Over the past several years, decommissioned U.S. warships have been turned into artificial reefs in the ocean by towing them out to sea and sinking them. The thinking was that sinking the ship would conveniently dispose of it while providing an artificial reef environment for aquatic life. In reality, some of the sunken ships have released toxins into the ocean and have been costly to decontaminate. In the late 1990s, at least two international conventions have made it all but impossible to export used warships for salvage without removing all military equipment, conducting a complete cleanup and cutting the ship into such comparatively small pieces as to make the entire exercise relatively expensive.

The new environmental regulations have made disposal of ships an expensive project. The United States has hundreds of mothballed warships, presenting an extremely expensive problem for military authorities and the government. Now the U.S. government is taking bids to instead dismantle and recycle ships that have recently been decommissioned (but have not been sunk yet.)

Assume that a recently decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Blaze, is estimated to contain 40 tons of recyclable materials able to be sold for approximately $32.8 million. About 90% of the value in old ships is the metals, including steel, copper, copper alloys, and lead that can be removed, sold for remelting, and reformed into new metal products. There are also some high-value metals; such as, nickel alloys, stainless steel, and titanium that can be found in some parts of all warships but may be present is such small quantities that recovery and resale may not be cost effective. The low bid for dismantling and transporting the ship materials to appropriate facilities is $34.5 million. Recycling and dismantling the ship would create about 500 jobs for about a year on the West Coast area. This geographic area has been experiencing record-high unemployment rates in recent years.

As an alternative, reefing these ships would create new habitats for underwater life and can be done using newer environmentally safe methods. These new artificial reefs would enhance fishery resources and facilitate the access and utilization by recreational and commercial fishermen. Artificial reefs can also increase tourism by attracting sport divers for recreational purposes. Academic organizations may be interested in using the site to study fish and other marine life which may open the door for more funding from these research activities. Research has shown that a new reef will attract 60,000 – 70,000 divers and add more than 10 million to the local tourism industry. Research has also shown that artificial reefs can substantially increase the population of reef-associated species. Within months the G. B. Church artificial reef in British Columbia had hundreds of encrusted individuals on its hull and within 2.5 years had seen an increase of nearly 100 species.

Reefing the ship would cost an estimated 800K (or $0.8 million) which includes cleaning of the vessel of toxics, oils and greases, PCB containing electrical and electronic equipment and other readily removable PCB containing equipment, local towing and docking, preparation (unspecified) and other incidental overhead items, insurance, and making the vessels safe for divers (diverizing). There will also be yearly maintenance costs in perpetuity.

Is it more financially advantageous to sink the ship or to dismantle and recycle it? Show your calculations. (Worth 4 pts.)

In your accounting career you will be required to analyse current accounting issues and communicate your theoretical understanding to your professional colleagues and your clients. For this assignment assume that you are the senior accountant working for a major firm.

Question 1 - 9 marks (1,500 words) The CEO has forwarded to you an interesting article and requires you to provide her with a deeper theoretical understanding of the issues discussed so that she can fully engage in the lively discourse at an upcoming conference. You are required to find a newspaper article or web page report of an item of accounting news, i.e. it refers to a current event, consideration, comment or decision that has been published after the 1st of January 2018. Your article could also come from one of the professional journals. The article should not come from an academic journal. Academic journals generally do not contain news articles or articles of less than one page and are usually only published 2 or 4 times a year. If you are having a problem ensuring that your article is from an appropriate source contact your subject coordinator. You then need to explain the article that you have found in your own words and clearly relate the concepts, ideas and facts within the article to one or more of the theories or topics that you have studied this session. Support your analysis of the assumptions and implications of the topic or theory as appropriate with reference to sources in APA 6 style. For example, this article from the Sydney Morning Herald in April 2016 could be linked to the topics of accounting regulation and measurement (and perhaps others). You must provide a copy of the article or web page, with details of the source, date and page number with your answer.

Question 2 - 10 marks (1,500 words) The Senior Partner of the firm you work for has appointed you to a new role. It is now your responsibility to review upcoming accounting standards and provide a report to the partners on the proposed standard and the opinions of other industry players on the changes. Firstly, you are required to find a current exposure draft or proposal for a new accounting standard which has been opened for public comments. (These can be found on the websites of most standard-setting organisations, such as the IASB, AASB and FASB. Hint: These websites can be quite difficult to navigate, so as a first step try typing “IASB exposure draft and comment letters”/”FASB exposure draft and comment letters” into Google or other search engine of your choice). Read a sample of the comments from a range of respondents. Select four respondents, ideally from different types of organisations for example, from accounting bodies, industry, companies or corporate bodies. If you are having a problem finding suitable comments letters then contact your subject coordinator. In your own words, supporting your evaluation with appropriate citations, appropriately referenced in APA 6 style, you are required to include the following information in the report. An outline of what the exposure draft is introducing or changing. An assessment as to whether the exposure draft is being introduced in the ‘public interest’. An outline of the views presented in the comments letters which highlights the areas of agreement and disagreement with the exposure draft and/or other comments letters. An assessment (with relevant examples) as to whether the comments letters utilise any of the arguments 'for' or 'against' regulation. An application of each of the theories of regulation (public interest, private interest and capture) to the comments letters and a justification as to which theory(ies) is most effective at explaining the comments and which theory(ies) is least effective at explaining the comments. Please note: you need to attach the comment letters you selected for your report (there is no need to attach the exposure draft)

Read these instructions carefully, and then read the text “The Highs and Lows of Vocational
Education” on the next page. Then write an essay of 350-400 words* in response to this essay title:

You must support your ideas with:
- Evidence taken from the ‘The Highs and Lows of Vocational Education” reading text (at
least one item, which must be referenced with an in-text citation)
AND
- Other evidence regarding either Hong Kong OR China (which you may have read and can
reference correctly, or which you have made up and should be referenced with your family
name and the current year, e.g. (Fan, 2019). You are not required to write a reference list.

Describe the advantages and disadvantages of studying vocational education, in either Hong

Kong or China, and in another country.

The Highs and Lows of Vocational Education [adapted]

by Matt Barnum (2017)
What’s one education topic that right wing, left wing, and all politicians support? It is vocational
training - something they’ve all said America needs in order to create a balance of practical as well
as academic school leavers. While President Trump praised Germany’s approach to vocational
education recently, he actually plans to reduce funding for it, but, at least in theory, there’s wide
support for helping more students learn career-specific skills.
Yet new international research points to a significant downside of such programs: Students may
benefit early in their careers, but are harmed later in life as the economy changes and they lack the
less specific skills necessary to adapt. The study raises concerns about the positive and negative
effects of expanding vocational training in the United States. “Individuals with general education
initially face worse employment outcomes, but with improved experience as they become older,
they have increased employment opportunities, relative to individuals with vocational education,”
write four researchers in the study.
Many European and developing countries provide extensive vocational training, including
apprenticeships with involvement from industry, the authors note. That stands in contrast with the
U.S., which has reduced or eliminated separate vocational tracks in most high schools. Looking at
11 European countries, the researchers compared students within the same country who went on the
vocational track to similar students who went through a general-education program. The result is
that although vocational students make higher salaries and are more likely to be employed as young
adults, this advantage fades over time; by their late forties, those who went through a general
education program have higher employment rates. Those findings were confirmed with more
detailed data from Germany. “The advantages of vocational training in smoothing entry into the
labor market have to be set against disadvantages later in life,” the study concludes.
At age 10, Germany requires students to choose a vocational high school, academic high school, or
what one article described as “something in between.” Students have frequent opportunities to move
between these choices as they progress with their studies. However, in the U.S., vocation-focused
courses are often just a small part of a student’s course load. As of 2009, the average American
student took 3.6 vocational classes in high school.
The authors of the latest research say the findings don’t imply that vocational education is
necessarily a bad idea, just that it is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of
each choice. The results also suggest that policymakers looking only at the short-term impacts of
such programs may not be getting an accurate understanding of their effects. One recent study of
Arkansas’s high-school vocational program, which requires students to take six career-focused
classes in high school in order to graduate and allows them to concentrate in specific areas, found
that participants had higher earnings and employment rates as young adults. Longer-run impacts
were not examined, however.

A. Which type of mutation do you feel would be most likely to be influenced by natural selection, those that result in changes of the third codon position, or those that result in changes of the first codon position? Explain your reasoning.

B. In many animals inbreeding among close relatives reduces the ability of their offspring to survive. Explain why this occurs.

Please correct answer. Thanks

(12.1) Why is it difficult to define boundaries between normality and psychopathology in the area of variant sexuality? This is a very interesting question given the changes in peoples points of view over the past 20 -30 years. 20 years ago homosexuality was considered a disorder - so was transgender. Today we see it differently. Given these social changes in attitudes and ideas what then is psychopathology in sexuality?

What is the definition of magnetic flux? What is Faraday's Law? Can you use it effectively to find the currents induced by changes in magnetic flux? How can it be verified experimentally using a field coil and a pickup coil? If you know how the magnetic field changes in time in a field coil, can you determine how the current induced in a pickup coil will change in time?

The acid base reaction between HCl and NaOH produces a solution with a pH of 7 at the equivalence point. Why does an acid-base indicator that changes color at a pH of 5 or 9 work just as well for this reaction as one that changes color at pH 7?

Is this because the pH change is so large at the equivalence point that it covers the range of the pH color change of the indicators?

Recall the evaluation of project management methodologies you did. Was project change management a consideration in your evaluation? Why or why not? What changes do you anticipate on the St. Dismas project? In what ways do you think the changes you identified impact project risk and quality? How can you as a project manager be proactive in managing project change?

• What were the most significant changes in this new tax law?
• What would be the effect on a business for which you might work as an engineer
• Would there be any changes in the way businesses deal with depreciation?
• A big change in taxes and depreciation also occurred in the 1980s. Research and summarize the effects of the Accelerated Cost Recovery System (ACRS) on taxes and depreciation. What is your opinion of ACRS?