Timely, Reliable, and Cost-Effective Internet Transport Service using Structured Overlay Networks

Emerging applications such as remote manipulation and remote robotic surgery require communication that is both timely and reliable, but the Internet natively supports only communication that is either completely reliable with no timeliness guarantees (e.g. TCP) or timely with best-effort reliability (e.g. UDP). We present an overlay transport service that can provide highly reliable communication while meeting stringent timeliness guarantees (e.g. 130ms round-trip latency across the US) over the Internet. To enable routing schemes that can support the necessary timeliness and reliability, we introduce dissemination graphs, providing a unified framework for specifying routing schemes ranging from a single path, to multiple disjoint paths, to arbitrary graphs. We conduct an extensive analysis of real-world network data, finding that a routing approach using two disjoint paths performs well in most cases, and that cases where two disjoint paths do not perform well typically involve problems around a source or destination. Based on this analysis, we develop a timely dissemination-graph-based routing method that can add targeted redundancy in problematic areas of the network. We show that this approach covers nearly 99% of the performance gap between a traditional single-path approach and an optimal (but prohibitively expensive) scheme, while two dynamic disjoint paths cover about 70% of this gap, and two static disjoint paths cover about 40%. This performance improvement is obtained at an overall cost increase of less than 1% compared with using two disjoint paths. The implementation of the dissemination-graph-based Internet transport service is available in the open-source Spines overlay messaging framework (www.spines.org)

Operational Plan for HMIS Rollout to be Read in Conjunction with the MoH&SW Document of October 2007

The MoH&SW, with a consortium of partners, in October 2007, developed a Proposal to Strengthen the HMIS in Tanzania. This document builds on that proposal to develop a budgeted 6‐month plan to kick‐start implementation of the Revised MTUHA in one region and at national level, to develop a replicable model that can be scaled up to other regions as additional funds become available. The overall HMIS revision process will ensure that, within a period of five years the HMIS will be functional in all 21 regions of the country, in a phased manner Six months intensive systems and database development in Mtwara region Eighteen months implementation in one region in each of the six zones Within 5 years, National rollout to every region The initial six months implementation process, described in depth in this document, will use action research and participatory development methodology that will integrate the six work packages in the HMIS document, in line with the HSSP III proposals for strengthening M&E. A number of dedicated teams will roll out the HMIS, develop a toolkit for implementation in other regions and produce a modern web based data warehouse. The project logframe aims to provide quality routine data for monitoring MDGs and the NHSSPIII by producing five outputs – HMIS revision, HMIS implementation, Capacity development, the DHIS software and action research. Terms of reference are developed for each of the HMIS teams, based on the activities in the logframe – Indicator and dataset revision, HMIS design, Database development and training team. An action‐based budget of US$15 million is provided for three years that envisages The model region will cost$1,25 million for the first year, including the rollout activities, the development of training material, adaptation of software etc. The other six regions will cost 1,05million for first year; all regions will reduce to $500,000 for the second year and$300,000 in the third year. National level costs will reduce from $700,000 to 500,000 a year as local consultants replace international technical assistance and Ministry takes over running expenses. Rollout for the other 14 regions will need a separate budgeting process after the six regions, but should be in the range of 1,8 million a year (or less if costs can be reduced). The activities in the model initiation region will cost$1,2 million for the first year, including the rollout activities, the development of training material, adaptation of software et

UAV-assisted data dissemination based on network coding in vehicular networks

Efficient and emergency data dissemination service in vehicular networks (VN) is very important in some situations, such as earthquakes, maritime rescue, and serious traffic accidents. Data loss frequently occurs in the data transition due to the unreliability of the wireless channel and there are no enough available UAVs providing data dissemination service for the large disaster areas. UAV with an adjustable active antenna can be used in light of the situation. However, data dissemination assisted by UAV with the adjustable active antenna needs corresponding effective data dissemination framework. A UAV-assisted data dissemination method based on network coding is proposed. First, the graph theory to model the state of the data loss of the vehicles is used; the data dissemination problem is transformed as the maximum clique problem of the graph. With the coverage of the directional antenna being limited, a parallel method to find the maximum clique based on the region division is proposed. Lastly, the method\u27s effectiveness is demonstrated by the simulation; the results show that the solution proposed can accelerate the solving process of finding the maximum clique and reduce the number of UAV broadcasts. This manuscript designs a novel scheme for the UAV-assisted data dissemination in vehicular networks based on network coding. The graph theory is used to model the state of the data loss of the vehicles. With the coverage of the directional antenna being limited, then a parallel method is proposed to find the maximum clique of the graph based on the region division. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by the simulation

Transparenting Transparency: Intial Empirics and Policy Applications

Major conceptual contributions of a number of Nobel-laureates in putting forth a framework linking the citizenry's right to know and access to information with development, have already had a major influence in various fields. However, implementation of transparency-related reforms on the ground remains checkered around the globe. Further, in contrast with other dimensions of governance -such as rule of law and regulatory burden-, there is a gap between the extent of the conceptual contributions in the transparency field and the progress on its measurement and empirical analysis, which has been wanting. Our paper is a contribution attempting to partly fill these empirical and policy-related gaps. We contribute to empirics by undertaking an initial construction of a transparency index for 194 countries based on over twenty 20 independent sources. An Unobserved Component Model (UCM) was used to generate the country ratings and the margins of error. The indices comprise an aggregate transparency index with two sub-components: economic/institutional transparency, and political transparency. The results emphasize variance. Exemplary transparency is not the exclusive domain of a particular region, and there are transparency-related challenges in countries in each region and income categories. Further, there is significant within-country variation, with large differences in performance between economic/institutional and political dimensions of transparency. Mindful of the challenges in inferring causality, we also find that transparency is associated with better socio-economic and human development indicators, as well as with higher competitiveness and lower corruption. Much progress can be attained without requiring inordinate amount of resources, since transparency reforms can be substantial net 'savers' of public resources, and often can serve as a more efficient and less financially costly substitute to creating additional regulations and/or regulatory or governance bodies. We provide a number of concrete examples of specific transparency-related reforms within a strategic framework, as well as a brief country illustration - the case of Chile.

Republic of Ghana Country Strategy Paper 2012-2016

This report aims to propose a Bank Group's strategy for supporting Ghana's development efforts over the period 2012 -- 2016. Several factors make a new Bank country strategy for Ghana particularly timely at this moment. These include the enormous challenges the country still faces in its development trajectory in spite of its impressive growth in the last decade, the recent adoption by the Government of the "Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda" (GSGDA), the promising developments the country is experiencing in its economic prospects, including becoming an oil producer, attracting interest from BRICS, and the recent completion by the Bank and other development partners of a number of key knowledge products. All these combined provides an opportunity for the Bank and Ghana to lay the foundations for a renewed partnership

Paradigm shift: efficient and cost effective real-time nutritional assessment technique

For several decades, nutritional anthropometry has been used in the assessment of nutritional status and growth monitoring for individuals and at population level. Techniques, equipment and standardization procedures endorsed by The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and The World Health Organization (WHO) for measurements of body size are extensively used, have evolved and advanced in precision. However, new challenges are emerging with each new equipment and technique for data collection, including; difficulty in calibrating and durability of equipment, frequent observational errors, delays in generating nutritional data, relatively high cost of data collection in the field, and scarcity of nutritional experts to manage assessments and analyse data. Moreover, some health facilities collect selective nutritional data (weight and age) required for drug prescriptions only and often lack a repository for the raw data, making it difficult to assess nutritional trends for individual patients and compare nutritional status of populations over time. In the last one decade, there has been a shift towards the use of high technology in data collection for social studies, which is faster, more accurate and reliable when compared to conventional methods. Advancement in technology has seen the development of high precision digital clinical scales for measuring weight and height/length for individuals and populations with readily installed software for calculating nutritional indices and interfaces, such as, Bluetooth, USB or Wi-Fi, for transmitting data. In the proposed real-time nutritional assessment system, we combine GPS-Coordinates, anthropometric data from high precision digital clinical scales; fingerprint coded data, with indicators derived from food security, water, sanitation, maternal and child health data in the smartphone platform. Through the cellular network, the combined data is transmitted to a specialised designed web-based visualisation interface where it is analysed and presented on a dashboard in a form of interactive dynamic graphs and charts. After deriving the nutritional indices, the system superimposes colour coded anthropometric results for study subjects to display their immediate nutritional status. Subsequently, these assessment results are simultaneously transmitted through live-web to the desktops of assessment supervisors, programmers, and developing partners who actively interact as results trickle in and can make intervention decisions in real time. This efficient and cost-effective nutrition assessment system is proposed because it generates nutritional data that provides the most current nutritional status of an individual and target population; monitors trends of nutritional status; identifies priority individuals and areas for immediate nutritional interventions; and evaluates the effectiveness of nutrition and health intervention programmes.Keywords: Nutrition assessments, Anthropometric, Mobile data collection, Real-time, Data Visualizatio

mWASH: Mobile Phone Applications for the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Sector

This report assesses how water and sanitation practitioners have begun to tap the potential of mobile phones as tools to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. Coined "mWASH" solutions, this report analyzes how mobile technology applications are already being tapped in many areas, such as health, agriculture, and disaster relief, as well as WASH. The ten case studies call out lessons critical for developing robust mWASH applications. Using SMS, email, or the web, citizens and residents can remotely report conditions such as poor water quality and sewage backflow, register lack of infrastructure to aid in network expansion, and view information on the status of service provision and problem resolution

Modelling Modal Shift Preference of Freight Transport on Surabaya-Jakarta Corridor : A Preliminary Survey

The market share of freight transport which is dominated by road transport and accompanied by unbalanced of infrastructure’s growth and freight demand has created various negative impacts on existing transportation system. The shift of freight transport from road to rail and sea is expected to reduce those impacts. Research on the behavior of freight mode choice and the extent to which the user is willing to trade off the attribute change needs to be done so that the amount of modal shift will be known. The main objective of the study was to produce a model of mode choice based on preference surveys among forwarders, as well as to provide inputs for policy improvement and or improvement of freight transportation services. One of the surveys to be conducted is the revealed preference (RP) survey. The important stage before the RP survey is to conduct a preliminary survey. This stage aims to determine the important trends related to the choice of modes by the forwarder and test the response rate of respondents. The survey is also useful for assessing the credibility of the data instrument, identifying potential errors in the data instrument, and determining non-conformities in survey management before the actual survey. Data collection was done by sending questionnaires. The structure of the questionnaire consists of questions about characteristics of : shipment, travel, and modes. The results of survey showed relatively low response rate because it was only 8 respondents who were willing to answer the questionnaire. This indicates that the questionnaire needs to be combined with other methods, such as: face to face interviews and or focus groups. The results of the preliminary survey show that the main factors for the choice of existing modes are: shipment costs, loss/damage, and time travel. The implementation of the next stage survey should consider that each company has more than one shipping commodity so it is necessary to group questions and analysis based on each commodity