235 research outputs found

    Understanding the relationship dynamics between female sex workers and their intimate partners in Kumasi, Ghana

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    This study was implemented by Boston University in collaboration with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology with support from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the U.S. Agency for International Development under Project SEARCH Task Order No. GHH‐I‐00‐07‐00023‐00, beginning August 27, 2010. The content and views expressed here are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or policy of USAID or the U.S. Government.This report presents findings from a qualitative study examining vulnerability to HIV and the prevention needs of men involved in intimate relationships with female sex workers (FSW) in Kumasi, Ghana. The study was conducted by a collaborative team of researchers from Boston University’s Center for Global and Health and Development (CGHD), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and FHI 360. It is the last of nine small qualitative studies conducted under the Operations Research among Key Populations in Ghana project designed to gather in-depth, personal information from members of key populations about their vulnerability to HIV and other threats to their health and well-being. This project was funded by the United States Agency for International Development Ghana in collaboration with the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC). The findings will be used to strengthen harm reduction interventions for sex workers and their intimate partners. Intimate partners of FSW are a population of growing interest in Ghana, where interventions focused on sex workers and both their paying and non-paying partners are being implemented by FHI 360 and other local organizations with support from the GAC and USAID. In 2012 Boston University and KNUST conducted a qualitative study looking at the backgrounds, living conditions, vulnerabilities, and HIV prevention needs of young female sex workers in Kumasi. Most (22/24) of the young women participating in in-depth interviews reported having a boyfriend or intimate partner, and half reported either never or only sometimes using condoms with these partners (1). In addition, quantitative data from two previous integrated bio-behavioral surveillance studies (IBBSS) conducted in 2009 and 2011 provide critical data showing the degree to which these men and their female partners (both those involved in sex work and others) are highly vulnerable to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The specific objectives were to: explore the emotional, financial and other power dynamics within these relationships; describe the sexual behaviors and HIV knowledge and vulnerabilities of both partners; and document the perceived availability and accessibility of social support and health services.Support from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the U.S. Agency for International Development under Project SEARCH Task Order No. GHH‐I‐00‐07‐00023‐00, beginning August 27, 201

    THE ECONOMICS OF MOBILE INTERNATIONAL ROAMING

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    International roaming is a hot topic in the telecommunications industry. Many countries have witnessed a downward trend in mobile domestic prices. On the contrary, international roaming prices remained reluctant to follow the domestic trend. In Europe, the service has been regulated with price cap since 2007, and regulation is maintained for years to come. The existing literature on the economics of international roaming has focused on theoretical modelling, which assumes a uniform retail price (i.e. common across visited networks). The main finding is that wholesale and retail prices rise with the number of visited networks. Additionally, vertical merger is found unprofitable; and home network steering does not cause downward pressure on wholesale prices. We found that the assumption of uniform retail pricing leads to results that are inconsistent with wholesale competition because visited networks appear in the demand as complements rather than substitutes. We present theoretical models that match the existing literature’s findings, and compare results to the case whereby the retail price is discriminatory (i.e. differs by visited networks). With discriminatory retail, substitutability of networks reduces prices, and the incentive for vertical merger exists. In a steering game, steering is found able to reduce wholesale prices; and networks alliances are formed in equilibrium. The empirical literature on international roaming is limited to few industry studies. We use an aggregated dataset on prices and quantities for networks visited by roamers from one major mobile provider whose subscribers travel a lot across the world, Etisalat. The study period witnessed a retail price shift from discriminatory to uniform. The main findings are: (1) competition, as measured by the number of visited networks, reduces wholesale price; (2) traffic steering is effective, especially towards preferred networks (alliance and cross-owned); (3) only alliance networks offer wholesale discounts; and (4) demand is more elastic than crude industry studies

    Challenging prospects for roam like at home. Bruegel Working Paper Issue 3 2016

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    On 25 November 2015, the European Union enacted new rules for international mobile roaming (IMR) under Regulation 2015/2120, which seeks to implement a Roam Like at Home (RLAH) regime among the member states of the European Union. Questions remain, however, as to whether it is possible to implement RLAH without mandating below-cost pricing and thus introducing significant regulatory and economic distortions

    Accelerating Heuristic Search for AI Planning

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    AI Planning is an important research field. Heuristic search is the most commonly used method in solving planning problems. Despite recent advances in improving the quality of heuristics and devising better search strategies, the high computational cost of heuristic search remains a barrier that severely limits its application to real world problems. In this dissertation, we propose theories, algorithms and systems to accelerate heuristic search for AI planning. We make four major contributions in this dissertation. First, we propose a state-space reduction method called Stratified Planning to accelerate heuristic search. Stratified Planning can be combined with any heuristic search to prune redundant paths in state space, without sacrificing the optimality and completeness of search algorithms. Second, we propose a general theory for partial order reduction in planning. The proposed theory unifies previous reduction algorithms for planning, and ushers in new partial order reduction algorithms that can further accelerate heuristic search by pruning more nodes in state space than previously proposed algorithms. Third, we study the local structure of state space and propose using random walks to accelerate plateau exploration for heuristic search. We also implement two state-of-the-art planners that perform competitively in the Seventh International Planning Competition. Last, we utilize cloud computing to further accelerate search for planning. We propose a portfolio stochastic search algorithm that takes advantage of the cloud. We also implement a cloud-based planning system to which users can submit planning tasks and make full use of the computational resources provided by the cloud. We push the state of the art in AI planning by developing theories and algorithms that can accelerate heuristic search for planning. We implement state-of-the-art planning systems that have strong speed and quality performance

    Regulation of international mobile roaming in the Southern African Development Community

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    The Southern African Development Community (SADC) experiences high levels of cross border human traffic due to trade, cultural and language links across the fifteen countries. Technological advances and increased domestic competition have contributed to lower domestic retail tariffs for mobile cellular services. Unfortunately, this has not extended to international mobile roaming (IMR) retail tariffs which remain unacceptably high. These high tariffs have attracted harsh criticism from commentators and prompted calls for regulatory intervention. This study investigates the level of international mobile roaming (IMR) retail tariffs, usage and demand elasticity. It further considers whether competition or regulation play a greater role in reducing these tariffs and whether regulatory intervention is likely to reduce competition. The research took the form of a quantitative study and used an online survey questionnaire as the data collection tool. The results of the study confirmed that international mobile roaming (IMR) retail tariffs are indeed high, resulting in poor uptake by cost conscious travellers who pay for their own cellular usage. The finding that competition plays a greater role than regulation in reducing IMR retail tariffs is not significant. It was concluded that neither competition nor regulation are sufficient on their own to provide increased social welfare. The best result is obtained when competition is allowed to flourish, underpinned by an enabling regulatory framework. CopyrightDissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte

    Providing telecommunication to the tea plantations in Bangladesh

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    Analyzing all the existing telecommunication technologies in Bangladesh, discussing their merits and demerits, and choosing the most viable option in order to provide a network system to the tea planters for facilitating updating of necessary information of the tea estates to the head offices and vice versa

    Holland City News, Volume 92, Number 25: June 20, 1963

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    Newspaper published in Holland, Michigan, from 1872-1977, to serve the English-speaking people in Holland, Michigan. Purchased by local Dutch language newspaper, De Grondwet, owner in 1888.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/hcn_1963/1023/thumbnail.jp

    How to improve transition in next decade

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    Essays on Environmental Economics

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    This dissertation comprises three essays on environmental economics. The first chapter studies the influence of media, both traditional TV news and emerging internet news, on U.S. foreign disaster aid. The Office of U.S. Foreign Disasters responds to an average of 65 disasters every year, spending 2.8 billion dollars. Due to the high stakes, it is essential that relief expenditure is determined by need rather than other factors. The results show a weak crowding out effect in TV news coverage of disasters and other breaking news. However, contrary to a previous study, OFDA relief during 2000-2019 is affected by the severity of the disasters but not by the attention they receive online or in TV news or the intensity of other contemporaneous breaking news. In the second chapter, I study rational inattention in an overwhelming information environment, one of the main explanations for the existence of the energy efficiency gap. I conducted an incentivized laboratory experiment simulating a car purchase decision using complex fuel efficiency information. I evaluated the effectiveness of the EPA’s information provision effort and used an inventive-compatible mechanism to elicit subjects’ true willingness to pay for fuel economy labels, a fuel cost calculator and knowledge of their financially optimal car. When presented with the fuel economy information in basic text format, around half of the subjects chose suboptimal options. Fuel economy labels do not improve subjects’ decisions, but the fuel cost calculator significantly reduces their misoptimization by 62%. The third chapter, coauthored with Dr. Garth Heutel, studies the incidence of pollution taxes and their impact on unemployment in an analytical general equilibrium efficiency wage model. We find closed-form solutions for the effect of a pollution tax on unemployment, factor prices, and output prices, and we identify and isolate different channels through which these general equilibrium effects arise. An effect arising from the efficiency wage specification depends on the form of the workers\u27 effort function. Numerical simulations further illustrate our results and show that this efficiency wage effect can fully offset the sources-side incidence results found in models that omit it

    Analysis and Experimental Verification of Diameter Attacks in Long Term Evolution Networks

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    In cellular networks, the roaming interconnection was designed when there were only a few trusted parties and security was not a major concern or design criteria. Most of the roaming interconnections today are still based on the decades-old SS7 and the lack of security is being blamed for several vulnerabilities. Recent research indicates that the roaming interconnection has been widely misused for gaining access to the core network. Several attacks have been demonstrated by malicious attackers and other unauthorized entities such as intelligence agencies by exploiting the SS7 signaling protocol. Some operators moved to the more modern LTE (Long Term Evolution) and Diameter Signaling for high-speed data roaming and enhanced security. While LTE offers very high quality and resilience over the air security, it still requires special security capabilities and features to secure the core network against attacks targeting the roaming interconnection. This thesis analyses and identifies attacks that exploit the roaming interconnection and Diameter signaling used in LTE networks. The attacks are analyzed in accordance with the mobile network protocol standards and signaling scenarios. The attacks are also implemented in a test LTE network of a global operator. This thesis also focuses on potential countermeasures to mitigate the identified attacks
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