Going out and the search for originality in China

Can China improve the competitiveness of its culture in world markets? Should it focus less on quantity and more on quality? How should Chinese cultural producers and distributors target audiences overseas? These are important questions facing policy makers today. In this paper I investigate how China might best deploy its soft power capabilities: for instance, should it try to demonstrate that it is a creative, innovative nation, capable of original ideas? Or should it put the emphasis on validating its credentials as an enduring culture and civilisation? In order to investigate these questions I introduce the cultural innovation timeline, a model that explains how China is adding value. There are six stages in the timeline but I will focus in particular on how the timeline facilitates cultural trade. In the second part of the paper I look at some of the challenges facing China, particularly the reception of its cultural products in international markets.

Revealing performance heterogeneity through knowledge management maturity evaluation : a capability-based approach

The dynamic capabilities view (DCV) focuses on renewal of firms’ strategic knowledge resources so as to sustain competitive advantage within turbulent markets. Within the context of the DCV, the focus of knowledge management (KM) is to develop the KMC through deploying knowledge governance mechanisms that are conducive to facilitating knowledge processes so as to produce superior business performance over time. The essence of KM performance evaluation is to assess how well the KMC is configured with knowledge governance mechanisms and processes that enable a firm to achieve superior performance through matching its knowledge base with market needs. However, little research has been undertaken to evaluate KM performance from the DCV perspective. This study employed a survey study design and adopted hypothesis-testing approaches to develop a capability-based KM evaluation framework (CKMEF) that upholds the basic assertions of the DCV. Under the governance of the framework, a KM index (KMI) and a KM maturity model (KMMM) were derived not only to indicate the extent to which a firm’s KM implementations fulfill its strategic objectives, and to identify the evolutionary phase of its KMC, but also to bench-mark the KMC in the research population. The research design ensured that the evaluation framework and instruments have statistical significance and good generalizabilty to be applied in the research population, namely construction firms operating in the dynamic Hong Kong construction market. The study demonstrated the feasibility of quantitatively evaluating the development of the KMC and revealing the performance heterogeneity associated with the development.

Resting metabolic rate is associated with hunger, self-determined meal size, and daily energy intake and may represent a marker for appetite

Background: There are strong logical reasons why energy expended in metabolism should influence the energy acquired in food-intake behavior. However, the relation has never been established, and it is not known why certain people experience hunger in the presence of large amounts of body energy. Objective: We investigated the effect of the resting metabolic rate (RMR) on objective measures of whole-day food intake and hunger. Design: We carried out a 12-wk intervention that involved 41 overweight and obese men and women [mean ± SD age: 43.1 ± 7.5 y; BMI (in kg/m2): 30.7 ± 3.9] who were tested under conditions of physical activity (sedentary or active) and dietary energy density (17 or 10 kJ/g). RMR, daily energy intake, meal size, and hunger were assessed within the same day and across each condition. Results: We obtained evidence that RMR is correlated with meal size and daily energy intake in overweight and obese individuals. Participants with high RMRs showed increased levels of hunger across the day (P < 0.0001) and greater food intake (P < 0.00001) than did individuals with lower RMRs. These effects were independent of sex and food energy density. The change in RMR was also related to energy intake (P < 0.0001). Conclusions: We propose that RMR (largely determined by fat-free mass) may be a marker of energy intake and could represent a physiologic signal for hunger. These results may have implications for additional research possibilities in appetite, energy homeostasis, and obesity. This trial was registered under international standard identification for controlled trials as ISRCTN47291569.

Extending and validating the is-impact model in Saudi Arabia : accounting for computer network quality

Organizations from every industry sector seek to enhance their business performance and competitiveness through the deployment of contemporary information systems (IS), such as Enterprise Systems (ERP). Investments in ERP are complex and costly, attracting scrutiny and pressure to justify their cost. Thus, IS researchers highlight the need for systematic evaluation of information system success, or impact, which has resulted in the introduction of varied models for evaluating information systems. One of these systematic measurement approaches is the IS-Impact Model introduced by a team of researchers at Queensland University of technology (QUT) (Gable, Sedera, & Chan, 2008). The IS-Impact Model is conceptualized as a formative, multidimensional index that consists of four dimensions. Gable et al. (2008) define IS-Impact as "a measure at a point in time, of the stream of net benefits from the IS, to date and anticipated, as perceived by all key-user-groups" (p.381). The IT Evaluation Research Program (ITE-Program) at QUT has grown the IS-Impact Research Track with the central goal of conducting further studies to enhance and extend the IS-Impact Model. The overall goal of the IS-Impact research track at QUT is "to develop the most widely employed model for benchmarking information systems in organizations for the joint benefit of both research and practice" (Gable, 2009). In order to achieve that, the IS-Impact research track advocates programmatic research having the principles of tenacity, holism, and generalizability through extension research strategies. This study was conducted within the IS-Impact Research Track, to further generalize the IS-Impact Model by extending it to the Saudi Arabian context. According to Hofsted (2012), the national culture of Saudi Arabia is significantly different from the Australian national culture making the Saudi Arabian culture an interesting context for testing the external validity of the IS-Impact Model. The study re-visits the IS-Impact Model from the ground up. Rather than assume the existing instrument is valid in the new context, or simply assess its validity through quantitative data collection, the study takes a qualitative, inductive approach to re-assessing the necessity and completeness of existing dimensions and measures. This is done in two phases: Exploratory Phase and Confirmatory Phase. The exploratory phase addresses the first research question of the study "Is the IS-Impact Model complete and able to capture the impact of information systems in Saudi Arabian Organization?". The content analysis, used to analyze the Identification Survey data, indicated that 2 of the 37 measures of the IS-Impact Model are not applicable for the Saudi Arabian Context. Moreover, no new measures or dimensions were identified, evidencing the completeness and content validity of the IS-Impact Model. In addition, the Identification Survey data suggested several concepts related to IS-Impact, the most prominent of which was "Computer Network Quality" (CNQ). The literature supported the existence of a theoretical link between IS-Impact and CNQ (CNQ is viewed as an antecedent of IS-Impact). With the primary goal of validating the IS-Impact model within its extended nomological network, CNQ was introduced to the research model. The Confirmatory Phase addresses the second research question of the study "Is the Extended IS-Impact Model Valid as a Hierarchical Multidimensional Formative Measurement Model?". The objective of the Confirmatory Phase was to test the validity of IS-Impact Model and CNQ Model. To achieve that, IS-Impact, CNQ, and IS-Satisfaction were operationalized in a survey instrument, and then the research model was assessed by employing the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach. The CNQ model was validated as a formative model. Similarly, the IS-Impact Model was validated as a hierarchical multidimensional formative construct. However, the analysis indicated that one of the IS-Impact Model indicators was insignificant and can be removed from the model. Thus, the resulting Extended IS-Impact Model consists of 4 dimensions and 34 measures. Finally, the structural model was also assessed against two aspects: explanatory and predictive power. The analysis revealed that the path coefficient between CNQ and IS-Impact is significant with t-value= (4.826) and relatively strong with â = (0.426) with CNQ explaining 18% of the variance in IS-Impact. These results supported the hypothesis that CNQ is antecedent of IS-Impact. The study demonstrates that the quality of Computer Network affects the quality of the Enterprise System (ERP) and consequently the impacts of the system. Therefore, practitioners should pay attention to the Computer Network quality. Similarly, the path coefficient between IS-Impact and IS-Satisfaction was significant t-value = (17.79) and strong â = (0.744), with IS-Impact alone explaining 55% of the variance in Satisfaction, consistent with results of the original IS-Impact study (Gable et al., 2008). The research contributions include: (a) supporting the completeness and validity of IS-Impact Model as a Hierarchical Multi-dimensional Formative Measurement Model in the Saudi Arabian context, (b) operationalizing Computer Network Quality as conceptualized in the ITU-T Recommendation E.800 (ITU-T, 1993), (c) validating CNQ as a formative measurement model and as an antecedent of IS Impact, and (d) conceptualizing and validating IS-Satisfaction as a reflective measurement model and as an immediate consequence of IS Impact. The CNQ model provides a framework to perceptually measure Computer Network Quality from multiple perspectives. The CNQ model features an easy-to-understand, easy-to-use, and economical survey instrument.

Enhancing security of linux-based android devices

Our daily lives become more and more dependent upon smartphones due to their increased capabilities. Smartphones are used in various ways from payment systems to assisting the lives of elderly or disabled people. Security threats for these devices become increasingly dangerous since there is still a lack of proper security tools for protection. Android emerges as an open smartphone platform which allows modification even on operating system level. Therefore, third-party developers have the opportunity to develop kernel-based low-level security tools which is not normal for smartphone platforms. Android quickly gained its popularity among smartphone developers and even beyond since it bases on Java on top of "open" Linux in comparison to former proprietary platforms which have very restrictive SDKs and corresponding APIs. Symbian OS for example, holding the greatest market share among all smartphone OSs, was closing critical APIs to common developers and introduced application certification. This was done since this OS was the main target for smartphone malwares in the past. In fact, more than 290 malwares designed for Symbian OS appeared from July 2004 to July 2008. Android, in turn, promises to be completely open source. Together with the Linux-based smartphone OS OpenMoko, open smartphone platforms may attract malware writers for creating malicious applications endangering the critical smartphone applications and owners� privacy. In this work, we present our current results in analyzing the security of Android smartphones with a focus on its Linux side. Our results are not limited to Android, they are also applicable to Linux-based smartphones such as OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner. Our contribution in this work is three-fold. First, we analyze android framework and the Linux-kernel to check security functionalities. We survey wellaccepted security mechanisms and tools which can increase device security. We provide descriptions on how to adopt these security tools on Android kernel, and provide their overhead analysis in terms of resource usage. As open smartphones are released and may increase their market share similar to Symbian, they may attract attention of malware writers. Therefore, our second contribution focuses on malware detection techniques at the kernel level. We test applicability of existing signature and intrusion detection methods in Android environment. We focus on monitoring events on the kernel; that is, identifying critical kernel, log file, file system and network activity events, and devising efficient mechanisms to monitor them in a resource limited environment. Our third contribution involves initial results of our malware detection mechanism basing on static function call analysis. We identified approximately 105 Executable and Linking Format (ELF) executables installed to the Linux side of Android. We perform a statistical analysis on the function calls used by these applications. The results of the analysis can be compared to newly installed applications for detecting significant differences. Additionally, certain function calls indicate malicious activity. Therefore, we present a simple decision tree for deciding the suspiciousness of the corresponding application. Our results present a first step towards detecting malicious applications on Android-based devices.

Approaches to designing for older adults' intuitive interaction with complex devices

Many older people have difficulties using modern consumer products due to increased product complexity both in terms of functionality and interface design. Previous research has shown that older people have more difficulty in using complex devices intuitively when compared to the younger. Furthermore, increased life expectancy and a falling birth rate have been catalysts for changes in world demographics over the past two decades. This trend also suggests a proportional increase of older people in the work-force. This realisation has led to research on the effective use of technology by older populations in an effort to engage them more productively and to assist them in leading independent lives. Ironically, not enough attention has been paid to the development of interaction design strategies that would actually enable older users to better exploit new technologies. Previous research suggests that if products are designed to reflect people's prior knowledge, they will appear intuitive to use. Since intuitive interfaces utilise domain-specific prior knowledge of users, they require minimal learning for effective interaction. However, older people are very diverse in their capabilities and domain-specific prior knowledge. In addition, ageing also slows down the process of acquiring new knowledge. Keeping these suggestions and limitations in view, the aim of this study was set to investigate possible approaches to developing interfaces that facilitate their intuitive use by older people. In this quest to develop intuitive interfaces for older people, two experiments were conducted that systematically investigated redundancy (the use of both text and icons) in interface design, complexity of interface structure (nested versus flat), and personal user factors such as cognitive abilities, perceived self-efficacy and technology anxiety. All of these factors could interfere with intuitive use. The results from the first experiment suggest that, contrary to what was hypothesised, older people (65+ years) completed the tasks on the text only based interface design faster than on the redundant interface design. The outcome of the second experiment showed that, as expected, older people took more time on a nested interface. However, they did not make significantly more errors compared with younger age groups. Contrary to what was expected, older age groups also did better under anxious conditions. The findings of this study also suggest that older age groups are more heterogeneous in their capabilities and their intuitive use of contemporary technological devices is mediated more by domain-specific technology prior knowledge and by their cognitive abilities, than chronological age. This makes it extremely difficult to develop product interfaces that are entirely intuitive to use. However, by keeping in view the cognitive limitations of older people when interfaces are developed, and using simple text-based interfaces with flat interface structure, would help them intuitively learn and use complex technological products successfully during early encounter with a product. These findings indicate that it might be more pragmatic if interfaces are designed for intuitive learning rather than for intuitive use. Based on this research and the existing literature, a model for adaptable interface design as a strategy for developing intuitively learnable product interfaces was proposed. An adaptable interface can initially use a simple text only interface to help older users to learn and successfully use the new system. Over time, this can be progressively changed to a symbols-based nested interface for more efficient and intuitive use.

Detecting Symbian OS malware through static function call analysis

Smartphones become very critical part of our lives as they offer advanced capabilities with PC-like functionalities. They are getting widely deployed while not only being used for classical voice-centric communication. New smartphone malwares keep emerging where most of them still target Symbian OS. In the case of Symbian OS, application signing seemed to be an appropriate measure for slowing down malware appearance. Unfortunately, latest examples showed that signing can be bypassed resulting in new malware outbreak. In this paper, we present a novel approach to static malware detection in resource-limited mobile environments. This approach can be used to extend currently used third-party application signing mechanisms for increasing malware detection capabilities. In our work, we extract function calls from binaries in order to apply our clustering mechanism, called centroid. This method is capable of detecting unknown malwares. Our results are promising where the employed mechanism might find application at distribution channels, like online application stores. Additionally, it seems suitable for directly being used on smartphones for (pre-)checking installed applications.

An Android application sandbox system for suspicious software detection

Smartphones are steadily gaining popularity, creating new application areas as their capabilities increase in terms of computational power, sensors and communication. Emerging new features of mobile devices give opportunity to new threats. Android is one of the newer operating systems targeting smartphones. While being based on a Linux kernel, Android has unique properties and specific limitations due to its mobile nature. This makes it harder to detect and react upon malware attacks if using conventional techniques. In this paper, we propose an Android Application Sandbox (AASandbox) which is able to perform both static and dynamic analysis on Android programs to automatically detect suspicious applications. Static analysis scans the software for malicious patterns without installing it. Dynamic analysis executes the application in a fully isolated environment, i.e. sandbox, which intervenes and logs low-level interactions with the system for further analysis. Both the sandbox and the detection algorithms can be deployed in the cloud, providing a fast and distributed detection of suspicious software in a mobile software store akin to Google's Android Market. Additionally, AASandbox might be used to improve the efficiency of classical anti-virus applications available for the Android operating system.

A new civics curriculum for Australian schools : is it national education?

In nation states and regions including Australia, Hong Kong, other countries of Asia, the European Economic Community and elsewhere, Civics and Citizenship education (CCE) is a contested concept. The development of The Australian Curriculum is providing a national opportunity for educators to rethink curriculum priorities and to decide on new emphases for learning in Australian schools, but policy documents have emphasized the importance of CCE for all young Australians. In this paper we discuss the notion of citizenship education as ‘national education’ in Australia. We suggest that while the development of CCE in Australia does include elements of ‘national education’, the new curriculum provides an opportunity to frame the civil, political and social components of CC for young Australians in ways that include local, national and global understandings. We argue that CCE should broaden young peoples’ world views and their passion and capacity to express their own identity, so they can be active and engaged citizens in diverse communities that include their own communities, the nation and beyond.

Behavioral biometrics for persistent single sign-on

Driven by the rapid development of ubiquitous and pervasive computing, personalized services and applications are deployed to support our lives. Accordingly, the number of interfaces and devices (smartphone, tablet computer, etc.) provided to access and consume these services is growing continuously. To simplify the complexity of managing many accounts with different credentials, Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions have been introduced. However, a single password for many accounts represents a single-point-of-failure. Furthermore, once initiated SSO session is a high potential risk when the working station is left unlocked and unattended. In this paper, we present a conception of a Persistent Single Sign-On (PSSO) for ubiquitous home environments by involving the capabilities of Behavioral Biometrics to check the identity of the user continuously in an unobtrusive manner.

How safe is safe enough? : a socio-technical view of low-cost level crossing safety

Low-cost level crossings are often criticized as being unsafe. Does a SIL (safety integrity level) rating make the railway crossing any safer? This paper discusses how a supporting argument might be made for low-cost level crossing warning devices with lower levels of safety integrity and issues such as risk tolerability and derivation of tolerable hazard rates for system-level hazards. As part of the design of such systems according to fail-safe principles, the paper considers the assumptions around the pre-defined safe states of existing warning devices and how human factors issues around such states can give rise to additional hazards.

Knowledge sharing for strengthening manufacturing operation and business performance

Manufacturing companies have strived to enhance managerial and technical capabilities to improve business performance. Building these capabilities requires effective share of knowledge - the strategic resource. Specifically, knowledge sharing (KS) between different manufacturing departments can improve manufacturing processes since leveraging organisational knowledge plays an enssential role in achieving competitive advantage. This paper presents an empirical investigation into the impact of KS on the effectiveness of supply chain management (SCM) and the product development process (PDP) in achieving desired business performance (BP). A questionnaire survey was administered from electronic manufacturing companies operating in Taiwan. 168 valid responses were received and used to statistically examine the relationships between the concepts (SCM, PDP, KS, BP). The study findings reveal that within the Taiwanese electronic manufacturing companies KS is an essential enabler for facilitating the effectiveness of SCM and PDP in achieving desired BP.

Teams rather than individuals : collaborative intrusion detection

We propose CIMD (Collaborative Intrusion and Malware Detection), a scheme for the realization of collaborative intrusion detection approaches. We argue that teams, respectively detection groups with a common purpose for intrusion detection and response, improve the measures against malware. CIMD provides a collaboration model, a decentralized group formation and an anonymous communication scheme. Participating agents can convey intrusion detection related objectives and associated interests for collaboration partners. These interests are based on intrusion objectives and associated interests for collaboration partners. These interests are based on intrusion detection related ontology, incorporating network and hardware configurations and detection capabilities. Anonymous Communication provided by CIMD allows communication beyond suspicion, i.e. the adversary can not perform better than guessing an IDS to be the source of a message at random. The evaluation takes place with the help of NeSSi² (www.nessi2.de), the Network Security Simulator, a dedicated environment for analysis of attacks and countermeasures in mid-scale and large-scale networks. A CIMD prototype is being built based on the JIAC agent framework(www.jiac.de).

Monitoring android for collaborative anomaly detection : a first architectural draft

Our daily lives become more and more dependent upon smartphones due to their increased capabilities. Smartphones are used in various ways, e.g. for payment systems or assisting the lives of elderly or disabled people. Security threats for these devices become more and more dangerous since there is still a lack of proper security tools for protection. Android emerges as an open smartphone platform which allows modification even on operating system level and where third-party developers first time have the opportunity to develop kernel-based low-level security tools. Android quickly gained its popularity among smartphone developers and even beyond since it bases on Java on top of "open" Linux in comparison to former proprietary platforms which have very restrictive SDKs and corresponding APIs. Symbian OS, holding the greatest market share among all smartphone OSs, was even closing critical APIs to common developers and introduced application certification. This was done since this OS was the main target for smartphone malwares in the past. In fact, more than 290 malwares designed for Symbian OS appeared from July 2004 to July 2008. Android, in turn, promises to be completely open source. Together with the Linux-based smartphone OS OpenMoko, open smartphone platforms may attract malware writers for creating malicious applications endangering the critical smartphone applications and owners privacy. Since signature-based approaches mainly detect known malwares, anomaly-based approaches can be a valuable addition to these systems. They base on mathematical algorithms processing data that describe the state of a certain device. For gaining this data, a monitoring client is needed that has to extract usable information (features) from the monitored system. Our approach follows a dual system for analyzing these features. On the one hand, functionality for on-device light-weight detection is provided. But since most algorithms are resource exhaustive, remote feature analysis is provided on the other hand. Having this dual system enables event-based detection that can react to the current detection need. In our ongoing research we aim to investigates the feasibility of light-weight on-device detection for certain occasions. On other occasions, whenever significant changes are detected on the device, the system can trigger remote detection with heavy-weight algorithms for better detection results. In the absence of the server respectively as a supplementary approach, we also consider a collaborative scenario. Here, mobile devices sharing a common objective are enabled by a collaboration module to share information, such as intrusion detection data and results. This is based on an ad-hoc network mode that can be provided by a WiFi or Bluetooth adapter nearly every smartphone possesses.

Daylighting design and simulation : ease of use analysis of digital tools for architects

Good daylighting design in buildings not only provides a comfortable luminous environment, but also delivers energy savings and comfortable and healthy environments for building occupants. Yet, there is still no consensus on how to assess what constitutes good daylighting design. Currently amongst building performance guidelines, Daylighting factors (DF) or minimum illuminance values are the standard; however, previous research has shown the shortcomings of these metrics. New computer software for daylighting analysis contains new more advanced metrics for daylighting (Climate Base Daylight Metrics-CBDM). Yet, these tools (new metrics or simulation tools) are not currently understood by architects and are not used within architectural firms in Australia. A survey of architectural firms in Brisbane showed the most relevant tools used by industry. The purpose of this paper is to assess and compare these computer simulation tools and new tools available architects and designers for daylighting. The tools are assessed in terms of their ease of use (e.g. previous knowledge required, complexity of geometry input, etc.), efficiency (e.g. speed, render capabilities, etc.) and outcomes (e.g. presentation of results, etc. The study shows tools that are most accessible for architects, are those that import a wide variety of files, or can be integrated into the current 3d modelling software or package. These software’s need to be able to calculate for point in times simulations, and annual analysis. There is a current need in these software solutions for an open source program able to read raw data (in the form of spreadsheets) and show that graphically within a 3D medium. Currently, development into plug-in based software’s are trying to solve this need through third party analysis, however some of these packages are heavily reliant and their host program. These programs however which allow dynamic daylighting simulation, which will make it easier to calculate accurate daylighting no matter which modelling platform the designer uses, while producing more tangible analysis today, without the need to process raw data.