EVEREST IST - 2002 - 00185 : D23 : final report

Deliverable públic del projecte europeu EVERESTThis deliverable constitutes the final report of the project IST-2002-001858 EVEREST. After its successful completion, the project presents this document that firstly summarizes the context, goal and the approach objective of the project. Then it presents a concise summary of the major goals and results, as well as highlights the most valuable lessons derived form the project work. A list of deliverables and publications is included in the annex.Postprint (published version

MIPv6 Experimental Evaluation using Overlay Networks

The commercial deployment of Mobile IPv6 has been hastened by the concepts of Integrated Wireless Networks and Overlay Networks, which are present in the notion of the forthcoming generation of wireless communications. Individual wireless access networks show limitations that can be overcome through the integration of different technologies into a single unified platform (i.e., 4G systems). This paper summarises practical experiments performed to evaluate the impact of inter-networking (i.e. vertical handovers) on the Network and Transport layers. Based on our observations, we propose and evaluate a number of inter-technology handover optimisation techniques, e.g., Router Advertisements frequency values, Binding Update simulcasting, Router Advertisement caching, and Soft Handovers. The paper concludes with the description of a policy-based mobility support middleware (PROTON) that hides 4G networking complexities from mobile users, provides informed handover-related decisions, and enables the application of different vertical handover methods and optimisations according to context.Publicad

Do Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) Processes Make a Difference to Country Commitments to Develop Agriculture?

The CAADP is a commitment of African countries to pursue economic growth through agriculture-led development to reduce poverty and hunger on the continent. It stems from the failure of previous interventions on the continent largely attributed to their weak ownership. CAADP is expected to serve as a framework that adds value to national and regional strategies for the development of agriculture. Some of its key principles that are expected to add value are the building of partnerships, dialogue, peer review, and mutual accountability at all levels as well as exploitation of regional complementarities. CAADP countries are expected to achieve 6 percent growth in the agricultural sector and allocate at least 10 percent of the national budget to agriculture. The objective of this paper is primarily to understand how continental initiatives such as CAADP can and do influence country commitment to seek agriculture-led development. This paper employs Ghana as a case study to examine whether CAADP processes leading up to and including the country roundtable process enhance the visibility of the role of agriculture as a means of reducing poverty. The study explores whether countries take the leadership in adopting the CAADP framework. First, the paper provides perspective on the agricultural sector in Ghana and the role of agriculture in development strategies. Further, it reviews how the processes for implementation of CAADP have evolved and how they have influenced implementation in Ghana. It evaluates what impact CAADP may have on the content of agricultural policies in Ghana. Finally, the paper makes some suggestions for improving CAADP implementation.Agriculture, CAADP, Development strategies, NEPAD, Participation, values,

Advancing prevention of sexually transmitted infections through point-of-care testing : target product profiles and landscape analysis

Objectives: Advancing the field of point-of-care testing (POCT) for STIs can rapidly and substantially improve STI control and prevention by providing targeted, essential STI services (case detection and screening). POCT enables definitive diagnosis and appropriate treatment in a single visit and home and community-based testing. Methods: Since 2014, the WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research, in collaboration with technical partners, has completed four landscape analyses of promising diagnostics for use at or near the point of patient care to detect syphilis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Chlamydia trachomatis, Trichomonas vaginalis and the human papillomavirus. The analyses comprised a literature review and interviews. Two International Technical Consultations on STI POCTs (2014 and 2015) resulted in the development of target product profiles (TPP). Experts in STI microbiology, laboratory diagnostics, clinical management, public health and epidemiology participated in the consultations with representation from all WHO regions. Results: The landscape analysis identified diagnostic tests that are either available on the market, to be released in the near future or in the pipeline. The TPPs specify 28 analytical and operational characteristics of POCTs for use in different populations for surveillance, screening and case management. None of the tests that were identified in the landscape analysis met all of the targets of the TPPs. Conclusion: More efforts of the global health community are needed to accelerate access to affordable quality-assured STI POCTs, particularly in low-and middle-income countries, by supporting the development of new diagnostic platforms as well as strengthening the validation and implementation of existing diagnostics according to internationally endorsed standards and the best available evidence

Innovative Ways of Making Aid Effective in Ghana: Tied Aid versus Direct Budgetary Support

multi-donor budgetary support, tied aid, poverty reduction

Integration of heterogeneous devices and communication models via the cloud in the constrained internet of things

As the Internet of Things continues to expand in the coming years, the need for services that span multiple IoT application domains will continue to increase in order to realize the efficiency gains promised by the IoT. Today, however, service developers looking to add value on top of existing IoT systems are faced with very heterogeneous devices and systems. These systems implement a wide variety of network connectivity options, protocols (proprietary or standards-based), and communication methods all of which are unknown to a service developer that is new to the IoT. Even within one IoT standard, a device typically has multiple options for communicating with others. In order to alleviate service developers from these concerns, this paper presents a cloud-based platform for integrating heterogeneous constrained IoT devices and communication models into services. Our evaluation shows that the impact of our approach on the operation of constrained devices is minimal while providing a tangible benefit in service integration of low-resource IoT devices. A proof of concept demonstrates the latter by means of a control and management dashboard for constrained devices that was implemented on top of the presented platform. The results of our work enable service developers to more easily implement and deploy services that span a wide variety of IoT application domains

Taxation of Oil Products and GDP Dynamics of Oil-rich Countries

This article proposes a complementary explanation for why oil-rich economies have experienced a relative low GDP growth over the last decades: the proportion of taxes in the prices of petroleum products have been globally increasing for the four last decades, thus making oil revenues grow slower than output from manufacturing and yielding a low growth of oil-exporting countries' GDPs. This is illustrated in a two-country model of oil depletion examining why a net oil-exporting country and a net oil-importing country are dierently affected by increasing taxes on the resource use. The hypothesis is constructed on the theory of non-renewable resources taxation. The argument is based on the distributional effects of taxes on exhaustible resources, that are mainly borne by the suppliers. The theoretical predictions are not invalidated when put up against available statistics.Oil curse, Non-renewable resources, Taxes, Oil revenues, GDP

Final report on the evaluation of RRM/CRRM algorithms

Deliverable public del projecte EVERESTThis deliverable provides a definition and a complete evaluation of the RRM/CRRM algorithms selected in D11 and D15, and evolved and refined on an iterative process. The evaluation will be carried out by means of simulations using the simulators provided at D07, and D14.Preprin