Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

An exploration of sustainable business model innovation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Today’s business environment is complex; organisations are increasingly forced to adjust. By innovating their business model, organisations have become increasingly capable of creating positive social and environmental value. In research years, the field of business models has gained attention in recent years in both the supporting literature and practice. Initially, the concept was mainly used in the context of technology businesses to describe business processes and evolved as a theoretical concept that outlines an organisation's value creation, delivery and capture processes. Literature acknowledges that innovation in this context looks beyond developing new or improved products to discovering new ways to operate. Advancements in the field of Sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) have helped realise that this type of innovation can help organisations maximise the sustainable value creation and gain competitive advantage while considering the needs of a broader range of stakeholders. This exploratory study aims to expand the knowledge on the SBMI phenomenon. A qualitative approach that relies on semi-structured interviews is applied to answer the research questions guiding the study. Furthermore, the data analysis was supported by tools and techniques such as thematic analysis, total interpretive structural modelling, Fuzzy MICMAC, the triple layered business model canvas, and the value mapping tool. Inspection of the role of the contextual relations between elements of the business environment a firm operates demonstrates how they systematically enables change in the organisations at the strategic and operational levels while influencing the business environment in which organisations operate. The findings highlight how collaborating across the value chain actors and monitoring the context in which the organisations operate allows for the identification of value creation and capture opportunities. This increased sensitivity and engagement also supports them in overcoming pressing challenges such as the lack of an adequate regulatory landscape and poor awareness from the public of the relevant sustainability themes. Identified sustainable strategies can guide the configuration of sustainable business models or serve as a starting point for innovation. The study also reflects on how SBMI implementation unfolds in new and established organisations which guides organisations to tailor processes based on their needs. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that organisations should improve their knowledge of the value implications of their business model. The research findings proposed and evaluated a strategic framework and dynamic capabilities assessment tool.MESCy

A Work-Pattern Centric Approach to Building a Personal Knowledge Advantage Machine

A work pattern, also known as a usage pattern, can be broadly defined as the methods by which a user typically utilizes a particular system. Data mining has been applied to web usage patterns for a variety of purposes. This thesis presents a framework by which data mining techniques could be used to extract patterns from an individual\u27s work flow data in order facilitate a new type of architecture known as a knowledge advantage machine. This knowledge advantage machine is a type of semantic desktop and semantic web application that would assist people in constructing their own personal knowledge networks, as well as sharing that information in an efficient manner with colleagues using the same system. A knowledge advantage machine would be capable of automatically discovering new knowledge which is relevant to the user\u27s personal ontology.;Through experimentation, we demonstrate that a user\u27s file usage patterns can be utilized by software in order to automatically and seamlessly learn what is important as defined by the user. Further research is necessary to apply this principle to a more realized knowledge advantage machine such that decisions can be fueled by work patterns as well as semantic or contextual information

On the Security of Software Systems and Services

This work investigates new methods for facing the security issues and threats arising from the composition of software. This task has been carried out through the formal modelling of both the software composition scenarios and the security properties, i.e., policies, to be guaranteed. Our research moves across three different modalities of software composition which are of main interest for some of the most sensitive aspects of the modern information society. They are mobile applications, trust-based composition and service orchestration. Mobile applications are programs designed for being deployable on remote platforms. Basically, they are the main channel for the distribution and commercialisation of software for mobile devices, e.g., smart phones and tablets. Here we study the security threats that affect the application providers and the hosting platforms. In particular, we present a programming framework for the development of applications with a static and dynamic security support. Also, we implemented an enforcement mechanism for applying fine-grained security controls on the execution of possibly malicious applications. In addition to security, trust represents a pragmatic and intuitive way for managing the interactions among systems. Currently, trust is one of the main factors that human beings keep into account when deciding whether to accept a transaction or not. In our work we investigate the possibility of defining a fully integrated environment for security policies and trust including a runtime monitor. Finally, Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is the leading technology for business applications distributed over a network. The security issues related to the service networks are many and multi-faceted. We mainly deal with the static verification of secure composition plans of web services. Moreover, we introduce the synthesis of dynamic security checks for protecting the services against illegal invocations