International Accounting Rate Reform in Telecommunications

Twenty European countries came together in 1865 to form an organisation, the predecessor to the International Telecommunications Union and to arrive at mechanisms and agree upon a methodology of distributing the revenues from the international telegraph service. The current accounting rate system is a modified version of the then developed methodology for the International telegraph. This international settlement regime based on accounting rates has long been under attack by economists, policy-makers in developed countries and international trade organisations. The ITU, the OECD, the FCC and other regulatory bodies are pursuing various initiatives to reform or replace the existing accounting rate system. These regulatory initiatives are aimed at reducing the current pricing distortions embedded in the accounting rate system. In the wake of the WTO agreement, a system of traffic compensation that is not ‘cost oriented’ is not only unsustainable, it is also in violation of the regulatory principles set out in the WTO reference paper. The FCC has been at the forefront of the move to decrease accounting rates. In August 1997, the FCC adopted “benchmark” accounting rates for different groups of countries, which it considered more closely related to the actual costs of providing international service between those countries and the US. The benchmark rates range from $0.15-$.23 per minute, and are far below those currently in practice, particularly for most of the developing countries which are sometimes in excess of $1.00 per minute. If implemented, these rates would significantly reduce international calling revenues of these countries. While the FCC obviously has no direct regulatory jurisdiction outside of the US, it has threatened to deny access to the US market to PTOs from other countries that do not reduce their accounting rates to the benchmark levels. While the future of the existing accounting rate system is being debated in regulatory circles, an increasing proportion of international traffic is bypassing this traditional system of compensation. Facilitated by the global trend towards the liberalisation of telecommunications markets, new technological means for bypassing the accounting rate system are also developing rapidly.

Enhancing Vocational Training for Economic Growth in Pakistan

Training and skills development play vital role in development. The demand for vocationally trained and technically educated human resource rises with every step towards industrialisation and modernisation of production units and work premises. Therefore, skill and capital are complementary. The paper specifically reviews and analyses the status of vocational training related policies and practices and their impact on the development of human resource in Pakistan. The study revealed that there is a time lag of 3 to 10 years to harness the benefits of training. Therefore, government should plan accordingly. It also explores that there exists a wide gap between demand and supply of effective manpower and lack of coordination amongst government and private agencies. There is a need to update and revise the existing curriculums, enhance of the status of the teachers, and strengthen the Institutions. Pakistan has favourable demographic transition trend, therefore, there is a need to exploit it properly. Public and private sectors should pursue demand based policies that promote growth in Human Resource Development.

Intelligent intrusion detection in low power IoTs

Security and privacy of data are one of the prime concerns in today’s Internet of Things (IoT). Conventional security techniques like signature-based detection of malware and regular updates of a signature database are not feasible solutions as they cannot secure such systems effectively, having limited resources. Programming languages permitting immediate memory accesses through pointers often result in applications having memory-related errors, which may lead to unpredictable failures and security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, energy efficient IoT devices running on batteries cannot afford the implementation of cryptography algorithms as such techniques have significant impact on the system power consumption. Therefore, in order to operate IoT in a secure manner, the system must be able to detect and prevent any kind of intrusions before the network (i.e., sensor nodes and base station) is destabilised by the attackers. In this article, we have presented an intrusion detection and prevention mechanism by implementing an intelligent security architecture using random neural networks (RNNs). The application’s source code is also instrumented at compile time in order to detect out-of-bound memory accesses. It is based on creating tags, to be coupled with each memory allocation and then placing additional tag checking instructions for each access made to the memory. To validate the feasibility of the proposed security solution, it is implemented for an existing IoT system and its functionality is practically demonstrated by successfully detecting the presence of any suspicious sensor node within the system operating range and anomalous activity in the base station with an accuracy of 97.23%. Overall, the proposed security solution has presented a minimal performance overhead.</jats:p

The Potentialities of the Private Health Sector and its Role in Health Services Provision in the Sudan

Health care policy in most developing countries has emphasized the development of government owned health services, largely financed by government revenues. But most public health services in developing countries are severely under–resourced which resulted in many problems and limitations in the provision of health services. Over most of the period since the Second World War, attention has focused on how to plan, develop and improve yields of the public investments in the health sector. However, the efforts towards that seemed far from adequate. Due to this situation within the public sector, the private health sector appeared to offer promise means of improving or avoiding the limitations of the public sector in delivering the needed health services

International Accounting Rate Reform in Telecommunications

Twenty European countries came together in 1865 to form an organisation, the predecessor to the International Telecommunications Union and to arrive at mechanisms and agree upon a methodology of distributing the revenues from the international telegraph service. The current accounting rate system is a modified version of the then developed methodology for the International telegraph. This international settlement regime based on accounting rates has long been under attack by economists, policy-makers in developed countries and international trade organisations. The ITU, the OECD, the FCC and other regulatory bodies are pursuing various initiatives to reform or replace the existing accounting rate system. These regulatory initiatives are aimed at reducing the current pricing distortions embedded in the accounting rate system. In the wake of the WTO agreement, a system of traffic compensation that is not ‘cost oriented’ is not only unsustainable, it is also in violation of the regulatory principles set out in the WTO reference paper

Legendre multi-wavelets direct method for solving Fredholm integral equations of the second kind

In this paper,We use the continuous Legendre multi-wavelets on the interval [0, 1) to solve Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. To do so, we reduced the solution of Fredholm integral equation to the solution of algebraic equations. Illustrative examples are included to show the high accuracy of the estimation, and to demonstrate validity and applicability of the technique

Indu-Diesel and Bio-Diesel as Renewable Fuel Synthesis from Used Automotive and Frying Oils

Generally, the types of used oil by human to meet its necessary requirements regardless of its source, whether industrial or vegetarian or animal are considered as one of environmental contaminants which ceaseless due to continue consumption and continuation put forward of it in huge amounts by a large proportion of population in cities and rural areas. Automotive engines need to replace their lubricating oil after passing a distance reach to (1000 – 1500) km to ensure the safety and not affected the car engine leading to poses not inconsiderable oil quantity of industrial origin to environment, if accounting the number of cars and the amount of replaced oil by each car engine after commuting the aforementioned distance. Human need to an almost daily basis for frying the food which is eating it during the three daily meals leaving great amounts of agricultural or animal origin oils due to the large number of population. Both types form contamination because it contains a harmful or undesirable materials for human and environment together, especially if throw these oils directly without treatment. This research tackles the ability of producing two types of diesel fuels, the first one is indu-diesel which prepared from used automotive oils (UAO) and the second type is bio-diesel that synthesis from used frying oil (UFO) using concentrated sulfuric acid and thermal treated eggshell for two types of produced diesel fuel (PDF), then complete the production process by applied clay treatment with faujasite type Y-zeolite for indu-diesel from UAO and ethanol for bio-diesel from UFO and after that all required test were performed for two types and compared the results with ordinary diesel of fossil fuel origin. The results show that convergence in values of tests for both types of PDFs with ordinary diesel with a relative vantage for indu-diesel on bio-diesel. Thus, obtained a petroleum product (diesel) which can be used directly as fuel or mixing with ordinary diesel from one side, and from another side it can get-rid of UAO and UFO by economic, benefit, useful and eco-friendly method. Keywords: : indu-diesel, biodiesel, ordinary diesel, automotive oil, frying oil, renewable fuel, eggshell and PD

Enhancing Vocational Training for Economic Growth in Pakistan

Training in general and skills development in particular, not only play a vital role in individual, organisational and overall national economic growth but are integral part of Human Resource Development (HRD). Skill development may be defined as a process to acquiring and sharpening capabilities to perform various functions associated with their present and future roles [Tripathi (2003)]. Moreover, literature suggests that human capabilities can be improved through better education and training [Haq (2002)]. Enhanced skills enable individuals to be more productive and spawn more money. It not only raises the rate of return on investment and increases employability but also ensures the implementation of various development projects in the time [Booth and Snower (1996) and O’Conner and Lunati (1999)]. To summarise, vocational education and training are indispensable instruments for improving labour mobility, adaptability and productivity, thus contributing to enhancing firms’ competitiveness and redressing labour market imbalances [Cailods (1994)]