Do economic and financial firm's situation affect the quality if financial reports?

We investigate whether firms’ economic and financial situation influence the Quality of their Financial Reports (FRQ). FRQ is fundamental for investors and it affects the international capital movements [Bradshaw et al. (2004)] and Gelos and Wei (2005)]. Following Schipper and Vicent (2003) we use two issues to access earnings quality: abnormal accruals and earnings persistence. For seventeen European countries, we find evidence that the economic performance affects FRQ. Big firms and those with high current earnings exhibit better financial information. These results are robust since they don’t depend on FRQ proxy and we have the same evidence when we estimate regression with economical and financial factors separately or together. About financial situation, it seems not to affect FRQ. However, in high leveraged firms, the capital structure becomes determinant.

Europa nach 1945 – zur situation nach dem zweiten weltkrieg

Bevor man „Europa― als politisches Konzept in zahlreichen theoretischen Texten erörterte, ist in der deutschen Literatur der Gedanke eines vereinten Europas schon seit dem 16. Jahrhundert thematisiert worden. Im folgenden Aufsatz sollen Texte der Essayisten Ernst Jünger, Frank Thiess, Werner Bergengruen und Klaus Mann (20. Jahrhundert), in denen ihr Standpunkt bezüglich des Europa-Gedanken, d.h. ein vereintes Europa zur Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg zum Ausdruck gebracht wird. Dabei sind hauptsächlich Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen zwischen den Autoren unter geistigen und historischen Gesichtspunkten zu ziehen.

Modelling the Contribution of 40K, 232Th and 226Ra to Radiation Dose and Risk from Airborne Discharges of Coal-Fired Power Plants

Coal contains trace elements and naturally occurring radionuclides such as 40K, 232Th, 238U. When coal is burned, minerals, including most of the radionuclides, do not burn and concentrate in the ash several times in comparison with their content in coal. Usually, a small fraction of the fly ash produced (2-5%) is released into the atmosphere. The activities released depend on many factors (concentration in coal, ash content and inorganic matter of the coal, combustion temperature, ratio between bottom and fly ash, filtering system). Therefore, marked differences should be expected between the by-products produced and the amount of activity discharged (per unit of energy produced) from different coal-fired power plants. In fact, the effects of these releases on the environment due to ground deposition have been received some attention but the results from these studies are not unanimous and cannot be understood as a generic conclusion for all coal-fired power plants. In this study, the dispersion modelling of natural radionuclides was carried out to assess the impact of continuous atmospheric releases from a selected coal plant. The natural radioactivity of the coal and the fly ash were measured and the dispersion was modelled by a Gaussian plume estimating the activity concentration at different heights up to a distance of 20 km in several wind directions. External and internal doses (inhalation and ingestion) and the resulting risk were calculated for the population living within 20 km from the coal plant. In average, the effective dose is lower than the ICRP’s limit and the risk is lower than the U.S. EPA’s limit. Therefore, in this situation, the considered exposure does not pose any risk. However, when considering the dispersion in the prevailing wind direction, these values are significant due to an increase of 232Th and 226Ra concentrations in 75% and 44%, respectively.

Multi-Agent Based Smart Grid Management and Simulation: Situation Awareness and Learning in a Test Bed with Simulated and Real Installations and Players

The rising usage of distributed energy resources has been creating several problems in power systems operation. Virtual Power Players arise as a solution for the management of such resources. Additionally, approaching the main network as a series of subsystems gives birth to the concepts of smart grid and micro grid. Simulation, particularly based on multi-agent technology is suitable to model all these new and evolving concepts. MASGriP (Multi-Agent Smart Grid simulation Platform) is a system that was developed to allow deep studies of the mentioned concepts. This paper focuses on a laboratorial test bed which represents a house managed by a MASGriP player. This player is able to control a real installation, responding to requests sent by the system operators and reacting to observed events depending on the context.

Por uma definição do professor de ensino precoce de línguas em Portugal: um estudo de caso

O ensino precoce de línguas estrangeiras no resto da Europa encontrase numa fase mais avançada do que em Portugal. Pretendemos, neste estudo, fazer o ponto de situação em Portugal quanto ao ensino precoce de línguas, definir o perfil do professor de línguas estrangeiras no Ensino Básico e perceber qual a idade ideal para a aquisição de línguas estrangeiras. De forma a enriquecer este estudo, centrámos a nossa atenção nas razões para a aquisição de línguas neste nível de ensino e realizámos um estudo de caso que compreende a realização de conversações por chat entre alunos portugueses e suíços do Ensino Básico. In the rest of Europe the foreign languages early teaching is more advanced than in Portugal. With this study we aim to define both the situation Portugal is living regarding this issue, understand which the profile of the teacher of foreign languages is at an early stage and perceive which the ideal age to start studying foreign languages is. In order to enrich this study, we focused our attention in the reasons for the acquisition of languages at a primary school level and made a study case which is related to the analysis of chat conversations between Portuguese and Swiss pupils.

Writing and living on the stage of history

This article studies the intercultural trajectory of a Portuguese female aristocrat of the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Her trajectory of intercultural transition from a Portuguese provincial lady into an independent owner of a sugar mill in tropical Bahia is documented through family letters, which provide a polyphonic representation of a movement of personal, family, and social transculturation over almost two decades. Maria Bárbara began her journey between cultures as a simple spectator-reader, progressively becoming a commentator-actor-protagonist-author in society, in politics, and in history. These letters function as a translation that is sometimes consecutive, other times simultaneous, of the events lived and witnessed. This concept of intercultural translation is based on the theories of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2006, 2008), who argues that cultural differences imply that any comparison has to be made using procedures of proportion and correspondence which, taken as a whole, constitute the work of translation itself. These procedures construct approximations of the known to the unknown, of the strange to the familiar, of the ‘other’ to the ‘self’, categories which are always unstable. Likewise, this essay explores the unstable contexts of its object of study, with the purpose of understanding different rationalities and worldviews.