Retail centres: it's time to make them convenient

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of time convenience on shopping behaviour in the light of a time scarcity phenomenon that is reported to have reached epidemic proportions in many markets. Design/methodology/approach - The paper begins with a survey of consumer households, examining the importance shoppers assign to time convenience. This is followed by a supply-side comparison of malls and shopping strips against the attributes of time convenience. Findings - The results indicate that time convenience has a salient influence on consumers' patronage behaviour, and that malls and strips differ in their provision of this key attribute. Practical implications - Retail planners must give serious thought to creating retail environments that allow shoppers to "buy" time. Providing time convenience via one-stop shopping, extended trading hours, proximity to home or work and enclosure offers one such strategy for the shopping mall and shopping strip. Originality/value - The focus on convenience provides practitioners with a strategic alternative to hedonic strategies. It is also one of the first studies to investigate retail centre patronage from both a demand-and supply-side perspective

When does economic development promote mitigation and why?

Is economic development compatible with mitigation? On the one hand, development should promote effective climate policy by enhancing states’ capacities for mitigation. On the other hand, economic growth creates more demand for production, thereby inhibiting emissions reduction. These arguments are often reconciled in the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) thesis. According to this approach, development initially increases emissions in poor economies, but begins to lower emissions after a country has attained a certain level of development. The aim of this article is to determine empirically whether the EKC hypothesis seems plausible in light of emissions trends over the birth and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Drawing on data from the World Bank World Development Indicators and World Resources Institute Climate Data Explorer, it conducts a large-N investigation of the emissions behaviour of 120 countries from 1990 to 2012. While several quantitative studies have found that economic factors influence emissions activity, this article goes beyond existing research by employing a more sophisticated – multilevel – research design to determine whether economic development: (a) continues to be a significant driver once country-level clustering is accounted for and (b) has different effects on different countries. The results of this article indicate that, even after we account for country-level clustering and hold constant the other main putative drivers of emissions activity, economic development tends to inhibit emissions reduction. They also provide strong evidence that emissions trends resemble the EKC, with development significantly constraining emissions reduction in the South and promoting it in the North

A Secure Key Management Interface with Asymmetric Cryptography

Cryptographic devices such as Hardware Security Modules are only as secure as their application programme interfaces (APIs) that offer cryptographic functionality to the outside world. Design flaws and implementation errors in security APIs have been shown to cause vulnerabilities that may leak secrets such as keys and PINs. Ideally, we would like to design such interfaces in such a way that we can formally prove security properties, even in the presence of some corrupted keys. In this work, we take such a design for a provably secure interface for symmetric key management, due to Cortier and Steel, and extend it to asymmetric cryptography, giving new security definitions and associated proofs. Asymmetric cryptography forces us to consider confidentiality and integrity properties separately and provide support for classical operations of public key infrastructure (e.g. certification of public keys). As far as we are aware this is the first such provably secure interface to support asymmetric key operations for key management: Cachin and Chandran's secure token interface supports asymmetric key operations only for encrypting and signing data, not for managing keys.Les systèmes cryptographiques tels que les modules matériels de sécurité ne peuvent apporter un niveau de sécurité que dans la mesure où leur interface de programmation (API) qui offre les services de cryptographie à l'extérieur de module atteint ce même niveau de sécurité. Il a été constaté que des défauts de conception ou des erreur d'implémentation dans les APIs de sécurité sont à l'origine de vulnérabilités pouvant entrainer la fuite de secrets comme des clefs ou des PINs. Idéalement, nous voudrions concevoir de telles interfaces de manière à pouvoir prouver formellement des propriétés de sécurité, même si certaines clefs sont corrompues. Dans cet article, nous partons d'une telle API, due à Cortier et Steel, conçue de manière disposer d'une preuve de sécurité pour la gestion de clefs symétriques, et nous l'adaptons à la cryptographie asymétrique en donnant une nouvelle définition de sécurité avec les preuves associées. Afin de prendre en compte la cryptographie asymétrique, nous sommes amenés à gérer de manière différentiée les propriétés de confidentialité et d'intégrité et à ajouter les fonctionalités classiques d'une infrastructure de gestion de clefs publiques (i.e. la certification des clefs publiques). Á notre connaissance, il s'agit de la première preuve d'interface prouvée permettant l'usage de primitives asymétriques pour la gestion de clefs : l'interface de Cachin et Chandra prévoit l'usage de primitives asymétriques uniquement pour le chiffrement et la signature de données, et non pas pour la gestion des clefs

Towards a Type System for Security APIs

Abstract. Security API analysis typically only considers a subset of an API’s functions, with results bounded by the number of function calls. Furthermore, attacks involving partial leakage of sensitive information are usually not covered. Type-based static analysis has the potential to alleviate these shortcomings. To that end, we present a type system for secure information flow based upon the one of Volpano, Smith and Irvine [1], extended with types for cryptographic keys and ciphertext similar to those in Sumii and Pierce [2]. In contrast to some other type systems, the encryption and decryption of keys does not require special treatment. We show that a well-typed sequence of commands is non-interferent, based upon a definition of indistinguishability where, in certain circumstances, the adversary can distinguish between ciphertexts that correspond to encrypted public data.

Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in COVID-19.

Host-mediated lung inflammation is present1, and drives mortality2, in the critical illness caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Host genetic variants associated with critical illness may identify mechanistic targets for therapeutic development3. Here we report the results of the GenOMICC (Genetics Of Mortality In Critical Care) genome-wide association study in 2,244 critically ill patients with COVID-19 from 208 UK intensive care units. We have identified and replicated the following new genome-wide significant associations: on chromosome 12q24.13 (rs10735079, P = 1.65 × 10-8) in a gene cluster that encodes antiviral restriction enzyme activators (OAS1, OAS2 and OAS3); on chromosome 19p13.2 (rs74956615, P = 2.3 × 10-8) near the gene that encodes tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2); on chromosome 19p13.3 (rs2109069, P = 3.98 ×  10-12) within the gene that encodes dipeptidyl peptidase 9 (DPP9); and on chromosome 21q22.1 (rs2236757, P = 4.99 × 10-8) in the interferon receptor gene IFNAR2. We identified potential targets for repurposing of licensed medications: using Mendelian randomization, we found evidence that low expression of IFNAR2, or high expression of TYK2, are associated with life-threatening disease; and transcriptome-wide association in lung tissue revealed that high expression of the monocyte-macrophage chemotactic receptor CCR2 is associated with severe COVID-19. Our results identify robust genetic signals relating to key host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage in COVID-19. Both mechanisms may be amenable to targeted treatment with existing drugs. However, large-scale randomized clinical trials will be essential before any change to clinical practice

Spatial convenience: bridging the gap between shopping malls and shopping strips

PURPOSE: Due to rising obesity levels, declining fitness levels, an aging population, and shopper lethargy, retail planners must give serious consideration to the physical demands retail centres place on their patrons. The purpose of this paper is to determine the importance consumers assign to spatial convenience, measure how consumers perceive shopping malls and shopping strips (also referred to as the downtown area, central business district, Main Street or the High Street) in relation to it, and compare them in their provision of it. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The study utilises a household survey of consumers and as well as a retail audit. The survey was used to identify the importance consumers assign to spatial convenience, while the retail audit was used to establish how malls and strips compare in their provision of it. Findings -The results of the survey indicate that consumers regard spatial convenience as important and believe that malls are superior in providing it. The retail audit confirmed the accuracy of these perceptions, with the mall providing greater store compatibility, and a more compact shopping environment. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The influence of spatial convenience on shopping behaviour has been largely overlooked at the level of the retail centre. Moreover, those studies that have focused on this topic, have typically done so from the singular focus of either malls or strips. This study incorporates both, and does so via an empirical analysis of consumer attitudes and a spatial comparison of both retail formats

Banking channels: online and bank branch

This paper explores the marketing issues associated with the development of electronic banking facilities linked to conventional Australian banks. The marketing communication messages promoted in both situations are examined through a broad based content analysis of the websites of major banks and compared with messages and impressions observed at the corresponding bank branches. This introductory study found that bank branches are associating their services with their counterpart online banking services whilst concurrently the Internet banking sites are disassociating their services from the conventional branches