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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to document a study of European and UK triple bottom line (TBL) report assurance statements. Design/methodology/approach -In undertaking the research, an international database was constructed from which all known European and UK third-party assurance statements that accompanied the release of TBL reports were selected for review. Findings -The results of the analysis indicate that there is much variability and ambiguity inherent within the contents of the third-party statements.Research limitations/implications -The UK and European reports included within the database compiled by the researchers provide the basis of the information used to develop this paper. In selecting assurance statements to include within the database, the latest TBL report from each reporting organization was obtained (and it should be appreciated that many organizations do not produce TBL reports on an annual basis). Of the 170 reports available internationally at the time the research was undertaken,

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common and the most severe of the muscular dystrophies in man. It is inherited as an X-linked recessive trait and is characterized by ongoing necrosis of skeletal muscle fibres with regeneration and eventually fibrosis and fatty infiltration. Although the gene and gene product which are defective in DMD have recently been identified, the pathogenesis of the disease is still poorly understood. A myopathy has been described in the dog which has been shown to be inherited as an X-linked trait and which is therefore a potential model of the human disease. We have studied the phenotypic expression of the disease, canine X-linked muscular dystrophy (CXMD), and have examined the molecular relationship between it and DMD. We report here that dogs with CXMD faithfully mimic the phenotype of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and that they lack the Duchenne gene transcript and its protein product, dystrophin.

Abstract-The aim of this study is to examine the impact of board characteristics and firm performance. Specifically we test the effects of board meeting, board independence, board size and directors accounting expertise on firm accounting performance. The paper uses both financial and non-financial data from annual reports of the 700 public listed firms in Malaysia for the year 2009. The result shows that board independence does not affect firm performance, whilst board size and board accounting/financial expertise are positively associated with firm performance. Board diligence in terms of board meetings is found to have an adverse effect on firm performance. These findings provide some implication for future research on the effectiveness of board directors on firm performance.Index Terms-Corporate governance, board characteristics, board meeting, board independence, accounting expertise and firm performance.