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The purpose of this paper is to find what kinds of problems, while implementing information security policy, may take place in foreign companies in the East African Community (EAC) because of cultural differences, and to suggest supplemental countermeasures in international frameworks such as Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission and ISO/IEC27001.

Setting potential problems based on Hofstede's scores of cultural dimensions and the authors' experience, this paper predicts potential problems first by using the theory of level of potential. Local employees working for foreign companies were polled to evaluate the severity of the problems. Based on the survey results, the paper finds which problems may take place, what triggers them and how severe they are. Finally, it finds countermeasures to prevent the problems.

Overall, British, US and Japanese companies are found to have higher potential of facing problems in the EAC. The problem of “using a previous company's confidential information” has been found to have the highest severity. British, US and Belgian companies have individualism‐originated problems. Japanese companies have the highest potential of facing problems due to masculinity. Chinese companies have the highest potential of facing problems due to long‐term orientation. In addition, a list of countermeasures is proposed to protect business information.

The paper has identified information security management (ISM)‐related problems with their severities for each of the selected investing countries in the EAC, applying a new method to predict potential problems concerning ISM in foreign companies. It has recommended practical countermeasures against the six serious problems identified.

Different techniques applied for the fabrication of thick‐film fine lines have been analysed. The basics, achievements, advantages and disadvantages of improved screen printing, screen printing with metal masks, the direct writing method, offset printing and photoformed or photoetched thick‐film are presented. In addition, current trends in front metallisation of silicon solar cells are described. Based on a critical review, the use of thick‐film fine lines for this purpose is discussed.

Specially formulated frit materials have been applied in thick film superconductors similar to the standard thick film materials in order to achieve processing parameters closely compatible with conventional thick film technology and alumina substrates. The applied frits have improved the adhesion and superconductor properties at the same time due to a superconductor bridge formation between the grains. Both YBCO and BSCCO systems have been analyzed. The results are promising.

The decision rule which minimizes the probability of error, in the discrimination problem, is the Bayes decision rule which assigns x to the class with the highest a posteriori probability. This rule leads to a partial probability of error which is given by Pe(x) = 1−max p(C2lx) for each x e X. Prior to observing X, the probability of error associated with X is defined as Pe = EX [Pe(x)]. Tanaka, Okuda and Asai formulated the discrimination problem with fuzzy classes and fuzzy information using the probability of fuzzy events and derived a bound for the average error probability, when the decision in the classifier is made according to the fuzzified Bayes method. The aim is to obtain bounds for the average error probability in terms of (αβ)‐information energy, when the decision in the classifier is made according to the fuzzified Bayes method.

The traditional literature dealing with statistical decision problems usually assumes that previous information about an associated experiment may be expressed by means of conditional probabilistic information, and the actual experimental outcomes can be perceived with exactness by the statistician. We now consider statistical decision problems satisfying the first assumption above, so that the actual available information cannot be exactly perceived, but rather it may be assimilated with fuzzy information (as defined by Zadeh et al.).

Therapeutic relationships have been identified to be a key feature of staff working with patients within mental health settings and are widely referred to within research literature. The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of support staff within secure mental health services with regards to the formation and development of therapeutic relationships with patients.

Ten participants were interviewed, all of whom were unqualified support staff based within secure establishments and working directly with patients.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis of the data resulted in the identification of three themes: “Building bridges”: developing relationships with patients; “You do forget what they've done”: seeing the person and managing risk, and “Playing your cards close to our chest”: maintaining boundaries.

The themes are discussed and evaluated in terms of relationship formation and development, barriers that may prevent such relationships from being built and the implications for clinical practice.

Competition and attempts to increase market share between organizations play an important role in business ecology. It has been determined that intensity in the institutions and death among organizations especially are of great importance. Intensity and homogeny among the organizational population are very important in the evolutionary process for them to create modern forms of institution. We have used parametric variables to collect a set of data in order to understand competition and niche among organization population. The study investigates how competition and niche affect the cluster of hotel population and their survivability. The founding of each hotel organization is differently constructed internally and different segments of the hotel population respond heterogeneously to the general process of competition. The findings show how niche and different segments of hotel population affect new organizational establishment and the evolutionary dynamics of modern organization structure, using the city center hotels of Canakkale in Turkey.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the selection of return distribution impacts estimated volatility in China’s stock market.

The authors use a Bayesian analysis of fat-tailed stochastic volatility (SV) model with Student’s t-distribution, and conduct an out-of-sample test with realized volatility.

Empirical analysis results indicate that fat-tailed SV model performs better in capturing the dynamics of daily returns. The authors find that asymmetry, holiday and day of the week effects are detected in estimated volatility. However, the out-of-sample comparison shows that fat-tailed SV models fail to outperform SV models with normal distribution in fitting and predicting realized volatility.

The contribution of this paper to existing literature is twofold. First, it proves that fat-tailed SV models with Student’s t-distribution perform better than normally distributed SV models in fitting daily returns of China’s stock market. Second, this paper takes asymmetry, holiday and day of the week effects into consideration at the same time in the fat-tailed SV model.