ARTICLES

9/26/2016· Environment

Just Who Is At Risk? The Ethics of Environmental Regulation

By: Dr. Ted Simon

The willingness to view risk as part of daily life has vanished. A risk-averse mindset among environmental regulators engenders confusion between the ethics of intention and the ethics of consequence, leading to the elevation of the precautionary principle with unintended and often unfortunate outcomes. Environmental risk assessment is conservative, but the actual level of conservatism cannot be determined. High-end exposure assumptions and current toxicity criteria from the USEPA, based on linear extrapolation for carcinogens and default uncertainty factors for systemic toxicants, obscure the degree of conservatism in risk assessments. Ideally, one could choose a percentile of the target population to include within environmental standards, but this choice is complicated by the food, pharmaceutical and advertising industries, whose activities, inadvertent or not, often promote maladaptive and unhealthy lifestyle choices.

9/13/2016· Accounting

Royalty Audits - Compliance With AICPA Standards

By: Sidney Blum

Royalty auditing is a niche service that has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years. The primary purpose of a royalty audit is to test whether a licensee has complied with a license agreement or statutory requirement. The royalty auditor is hired by an intellectual property owner (aka, licensor) or minerals owner to inspect the books and records of a licensee primarily to determine if usage-based monetary amounts have been paid as contractually required. In addition to monetary damage calculations, most royalty audits examine for breach of contract in a wide variety of areas, such as intellectual property protection, record keeping, distribution channels, and permitted usage.

8/19/2016· Transportation

Buses and Motorcoaches: The Case for Mandatory Sleep Apnea Testing, Part 2

By: Ned Einstein

The notion of "screening" driver-candidates for Sleep Apnea screening is not merely unsupportable, it is a delusion. In 2011, 517 truck drivers in Australia were tested for Obstructive Sleep Apnea ("Assessing Sleepiness and Sleep Disorder in Truck Drivers" in SLEEP, 2011). According to an anonymous self-evaluation questionnaire (a "multivariable apnea prediction index, based on self-report measures"), only 12% felt they had it, while roughly 4.4% had tested positive for it. Yet when all of them were tested, 41% more of them had this condition. The testing also found that a full 50% of the study participants were obese, and 49% of them smoked cigarettes. Neither of these parameters are included among the handful of criteria currently employed by either the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's or Federal Railway Administration's "recommended" screening exercise -- although, In fairness, the size-17 male neck (or size 16 female neck) serves as a proxy for obesity. At the same time, as noted below, it also captures plenty of "false positives."

8/18/2016· OSHA

Portable Generator Safety: Let There Be Light! But Be Safe About It

By: Greg Gerganoff

Electricity is a vital source of energy in our daily lives. It powers tools, provides light and heat. Our working lives are much improved and efficiency greatly increased thanks to electricity. But what about those situations where power from the grid is unavailable. Well, portable generators are an excellent tool for such a scenario.

8/16/2016· Psychology

Practice Patterns Across the Clinical Life Span: Results From the California Survey of Psychological Practice

By: Dr. David Pingitore

Changes in practice patterns routinely occur over time, both with in an individual psychologist's practice and between generations of practitioners. However, little empirical research has been conducted to examine psychologists' practice patterns across their collective professional life span, and whether meaningful differences exist in these patterns among a sample of psychologists. This attic Ie examines clinical practice patterns among a sample of California psychologists whose collective career life span ranges from I to 40 years of postlicensure experience. The data for this aIticle were drawn from the 2000 California Survey of Psychological Practice (hereafter the California Survey; Pingitore, Scheffler, Haley, Sentell, & Schwalm, 200Ia).

8/12/2016· Forgery & Fraud

How to Minimize Your Litigation Risk in a Low-Tech Way

By: Catherine Ghiglieri

Ten years ago, I wrote an article on how banks could minimize their litigation risks. Unfortunately, many of the same schemes are present today as they were ten years ago, such as check fraud, check kiting, elder abuse, bookkeeper fraud, and construction loan fraud. Today, cybersecurity and other high-tech risks are consuming bankers' attention in order to reduce their operational and reputational risks. While these issues are important, here are a few of the low-tech ways in which banks can minimize their litigation risk.

7/13/2016· Legal Issues

The Expert Witness In Real Estate Litigation - A User's Guide

By: Lawrence Jacobson

Although many articles have been written about the use of the expert witness in litigation, almost all are written by lawyers and rarely by an expert witness who is also a lawyer. Having practiced law since 1968 in the area of real estate and business transactions with a real estate broker's license since 1978, I have testified frequently as an expert witness in litigation involving the interpretation of real estate documents, the standard of care of real estate brokers, in legal malpractice actions involving real estate and business transactions and in legal fee disputes. As such, I thought it would be helpful to litigators handling real estate litigation matters to have the perspective of an expert witness on issues affecting the choice, usage and cross-examination of an expert witness in such litigation.

6/29/2016· Transportation

Buses and Motorcoaches: The Danger Deterrent

By: Ned Einstein

Like most fields, public transportation is swollen with studies, both in the U.S. and abroad. Yet some of the most fascinating things seem to be never studied, or rarely studied.

6/24/2016· OSHA

Safety Committees - Safety Culture: It's Not Just Another Trend

By: Greg Gerganoff

Safety culture is a term frequently bandied about in today's business world and sounds as trendy as "mission statements" were years ago. (Let's not forget "best in class". First time I heard this at a company meeting I looked around to make sure I hadn't mistakenly wandered into a dog show. Really?)

6/15/2016· Accounting

Valuing a Professional Practice Requires In-depth Analysis

By: Michael J. Garibaldi CPA, ABV, CFF, CGMA

Goodwill can be a significant asset for a professional practice. It may include both "personal" goodwill that's attributable to individual owners and "business" goodwill that can be transferred to third parties. When accountants and other types of professionals divorce, the amount of goodwill to include in the marital estate can become contentious (and may vary depending on state law). If expert testimony on the issue is inadequate, a court might look elsewhere for help, as it did in a recent Texas divorce case, Hill v. Hill.