Relevance Of Changes Research Articles

Food and Food Security in the US Security Strategy (1987–2022)

Abstract This article underlines that food security is a relevant dimension of contemporary international instability and aims to clarify the role it has played in the strategic discourse of the United States, given the country is the main food donor in the world besides being significantly involved in international crises. To this aim, the article carries a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the nineteen National Security Strategies published between 1987 and 2022. The research compares the way the different US Administrations have theorized food security and their respective elements of continuity and discontinuity. The research results show that food security is a steadily relevant issue in US strategic discourse, although the reasons for this strategic relevance change significantly with the political color of the Administration.

Shedding light on foreign currency cash flow hedges: transparency and the hedging decision

Utilizing firms in the S&P 500, we study whether greater transparency in the reporting of other comprehensive income (OCI) items, as mandated by ASU 2011-05, resulted in a reduction in information asymmetry, a change in the value relevance of this information, or a change in hedging practice. Our results show that while transparent reporting reduced information asymmetry, firms that engage in cash flow hedging do have greater information asymmetry than their counterparts that do not hedge. We find evidence that investors penalize firm value for greater volatility of OCI relative to net income volatility when reported transparently. When permitted, managers were able to mitigate the negative impact by reporting OCI only in the Statement of Shareholders’ Equity. We conclude that managers’ concerns regarding potential confusion surrounding OCI volatility following more prominent reporting led to changes in hedging behavior. After transparent reporting, we find a reduced likelihood of foreign currency cash flow (FXCF) hedges and a reduced level of FXCF hedging among firms experiencing the greatest volatility of unrealized hedging gains and losses.

IFRS adoption and the value-relevance of financial statements figures in Nigeria

Research Question: Has IFRS adoption improved the value-relevance of financial statement figures in Nigeria? Motivation: The informativeness of the reported earnings, book values, and cash flows depends on the accounting standards used in preparing the financial statements. IFRS is a global set of accounting standards that tries to improve the relevance of accounting figures by recommending more realistic measurement and recognition criteria and increasing the level of disclosure of relevant information. Idea: The value relevance of accounting figures in predicting stock prices is widely acknowledged. However, this study tests whether IFRS adoption significantly improves this value-relevance by increasing the degree of correlation between accounting figures and stock prices in Nigeria. Data: The data were collected from the Bloomberg market data terminal and Datastream financial database. A sample of 85 listed companies was selected. The sample period was from 2007 to 2016. Tools: The study applied the Ohlson model (using fixed and random-effect models) along with the Driscoll-Kraay standard errors (DKSE) and Panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) to anticipate autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and cross-sectional dependence biases. The Ohlson model was estimated separately for the pre- and post-IFRS adoption periods to detect changes in value relevance. The interactions of the IFRS dummy with earnings, book values, and cash flows were also estimated separately to detect the significance of IFRS interaction with the accounting figures. Findings: The results showed an overall increase in value-relevance by comparing adjusted R2s across the pre- and post-IFRS adoption period. Also, the interactions of IFRS with earnings, book value, and cash flows were all significant. Contribution: The study contributes to the existing literature by including cash flow in the value-relevance test in Nigeria and by applying estimation techniques that control for possible estimation biases. The authors recommend that investors pay more attention to these accounting figures under the IFRS regime when making investment decisions.

Tác động của thay đổi các quy định pháp lý về quản trị công ty đến mối quan hệ giữa lợi nhuận và giá cổ phiếu của các công ty niêm yết tại Việt Nam

This paper examines effect of changes in regulations on corporate governance in Vietnam on accounting quality in the aspect of relationship between earnings and share prices. After financial scandals, many countries have tightened legal regulations on corporate governance. In Vietnam, important legal regulations on corporate governance, including Security Law, Enterprise Law and Regulations on disclosure of information by listed companies, have been amended or issued in 2019-2020 and being effective from January 1, 2021. However, with a sample of approximate 300 Vietnamese listed companies in 2 years (2020- 2021), regression results reveal that there is no evidence for the changes in value relevance (relationship between earnings and stock price) in the period after the newly issued legal documents took effect. The evidence provided in this paper is consistent with some previous studies in developing countries and supports for the recommendation that each country should take consideration of its legal and cultural characteristics in adopting Westen corporate governance practices. This result is also useful for evaluating the effectiveness of the changes in CG regulations.

일반지주회사의 가치관련성 수준

[Purpose]This paper examines value relevance of holding companies out Monoploy Regulation and Fair Trade Act(hereinafter general holding companies). For this purpose, we compare the difference of value relevance between general holding companies and MRFTA holding companies and investigate change of value relevance after transition into holding companies respectively. [Methodology]Samples are selected among listed holdings companies from 2011 to 2022 and number of samples is 63 per year, which consist 16 holdings out MRFTA and 47 holdings in MRFTA per year, and 756 firm－year observations. [Findings]The results are as follows. First, value relevance of general hoding companies is lower than that of MRFTA holding companies in terms of book per share(BPS). Second, value relevance of the general holding companies is significantly decreased after transition into holding company in terms of earnings per share(EPS). Third, the result of 2SLS analysis is the same with those of the main analysis. [Implications]As the contribution of the precedent researches, this research examines value relavance of general holding companies in Korea for the first time. The results of this research emphasize low earnings quality in MRFTA holding companies is negative influence on value relevance of companies.

Hydrological digital twin model of a large anthropized italian alpine catchment: The Adige river basin

Understanding and simulating the hydrological cycle, especially in a context of climate change, is crucial for quantitative water risk assessment and basin management. The hydrological cycle is complex as it is a combination of non-linear natural processes and anthropogenic influences that alter landforms and water flows. Human-induced changes of relevance, including changes in land uses, construction of dams and artificial reservoirs, and diversion of the river course, lead to changes in water flows throughout the basin. These should be explicitly accounted for a realistic representation of the anthropogenically altered hydrological cycle. Such a realistic representation of the hydrological cycle is a necessary input for the water risk assessment in a particular region. In this paper, we present a hydrological digital twin (HDT) model of a large anthropized alpine basin: the Adige basin located in the northeast of Italy.Most catchments model often overlook land-uses changes over time and forget to model reservoir operation and their influence over time on water flow. Yet, for example, the Adige basin has>30 reservoirs affecting the water flow. We therefore use the GEOframe modeling framework to demonstrate the ability to create a hydrological twin model accounting for these anthropogenic changes.Specifically, we model each component of the water cycle over 39 years (1980–2018) at daily timescale through calibration of the Adige HDT with a multi-site approach using discharge data of 33 stations, based on a high-resolution (1 km) temperature and precipitation dataset and a calculated crop potential evapotranspiration (PETc) dataset, which accounts for human-induced change of the land cover over time. The modeling system also includes the simulation of artificial reservoirs and dams by the dynamically zoned target release (DZTR) reservoir model.The Adige HDT is assessed/validated/compared through a variety of hydrological processes (i.e., river and reservoir discharges, PETc and actual evapotranspiration, snow, and soil moisture) and data sources (i.e., observations and remote sensing data).Overall, the HDT reproduces well the measured discharge in space and time with a Kling Gupta Efficiency (KGE) above 0.7 (0.8) for 30 (23) of the 33 gauge-stations. For 7 artificial reservoirs with available data, the reservoir turbinated discharges are successfully reproduced with an average KGE of 0.92. A comparison between modeled and MODIS remote sensing snow data showed an average error of < 10% across the entire basin; the model also presented a good spatio-temporal agreement both with GLEAMS potential (and actual evapotranspiration) with an average KGE of 0.63 (0.60) and a high-level of correlation (0.5 on average) with the ASCAT satellite retrieved soil moisture.The findings of this paper demonstrate the potential of the open-source, component-based, GEOframe system to build a HDT, to provide a reliable and long term (39 years) estimation of all the water cycle components in a complex anthropized river basin at high spatial resolution. Spatially detailed HDT models results of this type can be used to inform basin-wise adaptation policy decisions and better water management practices in a time of changing climate.

Exploring Political Mistrust in Pandemic Risk Communication: Mixed-Method Study Using Social Media Data Analysis.

This research extends prior studies by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare on pandemic-related risk perception, concentrating on the role of trust in health authorities and its impact on public health outcomes. The paper aims to investigate variations in trust levels over time and across social media platforms, as well as to further explore 12 subcategories of political mistrust. It seeks to understand the dynamics of political trust, including mistrust accumulation, fluctuations over time, and changes in topic relevance. Additionally, the study aims to compare qualitative research findings with those obtained through computational methods. Data were gathered from a large-scale data set consisting of 13,629 Twitter and Facebook posts from 2020 to 2023 related to COVID-19. For analysis, a fine-tuned FinBERT model with an 80% accuracy rate was used for predicting political mistrust. The BERTopic model was also used for superior topic modeling performance. Our preliminary analysis identifies 43 mistrust-related topics categorized into 9 major themes. The most salient topics include COVID-19 mortality, coping strategies, polymerase chain reaction testing, and vaccine efficacy. Discourse related to mistrust in authority is associated with perceptions of disease severity, willingness to adopt health measures, and information-seeking behavior. Our findings highlight that the distinct user engagement mechanisms and platform features of Facebook and Twitter contributed to varying patterns of mistrust and susceptibility to misinformation during the pandemic. The study highlights the effectiveness of computational methods like natural language processing in managing large-scale engagement and misinformation. It underscores the critical role of trust in health authorities for effective risk communication and public compliance. The findings also emphasize the necessity for transparent communication from authorities, concluding that a holistic approach to public health communication is integral for managing health crises effectively.

The role of artificial intelligence in improving the omnichannel customer experience

PurposeThis study aims to explore the role that artificial intelligence (AI) systems could play in configuring and enhancing the omnichannel customer experience (OCE).This paper aims to pave the way to better understand the intersection between these two novel topics through perspectives and associated interpretations from managers', consultants' and consumers' beliefs, experiences and thoughts.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts an explorative inductive design. Data from 41 in-depth interviews with high-level retail managers (12), AI consultants (3) and omnichannel consumers (26) was analyzed using grounded theory methodology.FindingsThe study's results revealed that, when AI systems are implemented in the omnichannel experience, some dimensions of the OCE change in relevance. The findings show that some OCE dimensions are easier to relate with experiential elements of the omnichannel experience, such as personalization, consistency and flexibility. In contrast, integration and connectivity are perceived as internal retailer capabilities that enable the omnichannel strategy. Consumers' data also show differences in the omnichannel customer journeys for the product categories of clothes, electronics and furniture.Originality/valueThis study presents insights on the impact of AI on OCE from top-retail managers', consultants' and consumers' perspectives. This choice allowed researchers to explore and uncover interesting intersecting points and examine issues related to omnichannel experience and AI systems implementation, providing guidance for future research.

Changes in Frequency, Relevance, and Importance of Pharmacist-Reported Job-Related Tasks from 2012-2022

Changes in Frequency, Relevance, and Importance of Pharmacist-Reported Job-Related Tasks from 2012-2022

Stories in management education: Relevance, insights, and perspectives

This study aims to integrate and consolidate academic knowledge about stories in management education. This research is based on a systematic review of national and international academic production. The analysis of identified research resulted in three central categories to explain the field: relevance (communication, engagement, creativity, politics, change, moral, and emotion), knowledge (typologies of stories, management practices, and teaching strategies and learning), and perspectives (storytelling and story writing). By elaborating a structured view of stories in management education, the results of this research contribute to structure, to stimulate, and to guide future research.

IFRS and the evolution of value relevance: evidence from an African developing country

Purpose This study aims to assess the evolution of the value relevance of book value, earnings and its components in Mauritius, an African developing country, focusing on value relevance changes after International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption and subsequent local reforms. Design/methodology/approach The study relies on a data set of 567 firm-year observations (2001–2018) and the Ohlson valuation model to investigate value relevance after IFRS adoption, the implementation of institutional reforms and enforcement reforms. Findings Firstly, the authors find support for a rise in the combined value relevance of earnings and book value, albeit that book value significantly contributes to changes over time. The findings highlight the combined importance of IFRS adoption with institutional and enforcement reforms to improve value relevance. Secondly, the authors do not find evidence of a shift in value relevance between earnings and book value. Third, the cash flow model reveals a higher level of significance relative to the earnings model. Originality/value The authors extend the value relevance literature in the context of African developing countries. The present findings underpin the need for a reinforcing of relevant institutional and enforcement frameworks to ensure the benefits of IFRS adoption materialise. The findings also offer a contribution of how developing countries’ experience IFRS post-adoption while adding to the dearth of studies analysing IFRS enforcement practices.

Intraocular pressure variation from ocular compression in low and high myopia

ABSTRACT Clinical relevance Change in intraocular pressure during acute ocular compression is related to aqueous humour dynamics. Monitoring intraocular pressure (IOP) change throughout ocular compression has potential to evaluate aqueous outflow facilities. Background Recent studies have monitored lamina cribrosa deformation using optical coherence tomography during ocular compression. IOP was measured only once immediately after ocular compression. This study aimed to evaluate IOP changes during and after ocular compression and compare the differences between low and high myopia. Methods Two groups of young, healthy adults were age-matched and underwent ocular compression. IOP was measured at baseline and monitored during a 2-min ocular compression followed by a 10-min recovery phase. Rebound tonometry was used and applied at 30-s intervals. Results Thirty low and 30 high myopes (60 right eyes) were included in the study. They had similar baseline IOP at 14.9 mmHg. IOP was elevated to 21.7 ± 3.8 mmHg and 22.3 ± 4.2 mmHg for the low and high myopic group, respectively (p = 0.877). Low myopes had faster IOP decay during ocular compression at −3.24 mmHg/min than high myopes at −2.58 mmHg/min (p = 0.0528). The IOP dropped below the baseline level after the release of the compressive force. Low myopes had IOP that returned to baseline levels faster (at 360 s) than high myopes (at 510 s). Conclusion Measuring IOP once immediately after ocular compression could under-estimate the effect of IOP elevation during ocular compression. Further studies are required regarding IOP changes from ocular compression in aqueous humour dynamics.

Changes in behavioral priority influence the accessibility of working memory content

Evolving behavioral goals require the existence of selection mechanisms that prioritize task-relevant working memory (WM) content for action. Selecting an item stored in WM is known to blunt and/or reverse information loss in stimulus-specific representations of that item reconstructed from human brain activity, but extant studies have focused on all-or-none circumstances that allow or disallow an agent to select one of several items stored in WM. Conversely, behavioral studies suggest that humans can flexibly assign different levels of priority to different items stored in WM, but how doing so influences neural representations of WM content is unclear. One possibility is that assigning different levels of priority to items in WM influences the quality of those representations, resulting in more robust neural representations of high- vs. low-priority WM content. A second – and non-exclusive – possibility is that asymmetries in behavioral priority influence how rapidly neural representations of high- vs. low-priority WM content can be selected and reported. We tested these possibilities in two experiments by decoding high- and low-priority WM content from EEG recordings obtained while human volunteers performed a retrospectively cued WM task. Probabilistic changes in the behavioral relevance of a remembered item had no effect on our ability to decode it from EEG signals; instead, these changes influenced the latency at which above-chance decoding performance was reached. Thus, our results indicate that probabilistic changes in the behavioral relevance of WM content influence the ease with which memories can be selected independently of their strength.

Toward electoral (ir)relevance of moral traditionalism? Religious decline and voting in Western Europe (1981–2017)

AbstractThis article tests two contrasting hypotheses about changes in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism–progressiveness, which pertains to attitudes toward matters of procreation, sexuality, and family and gender roles. While the “cultural turn” literature expects the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism to increase over time alongside that of all other cultural issues, studies inspired by secularization theory rather predict a decrease in its relevance—due to religious decline. Analyzing the data from the European Values Study (1981–2017) for 20 West European countries, we find empirical evidence for a decrease and no indication of an increase in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism. Religious decline weakened the effect of moral traditionalism on religious and conservative voting over time due to the most traditionalist voters shifting away from these parties. Our findings, therefore, highlight the need to differentiate between different types of cultural motives behind voting choice in Western Europe.

Changing articulations of relevance in soil science: Diversity and (potential) synergy of epistemic commitments in a scientific discipline

This paper traces how the self-understanding of soil science has changed in relation to ideas of societal relevance and academic legitimacy. While soil science was established as an academic discipline with strong links to agriculture, this link was largely lost around 1980. This led to a perceived crisis of the discipline, which has been followed by a long process of redefining its self-understanding. Building on document analysis and qualitative interviews, this paper traces five ways in which soil scientists have re-articulated the relevance of soil science, and analyses if and how these re-articulations are linked to new kinds of research practices and new self-understandings of soil science as a discipline. We conceptualise these re-articulations of relevance as different epistemic commitments that have provided soil scientists with a repertoire of relating their research to societal and environmental problems. At the same time, we also highlight how this epistemic diversity has created tensions in the discipline's self-understanding. Related to recent calls to further integrate different kinds of soil-related knowledge, we argue that these tensions still need to be turned into productive interaction to create synergy instead of competition between different ways of articulating relevance—allowing different kinds of soil-related research to thrive, both in their distinct regimes of relevance, and in a fruitful co-production. This paper shows that studies of how ways of articulating relevance change over time can provide new insights to debates about what conditions support science in gaining societal relevance.

Message self and social relevance increases intentions to share content: Correlational and causal evidence from six studies.

Information sharing within social networks can catalyze widespread attitudinal and behavioral change and the chance to share information with others has been characterized as inherently valuable to people. But what are the sources of value and how might they be leveraged to promote sharing? We test ideas from the value-based virality model that the value of sharing increases when people perceive messages as more relevant to themselves and to people they know, resulting in stronger intentions to share. We extend this work by considering how sharing context-broadcasting to a wide audience or narrowcasting directly to someone-may alter these relationships. Six online studies with adults in the United States (N participants = 3,727; messages = 362; message ratings = 30,954) showed robust evidence that self and social relevance are positively and uniquely related to sharing intentions within- and between-person. Specification curve analysis showed these relationships were consistent across message content (COVID-19, voting, general health, climate change), medium (social media post and news articles), and sharing context (broad- and narrowcasting). A preregistered experiment showed that manipulating the self and social relevance of messages through a framing manipulation causally increased sharing intentions. These causal effects were mediated by changes in both self and social relevance, but the relative strength of the causal pathways differed depending on sharing context. These findings extend existing models of information sharing, and highlight self and social relevance as psychological mechanisms that motivate information sharing that can be targeted to promote sharing across contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

IFRS Convergence and Value Relevance of Indian Accounting Information: The Earnings-Returns Association Analysis

Manuscript type: Research paper Research aims: India has recently joined the accounting revolution by implementing the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) through the convergence mode. This paper aims to examine the value relevance of Indian accounting information by finding an association between stock returns and the levels of earnings and changes in earnings. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study follows both relative and incremental association approaches to investigate changes in the value relevance of accounting information prepared using the IFRS converged Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS), while also examining the impact of their voluntary use. The study employs the Easton and Harris (1991) model on accounting data collected from 2012-13 to 2019-20. The panel data of 7,064 firm-year observations covers 883 firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and uses relevant econometric tests and multivariate panel regressions to test the hypotheses. Research findings: The findings reveal a decline in the returns value relevance following both mandatory and voluntary IFRS convergence. Theoretical contribution/Originality: The study is the first to document the changes in value relevance based on stock returns since the IFRS convergence process began in India. Practitioner/Policy implication: This line of research is significant in Indian capital markets to unravel the effects of the new standards on accounting as well as stock market variables. It has managerial implications for firm and standard-setters. Research limitation: The value relevance results are based on the returns model alone and the study does not analyse the price model.

Relevance insensitivity: A framework of psychological biases in consumer behavior and beyond

AbstractIn judgment and choice, consumers show a variety of biases, from the sunk cost fallacy and projection bias to usage frequency neglect and erroneous price–quality inferences. This article explains these seemingly disparate biases and predicts new biases using an overarching framework based on the relevance insensitivity theory proposed by Hsee et al. (2019). According to the theory, many biases arise because people are insufficiently sensitive to the relevance (i.e., weight) of a cue variable to the target variable (the dependent variable). The direction of the bias depends on the normative relevance of the cue—people over‐rely on the cue when it is normatively irrelevant and under‐rely on the cue when it is normatively highly relevant. We show that ostensibly unique and universal biases are neither unique nor universal: All are manifestations of relevance insensitivity, and each bias attenuates or reverses as the cue variable's relevance changes.

DNA methylation landscapes from pig’s limbic structures underline regulatory mechanisms relevant for brain plasticity

Epigenetic dynamics are essential for reconciling stress-induced responses in neuro-endocrine routes between the limbic brain and adrenal gland. CpG methylation associates with the initiation and end of regulatory mechanisms underlying responses critical for survival, and learning. Using Reduced Representation Bisulfite Sequencing, we identified methylation changes of functional relevance for mediating tissue-specific responses in the hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, and adrenal gland in pigs. We identified 4186 differentially methylated CpGs across all tissues, remarkably, enriched for promoters of transcription factors (TFs) of the homeo domain and zinc finger classes. We also detected 5190 differentially methylated regions (DMRs, 748 Mb), with about half unique to a single pairwise. Two structures, the hypothalamus and the hippocampus, displayed 860 unique brain-DMRs, with many linked to regulation of chromatin, nervous development, neurogenesis, and cell-to-cell communication. TF binding motifs for TFAP2A and TFAP2C are enriched amount DMRs on promoters of other TFs, suggesting their role as master regulators, especially for pathways essential in long-term brain plasticity, memory, and stress responses. Our results reveal sets of TF that, together with CpG methylation, may serve as regulatory switches to modulate limbic brain plasticity and brain-specific molecular genetics in pigs.

Association between lncRNAs in plasma exosomes and diabetic retinopathy.

BackgroundLong noncoding RNA (lncRNA) in plasma exosomes is a potential non-invasive diagnostic biomarker for diabetic retinopathy (DR). However, the changes in plasma exosomal lncRNAs and diagnostic relevance in patients with DR patients remain unclear.MethodsA case–control study with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and patients with comorbid DR were enrolled, and their clinical information and blood samples were collected. Plasma exosomes were extracted, and the relative expression levels of representative differentially expressed exosomal lncRNAs were determined. A logistic regression model was used to analyze the relationships of DR with relative lncRNA expression and DR-related factors, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to evaluate the value of exosomal lncRNAs for DR diagnosis.ResultsSixty-two patients with T2DM and sixty-two patients with DR were matched by age, sex, and disease duration. The fasting blood glucose concentration, glycosylated hemoglobin level (HbA1c), and relative expression of the plasma exosomal lncRNA DLX6-AS1 were significantly higher in the DR group than in the T2DM group, whereas the 2-h C-peptide concentration and relative expression of the lncRNAs PRINS and FAM190A-3 were lower in the DR group. After adjusting for relevant confounders, the fasting blood glucose concentration, HbA1c level, 2-h C-peptide concentration, and relative expression of lncRNA DLX6-AS1, PRINS, and FAM190A-3 were found to be associated with DR. Both DLX6-AS1 [area under the curve (AUC): 0.658 (0.562–0.754)], PRINS [AUC: 0.798 (0.722–0.873)], and FAM190A-3 [AUC: 0.603 (0.503-0.702)] expression had predictive value for DR diagnosis. The combination of DLX6-AS1 and PRINS yielded an AUC of 0.813 (0.740–0.886). In males, the combination of DLX6-AS1 and PRINS yielded an AUC of 0.860 (0.780–0.940).ConclusionThe fasting blood glucose concentration, HbA1c level, and exosomal DLX6-AS1 expression were identified as risk factors for DR, whereas the 2-h C-peptide concentration and exosomal PRINS and FAM190A-3 were identified as protective against DR. The combination of exosomal DLX6-AS1 and PRINS had good diagnostic value for DR in the general population and males. More attention should be paid to the role of exosomal PRINS expression as a predictive and diagnostic DR biomarker in females.