The digitization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has accelerated in recent years, increasing their reliance on information systems to support core business operations. ENISA’s 2021 report showed an important growth in SME dependence on IT, while the World Economic Forum ranked cybersecurity failure among the top five global risks. Although digital transformation brings competitive advantages, it also exposes SMEs to cyber threats. A comparative analysis of scientific studies from the UK, Australia, the EU, Malaysia, and the USA identified social engineering, Denial of Service (DoS) / Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks as the most frequent threats. This article analyzes the main barriers preventing SMEs from implementing information security frameworks and identifies the lack of national-level regulations in the Republic of Moldova. Based on a structured model developed by the authors, the paper proposes tailored recommendations for improving information system security in Moldovan micro-enterprises. The findings emphasize the need for contextualized, cybersecurity solutions and public policy support targeting risk management and awareness.
Infrared small target detection (ISTD) is highly sensitive to sensor type, observation conditions, and the intrinsic properties of the target. These factors can introduce substantial variations in the distribution of acquired infrared image data, a phenomenon known as domain shift. Such distribution discrepancies significantly hinder the generalization capability of ISTD models across diverse scenarios. To tackle this challenge, this paper introduces an ISTD framework enhanced by domain adaptation. To alleviate distribution shift between datasets and achieve cross-sample alignment, we introduce Cross-view Channel Alignment (CCA). Additionally, we propose the Cross-view Top-K Fusion strategy, which integrates target information with diverse background features, enhancing the model' s ability to extract critical data characteristics. To further mitigate the impact of noise on ISTD, we develop a Noise-guided Representation learning strategy. This approach enables the model to learn more noise-resistant feature representations, to improve its generalization capability across diverse noisy domains. Finally, we develop a dedicated infrared small target dataset, RealScene-ISTD. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our approach demonstrates superior performance in terms of detection probability (Pd), false alarm rate (Fa), and intersection over union (IoU). The code is available at: https://github.com/luy0222/RealScene-ISTD.
Given the busy period and busy cycle major importance in queuing systems, it is crucial the knowledge of the respective distribution functions that is what allows the calculation of the important probabilities. For the M|G|$\infty$ queue system, there are no round form formulae for those distribution functions. But, for the M|D|$\infty$ queue, due the fact that its busy period and busy cycle have both Laplace transform expression round forms, what does not happen for any other M|G|$\infty$ queue system, with an algorithm created by Platzman, Ammons and Bartholdi III, that allows the tail probabilities computation since the correspondent Laplace transform in round form is known, those distribution functions calculations are possible. Here, we will implement the algorithm through a FORTRAN program.
Business cycles (a periodic change of e.g. GDP over five to ten years) exist, but a proper explanation for it is still lacking. Here we extend the well-known NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) model, resulting in a set of differ-ential equations. However, the solution is marginal stable. Therefore we find a nat-ural sinusoidal oscillation of inflation and unemployment just as observed in busi-ness cycles. When speculation is present, the instability becomes more severe. So we present for the first time a mathematical explanation for business cycles. The steering of central banks by setting interest rates to keep inflation stable and low needs an overhaul. One has to distinguish between real monetary instability and the one caused naturally by business cycles.
The research aim was to examine the level to which Small and Medium-sized businesses in the eThekwini Municipality used financial management engages. In collecting and analysing data from the field, the research project took a quantitative method. The survey included 60 participants from various types of small and medium-sized businesses in eThekwini. Proprietors and managers of small and medium-sized businesses were among those who responded. The rate at which organisations implement systems that effectively organise their money was a key component in analysing the financial management engagements of small and medium-sized businesses. This can be assessed in a variety of ways, including the distribution of closed-ended surveys to responders. Furthermore, the proprietors of small and medium-sized businesses were prompted to score their companies based on the level to which financial preparation strategies were implemented and the funding sources of money. The research found that small and medium-sized businesses in the research areas did not develop long-term financial strategies that included investments in non-current assets, shares, and stocks, as well as real estate initiatives. Small and Medium-sized businesses must establish trustworthy systems for accounting information, disclose and analyse their financial challenges on a regular basis.
René Isaac Bracho Rivera, Aaron Samuel Bracho Mosquera
In this paper explores the position of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in terms of three key variables: propensity to credit, capital structure and strategic profile. The premises presented in this scientific essay are derived from the interpretation of data and results of two studies applied to MSMEs. Some elements are presented that illustrate the most frequent preferences and behaviors together with conceptual considerations, with the purpose of trying to explain the main financial and strategic challenges of this type of companies in the national context. In each of the studies that serve as the basis for this paper, surveys were applied as instruments for data collection.
The recent banking crisis has again emphasized the importance of understanding and mitigating systemic risk in financial networks. In this paper, we study a market-driven approach to rescue a bank in distress based on the idea of claims trading, a notion defined in Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. We formalize the idea in the context of financial networks by Eisenberg and Noe. For two given banks v and w, we consider the operation that w takes over some claims of v and in return gives liquidity to v to ultimately rescue v. We study the structural properties and computational complexity of decision and optimization problems for several variants of claims trading. When trading incoming edges of v, we show that there is no trade in which both banks v and w strictly improve their assets. We therefore consider creditor-positive trades, in which v profits strictly and w remains indifferent. For a given set C of incoming edges of v, we provide an efficient algorithm to compute payments by w that result in maximal assets of v. When the set C must also be chosen, the problem becomes weakly NP-hard. Our main result here is a bicriteria FPTAS to compute an approximate trade. The approximate trade results in nearly the optimal amount of assets of v in any exact trade. Our results extend to the case in which banks use general monotone payment functions and the emerging clearing state can be computed efficiently. In contrast, for trading outgoing edges of v, the goal is to maximize the increase in assets for the creditors of v. Notably, for these results the characteristics of the payment functions of the banks are essential. For payments ranking creditors one by one, we show NP-hardness of approximation within a factor polynomial in the network size, when the set of claims C is part of the input or not. Instead, for proportional payments, our results indicate more favorable conditions.
Purpose – The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes. Design/methodology/approach – Using a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity. Findings – The authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. Originality/value – The authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.
Small and medium-sized businesses, artisans, handicrafts, trades, Business
Whilst the partial differential equations that govern the dynamics of our world have been studied in great depth for centuries, solving them for complex, high-dimensional conditions and domains still presents an incredibly large mathematical and computational challenge. Analytical methods can be cumbersome to utilise, and numerical methods can lead to errors and inaccuracies. On top of this, sometimes we lack the information or knowledge to pose the problem well enough to apply these kinds of methods. Here, we present a new approach to approximating the solution to physical systems - physics-informed neural networks. The concept of artificial neural networks is introduced, the objective function is defined, and optimisation strategies are discussed. The partial differential equation is then included as a constraint in the loss function for the optimisation problem, giving the network access to knowledge of the dynamics of the physical system it is modelling. Some intuitive examples are displayed, and more complex applications are considered to showcase the power of physics informed neural networks, such as in seismic imaging. Solution error is analysed, and suggestions are made to improve convergence and/or solution precision. Problems and limitations are also touched upon in the conclusions, as well as some thoughts as to where physics informed neural networks are most useful, and where they could go next.
"Data" is becoming an indispensable production factor, just like land, infrastructure, labor or capital. As part of this, a myriad of applications in different sectors require huge amounts of information to feed models and algorithms responsible for critical roles in production chains and business processes. Tasks ranging from automating certain functions to facilitating decision-making in data-driven organizations increasingly benefit from acquiring data inputs from third parties. Responding to this demand, new entities and novel business models have appeared with the aim of matching such data requirements with the right providers and facilitating the exchange of information. In this paper, we present the results and conclusions of a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of entities trading data on the internet, as well as novel data marketplace designs from the research community.
NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth Contains over 30000 photos of 2500 cataloged urban lightscapes (urban night lights) taken from the International Space Station. Over 100 of these multispectral DSLR photos are of sufficient spatial resolution, sharpness and exposure to be used for broadband spectral characterization of urban lightscapes. Analysis of simulated atmospheric transmissivity from the MODTRAN radiative transfer model shows that spectral slopes of transmissivity spectra are relatively insensitive to choice of model atmopshere, with variations in atmospheric path length and aerosol optical depth primarily affecting the bias of the spectrum rather than the slope. This suggests that color tempterature-calibrated RGB channels can be corrected for relative differences in atmospheric scattering and absorption to allow for quantitative intercomparison. A mosaic of 18 intercalibrated RGB photos renders a spectral feature space with four clearly defined spectral endmembers corresponding to white, yellow and red light sources, with brightness modulated by a dark background endmember. These four spectral endmembers form the basis of a linear spectral mixture model which can be inverted to provide estimates of the areal fraction of each endmember present within every pixel instantaneous field of view. The resulting spectral feature space shows two distinct mixing trends extending from the dark endmember to near flat spectrum (white-yellow) and warm spectrum (orange) sources. The distribution of illuminated pixels is strongly skewed toward a lower luminance background of warm spectrum street lighting, with brighter lights generally corresponding to point sources and major thoroughfares. Intercomparison of 18 individual urban lightscape spectral feature spaces show consistent topology, despite variations in exposure and interior mixing trends.
The article analyzes issues related to the impact of various reforms in the sphere of Russian self-government on the development of Russian cities, especially in the context of new territorial administration systems. As the initial premises of such reforms, we consider, first of all, the constitutional innovations of 2020, which in one way or another affected the economic and legal foundations of Russian local self-government, in particular, through the approval of a single institution of “public power” in the country. The concept of “public authority” is intended to embody the unity and interaction of state and municipal administration in solving the problems of socio-economic development of territories. Further, in the context of the development of cities and their management systems, the tasks of preparing new “Foundations...” of state policy in the field of local self-government are discussed. Emphasis is placed on the need to strengthen the role of municipal management structures in supporting small business forms. The importance of specifying the place and role of various types of municipalities in the practice of strategic planning is shown.
Dynamic capabilities (DC) and market orientation (MO) have been described as affecting firm performance, particularly in the case of fast-changing markets. They have been analysed for a wide range of firm sizes, but research on DC in the context of sole traders and micro enterprises is scarce. To begin filling this gap, this research focuses on the effects of DC and MO on firm performance in the case of sole traders, micro and small enterprises (MSEs), using higher education (HE) consulting as a case study. HE consulting was chosen as it is comprised of numerous sole traders and MSEs and it is subjected to significant and continual change. Using a survey completed by 60 MSEs based in the UK, Europe and North America, this research found that the sensing capability is a significant determinant of firm performance, alongside what this study defines as operational MO. Furthermore, operational MO was found to significantly moderate the relationship between the learning capability and firm performance. This work suggests that (i) research on DC should be extended to sole traders and MSEs; and (ii) the business literature is ripe for a growing body of applied work on DC going beyond their theoretical validation and looking to develop practical recommendations for firms in different industry sectors.
Small and medium-sized businesses, artisans, handicrafts, trades, Business
There is a disconnect between artists’ applications of entrepreneurial behavior in their practice and evaluations of artists as productive members of their communities. Informed by interviews with Nashville-based artists to investigate how artists understand their creativity, artistic practice, and approaches to entrepreneurship in the context of a their vibrant, artistically oriented community, this study finds that artists engage in entrepreneurial behavior by deploying creativity in multiple domains, including art, business, and the social, with their skills in each being important towards preserving the motives of their artistic practice. The findings highlight artists as multi-faceted creatives capable of transforming their practice through entrepreneurial pursuits.
Arts in general, Small and medium-sized businesses, artisans, handicrafts, trades
The problems arising when the moments of service time distributions, for which the MGinf queue system busy period and busy cycle become very easy to study, are presented and it is shown how to overcome them. The busy cycle renewal function and the peakedness and the modified peakedness for the MGinf busy period and busy cycle in the case of those service time distributions are also computed.
The small and medium-sized business sector, on the one hand, plays a crucial role in the development of any region, providing the consumer market with basic goods and services, creating jobs, at the same time diversifying risks in economic development. On the other hand, the sustainability of the functioning of the small and medium-sized enterprise sector largely depends not only on national, but also on regional factors. The article examines the regional factors of development of small and medium-sized businesses. It has been found that there is no generally accepted classification of regional reasons determining the degree of sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises. The author proposes and substantiates regional sustainability factors influencing the functioning of SMEs: economic and geographical location, the system of regional support for small and medium-sized businesses, the level of consumer demand and purchasing power. This study will make it possible to apply the successful experience of SMEs in the context of regional development, based on the key, but not exhaustive factors identified in this study.
La pandemia actual -COVID19- ha llevado a muchos gobiernos a tomar medidas drásticas en respuesta a la crisis de salud global. Las medidas de bloqueo como respuesta a la crisis han frenado aún más las actividades económicas a nivel mundial. En este contexto destaca la importancia del papel de los emprendedores para acelerar la recuperación económica. Este trabajo se centra en analizar cómo los emprendedores enfrentan la situación causada por la COVID-19 a través de un estudio cuantitativo con una muestra de 236 emprendedores españoles ubicados geográficamente en la Región de Murcia. Los resultados muestran cómo los emprendedores han tenido que adaptarse a estas nuevas circunstancias enfrentándose a desafíos como la necesidad de digitalización, la falta de financiamiento, la disminución del capital humano o la percepción de nuevas oportunidades que se conviertan en negocios viables.
Small and medium-sized businesses, artisans, handicrafts, trades, Business
Modern organizations need real-time awareness about the current business conditions and the various events that occur from multiple and heterogeneous environments and influence their business operations. Moreover, based on real-time awareness they need a mechanism that allows them to respond quickly to the changing business conditions, in order to either avoid problematic situations or exploit opportunities that may arise in their business environment. In this paper we present BEAM, an event-driven framework that enables awareness about the situations happening in business environments and increases organizations responsiveness to them. We illustrate how BEAM increases the awareness of managers about the running business processes, as well as their flexibility by presenting a practical application of the framework in the transportation and logistics domain.