SEC Code Research Articles

Investigation of mechanical, microstructure, and corrosion properties of duplex stainless steel joint for natural gas processing facilities

Duplex stainless steel is an exotic material known for its excellent corrosion resistance and mechanical properties due to the presence of a two-phase structure that is quite balanced between ferrite and austenite, making it one of the top choices for the oil and gas industry. In this paper, we will discuss the process and investigation of the welding results of the A/SA 790 UNS 31803 duplex pipe joint which is connected using the gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process for gas purification process applications. The welding process and qualification is based on the ASME BPVC Sec code. IX was then tested to obtain information on the characteristics of the mechanical properties, microstructure, and corrosion resistance of the resulting joints. Heat input in the welding process is a crucial factor that determines the equilibrium of the ferrite and austenite phases which then correlates with the mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of the joint. Based on the microstructural analysis, there was a decrease in the ferrite phase in the weld metal, but it was still within the required limits. Furthermore, the results of the mechanical properties test showed that the tensile strength of the joint was greater than the tensile strength of the base metal and no open discontinuity was observed in the bending test. The corrosion test showed no signs of pitting corrosion with a weight loss value of 1.7 g/m2.

A Comparative Analysis of Corporate Governance Attributes and Audit Quality

The objective of this study is to investigate the results of relationship between corporate governance attributes and audit quality with empirical evidence from the consumer goods and financial services sectors. Board diligence and independence were the two board attributes used against audit quality to establish the relationships. Based on the use of historical data for the study, an ex-post facto research design was adopted. Thirty-four (34) firms quoted on the Nigerian Stocks Exchange were used for the study. For our hypotheses testing, descriptive and Logistic Regression statistics were applied for the dataset covering four (4) years from 2015 to 2018 – a post- corporate governance and IFRS-adoption period. In the consumer goods sector, the result shows that the independence of the board has positive and significant relationship with audit quality. While board independence and diligence have both negative and no significant relationship with audit quality for firms in the financial services sector. The study therefore recommended that adequate attentions should be paid to the enhancement of board independence and there should be increase in the number of Board meetings especially in consumer goods sector in line with SEC code of 2018 directive which call for at least 4 board meetings annually.

Do age and size of companies affect female directors on boardrooms?

Gender diversity on boards is one of the attributes of good corporate governance practices. Male directors over the years have continued to dominate boards of corporate bodies. Our study is aimed at exploring the impact of older and matured companies on female directors on the boards. The study employs data of companies listed on the main floor of the Nigerian Stock Market from 2012-2016. The study segregated the sampling period into pre and post mandatory periods of the SEC code. Findings from the study revealed that throughout the periods, age of company is positive and significant. In the pre mandatory period, size of company is negatively significant. During the post mandatory and the entire sample period, size of company was found to be positively associated with female directors. This implies that fear of greater liabilities from the oversight body and public outrage have encouraged larger companies to have divergent boards in terms of gender.

A Single and Adjacent Error Correction Code for Fast Decoding of Critical Bits

Many systems have critical bits which must be decoded at high speeds; for example, flags to mark the start and end of a packet (SOP and EOP) determine subsequent actions, thus they must be decoded first and fast. This paper presents a new single and adjacent error correction (SAEC) code; as the codewords have critical bits, the proposed code accomplishes a fast decoding for them. The proposed code is a systematic code and permits shortening. This is accomplished by reducing the information bits, so that columns in the H matrix can be eliminated, while still keeping both the SAEC capability and the systematic feature, but for an odd number of information bits, an adjustment step in critical bits is required. It is shown that the check bit length of the proposed code is nearly the same as that of the traditional (optimal) Hamming SAEC code. The decoder of the proposed SAEC code is compared with the traditional Hamming SAEC code; this comparison shows that on average, the delay time for the critical bits is reduced by 6 percent compared with the traditional Hamming SAEC code (so at the same reduction level as a previous SEC scheme for fast decoding of critical bits over a traditional SEC code). Also, the area and power consumption of the proposed decoder show average reductions of 12 percent and 10 percent compared with the decoder of a traditional SAEC code.

AUDIT COMMITTEE ATTRIBUTES AND AUDIT QUALITY: A BENCHMARK ANALYSIS

This study examined audit committee attributes and audit quality with emphasis on the specific requirements of the 2011 SEC code. The study applied the deductive approach via the expost facto research design and the Binary probit regression model in analyzing the various hypotheses put forward in study. Data used for the study were gathered for 150 firm-year observations from the annual reports of quoted companies on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Findings from the study revealed that audit committee size, frequency of meetings, number of expertise and overall effectiveness all have a positive relationship with audit quality. However, only size and overall effectiveness was significant in their relationship. The study recommends that since the significant positive nature of audit committee effectiveness show that four attributes jointly account for effectiveness, firms are encouraged to establish audit committees that have all these attributes. Furthermore, the requirement of having a 6-member audit committee is sound and empirically proven to aid audit quality. Therefore, firms yet to subscribe to these should hasten up, while sanctions should be made for firms that do not.

Error Correction Schemes with Erasure Information for Fast Memories

Two error correction schemes are proposed for word-oriented binary memories that can be affected by erasures, i.e. errors with known location but unknown value. The erasures considered here are due to the drifting of the electrical parameter used to encode information outside the normal ranges associated to a logic 0 or a logic 1 value. For example, a dielectric breakdown in a magnetic memory cell may reduce its electrical resistance sensibly below the levels which correspond to logic 0 and logic 1 values stored in healthy memory cells. Such deviations can be sensed during memory read operations and the acquired information can be used to boost the correction capability of an error-correcting code (ECC). The proposed schemes enable the correction of double-bit errors based on the combination of erasure information with single-bit error correction and double-bit error detection (SEC-DED) codes or shortened (SEC) codes. The correction of single-bit errors is always guaranteed. Ways to increase the number of double-bit and triple-bit errors that can be detected by shortened SEC and SEC-DED codes are considered in order to augment the error correction capability of the proposed solutions.

Do US commercial banks use FAS 157 to manage earnings?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether commercial banks manage earnings through their use of Level 3 valuation under The Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 157 (FAS 157), Fair Value Measurements. To achieve this goal, the authors investigate the association between banks' performance and size with the percentage of Level 3 inputs for valuing assets and liabilities. The FAS 157 requires or permits US listed firms to adopt one of the three levels of inputs to measure and report fair values of their assets and liabilities. Level 1 input is based on quoted prices in the active markets; Level 2 is from the observable markets other than quoted prices; while Level 3 is based on unobservable and firm‐generated inputs.Design/methodology/approachThe authors extract information from all the 10Q‐reports submitted by the US commercial banks (SEC Code 6021) for the first two quarters of 2008. Since Level 3 input is subject to the highest level of managerial discretion, this is expected to be an avenue for earnings management. Multivariate regression was applied to test whether the banks' performance and size are associated with a higher level of Level 3 input.FindingsOut of 329 quarterly bank observations, the authors find large banks and poor performing banks with lower returns on assets, lower cash flows, and higher amounts of provision for loan losses, use more Level 3 inputs on valuing their assets and liabilities.Research limitations/implicationsThe results suggest that US commercial banks use FAS157 as an avenue for earnings management. The results have implications for the accounting standard setters, banking sector and policy decision makers.Originality/valueThis is the first paper providing evidence that banks use fair value measurements to manipulate earnings.

On-chip triple-error correction and quadruple-error detection ECC structure for ultra-large, single-chip memories

Soft errors resulting from alpha-particle strikes are one of the major factors that reduces the reliability of memory chips. One way to improve reliability of memory chips is to employ an on-chip error-correcting code (ECC) structure. This paper presents a triple-error correcting and quadruple-error detecting (TEC–QED) code, that is capable of correcting three and detecting four soft errors, simultaneously. The TEC–QED code design is based on odd-weight-column SEC–DED code in conjunction with the parity technique. Results show that timing overhead of less than 11 ns can be expected. The proposed code improves the mean time between failure (MTBF) by a factor of 210%, when compared to DEC APC, and by a factor of 31%, when compared to the interleaved SEC code.

Fault-Tolerant Memory Architecture Against Radiation-Dependent Errors: A Mixed Error Control Approach

We present a high qualitative reconfigurability method for fault-tolerant memory systems against radiation influence on semiconductors. Its novelty lies in a joint failure repair mechanism. It uses a concurrent on-line technique based on asynchronous built-in current sensors (BICS), parity check and cold spare modules against electrical abnormal behaviour due to latch-up (LU), and the Hamming SEC code to counterattack single error upset (SEU), manifested in logical failures. Complete reliability computations, which underlie the proposed scheme, search for a 99.902% tolerance, thought to meet typical spatial irradiation conditions, to the cost of a small hardware overhead (2 spare (additional) 1K1 modules for each 1K16 of a memory system of 512K16, and Mean Time To Failure e 10−7 h−1). Finally, as we envisage a 2.4 μm CMOS implementation, we performed complexity estimations, which show that the supplementary self-tolerance ensuring circuitry involves an overhead of 0.0094% for a 512K16 memory. The recovering latency is minimised. For SEU in DRAM it requires zero latency and no more than the duration of an equivalent refresh cycle in SRAM. LU reflects a locality property, as only the affected module is submitted to the recovering algorithm.

A note on SEC/AUED codes

A common method of constructing single error correcting/all unidirectional error detecting (SEG/AUED) codes is to choose a SEC code and then to append a tail such that the new code can detect all unidirectional errors. The tail is a function of the weight of the codeword. We present a technique to reduce the weight distribution of the SEC code so that the tail needed is smaller. We also present a new method to construct the tail.

A Test of Industry Indices Based on Sic Codes

The first major study of industry effects in market returns was performed by King [2]. He used principal components analysis and clustering techniques on a sample of 63 companies chosen from six 2-digit industries based on Security and Exchange Commission codes. SEC codes are similar to the Standard Industrial Classification codes defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Budget [4]. SIC codes are 4-digit codes based on the principal end product of the firm. They are chosen so that, as the lowest order digit is removed, the companies are aggregated into broader but still similar groups.

Application of error-correcting codes in computer reliability studies : IEEE Trans. Reliab.R-18, No. 3, August (1969), p. 108

Soft errors resulting from alpha-particle strikes are one of the major factors that reduces the reliability of memory chips. One way to improve reliability of memory chips is to employ an on-chip error-correcting code (ECC) structure. This paper presents a triple-error correcting and quadruple-error detecting (TEC–QED) code, that is capable of correcting three and detecting four soft errors, simultaneously. The TEC–QED code design is based on odd-weight-column SEC–DED code in conjunction with the parity technique. Results show that timing overhead of less than 11 ns can be expected. The proposed code improves the mean time between failure (MTBF) by a factor of 210%, when compared to DEC APC, and by a factor of 31%, when compared to the interleaved SEC code.