Innovation theories in retrospect : the case of electronic commerce adoption in small business in New Zealand

A review of the technological innovation adoption literature on small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) provides useful insights into factors influencing innovation adoption but points to the need to introduce more determinants of innovation adoption to SMEs research. This research is interested in identifying these factors and hence, introducing more potential determinants to electronic commerce (EC) adoption research in SMEs. Therefore, this research attempts to extend the technological innovation theories to EC adoption research in SMEs by identifying potential constructs and factors from these theories and then checking their face validity using three case studies in New Zealand. This research endeavours to shortlist and discuss the most important determinants of EC adoption and to eliminate the least relevant ones.

Menstrual dysfunction and bone health in female athletes

Female athletes are generally considered to be at Iow risk of osteoporosis because of the skeletal loading associated with sports participation. Sites that are exposed to long-term high-impact loading are consistently reported to be higher than the same sites in their sedentary peers. However, weight-bearing exercise does not always ensure that athletes will have high bone-mineral density, as the hormonal environment, dietary factors, and loading history all influence bone-mineral density, In particular, menstrual dysfunction, which can occur with intense training or disordered eating, is a significant risk factor for Iow bone-mineral density. Exercise history before menstrual dysfunction is likely to offer some protection for Iow bone-mineral density, particularly at the hip, Resumption of menses is unlikely to restore bone-mineral density to levels reported in eumenorrheic athletes or even sedentary peers, Athletes at risk of amenorrhea should be identified and their training loads and energy intakes monitored to ensure normal menstrual function, Athletes who remain amenorrheic should be counseled about the possible negative effects of amenorrhea and monitored for bone loss. Early intervention is recommended for amenorrheic athletes with Iow bone-mineral density.

Thermoregulation in young athletes exercising in hot environments.

Children are less efficient thermoregulators than are adults. During exercise, sweat evaporation is the most important physiological means of cooling the body. The sweat response in children, however, is less efficient than in adults, so children dissipate less heat though evaporative sweating and more through convection (the loss of heat through the skin) plus radiation. Children and adolescents with high levels of body fat and heavy builds are more susceptible to heat stress because they dissipate body heat less efficiently. Maintaining adequate hydration is crucial for preventing heat stress, Although water is often described as the best choice of fluid, studies on voluntary drinking habits and flavor preferences in children and adolescents suggest that greater consumption occurs when sports drinks are offered instead of water. Although a child's sweat contains less sodium and chloride than an adult's does, there appears to be no evidence that a child's performance improves when given beverages more diluted than those currently recommended for adults, More information is necessary to identify the optimal electrolyte and carbohydrate content of sports drinks for young athletes.

Patellar tendinopathy: pathomechanics and a modern approach to treatment

Patellar tendinopathy, a common condition in sport, can be recurrent and resistant to treatment, Risk factors include the level of training, biomechanics, and genetic factors. This review discusses several programs based on eccentric exercise and suggests principles for nonoperative treatment including improving shock absorption, load modification, and adaptation of the tendon to sporting stress. The level of pain that patients are asked to tolerate during tendon-exercise programs varies among programs, and it is unclear what level is optimal to stimulate tendon recovery. Rehabilitation presents several challenges: It can take a long time (3-12 months), exercise prescription in an athlete who is continuing to compete is not straightforward, and guidelines for treatment progression are poor, Nonoperative treatment can fail because of inappropriate exercise prescription and poor athlete compliance. If this occurs and surgical intervention is required, the athlete might still have an unpredictable outcome. Solutions to these problems require additional clinical research.

A security evaluation criteria for baseline security standards

Recent advances in technology and new software applications are steadily transforming human civilization into what is called the Information Society. This is manifested by the new terminology appearing in our daily activities. E-Business, E-Government, E-Learning, E-Contracting, and E-Voting are just a few of the ever-growing list of new terms that are shaping the Information Society. Nonetheless, as "Information" gains more prominence in our society, the task of securing it against all forms of threats becomes a vital and crucial undertaking. Addressing the various security issues confronting our new Information Society, this volume is divided into 13 parts covering the following topics: Information Security Management; Standards of Information Security; Threats and Attacks to Information; Education and Curriculum for Information Security; Social and Ethical Aspects of Information Security; Information Security Services; Multilateral Security; Applications of Information Security; Infrastructure for Information Security Advanced Topics in Security; Legislation for Information Security; Modeling and Analysis for Information Security; Tools for Information Security. Security in the Information Society: Visions and Perspectives comprises the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Information Security (SEC2002), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and jointly organized by IFIP Technical Committee 11 and the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications of Cairo University. The conference was held in May 2002 in Cairo, Egypt. This volume is essential reading for scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested inkeeping pace with the ever-growing field of Information Security.

Working in teams: the influence of rhetoric-from sensemaking to sadness

The prevailing wisdom tells us that teams axiomatically bring increases and improvements in effectiveness, productivity and communication. There has been too little critical address of whether these benefits actually accrue, nor what the experience of team members actually is. This paper shares findings from a Heideggerian phenomenological study, where members of teams in organizations were interviewed and asked about their experiences of working in teams. Astonishingly, not only did team members not report these anticipated improvements, their stories tended to highlight the negative influence that the rhetoric surrounding teams might have on individuals. This paper shares the responses of team members to that rhetoric, revealing themes of "Teams, Rhetoric and Sensemaking", a challenge to the notion of "Teams as One Big Happy Family?", and "Teams as Crucibles of Resignation and Sadness". These findings indicate the need for future research into understanding the experience of individuals within various team and organizational structures.

IES 4 - ethics education revisited

In 2003, the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) issued a set of International Education Standards (IES). IES 4 Professional Values, Ethics and Attitudes aims to equip candidates for membership of an IFAC member body with the appropriate professional values, ethics and attitudes to function as professional accountants. This paper explores the implications of IES 4 and analyses some of the challenges arising from an international professional accounting body prescribing ethics education. It concludes with an overview of considerations to be addressed to ensure that the implementation of IES 4 is successful.

Polyhedral studies for minimum-span graph labelling with integer distance constraints

This paper studies the polytope of the minimum-span graph labelling problems with integer distance constraints (DC-MSGL). We first introduce a few classes of new valid inequalities for the DC-MSGL defined on general graphs and briefly discuss the separation problems of some of these inequalities. These are the initial steps of a branch-and-cut algorithm for solving the DC-MSGL. Following that, we present our polyhedral results on the dimension of the DC-MSGL polytope, and that some of the inequalities are facet defining, under reasonable conditions, for the polytope of the DC-MSGL on triangular graphs.

An effective non-parametric method for globally clustering genes from expression profiles

Clustering is widely used in bioinformatics to find gene correlation patterns. Although many algorithms have been proposed, these are usually confronted with difficulties in meeting the requirements of both automation and high quality. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for clustering genes from their expression profiles. The unique features of the proposed algorithm are twofold: it takes into consideration global, rather than local, gene correlation information in clustering processes; and it incorporates clustering quality measurement into the clustering processes to implement non-parametric, automatic and global optimal gene clustering. The evaluation on simulated and real gene data sets demonstrates the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Managing email overload with an automatic nonparametric clustering approach

Email overload is a recent problem that there is increasingly difficulty people have faced to process the large number of emails received daily. Currently this problem becomes more and more serious and it has already affected the normal usage of email as a knowledge management tool. It has been recognized that categorizing emails into meaningful groups can greatly save cognitive load to process emails and thus this is an effective way to manage email overload problem. However, most current approaches still require significant human input when categorizing emails. In this paper we develop an automatic email clustering system, underpinned by a new nonparametric text clustering algorithm. This system does not require any predefined input parameters and can automatically generate meaningful email clusters. Experiments show our new algorithm outperforms existing text clustering algorithms with higher efficiency in terms of computational time and clustering quality measured by different gauges.