Exploring the feasibility and acceptability of using internet technology to promote physical activity within a defined community

ISSUE ADDRESSED: To explore the feasibility of using the Internet and e-mail to promote physical activity in a defined community. METHODS: An online survey was conducted through a community-based Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISP clients were recruited via electronic newsletter and direct e-mail. Data were collected on preferred sources of assistance for physical activity advice and stage of motivational readiness for physical activity. RESULTS: Valid surveys were completed by 797 (9% response rate). Participants were: 55% men; 56% aged >45 years; 57% worked full time; mean BMI was 28+/-8. Thirty-six per cent were in the early stages of motivational readiness for physical activity. More than 70% were somewhat to extremely interested in having access to a physical activity website. CONCLUSION: Promoting physical activity via the Internet and e-mail is feasible and appealing to some people. Expanding the reach, appeal and use of this technology to deliver physical activity programs will be a challenge.

Using the Internet for Physical Activity Promotion in a Regional Community: Feasibility Study Findings

New communication technologies (websites and email) are believed to hold promise for delivering population health interventions. However, studies on internet-delivered physical activity (PA) programs have encountered difficulties in engaging and retaining participants. Recent PA research has focused on peoples’ perceptions of the local environment and how this relates to PA participation. This study investigated the potential of: 1) reaching people living in a regional community via a locally-based Internet Service Provider (ISP), and 2) using data on the local environment to design a PA intervention relevant to the individual. An online survey was conducted via the ISP’s website over 12 days. ISP clients (approximately 9,000) were invited to participate in the survey via electronic newsletter and direct email. Data on motivational readiness and environmental correlates of PA were collected. 820 surveys were completed, of which 797 were valid (response rate = 9%). Participants had a mean BMI 27.6±8.3, were 55% male, 56% aged >45 years, 57% worked fulltime, and 36% were in the early stages of motivational readiness for PA. Most reported positive perceptions of the local environment in terms of aesthetics, convenience, access, traffic and safety. However, over half did not know about or use local PA facilities. Over 70% were somewhat to extremely interested in having access to a PA promotion website. These data suggest that promoting PA via a locally based ISP is feasible and appealing to some people living in a regional community, but also highlight some of the challenges of using this technology to deliver population health interventions.

Cryptographic techniques for personal communication systems security

The advent of personal communication systems within the last decade has depended upon the utilization of advanced digital schemes for source and channel coding and for modulation. The inherent digital nature of the communications processing has allowed the convenient incorporation of cryptographic techniques to implement security in these communications systems. There are various security requirements, of both the service provider and the mobile subscriber, which may be provided for in a personal communications system. Such security provisions include the privacy of user data, the authentication of communicating parties, the provision for data integrity, and the provision for both location confidentiality and party anonymity. This thesis is concerned with an investigation of the private-key and public-key cryptographic techniques pertinent to the security requirements of personal communication systems and an analysis of the security provisions of Second-Generation personal communication systems is presented. Particular attention has been paid to the properties of the cryptographic protocols which have been employed in current Second-Generation systems. It has been found that certain security-related protocols implemented in the Second-Generation systems have specific weaknesses. A theoretical evaluation of these protocols has been performed using formal analysis techniques and certain assumptions made during the development of the systems are shown to contribute to the security weaknesses. Various attack scenarios which exploit these protocol weaknesses are presented. The Fiat-Sharmir zero-knowledge cryptosystem is presented as an example of how asymmetric algorithm cryptography may be employed as part of an improved security solution. Various modifications to this cryptosystem have been evaluated and their critical parameters are shown to be capable of being optimized to suit a particular applications. The implementation of such a system using current smart card technology has been evaluated.

The role of the sales employee in securing customer satisfaction

Purpose: Previous research has emphasized the pivotal role that salespeople play in customer satisfaction. In this regard, the relationship between salespeople's attitudes, skills, and characteristics, and customer satisfaction remains an area of interest. The paper aims to make three contributions: first, it seeks to examine the impact of salespeople's satisfaction, adaptive selling, and dominance on customer satisfaction. Second, this research aims to use dyadic data, which is a better test of the relationships between constructs since it avoids common method variance. Finally, in contrast to previous research, it aims to test all of the customers of salespeople rather than customers selected by salespeople. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs multilevel analysis to examine the relationship between salespeople's satisfaction with the firm on customer satisfaction, using a dyadic, matched business-to-business sample of a large European financial service provider that comprises 188 customers and 18 employees. Findings: The paper finds that customers' evaluation of service quality, product quality, and value influence customer satisfaction. The analysis at the selling firm's employee level shows that adaptive selling and employee satisfaction positively impact customer satisfaction, while dominance is negatively related to customer satisfaction. Practical implications: Research shows that customer-focus is a key driver in the success of service companies. Customer satisfaction is regarded as a prerequisite for establishing long-term, profitable relations between company and customer, and customer contact employees are key to nurturing this relationship. The role of salespeople's attitudes, skills, and characteristics in the customer satisfaction process are highlighted in this paper. Originality/value: The use of dyadic, multilevel studies to assess the nature of the relationship between employees and customers is, to date, surprisingly limited. The paper examines the link between employee attitudes, skills, and characteristics, and customer satisfaction in a business-to-business setting in the financial service sector, differentiating between customer- and employee-level drivers of business customer satisfaction.

Risk management in enterprise resource planning implementation:a new risk assessment framework

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects are risky. But if they are implemented appropriately, they can provide competitive advantage to organisations. Therefore, ERP implementation has become one of the most critical aspects of today's information management research. The main purpose of this article is to describe a new ERP risk assessment framework (RAF) that can be used to increase the success of ERP implementation. In this article, through a case study based in a leading UK-based energy service provider, we demonstrate the new RAF, which has been shown to help identify and mitigate risks in ERP implementation. In contrast to other research, this RAF identifies risks hierarchically in external engagement, programme management, work stream and work package levels across technical, schedule, operational, business and organisational categories. This not only helped to develop responses to mitigate risks but also facilitates on-going risk control.

Online trendy topics detection in microblogs with selective user monitoring under cost constraints

As microblog services such as Twitter become a fast and convenient communication approach, identification of trendy topics in microblog services has great academic and business value. However detecting trendy topics is very challenging due to huge number of users and short-text posts in microblog diffusion networks. In this paper we introduce a trendy topics detection system under computation and communication resource constraints. In stark contrast to retrieving and processing the whole microblog contents, we develop an idea of selecting a small set of microblog users and processing their posts to achieve an overall acceptable trendy topic coverage, without exceeding resource budget for detection. We formulate the selection operation of these subset users as mixed-integer optimization problems, and develop heuristic algorithms to compute their approximate solutions. The proposed system is evaluated with real-time test data retrieved from Sina Weibo, the dominant microblog service provider in China. It's shown that by monitoring 500 out of 1.6 million microblog users and tracking their microposts (about 15,000 daily) with our system, nearly 65% trendy topics can be detected, while on average 5 hours earlier before they appear in Sina Weibo official trends.

Techonology usage in the supply chain:the case of small 3PLs

In today's supply chain management practices, a successful strategy depends increasingly on the performance of third party logistics (3PLs) providers as they play a key integrative role linking the different supply chain elements more effectively. Information and communications technology (ICT) has become an important element of 3PL competitive capability as it enables higher levels of supply chain integration. Recent industry developments have widened the technological gap between large and small 3PLs. This is critical particularly for those markets populated by a large number of small 3PLs such as the Italian logistics industry. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of ICT adoption in small logistics service providers. The focus of the study is the Italian 3PL market. The methodology adopted in this paper is based on the action research framework and it is a combination of theoretical analysis and empirical findings (focus groups and surveys). Firstly, a literature review on ICT dissemination in the international and Italian 3PL industry has been carried out. Then, a field survey has been developed preceded by two focus groups. The empirical investigation examined a sample of 153 small Italian 3PLs on the base of a definition and taxonomy proposed by the authors. The results provide a useful technological profile of the surveyed companies, as well as an analysis of the role of ICT in customising services and of the factors influencing ICT adoption. To give a more robust scientific justification of the survey results, it would be useful to carry out an additional large-scale analysis including other countries with a high presence of small logistics service companies. Furthermore, a complementary case-study analysis would be of help in defining the role of specific factors in different types of 3PL. Further investigations in this field are needed to better understand innovation paths, and how ICT can improve the competitive capabilities of 3PLs and of the wider supply chain. Managers of small 3PLs can use the findings to set-up guidelines for improving a company's technology innovation. Technology vendors can use the findings to better market their service/product into the small logistics service provider segment. Despite the fact that much has been written about the dissemination of ICT, there is still a shortage of research in the field of small 3PLs with little empirical investigation into the usage of ICT by small 3PLs. This paper provides a contribution to filling this void and suggests some possible research directions.

A new three phase method (SDP method) for the multi-objective vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delvery and pickup (VRPSDP)

Transportation service operators are witnessing a growing demand for bi-directional movement of goods. Given this, the following thesis considers an extension to the vehicle routing problem (VRP) known as the delivery and pickup transportation problem (DPP), where delivery and pickup demands may occupy the same route. The problem is formulated here as the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup (VRPSDP), which requires the concurrent service of the demands at the customer location. This formulation provides the greatest opportunity for cost savings for both the service provider and recipient. The aims of this research are to propose a new theoretical design to solve the multi-objective VRPSDP, provide software support for the suggested design and validate the method through a set of experiments. A new real-life based multi-objective VRPSDP is studied here, which requires the minimisation of the often conflicting objectives: operated vehicle fleet size, total routing distance and the maximum variation between route distances (workload variation). The former two objectives are commonly encountered in the domain and the latter is introduced here because it is essential for real-life routing problems. The VRPSDP is defined as a hard combinatorial optimisation problem, therefore an approximation method, Simultaneous Delivery and Pickup method (SDPmethod) is proposed to solve it. The SDPmethod consists of three phases. The first phase constructs a set of diverse partial solutions, where one is expected to form part of the near-optimal solution. The second phase determines assignment possibilities for each sub-problem. The third phase solves the sub-problems using a parallel genetic algorithm. The suggested genetic algorithm is improved by the introduction of a set of tools: genetic operator switching mechanism via diversity thresholds, accuracy analysis tool and a new fitness evaluation mechanism. This three phase method is proposed to address the shortcoming that exists in the domain, where an initial solution is built only then to be completely dismantled and redesigned in the optimisation phase. In addition, a new routing heuristic, RouteAlg, is proposed to solve the VRPSDP sub-problem, the travelling salesman problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup (TSPSDP). The experimental studies are conducted using the well known benchmark Salhi and Nagy (1999) test problems, where the SDPmethod and RouteAlg solutions are compared with the prominent works in the VRPSDP domain. The SDPmethod has demonstrated to be an effective method for solving the multi-objective VRPSDP and the RouteAlg for the TSPSDP.

Learning and change in interorganizational networks:the case for network learning and network change

The ALBA 2002 Call for Papers asks the question ‘How do organizational learning and knowledge management contribute to organizational innovation and change?’. Intuitively, we would argue, the answer should be relatively straightforward as links between learning and change, and knowledge management and innovation, have long been commonly assumed to exist. On the basis of this assumption, theories of learning tend to focus ‘within organizations’, and assume a transfer of learning from individual to organization which in turn leads to change. However, empirically, we find these links are more difficult to articulate. Organizations exist in complex embedded economic, political, social and institutional systems, hence organizational change (or innovation) may be influenced by learning in this wider context. Based on our research in this wider interorganizational setting, we first make the case for the notion of network learning that we then explore to develop our appreciation of change in interorganizational networks, and how it may be facilitated. The paper begins with a brief review of lite rature on learning in the organizational and interorganizational context which locates our stance on organizational learning versus the learning organization, and social, distributed versus technical, centred views of organizational learning and knowledge. Developing from the view that organizational learning is “a normal, if problematic, process in every organization” (Easterby-Smith, 1997: 1109), we introduce the notion of network learning: learning by a group of organizations as a group. We argue this is also a normal, if problematic, process in organizational relationships (as distinct from interorganizational learning), which has particular implications for network change. Part two of the paper develops our analysis, drawing on empirical data from two studies of learning. The first study addresses the issue of learning to collaborate between industrial customers and suppliers, leading to the case for network learning. The second, larger scale study goes on to develop this theme, examining learning around several major change issues in a healthcare service provider network. The learning processes and outcomes around the introduction of a particularly controversial and expensive technology are described, providing a rich and contrasting case with the first study. In part three, we then discuss the implications of this work for change, and for facilitating change. Conclusions from the first study identify potential interventions designed to facilitate individual and organizational learning within the customer organization to develop individual and organizational ‘capacity to collaborate’. Translated to the network example, we observe that network change entails learning at all levels – network, organization, group and individual. However, presenting findings in terms of interventions is less meaningful in an interorganizational network setting given: the differences in authority structures; the less formalised nature of the network setting; and the importance of evaluating performance at the network rather than organizational level. Academics challenge both the idea of managing change and of managing networks. Nevertheless practitioners are faced with the issue of understanding and in fluencing change in the network setting. Thus we conclude that a network learning perspective is an important development in our understanding of organizational learning, capability and change, locating this in the wider context in which organizations are embedded. This in turn helps to develop our appreciation of facilitating change in interorganizational networks, both in terms of change issues (such as introducing a new technology), and change orientation and capability.

Using patient knowledge for better health systems

Purpose – This paper describes a “work in progress” research project being carried out with a public health care provider in the UK, a large NHS hospital Trust. Enhanced engagement with patients is one of the Trust’s core principles, but it is recognised that much more needs to be done to achieve this, and that ICT systems may be able to provide some support. The project is intended to find ways to better capture and evaluate the “voice of the patient” in order to lead to improvements in health care quality, safety and effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – We propose to investigate the use of a patient-orientated knowledge management system (KMS) in managing knowledge about and from patients. The study is a mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) investigation based on traditional action research, intended to answer the following three research questions: (1) How can a KMS be used as a mechanism to capture and evaluate patient experiences to provoke patient service change (2) How can the KMS assist in providing a mechanism for systematising patient engagement? (3) How can patient feedback be used to stimulate improvements in care, quality and safety? Originality/value –This methodology aims to involve patients at all phases of the study from its initial design onwards, thus leading to an understanding of the issues associated with using a KMS to manage knowledge about and for patients that is driven by the patients themselves. Practical implications – The outcomes of the project for the collaborating hospital will be firstly, a system for capturing and evaluating knowledge about and from patients, and then as a consequence, improved outcomes for both the patients and the service provider. More generally, it will produce a set of guidelines for managing patient knowledge in an NHS hospital that have been tested in one case example.

Analysis and identification of spamming behaviors in Sina Weibo microblog

Spamming has been a widespread problem for social networks. In recent years there is an increasing interest in the analysis of anti-spamming for microblogs, such as Twitter. In this paper we present a systematic research on the analysis of spamming in Sina Weibo platform, which is currently a dominant microblogging service provider in China. Our research objectives are to understand the specific spamming behaviors in Sina Weibo and find approaches to identify and block spammers in Sina Weibo based on spamming behavior classifiers. To start with the analysis of spamming behaviors we devise several effective methods to collect a large set of spammer samples, including uses of proactive honeypots and crawlers, keywords based searching and buying spammer samples directly from online merchants. We processed the database associated with these spammer samples and interestingly we found three representative spamming behaviors: Aggressive advertising, repeated duplicate reposting and aggressive following. We extract various features and compare the behaviors of spammers and legitimate users with regard to these features. It is found that spamming behaviors and normal behaviors have distinct characteristics. Based on these findings we design an automatic online spammer identification system. Through tests with real data it is demonstrated that the system can effectively detect the spamming behaviors and identify spammers in Sina Weibo.

Cost-effective node monitoring for online hot event detection in sina weibo microblogging

We propose a cost-effective hot event detection system over Sina Weibo platform, currently the dominant microblogging service provider in China. The problem of finding a proper subset of microbloggers under resource constraints is formulated as a mixed-integer problem for which heuristic algorithms are developed to compute approximate solution. Preliminary results show that by tracking about 500 out of 1.6 million candidate microbloggers and processing 15,000 microposts daily, 62% of the hot events can be detected five hours on average earlier than they are published by Weibo.

Is there a role for telemedicine in adult allergy services?

Telemedicine refers to the application of telecommunication and information technology (IT) in the delivery of health and clinical care at a distance or remotely and can be broadly considered in two modalities: store-and-forward and real-time interactive services. Preliminary studies have shown promising results in radiology, dermatology, intensive care, diabetes, rheumatology and primary care. However, the evidence is limited and hampered by small sample sizes, paucity of randomised controlled studies and lack of data relating to cost-effectiveness, health related quality of life and patient and clinician satisfaction. This review appraises the evidence from studies that have employed telemedicine tools in other disciplines and makes suggestions for its potential applications in specific clinical scenarios in adult allergy services. Possible examples include: triaging patients to determine the need for allergy tests; pre-assessment for specialised treatments such as allergen immunotherapy; follow up to assess treatment response and side effects; and education in self-management plan including training updates for self-injectable adrenaline and nasal spray use. This approach might improve access for those with limited mobility or living far away from regional centres, as well as bringing convenience and cost savings for the patient and service provider. These potential benefits need to be carefully weighed against evidence of service safety and quality. Keys to success include delineation of appropriate clinical scenarios, patient selection, training, IT support and robust information governance framework. Well-designed prospective studies are needed to evaluate its role. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Returning to Server-Centric Hospitality System Applications

Application service provider models represent an alternative to in-house information systems and are gaining favor within the hospitality industry: The models, which place technical system components at a remote site, are described as server-centric. ASPs allow hospitality management to share investment dollars, system costs, and technical staff expenditure with an ASP operator, thereby concentrating on providing enhanced guest services. Although considered a viable alternative to in-house processing, not everyone agrees this is a favorable trend.

Imunidade recíproca e livre concorrência: considerações acerca de sua fruição por empresas estatais

This study begins with a brief overview of tax immu nities in general, dealing with the concept, legal, doctrinal ratings and limits. Then enters into the reciprocal immunity, since its birth in the United States, its justifica tions, until her current developments in the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has expanded it quite considerably. That Court has extended to state owned enterprises, even if pa id by public prices or rates, or if acts somewhat away from its essential functions, es pecially if they are public services provider. Given this linkage, these are also treate d in own topic, grounded in newer doctrinal proposals and less attached to historical formalisms (see such Supremacy of Public Interest over Private one). Public services are approached in its diversity, oblivious to traditional monolithic nature and accu stomed to the modern doctrine of fundamental human rights. It deals also the princip les of free enterprise and free competition, given that the public service provider s have lived intensely in this environment, be they public or private agents. In d ialectical topic, these institutes are placed in joint discussion, all in an attempt to in vestigate their interactions and propose criteria less generic and removed from real ity, to assess the legitimacy of the mutual enjoyment of immunity by certain agents. Sev eral cases of the Court are analyzed individually, checking in each one the app lication of the proposed criteria, such logical-deductive activity and theory of pract ice approach. At the end, the conclusions refer to a reciprocal immunity less rhe torical and ideological and more pragmatic and consequentialist. It is proposed the end to the general rules or abstract formulas of subsumption, with concerns on the one h and the actual maintenance of the federal pact, and on the other by a solid econo mic order without inapt advantages to certain players, which flatly contradicts the co nstitutional premises.