters of the sensor. The method allows us to gauge the impact of various interactions present in the sensor system exclusively and permits us to single out those factors that have a dominant influence on the overall performance of the sensor. The investigation suggests that the Taguchi method is a more structured and efficient approach for achieving a robust design compared with the classical full factorial design approach.     

A continuous sampling plan using CUSUMs

A Continuous Sampling Plan, CSP-CUSUM, is proposed based on the use of Cumulative Sums (CUSUMs) for deciding when to switch between the phases of sampling inspection and 100% inspection. The Geometric CUSUM, also termed the Run-length CUSUM, is chosen for this purpose, and two separate CUSUMs are to be operated, one for each inspection phase. The conventional measures of performance for CSPs such as average outgoing quality, average fraction inspected, and average proportion passed under sampling inspection are evaluated for CSP-CUSUM, and comparisons with some standard CSPs are presented. An additional performance-measure, Average Cycle Length, is proposed. A table is provided to aid the choice of parameters for the operation of CSP-CUSUM. It is recommended that a Geometric CUSUM control chart be maintained in parallel with CSP-CUSUM to detect significant upward shifts in the incoming fraction defective.     

高校加强大学生心理健康教育问题探索

本文针对近期大学生中出现的一系列心理问题,结合教学实际,就如何加强大学生心理健康教育进行了探讨,提出开设心理健康课、成立心理咨询中心等建议。     

辛亥革命与早期共产党人的思想启蒙

辛亥革命是中华民族的一次伟大觉醒 ,是民族危机意识、救亡图存理念和民主革命思想的积聚和爆发 ,促进了爱国主义精神的空前高涨。早期共产党人一部分参加过辛亥革命 ,经历了辛亥革命的洗礼 ;一部分受到辛亥革命的深刻影响 ,接受了资产阶级民主革命思想 ,而后 ,又在反思辛亥革命和探索新出路的历程中 ,由民主主义者转变为共产主义者     

李觏遗存及祭祀述略

文章在查阅文献和实地考察的基础上，就抚州市区内李觏的遗存和历代祭祀情况作简要、客观的记述介绍，为李觏的研究者提供资料参照，其中，“龙马书院”过去少有提及，尤为值得关注。     

论经学对《汉书》义例的影响

经学对《汉书》的影响是深重的。经学对《汉书》义例的影响主要表现在两个方面：一是立名定目，依托经典；二是创立志表，弘扬经学。探讨经学对《汉书》的影响有助于解决一些史学问题。     

Still-births among the offspring of male radiation workers at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant: detailed results and statistical aspects

Summary. This study investigates whether there was evidence of increasing risk of still-birth with increasing paternal exposure to ionizing radiation received during employment at the Sellafield nuclear installation before the child was conceived. A significant positive association is found between the total paternal preconceptional exposure to external ionizing radiation and the risk of still-birth (after adjustment for year of birth, social class, birth order and paternal age, odds ratio at 100 mSv 1.24 (95% confidence interval 1.04–1.45)). A summary of the principal scientific findings of this study has been published in the Lancet . This paper describes in detail the statistical methods that were used in the investigation and presents the results in full.     

Measuring agreement between two statistics with applications to age standardization

Summary.  We detail a general method for measuring agreement between two statistics. An application is two ratios of directly standardized rates which differ only by the choice of the standard. If the statistics have a high value for the coefficient of agreement then the expected squared difference between the statistics is small relative to the variance of the average of the two statistics, and inferences vary little by changing statistics. The estimation of a coefficient of agreement between two statistics is not straightforward because there is only one pair of observed values, each statistic calculated from the data. We introduce estimators of the coefficient of agreement for two statistics and discuss their use, especially as applied to functions of standardized rates.