Export New Product Success: The Impact of Market and Technology Orientation

The extant literature implies that export companies attempt to improve export new product performance in order to reach superior and sustainable business performance and thus remain competitive. However, the degree to which companies must focus either on market or technological issues as the factors involved in new product performance has been a problem they often encounter. The current research aims at investigating the impact of those orientations on export new product performance. Surveying export chemical manufacturing companies, partial least squares indicate that although both orientations have significant positive impacts on export new product success, the impact of technology orientation is higher. After the conclusions are drawn, the limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed

To authorize or not authorize: helping users review access policies in organizations

ABSTRACT This work addresses the problem of reviewing complex access policies in an organizational context using two studies. In the first study, we used semi-structured interviews to explore the access review activity and identify its challenges. The interviews revealed that access review involves challenges such as scale, technical complexity, the frequency of reviews, human errors, and exceptional cases. We also modeled access review in the activity theory framework. The model shows that access review requires an understanding of the activity context including information about the users, their job, their access rights, and the history of access policy. We then used activity theory guidelines to design a new user interface named AuthzMap. We conducted an exploratory user study with 340 participants to compare the use of AuthzMap with two existing commercial systems for access review. The results show that AuthzMap improved the efficiency of access review in 5 of the 7 tested scenarios, compared to the existing systems. AuthzMap also improved accuracy of actions in one of the 7 tasks, and only negatively affected accuracy in one of the tasks

Guidelines for designing IT security management tools

An important factor that impacts the effectiveness of secu-rity systems within an organization is the usability of secu-rity management tools. In this paper, we present a survey of design guidelines for such tools. We gathered guidelines and recommendations related to IT security management tools from the literature as well as from our own prior studies of IT security management. We categorized and combined these into a set of high level guidelines and identified the relationships between the guidelines and challenges in IT security management. We also illustrated the need for the guidelines, where possible, with quotes from additional in-terviews with five security practitioners. Our framework of guidelines can be used by those developing IT security tools, as well as by practitioners and managers evaluating tools

The survey and identification source of white spot disease in shrimp Farm in Abadan area

In the summer of 2002 high mortality occurred in farm shrimp in Abadan area due to white spot disease. The main objective of this study was detection and identification the source of white spot syndrome virus. For this reason from 2004/11/4 until 2005/120/6 about 190 samples consisted of wild shrimp, crab, fish, and plankton collected and preserved in alcohol 90-75% for polymerase chain reaction (PCR).The samples transferred to the South Iranian Aquaculture Center in Ahwaz. The samples examined by commercial WSSV detection kit (Fast Target) and new kit design by Iranian Fisheries Research Organization (IFRO) and Biotechnology Research Center from Iran. The result from PCR showed the samples of Penaeus indicus brood stock and postlarvea, Parapenaeopsis stylifrus and Metapenaeus affinis was positive. The rest of samples did not show any sign of virus and they was negative by PCR. Because the disease outbreak occurred in 2002 and the samples collected in 2004, the situation of environmental in the area was changed and may be the virus disappears in the samples and died

Establishing usability heuristics for heuristics evaluation in a specific domain: is there a consensus?

Heuristics evaluation is frequently employed to evaluate usability. While general heuristics are suitable to evaluate most user interfaces, there is still a need to establish heuristics for specific domains to ensure that their specific usability issues are identified. This paper presents a comprehensive review of 70 studies related to usability heuristics for specific domains. The aim of this paper is to review the processes that were applied to establish heuristics in specific domains and identify gaps in order to provide recommendations for future research and area of improvements. The most urgent issue found is the deficiency of validation effort following heuristics proposition and the lack of robustness and rigour of validation method adopted. Whether domain specific heuristics perform better or worse than general ones is inconclusive due to lack of validation quality and clarity on how to assess the effectiveness of heuristics for specific domains. The lack of validation quality also affects effort in improving existing heuristics for specific domain as their weaknesses are not addressed

„Ert ekki slæmur fyrr en þú færð slæmt“: Viðhorf og viðbrögð veitingastaða við TripAdvisor

Undanfarin ár hafa samfélagsmiðlar skipað stóran sess í lífi fólks. Hver samfélagsmiðill hefur sinn tilgang en oft á tíðum notar fólk miðlana vegna hentugleika hvort sem miðillinn er hannaður til að auðvelda samskipti við kunningja eða sem upplýsingaveita. Í þessari rannsókn er samfélagsmiðillinn TripAdvisor til umfjöllunnar og gert verður grein fyrir þeim áhrifum sem miðillinn hefur haft í för með sér. Tilgangur rannsóknarinnar var að kanna viðhorf stjórnenda veitingastaða til TripAdvisor og bæði hvort og með hvaða hætti þeir reyna að ná árangri á miðlinum. Ásamt því var að athuga hvort það væri í stefnu veitingastaða að bregðast við ummælum á TripAdvisor með ákveðnum hætti. Tekin voru sex viðtöl við stjórnendur veitingastaða sem byggðust á viðtalsramma sem samanstóð af átta spurningum. Hvert viðtal byggðist á viðtalsrammanum en var að öðru leyti opið og oft á tíðum spurði rannsakandi að viðbótarspurningum sem honum skyndilega datt í hug. Helstu niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar eru þær að viðhorf stjórnenda veitingastaða til TripAdvisor virðist vera að miklu leyti jákvætt en er miðillinn þó alls ekki talinn vera gallalaus. Megin áhersla er lögð á að svara neikvæðum dómum, fremur en þeim jákvæðu, í von um að slæmu dómarnir verði fjarlægðir af miðlinum. Þeir sem sjá tilgang í því að svara jákvæðum dómum virðast hafa jákvæðara viðhorf til miðilsins heldur en þeir sem ekki sjá tilganginn í því

User-centered design of identity and access management systems

IT security management (ITSM) technologies are important components of IT security in organizations. But there has been little research on how ITSM technologies should incorporate human and social issues into their design. Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, as an important category of ITSM, share such a gap with other ITSM technologies. The overreaching goal of this research is to narrow the gap between IAM technologies and social context. In the first phase, we developed a set of usability guidelines, and heuristics for design and usability evaluation of ITSM tools. We gathered recommendations related to ITSM tools from the literature, and categorized them into a set of 19 high-level guidelines that can be used by ITSM tool designers. We then used a methodical approach to create seven heuristics for usability evaluation of ITSM tools and named them ITSM heuristics. With a between-subjects study, we compared the usage of the ITSM and Nielsen's heuristics for evaluation of a commercial IAM system. The results confirmed the effectiveness of ITSM heuristics, as participants who used the ITSM heuristics found more problems categorized as severe than those who used Nielsen's. In the second phase, we conducted a field-study of 19 security practitioners to understand how they do IAM and identify the challenges they face. We used a grounded theory approach to collect and analyze data and developed a model of IAM activities and challenges. Built on the model, we proposed a list of recommendations for improving technology or practice. In the third phase, we narrowed down our focus to a specific IAM related activity, access review. We expanded our understanding of access review by further analysis of the interviews, and by conducting a survey of 49 security practitioners. Then, we used a usability engineering process to design AuthzMap, a novel user-interface for reviewing access policies in organizations. We conducted a user study with 430 participants to compare the use of AuthzMap with two existing access review systems. The results show AuthzMap improved the efficiency in five of the seven tested tasks, and improved accuracy in one of them.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat

Usability Study of Windows Vista’s Firewall

Windows Vista is shipped with a built-in personal firewall. The firewall has lots of new features over its predecessor, XP’s firewall. But, previous studies showed that Vista’s firewall have a set of usability problems. The goal of this paper is to address the lack of a complete and validated prototype of improved Vista’s firewall interface. By providing a high-fidelity prototype that could be evaluated against Vista’s firewall, the weaknesses of current interface can be shown with enough evidence, and suggested improvements could be used to fix the usability flaws in the Vista’s firewall. 1

Post-chemotherapy arthralgia and arthritis in lung cancer

Objective: Evaluate the characteristics of arthritis, arthralgia and musculoskeletal pain after chemotherapy in patients with lung cancer. Materials and Methods: In this study, we evaluate the characteristics of 17 patients with joint symptoms following receiving chemotherapy for lung cancer. Demographic information of patients including sex, age, time of rheumatologic findings after starting of chemotherapy, time of improvement after starting of medication, and relevant laboratory findings for each patient. Results: A total of seventeen patients (six women with mean age 41.2 ± 5.2 years and 11 men with mean age 42.5 ± 8.2) that received standard chemotherapy for lung cancer according to stage of disease. Joint symptoms usually began about seven months after the first session of chemotherapy. Patients had an average of two tender joints and 1 hr of morning stiffness. Four patients were positive for anti-nuclear antibody, and none of patient was positive for rheumatoid factor. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD), corticosteroids, and venlafaxine were prescribed. Four patients did not show an improvement. Follow-up was available for all patients. 11 patients showed favorable responses, characterized by a significant decrease (more than 50%) in morning stiffness, pain, and tender joint counts after a mean of three months′ treatment. Two patients had complete resolution of symptoms and did not required further medications for arthritis, arthralgia or musculoskeletal pain. Conclusion: Chemotherapy-related arthropathy in lung cancer is not uncommon. Early treatment with NSAID, DMARD, and corticosteroids is effective in the majority of patients