Web Vulnerability Study of Online Pharmacy Sites

Consumers are increasingly using online pharmacies, but these sites may not provide an adequate level of security with the consumers’ personal data. There is a gap in this research addressing the problems of security vulnerabilities in this industry. The objective is to identify the level of web application security vulnerabilities in online pharmacies and the common types of flaws, thus expanding on prior studies. Technical, managerial and legal recommendations on how to mitigate security issues are presented. The proposed four-step method first consists of choosing an online testing tool. The next steps involve choosing a list of 60 online pharmacy sites to test, and then running the software analysis to compile a list of flaws. Finally, an in-depth analysis is performed on the types of web application vulnerabilities. The majority of sites had serious vulnerabilities, with the majority of flaws being cross-site scripting or old versions of software that have not been updated. A method is proposed for the securing of web pharmacy sites, using a multi-phased approach of technical and managerial techniques together with a thorough understanding of national legal requirements for securing systems

Empirical Study of Privacy Issues Among Social Networking Sites.

Social media networks are increasing their types of services and the numbers of users are rapidly growing. However, online consumers have expressed concerns about their personal privacy protection and recent news articles have shown many privacy breaches and unannounced changes to privacy policies. These events could adversely affect data protection and compromise user trust, thus it is vital that social sites contain explicit privacy policies stating a comprehensive list of protection methods. This study analyzes 60 worldwide social sites and finds that even if sites contain a privacy policy, the site pages may also possess technical elements that could be used to serendipitously collect personal information. The results show specific technical collection methods most common within several social network categories. Methods for improving online privacy practices are suggested

Patterns of Sponge Abundance Across a Gradient of Habitat Quality in the Wakatobi Marine National Park, Indonesia

Sponges are important components of reef communities worldwide, fulfilling a number of important functional roles. Habitat degradation caused by the loss of hard corals has the potential to cause increases in sponge abundance and percentage cover as they gain access to resources such as space and food. In this study we compared sponge densities and percentage cover at sites with varying hard coral cover in the Wakatobi Marine National Park, Indonesia (WMNP). We found significant differences in sponge densities at the study sites but no significant difference in sponge densities on different surface angles. Unexpectedly, we also found a weak positive correlation between coral cover and sponge density. This indicates that spatial competition is unlikely to be the most important factor determining sponge abundance in the WMNP. In contrast to sponge density data, we found that sponge percentage cover and hard coral cover were weakly negatively correlated, but found no significant difference in sponge percentage cover between the study sites. Finally, multivariate analysis of the benthic communities at the study sites indicated that while sites with higher coral cover were characterised by coral (proportionally), lower coral cover sites were characterised by algae and sponges. This suggests that although there was no significant difference in sponge percentage cover between the study sites conditions that led to the loss of hard coral at lower quality sites mean that these sites are characterised by sponges and algae rather than by any other groups of benthic organisms

Study on Chinese Tourism Web Sites' Distribution and Online Marketing Effects.

As a platform and carrier of tourism information, tourism websites (TWs) and online tourism marketing have deeply affected the tourism industry. The authors adopt a geographical perspective to analyze the distribution of Chinese tourism websites (CTWs), and statistical analysis with SPSS16.0 was conducted to explore the online marketing effects of CTWs, and some meaningful results has been produced: 1) The number of CTWs generally decreases from eastern China to central and western China, and are especially dominant in tourism developed provinces. 2) The number of tourists has strong statistical correlation with the number of CTWs. 3) The strongest correlation for inbound tourists is with hotel websites, and the highest correlation coefficient is 0.807 between the number of domestic tourist and resort websites. Both inbound and domestic tourists have a low correlation coefficient with travel agency websites (TA). 4) There exist some statistical models between tourist numbers and different kinds of CTWs. The results clearly unveil the marketing effects and correlation of CTWs and is helpful for further online marketing strategies

The Impact of Employment Web Sites' Traffic on Unemployment: A Cross Country Comparison

Although employment web sites have recently become the main source for re- cruitment and selection process, the relation between those sites and unemploy- ment rates is seldom addressed. Deriving data from 32 countries and 427 web sites, this study explores the correlation between unemployment rates of European countries and the attractiveness of country specific employment web sites. It also compares the changes in unemployment rates and traffic on all the aforementioned web sites. The results showed that there is a strong correlation between web sites traffic and unemployment rates.Comment: 9 page

Estimating population density distribution from network-based mobile phone data

In this study we address the problem of leveraging mobile phone network-based data for the task of estimating population density distribution at pan-European level. The primary goal is to develop a methodological framework for the collection and processing of network-based data that can be plausibly applied across multiple MNOs. The proposed method exploits more extensive network topology information than is considered in most state-of-the-art literature, i.e., (approximate) knowledge of cell coverage areas is assumed instead of merely cell tower locations. A distinguishing feature of the proposed methodology is the capability of taking in input a combination of cell-level and Location Area-level data, thus enabling the integration of data from Call Detail Records (CDR) with other network-based data sources, e.g., Visitor Location Register (VLR). Different scenarios are considered in terms of input data availability at individual MNOs (CDR only, VLR only, combinations of CDR and VLR) and for multi-MNO data fusion, and the relevant tradeoff dimensions are discussed. At the core of the proposed method lies a novel formulation of the population distribution estimation as a Maximum Likelihood estimation problem. The proposed estimation method is validated for consistency with synthetically generated data in a simplified simulation scenario.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

Home green home; a case study of inducing energy-efficient innovations in the Dutch building sector

This document provides a case study of policies aiming to foster technological innovations for ‘green’ buildings in the Netherlands. The study aims to provide 1) a detailed overview of the policy framework over the last thirty years, and 2) a picture of the level of innovations related to energy efficiency in buildings in the Netherlands. �The analysis shows an intensification of environmental policy in the Dutch building sector in the mid-1990s, followed by a slight decline after 2001. A striking feature of environmental policy in this sector is the large number of policy programs implemented successively for short periods of time. This might affect the stability and continuity of the policy framework and be damaging for innovation. Faced with high levels of uncertainty about future policies, firms may prefer to postpone risky investments in innovative activities. Finally, governmental R&D support for green innovations in general remains very low in the Netherlands. Descriptive data on patenting activities show that Dutch firms file nowadays about 150 patents annually in the field of energy efficiency in buildings. The Netherlands have a clear comparative advantage in the field of energy-saving lighting technologies, mainly due to intensive patenting activities by Philips. High-efficiency boilers also represent a substantial share of Dutch innovation activities in this domain over the last decades. In many other fields (such as insulation, heat-pumps and co-generation, solar boilers, etc), however, Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries rank much higher than the Netherlands.

Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study

To examine changes in the open access landscape over time, this study partially replicated Kristin Antelman’s 2004 study of open access citation advantage. Results indicated open access articles still have a citation advantage. For three of the four disciplines examined, the most common sites hosting freely available articles were independent sites, such as academic social networks or article sharing sites. For the same three disciplines, more than 70% of the open access copies were publishers’ PDFs. The major difference from Antelman’s is the increase in the number of freely available articles that appear to be in violation of publisher policies