TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2008

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

The Importance of Broadband Provision to Knowledge Intensive Firm Location

Despite the volume of literature afforded knowledge work and innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs), few studies have examined the importance of ICTs to knowledge industries and the impact of their availability on firm location decisions. This study will evaluate the relative importance of ICTs to knowledge intensive firm location for select US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Spatial econometric estimation techniques are used to construct models from ZIP code level data that describe the relative importance of broadband to knowledge intensive industries, as defined in this study. A global model is constructed for all relevant ZIP code areas across the continental U.S and the results are compared to metropolitan specific models. In addition to demonstrating variations by metropolitan area in the relative importance of broadband provision, the results suggest that broadband deployment initiatives will have varied outcomes on knowledge intensive firm growth and the subsequent change in the industrial composition of regional economies in future years.

Report of the Working Group on Fisheries Acoustics Science and Technology (WGFAST)[ 10–13 May 2011 Reykjavík, Iceland]

Contributors: Lucio Calise, Handegaard Nils Olav, Rolf Korneliussen, Gavin Macaulay, Egil Ona, Ruben Patel and Hector Pen

Potential Solutions to Rural Broadband Internet Deployment

Broadband availability in rural areas continues to be a major topic of concern in many areas of the country but especially in our rural communities. Several grassroots organizations, including the Wireless Communication Association International and the Rural Broadband Coalition, were created for the sole purpose of closing the “Digital Divide” for underserved Americans. Government should support efforts to offer broadband to the masses, but in some cases special legislation is required to pave the way. In Kentucky, the Supreme Court rendered an August 2005 decision that may have severely hindered broadband deployment by restricting rural electric cooperatives from providing any service other than that of electricity. It is unclear whether this decision adversely affected rural cooperative’s plans to pursue providing high-speed Internet to their constituents but it certainly caused them to their entrance into a less than competitive market for rural areas. Reacting relatively quickly to this decision the Kentucky Legislature passed legislation that empowered these organizations to once again offer services like Internet, long distance telephone, and propane gas service (ConnectKentucky, 2006)

The global information technology report 2014

Executive summary When The Global Information Technology Report (GITR) and the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) were created more than 13 years ago, the attention of decision makers was focused on how to develop strategies that would allow them to benefit from what Time Magazine had described as “the new economy”: a new way of organizing and managing economic activity based on the new opportunities that the Internet provided for businesses. At present, the world is slowly emerging from one of the worst financial and economic crises in decades, and policymakers, business leaders, and civil society are looking into new opportunities that can consolidate growth, generate new employment, and create business opportunities. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to rank high on the list as one of the key sources of new opportunities to foster innovation and boost economic and social prosperity, for both advanced and emerging economies. For more than 13 years, the NRI has provided decision makers with a useful conceptual framework to evaluate the impact of ICTs at a global level and to benchmark the ICT readiness and usage of their economies

Future benefits and applications of intelligent on-board processing to VSAT services

The trends and roles of VSAT services in the year 2010 time frame are examined based on an overall network and service model for that period. An estimate of the VSAT traffic is then made and the service and general network requirements are identified. In order to accommodate these traffic needs, four satellite VSAT architectures based on the use of fixed or scanning multibeam antennas in conjunction with IF switching or onboard regeneration and baseband processing are suggested. The performance of each of these architectures is assessed and the key enabling technologies are identified

The University Defence Research Collaboration In Signal Processing

This chapter describes the development of algorithms for automatic detection of anomalies from multi-dimensional, undersampled and incomplete datasets. The challenge in this work is to identify and classify behaviours as normal or abnormal, safe or threatening, from an irregular and often heterogeneous sensor network. Many defence and civilian applications can be modelled as complex networks of interconnected nodes with unknown or uncertain spatio-temporal relations. The behavior of such heterogeneous networks can exhibit dynamic properties, reflecting evolution in both network structure (new nodes appearing and existing nodes disappearing), as well as inter-node relations. The UDRC work has addressed not only the detection of anomalies, but also the identification of their nature and their statistical characteristics. Normal patterns and changes in behavior have been incorporated to provide an acceptable balance between true positive rate, false positive rate, performance and computational cost. Data quality measures have been used to ensure the models of normality are not corrupted by unreliable and ambiguous data. The context for the activity of each node in complex networks offers an even more efficient anomaly detection mechanism. This has allowed the development of efficient approaches which not only detect anomalies but which also go on to classify their behaviour

Predicting and auralizing acoustics in classrooms

Although classrooms have fairly simple geometries, this type of room is known to cause problems when trying to predict their acoustics using room acoustics computer modeling. Some typical features from a room acoustics point of view are: Parallel walls, low ceilings (the rooms are flat), uneven distribution of absorption, and most of the floor being covered with furniture which at long distances act as scattering elements, and at short distance provide strong specular components. The importance of diffraction and scattering is illustrated in numbers and by means of auralization, using ODEON 8 Beta