eBusiness use in the United Arab Emirates : lessons for evolving markets

Since the early 1990’s the United Arab Emirates has been actively seeking to diversify into non-oil sectors. The nation has set out to market itself as a hub for foreign and domestic companies; realizing to achieve these goals that it must provide appropriate e-business frameworks and infrastructures. While the nation itself is paving the way for other nations in the Middle East to undertake electronic business initiatives, the use of everyday e-business in the UAE appears to be somewhat stifled. An investigation into reasons for the apparent low levels of adoption of e-business by UAE inhabitants has been conducted using an autoethnographic research methodology coupled with qualitative interviews of selected stakeholders. Findings from this research may contribute to a better understanding of how e-business initiatives in specific regions need to take into account local cultural and other issues which may be irrelevant elsewhere.

Next Generation ‘Filmmaking’: New Markets, New Methods and New Business Models

Digital production and distribution technologies may create new opportunities for filmmaking in Australia. A culture of new approaches to filmmaking is emerging driven by ‘next generation filmmakers’ who are willing to consider new business models: from online web series to short films produced for mobile phones. At the same time cultural representation itself is transforming within an interactive, social media driven environment. Yet there is very little research into next generation filmmaking. The aim of this paper is to scope and discuss three key aspects of next generation filmmaking, namely: digital trends in film distribution and marketing; processes and strategies of ‘next generation’ filmmakers; and case studies of viable next generation business models and filmmaking practices. We conclude with a brief examination of the implications for media and cultural policy which suggests the future possibility of a rapprochement between creative industries discourse and cultural policy.

Elliptic curves, group law, and efficient computation

This thesis is about the derivation of the addition law on an arbitrary elliptic curve and efficiently adding points on this elliptic curve using the derived addition law. The outcomes of this research guarantee practical speedups in higher level operations which depend on point additions. In particular, the contributions immediately find applications in cryptology. Mastered by the 19th century mathematicians, the study of the theory of elliptic curves has been active for decades. Elliptic curves over finite fields made their way into public key cryptography in late 1980’s with independent proposals by Miller [Mil86] and Koblitz [Kob87]. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), following Miller’s and Koblitz’s proposals, employs the group of rational points on an elliptic curve in building discrete logarithm based public key cryptosystems. Starting from late 1990’s, the emergence of the ECC market has boosted the research in computational aspects of elliptic curves. This thesis falls into this same area of research where the main aim is to speed up the additions of rational points on an arbitrary elliptic curve (over a field of large characteristic). The outcomes of this work can be used to speed up applications which are based on elliptic curves, including cryptographic applications in ECC. The aforementioned goals of this thesis are achieved in five main steps. As the first step, this thesis brings together several algebraic tools in order to derive the unique group law of an elliptic curve. This step also includes an investigation of recent computer algebra packages relating to their capabilities. Although the group law is unique, its evaluation can be performed using abundant (in fact infinitely many) formulae. As the second step, this thesis progresses the finding of the best formulae for efficient addition of points. In the third step, the group law is stated explicitly by handling all possible summands. The fourth step presents the algorithms to be used for efficient point additions. In the fifth and final step, optimized software implementations of the proposed algorithms are presented in order to show that theoretical speedups of step four can be practically obtained. In each of the five steps, this thesis focuses on five forms of elliptic curves over finite fields of large characteristic. A list of these forms and their defining equations are given as follows: (a) Short Weierstrass form, y2 = x3 + ax + b, (b) Extended Jacobi quartic form, y2 = dx4 + 2ax2 + 1, (c) Twisted Hessian form, ax3 + y3 + 1 = dxy, (d) Twisted Edwards form, ax2 + y2 = 1 + dx2y2, (e) Twisted Jacobi intersection form, bs2 + c2 = 1, as2 + d2 = 1, These forms are the most promising candidates for efficient computations and thus considered in this work. Nevertheless, the methods employed in this thesis are capable of handling arbitrary elliptic curves. From a high level point of view, the following outcomes are achieved in this thesis. - Related literature results are brought together and further revisited. For most of the cases several missed formulae, algorithms, and efficient point representations are discovered. - Analogies are made among all studied forms. For instance, it is shown that two sets of affine addition formulae are sufficient to cover all possible affine inputs as long as the output is also an affine point in any of these forms. In the literature, many special cases, especially interactions with points at infinity were omitted from discussion. This thesis handles all of the possibilities. - Several new point doubling/addition formulae and algorithms are introduced, which are more efficient than the existing alternatives in the literature. Most notably, the speed of extended Jacobi quartic, twisted Edwards, and Jacobi intersection forms are improved. New unified addition formulae are proposed for short Weierstrass form. New coordinate systems are studied for the first time. - An optimized implementation is developed using a combination of generic x86-64 assembly instructions and the plain C language. The practical advantages of the proposed algorithms are supported by computer experiments. - All formulae, presented in the body of this thesis, are checked for correctness using computer algebra scripts together with details on register allocations.

Efficient clustering approach for intrusion detection in adhoc networks

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are temporary wireless networks useful in emergency rescue services, battlefields operations, mobile conferencing and a variety of other useful applications. Due to dynamic nature and lack of centralized monitoring points, these networks are highly vulnerable to attacks. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) provide audit and monitoring capabilities that offer the local security to a node and help to perceive the specific trust level of other nodes. We take benefit of the clustering concept in MANETs for the effective communication between nodes, where each cluster involves a number of member nodes and is managed by a cluster-head. It can be taken as an advantage in these battery and memory constrained networks for the purpose of intrusion detection, by separating tasks for the head and member nodes, at the same time providing opportunity for launching collaborative detection approach. The clustering schemes are generally used for the routing purposes to enhance the route efficiency. However, the effect of change of a cluster tends to change the route; thus degrades the performance. This paper presents a low overhead clustering algorithm for the benefit of detecting intrusion rather than efficient routing. It also discusses the intrusion detection techniques with the help of this simplified clustering scheme.

Empowerment and role stress in the human interface between the firm and its markets

Frontline employees constitute one of the key interfaces that service organisations have with their markets. Many strategies to enhance the ability of these employees to satisfy the needs of customers have been proposed. Amongst these, empowering employees has been suggested to enhance the customer orientation of the firm and consequently its effectiveness in serving the market. However, the impact of empowerment in service organisations remains somewhat contentious. This paper examines the role of empowerments an organisational service strategy and identifies its consequences for role stress, job satisfaction and the willingness of service employees to serve their customers.

Poster abstract : Energy-efficient rate adaptive MAC Protocol (RA-MAC) for long-lived sensor networks

This paper introduces an energy-efficient Rate Adaptive MAC (RA-MAC) protocol for long-lived Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Previous research shows that the dynamic and lossy nature of wireless communication is one of the major challenges to reliable data delivery in a WSN. RA-MAC achieves high link reliability in such situations by dynamically trading off radio bit rate for signal processing gain. This extra gain reduces the packet loss rate which results in lower energy expenditure by reducing the number of retransmissions. RA-MAC selects the optimal data rate based on channel conditions with the aim of minimizing energy consumption. We have implemented RA-MAC in TinyOS on an off-the-shelf sensor platform (TinyNode), and evaluated its performance by comparing RA-MAC with state-ofthe- art WSN MAC protocol (SCP-MAC) by experiments.

ERTP : Energy-efficient and reliable transport protocol for data streaming in wireless sensor networks

Emerging data streaming applications in Wireless Sensor Networks require reliable and energy-efficient Transport Protocols. Our recent Wireless Sensor Network deployment in the Burdekin delta, Australia, for water monitoring [T. Le Dinh, W. Hu, P. Sikka, P. Corke, L. Overs, S. Brosnan, Design and deployment of a remote robust sensor network: experiences from an outdoor water quality monitoring network, in: Second IEEE Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications (SenseApp 2007), Dublin, Ireland, 2007] is one such example. This application involves streaming sensed data such as pressure, water flow rate, and salinity periodically from many scattered sensors to the sink node which in turn relays them via an IP network to a remote site for archiving, processing, and presentation. While latency is not a primary concern in this class of application (the sampling rate is usually in terms of minutes or hours), energy-efficiency is. Continuous long-term operation and reliable delivery of the sensed data to the sink are also desirable. This paper proposes ERTP, an Energy-efficient and Reliable Transport Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. ERTP is designed for data streaming applications, in which sensor readings are transmitted from one or more sensor sources to a base station (or sink). ERTP uses a statistical reliability metric which ensures the number of data packets delivered to the sink exceeds the defined threshold. Our extensive discrete event simulations and experimental evaluations show that ERTP is significantly more energyefficient than current approaches and can reduce energy consumption by more than 45% when compared to current approaches. Consequently, sensor nodes are more energy-efficient and the lifespan of the unattended WSN is increased.

Efficient certificateless KEM in the standard model

We give a direct construction of a certificateless key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) in the standard model that is more efficient than the generic constructions proposed before by Huang and Wong \cite{DBLP:conf/acisp/HuangW07}. We use a direct construction from Kiltz and Galindo's KEM scheme \cite{DBLP:conf/acisp/KiltzG06} to obtain a certificateless KEM in the standard model; our construction is roughly twice as efficient as the generic construction. We also address the security flaw discovered by Selvi et al. \cite{cryptoeprint:2009:462}.

Compliance with international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and the value relevance of accounting information in emerging stock markets : evidence from Kuwait

Since the 1960s, the value relevance of accounting information has been an important topic in accounting research. The value relevance research provides evidence as to whether accounting numbers relate to corporate value in a predicted manner (Beaver, 2002). Such research is not only important for investors but also provides useful insights into accounting reporting effectiveness for standard setters and other users. Both the quality of accounting standards used and the effectiveness associated with implementing these standards are fundamental prerequisites for high value relevance (Hellstrom, 2006). However, while the literature comprehensively documents the value relevance of accounting information in developed markets, little attention has been given to emerging markets where the quality of accounting standards and their enforcement are questionable. Moreover, there is currently no known research that explores the association between level of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the value relevance of accounting information. Motivated by the lack of research on the value relevance of accounting information in emerging markets and the unique institutional setting in Kuwait, this study has three objectives. First, it investigates the extent of compliance with IFRS with respect to firms listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE). Second, it examines the value relevance of accounting information produced by KSE-listed firms over the 1995 to 2006 period. The third objective links the first two and explores the association between the level of compliance with IFRS and the value relevance of accounting information to market participants. Since it is among the first countries to adopt IFRS, Kuwait provides an ideal setting in which to explore these objectives. In addition, the Kuwaiti accounting environment provides an interesting regulatory context in which each KSE-listed firm is required to appoint at least two external auditors from separate auditing firms. Based on the research objectives, five research questions (RQs) are addressed. RQ1 and RQ2 aim to determine the extent to which KSE-listed firms comply with IFRS and factors contributing to variations in compliance levels. These factors include firm attributes (firm age, leverage, size, profitability, liquidity), the number of brand name (Big-4) auditing firms auditing a firm’s financial statements, and industry categorization. RQ3 and RQ4 address the value relevance of IFRS-based financial statements to investors. RQ5 addresses whether the level of compliance with IFRS contributes to the value relevance of accounting information provided to investors. Based on the potential improvement in value relevance from adopting and complying with IFRS, it is predicted that the higher the level of compliance with IFRS, the greater the value relevance of book values and earnings. The research design of the study consists of two parts. First, in accordance with prior disclosure research, the level of compliance with mandatory IFRS is examined using a disclosure index. Second, the value relevance of financial statement information, specifically, earnings and book value, is examined empirically using two valuation models: price and returns models. The combined empirical evidence that results from the application of both models provides comprehensive insights into value relevance of accounting information in an emerging market setting. Consistent with expectations, the results show the average level of compliance with IFRS mandatory disclosures for all KSE-listed firms in 2006 was 72.6 percent; thus, indicating KSE-listed firms generally did not fully comply with all requirements. Significant variations in the extent of compliance are observed among firms and across accounting standards. As predicted, older, highly leveraged, larger, and profitable KSE-listed firms are more likely to comply with IFRS required disclosures. Interestingly, significant differences in the level of compliance are observed across the three possible auditor combinations of two Big-4, two non-Big 4, and mixed audit firm types. The results for the price and returns models provide evidence that earnings and book values are significant factors in the valuation of KSE-listed firms during the 1995 to 2006 period. However, the results show that the value relevance of earnings and book values decreased significantly during that period, suggesting that investors rely less on financial statements, possibly due to the increase in the available non-financial statement sources. Notwithstanding this decline, a significant association is observed between the level of compliance with IFRS and the value relevance of earnings and book value to KSE investors. The findings make several important contributions. First, they raise concerns about the effectiveness of the regulatory body that oversees compliance with IFRS in Kuwait. Second, they challenge the effectiveness of the two-auditor requirement in promoting compliance with regulations as well as the associated cost-benefit of this requirement for firms. Third, they provide the first known empirical evidence linking the level of IFRS compliance with the value relevance of financial statement information. Finally, the findings are relevant for standard setters and for their current review of KSE regulations. In particular, they highlight the importance of establishing and maintaining adequate monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with accounting standards. In addition, the finding that stricter compliance with IFRS improves the value relevance of accounting information highlights the importance of full compliance with IFRS and not just mere adoption.