Dr M Khalid's global village blog

How hard is it to ferret out securities fraud? It might be as easy as looking for how many times the digit `1’ appears in a company's financial entries instead of ‘9.’ A simple mathematical law that applies to everything from the height of mountains to the population of towns in Tajikistan can also be used to uncover suspicious numbers in public-company accounting, an expert at  Columbia Business School  says in a new paper. Benford’s Law states simply that the quantity of most things in the real world is more likely to be described by a number beginning in 1 than any other digit, and the likelihood of it being described by other digits declines at an increasing rate as those digits get higher. More on Forbes: Is This The Cigarette Of The Future When Columbia’s  Dan Amiram  and two coauthors applied Benford’s Law to public companies, they found the same rules hold true: Companies whose financial statements were significantly out of compliance with the ...

The most commonly invested Gold ETF the SPDR gold trust price movement is used or analysis. It  follows the gold price in dollars. It is comparable to Gold price by a factor of 1/10. That is if Gold is at $1200, SPDR gold ETF unit is at $120. SPDR Gold ETF 10 year Chart :  https://in.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GLD#symbol=GLD;range= Gold Historic chart :  http://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html Price level at 20 Day exponential moving average are taken for the sake of adjusting the short fluctuations. In the past 8 years, since 2008, we can see 2 prominent bull runs in Gold price.  One bull run form a low of October 2006 (Price $58.5) to May 2008(Price $95) - a rise of $36.5. Then a fall of $21 to Nov 2008(Price$78). Another bull run from a low of Nov 2008(Price $74) to September 2011(Price $176) - a rise of $102 then a fall to recent  levels the lowest being of December 2013 (Price $118) - a fall of 58 points. Thus the first bull run had a ...

Placements Across Tier-2 B-Schools Slump, Only 18% Get Jobs: Survey If you have not been lucky enough to secure a seat in the prestigious IIMs or one of the few top-notch business schools such as the FMS or XLRI, you should be worried. A survey across second-rung business schools across India has found that only 18 per cent MBA students have got jobs at the end of the two-year course in 2014. What's even more disappointing is salary packages for campus offers in such B-schools have dropped by 40-45 per cent as compared to last year. (Also read:  Salary hikes in 2014 to be lowest in a decade ) The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) survey says, "economic slowdown, stalling of new projects and investors' apathy towards several key sectors like infrastructure, hotels, financial services, realty and retail have led to drying of job opportunities for a large numbers of students from the B-category business schools." http://profit.nd...

IN the world of higher education, we professors like to believe that we are free from the racial and gender biases that afflict so many other people in society. But is this self-conception accurate? To find out, we conducted an experiment. A few years ago, we sent emails to more than 6,500 randomly selected professors from 259 American universities. Each email was from a (fictional) prospective out-of-town student whom the professor did not know, expressing interest in the professor’s Ph.D. program and seeking guidance. These emails were identical and written in impeccable English, varying only in the name of the student sender. The messages came from students with names like Meredith Roberts, Lamar Washington, Juanita Martinez, Raj Singh and Chang Huang, names that earlier research participants consistently perceived as belonging to either a white, black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese student. In total, we used 20 different names in 10 different race-gender categories (e.g. white ma...

China will not use any large-scale stimulus to boost its economy, Central Bank Chief Zhou Xiaochuan was reported as saying on Saturday, in response to speculation that authorities might lower reserve requirements for banks to spur growth. Zhou, who was speaking at a closed-door session at the Tsinghua University, was also reported by Phoenix New Media Ltd as saying the central bank would only "fine-tune" its policy to counter economic cycles. There has been market speculation that China may reduce the amount of cash commercial banks must hold as reserves at the central bank to shore up its economic growth, which fell to an 18-month low in the first quarter. https://in.news.yahoo.com/china-avoid-big-economic-stimulus-central-bank-chief-083218580--business.html

New Delhi, May 10 (ANI): A World Health Organisation (WHO) study ranks New Delhi as the world's worst city for air pollution, with an annual average of 153 micrograms of small particulates, known as PM 2.5, per cubic metre. The WHO study of 1,600 cities released on Wednesday found air pollution had worsened since a smaller survey in 2011, putting city-dwellers at a higher risk of cancer, stroke and heart disease. "The number of vehicles has increased exponentially and the number of diesel vehicles has increased. Diesel is particularly, extremely toxic, it is also the key reason why there are such high levels of particulate pollution in the city of Delhi," said Director-General of the Centre for Science and Environment Sunita Narain.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials on Friday confirmed the first case of an American infected with a mysterious Middle East virus. The man fell ill after arriving in the U.S. about a week ago from Saudi Arabia where he is a health care worker. The man is hospitalized in Indiana with Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is investigating the case along with Indiana health officials. Saudi Arabia has been the center of an outbreak of MERS that began about two years ago. At least 400 people have had the respiratory illness, and more than 100 people have died. All had ties to the Middle East or to people who traveled there. Infections have been previously reported among health care workers. MERS belongs to the coronavirus family that includes the common cold and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which caused some 800 deaths globally in 2003. The MERS virus has been found in camels, but official...

Jadav Payeng turned a barren sandbar in northern India into a lush new forest ecosystem. The forest, called the Molai woods, is a safe haven for numerous birds, deer, rhinos, tigers and elephants — species increasingly at risk from habitat loss. (Photo: PhBasumata/flickr) A little more than 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a  refuge for wildlife . Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site so he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acres of jungle that Payeng planted — single-handedly.   The Times of India  recently caught up with Payeng in his remote forest lodge to learn more about how he came to leave such an indelible mark on the landscape.   It all started way back in 1979, when floods washed a...