Board Independence and Internal Committees in the BRICs

To be successful in global markets, companies from the emerging countries need the approval of foreign investors and other stakeholders. In this regard, Brazil, Russia, India, and China （BRIC） have progressively strengthened their corporate governance rules to help their companies overcome the competitors from the old industrialized countries. Directors＇ non-executive qualification, independence, and professional expertise represent basic requirements for effective corporate governance, so they should be carefully considered to guarantee a proper board composition and an adequate establishment of internal committees in listed companies. The paper intends to compare the legislative and regulatory frameworks adopted by the four countries; then it aims at answering to the following research questions by means of an empirical investigation： Have BRIC companies appointed non-executive and independent board members？ What do BRIC companies do in order to assure an effective participation of non-executive and independent board members to corporate governance activities？ Have BRIC companies established internal committees？ The research examines the appointment of non-executive directors and independent directors to the boards of 100 BRIC leading firms, as well as their involvement in internal committees focused on matters requiring motivated and impartial opinions. Although the laws and recommendations seem to favor a general convergence of corporate governance principles among the four BRIC and towards the international best practices, some differences and peculiarities emerge from a firm-level perspective. Indeed, the Indian and the Chinese companies analyzed appear more inclined than the Brazilian and the Russian ones to reassure their international stakeholders about board independence and effective committees.

Election Procedure for Rural Two Committees

In order to further strengthen the construction and improvement of villager autonomy system with democratic election,democratic decision making,democratic management,and democratic supervision of rural two committees with Chinese characteristics,experience of work team of Longyang District Agricultural Technology Extension Station dispatched to villager committees( or offices) and their guidance on election of rural two committees in 2007-2016 were used,and exploration was made for election of rural two committees from the third to the sixth committees. It summarized achievements and main problems in election of rural two committees and came up with pertinent recommendations.The results of this study are expected to provide certain reference for theory and practice of future villager autonomy.

Audit Committees： How They Affect Financial Reporting in Nigerian Companies

This study examines whether audit committees are associated with improved financial reporting quality for a sample of Nigerian listed companies prior to and after a corporate governance code mandated new regulations for audit committees in 2003. Using a sample of 70 companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, this study uses archival data in the form of companies＇ annual reports to measure the association between audit committees and improved financial reporting quality. Dechew and Dichev （2002）＇s model was used to measure earnings as a proxy for financial reporting quality. The results indicate that formation of audit committees was positively associated with improved financial reporting quality. It was also found that audit committees having an independent chair and audit committee expertise were positively associated with financial reporting quality. Other audit committee characteristics examined were found to be insignificantly related to financial reporting quality.

Three National Standardizetion Technical Committees Authorized By SAC

In December, 2004, the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) has approved the establishments of three National Standardization Technical Committees. They are the National Standardization Technical Committees for Environmental Protection Products (SAC/TC275), for Safety Management of Agricultural Transgenic Biology (SAC/TC276) and for Testing of New Varieties of Plant (SAC/TC277).The National Standardization Technical Committee for Environmental Protection Products is responsible for the development and revision of national standards in the following fields:

MEMBERSHIP OF THE 1996 CAS PRESIDIUM & STANDING COMMITTEES OF THE CAS ACADEMIC DIVISIONS

Chen Nengkuan Liang Xiaotian Ni Jiazan Wang Yuan Zheng

Analysis of the Election of Village Committees: A Case in Shanxi Province

The report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China （CPC） called for improving the grassroots autonomy mechanism led by grassroots Party organizations; paying more attention to enriching democracy, improving the democratic system to ensure people＇s democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision;

Implementation of Villagers Autonomy on Fast Lane——In commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the promulgation and implementation of the Organic Law of the Villagers Committees

It is already five years since the 10-year-old experimental law on the organization of villagers committees adopted in November 1987 by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress was made permanent, ending an intense political debate about how much independence villagers committees should be given to manage village affairs and to what extent villagers should be allowed to choose their leaders. It is five years in which the implementation of villagers autonomy as defined by the law proceeded the fastest and the achievements were the most fruitful. Local laws Over the past five years, all places

Effectiveness of Supervisory Boards in Coordination With Audit Committees in China

China＇s supervisory mechanism is peculiar in that it integrated the supervisory board （SB） of the German corporate governance （CG） model in 1993, and has simultaneously adopted the audit committee （AC） of the Anglo-American model since 2002. This paper aims to reveal the effectiveness of SBs in coordination with ACs in China. The regulations for Anglo-American and Chinese systems are compared and further evidence is provided through interviewing two governors of all listed companies in the SSE and of 79 investment corporations in Hangzhou. Both statements indicate that China still faces difficulties and problems in meeting the two indexes of independence and expertise of supervision to give effective supervisory functions. Both opinions differed in terms of the co-ordination of SBs and ACs in the future. The evidence presented forms a basis for proposals of how key characteristics of effectiveness and co-ordination can be improved to make supervisory functions in China more effective.

Agenda Setting on FAIR Guidelines in the European Union and the Role of Expert Committees

The FAIR Guidelines were conceptualised and coined as guidelines for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable(FAIR) data at a conference held at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden in 2014. A relatively short period of time after this conference, the FAIR Guidelines made it onto the public policy agenda of the European Union. Following the concept of Kingdon, policy entrepreneurs played a critical role in creating a policy window for this idea to reach the agenda by linking it to the policy of establishing a European Open Science Cloud(EOSC). Tracing the development from idea to policy, this study highlights the critical role that expert committees play in the European Union. The permeability of the complex governance structure is increased by these committees, which allow experts to link up with the institutions and use the committees to launch new ideas. The High Level Expert Groups on the EOSC provided the platform from which the FAIR Guidelines were launched, and this culminated in the adoption of the FAIR Guidelines as a requirement for all European-funded science. As a result, the FAIR Guidelines have become an obligatory part of data management in European-funded research in 2020 and are now followed by other funders worldwide.

Residential Committees in Lanes

The residential committee organizes members of the veteran cadres activity station to have out-door body building activities to carry out the "Body Building Plans for the Whole People."

Comparison of residents' committees in two Chinese cities:Shanghai and Shenyang

The residents＇ committee as an affiliate of the sub-district office actually plays a role much greater than that of a ＂self-governing mass organization＂ as defined by law. Owing to path dependence arising from their long-time role as agents of the government, residents＇ committee staff are naturally used to regarding daily political administration closely related to community development as part of internal community affairs. Therefore, community building is essentially the construction of a governance structure in grassroots society, which entails state forces vacating some space to allow the self-operation of grass-roots society. To realize this goal, the critical precondition rests in that the management and services of the functional departments of government must hit the mark. Creative institutional reform involves establishing a community governance system consisting of a ＂community-building guidance committee （government agency）, community management committee （social association）, community workers （professional service body）, community residents＇ committee （community self-governing organization）.＂

Standard Operating Procedures for Chinese Medicine Data Monitoring Committees of Clinical Studies

Although there is guidance from different regulatory agencies,there are opportunities to bring greater consistency and stronger applicability to address the practical issues of establishing and operating a data monitoring committee(DMC)for clinical studies of Chinese medicine.We names it as a Chinese Medicine Data Monitoring Committee(CMDMC).A panel composed of clinical and statistical experts shared their experience and thoughts on the important aspects of CMDMCs.Subsequently,a community standard on CMDMCs(T/CACM 1323-2019)was issued by the China Association of Chinese Medicine on September 12,2019.This paper summarizes the key content of this standard to help the sponsors of clinical studies establish and operate CMDMCs,which will further develop the scientific integrity and quality of clinical studies.

A survey of five first-level hospital ethics committees in Urumqi,China

This paper presents the results from a survey of first-level hospitals in Urumqi,China.The survey had two parts:the first part was aimed at understanding the operation of the ethics committees of first-level hospitals,including the process for electing members and the variety of members' backgrounds.Information was also gathered about the establishment of criteria,operational rules and regulations,and standard operational procedures.The aim of the second part was to investigate the level of understanding among technicians and doctors about the function of the ethics committees.This paper identifies and analyzes some deficiencies found in the operation of hospital ethics committees,offers some constructive suggestions for improvement,and promotes the role of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region hospital ethics committees.

Corrigendum to “Increasing the greenness of an organic acid through deep eutectic solvation and further polymerisation” [Green Energy & Environ 7 (4) (August 2022) 840–853]

The authors regret that the name of the ethic committee that approved the study and the reference number was omitted from the published paper.In this research,all animal experiments were performed in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals(US National Institutes of Healh)and were approved by the Animal Welfare and Ethical Committee of Hebei University(No.IACUC-2020XG021,Baoding,China).

Machine-Learning Based Packet Switching Method for Providing Stable High-Quality Video Streaming in Multi-Stream Transmission

Broadcasting gateway equipment generally uses a method of simply switching to a spare input stream when a failure occurs in a main input stream.However,when the transmission environment is unstable,problems such as reduction in the lifespan of equipment due to frequent switching and interruption,delay,and stoppage of services may occur.Therefore,applying a machine learning(ML)method,which is possible to automatically judge and classify network-related service anomaly,and switch multi-input signals without dropping or changing signals by predicting or quickly determining the time of error occurrence for smooth stream switching when there are problems such as transmission errors,is required.In this paper,we propose an intelligent packet switching method based on the ML method of classification,which is one of the supervised learning methods,that presents the risk level of abnormal multi-stream occurring in broadcasting gateway equipment based on data.Furthermore,we subdivide the risk levels obtained from classification techniques into probabilities and then derive vectorized representative values for each attribute value of the collected input data and continuously update them.The obtained reference vector value is used for switching judgment through the cosine similarity value between input data obtained when a dangerous situation occurs.In the broadcasting gateway equipment to which the proposed method is applied,it is possible to perform more stable and smarter switching than before by solving problems of reliability and broadcasting accidents of the equipment and can maintain stable video streaming as well.

Computed tomography-based radiomics diagnostic approach for differential diagnosis between early-and late-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND One of the primary reasons for the dismal survival rates in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC)is that most patients are usually diagnosed at late stages.There is an urgent unmet clinical need to identify and develop diagnostic methods that could precisely detect PDAC at its earliest stages.METHODS A total of 71 patients with pathologically proved PDAC based on surgical resection who underwent contrast-enhanced computed tomography(CT)within 30 d prior to surgery were included in the study.Tumor staging was performed in accordance with the 8th edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system.Radiomics features were extracted from the region of interest(ROI)for each patient using Analysis Kit software.The most important and predictive radiomics features were selected using Mann-Whitney U test,univar-iate logistic regression analysis,and minimum redundancy maximum relevance(MRMR)method.Random forest(RF)method was used to construct the radiomics model,and 10-times leave group out cross-validation(LGOCV)method was used to validate the robustness and reproducibility of the model.RESULTS A total of 792 radiomics features(396 from late arterial phase and 396 from portal venous phase)were extracted from the ROI for each patient using Analysis Kit software.Nine most important and predictive features were selected using Mann-Whitney U test,univariate logistic regression analysis,and MRMR method.RF method was used to construct the radiomics model with the nine most predictive radiomics features,which showed a high discriminative ability with 97.7%accuracy,97.6%sensitivity,97.8%specificity,98.4%positive predictive value,and 96.8%negative predictive value.The radiomics model was proved to be robust and reproducible using 10-times LGOCV method with an average area under the curve of 0.75 by the average performance of the 10 newly built models.CONCLUSION The radiomics model based on CT could serve as a promising non-invasive method in differential diagnosis between early and late stage PDAC.

A fond farewell By Kathie Morgan,Past President,ASTM International

From the first position as staff manager in technical committee operations to the presidency of the organization,Kathie Morgan has spent four decades at the ASTM International.It must be hard for her to say goodbye.