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In the recent past, there have been accounting and auditing scandals in the USA, which began with Enron and became widespread and had a global impact. Various factors played a dominant role in the formation of those scandals including but not limited to fraudulent practices associated with some basic business functions (financial reporting, accounting, auditing, internal control, finance, oversight, and corporate governance). Additionally, the deliberate damage and violation of ethical principles such as accuracy, honesty, transparency, independence, and accountability in such scandals have also been conspicuous. Consequently, auditing, accounting, financial reporting, internal control, oversight, and corporate governance functions have become vitally important along with the ethical principles following these scandals.

Recently, there has been a significant change in capital markets and competitive business environment. This change stems from advances in data science and communication technologies. In this new digital era, recent issues shape our understanding of the business and financial ecosystem. Individualized products, cyber-physical systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and cognitive computing are some of the key components in this transformational change, the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. Additionally, blockchain technologies are redefining rules of the game in traditional finance. It also shapes traditional business operations and their connectedness with capital markets. Therefore, centralized characteristics of the financial ecosystem need to adapt to these transformational changes. Banks as intermediaries today seek new ways to transfer values with more efficiency and less amount of time. Throughout its blockchain ecosystem, some projects are financed with initial coin offerings without any intermediaries. It is more accurate, less costly, and promising. However, the risks are tremendous as there are no monitoring or regulatory bodies in this decentralized network activity. Therefore, we need to develop a clear understanding of transformational change in the financial ecosystem in the new era. Moreover, a decentralized network economy should also be evaluated from a holistic perspective with the contributions of international scholars.

En dépit de progrès majeurs en matière de biologie moléculaire et cellulaire, de biologie des systèmes et de bioinformatique, la toxicologie appliquée à l’évaluation du risque des substances chimiques et des toxines n'a pas beaucoup évolué au cours des dernières décennies. Un changement conceptuel et méthodologique radical doit émerger si l’on veut pouvoir tester à moindre coût et rapidement un grand nombre de produits chimiques, seuls ou en mélanges. Le développement et la mise en application d’outils in vitro, recommandés par les instances règlementaires internationales, sont des étapes essentielles de ces changements. Les toxicologues doivent désormais s’appuyer sur la biologie des systèmes, l'intégration de données multi-omiques et les bases de données publiques pour combler l'écart entre les événements moléculaires initialement repérés et les effets néfastes à l’échelle d’un système biologique, puis d’un individu. Outre les données de protéomique et de transcriptomique capables d’appréhender les changements moléculaires et cellulaires, les approches métabolomiques renseignent sur les niveaux de métabolites ou les flux de métabolites altérés par les toxiques et peuvent guider le choix de biomarqueurs précoces spécifiques et sensibles pour le développement ultérieur de dépistages haut débit. L’utilisation des données massives et leur modélisation devraient permettre de mieux prédire les liens entre exposition aux substances toxiques et états physiopathologiques., Despite major advances in molecular and cellular biology, systems biology and bioinformatics, toxicology applied to the risk assessment of chemicals and toxins has not changed significantly during the last decades. A radical conceptual and methodological change must emerge if a large number of chemicals or their combinations in mixtures need to be tested at a lower cost and quickly. The development and implementation of in vitro tools, recommended by international regulatory authorities, are essential steps in these changes. Toxicologists must now rely on the potential of systems biology, multiomics data integration and public databases to bridge the gap between initial molecular events and adverse effects at the level of a biological system and then an individual. In addition to proteomics and transcriptomics data capable of informing about potential changes in cell function and infrastructure, metabolomics approaches provide information about metabolite levels or flows of metabolites altered by toxic substances and can guide the selection of specific and sensitive early biomarkers for the subsequent development of high throughput screening. The analysis of big data and their modelling should make it possible to better predict the links between exposure to toxic substances and physiopathological conditions.

International audience; Up to around 1.1 kHz, the soundboard of the piano behaves like a homogeneous plate whereas upper in frequency, it can be described as a set of waveguides defined by the ribs. In consequence: a) The acoustical coincidence phenomenon is deeply modified in comparison with that occurring in homogeneous plates since the dispersion curve of a waveguide can present none, one, or two coincidence frequencies. This may result in a nonuniformity of the soundboard radiation in the treble range, corresponding to the so-called killer octave, where a good sustain is difficult to obtain. b) The mobility (mechanical admittance) in the direction normal to the soundboard can be synthesised with only a small number of parameters. It compares well with published measurements (Giordano, JASA, 1998), in particular the step-like falloff of the local impedance due to the localisation of the waves between ribs. c) The synthesised mobility has the same features as those which can be derived independantly, according to Skudrzyk (JASA, 1980) and Langley (JSV, 1994). This approach avoids the detailed description of the soundboard, based on a very large number of parameters. It can be used to predict global changes of the driving point mobility, and possibly of the sound radiation in the treble range, resulting from structural modifications.