Broadband Korea

노트 : This report was prepared by Tim Kelly, Vanessa Gray and Michael Minges. It is based on research carried out from 23 to 30 May 2002 as well as articles and reports noted in the document. The assistance of the Ministry of Information and Communication, particularly Sang-Hak Lee, was indispensable and highly appreciated. The assistance of colleagues within ITU is also noted particularly Nathalie Delmas, who formatted the report and created the cover. Both Jin-Kyu Jeong and Chinyong Chong provided detailed comments. The report would not have been possible without the cooperation of the many Korean organizations who offered their time to the reportís authors. The report is one of a series examining the Internet in developing nations. Additional information is available on ITUís Internet Case Study web page at http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/cs/. (The rest omitted

A Case Study of Electronic Commerce in Nepal

The authors conducted a study of the state of the Internet and telecommunication in Nepal during January, 2000 (ITU, 2000). Part of our charge was to recommend electronic commerce projects that would generate hard currency and increase social and geographic equity and increase rural employment. We present background on Nepal, a statement of our charge, ecommerce alternatives and our conclusions

Distinction of the memory B cell response to cognate antigen versus bystander inflammatory signals

The hypothesis that bystander inflammatory signals promote memory B cell (BMEM) self-renewal and differentiation in an antigen-independent manner is critically evaluated herein. To comprehensively address this hypothesis, a detailed analysis is presented examining the response profiles of B-2 lineage B220+IgG+ BMEM toward cognate protein antigen in comparison to bystander inflammatory signals. After in vivo antigen encounter, quiescent BMEM clonally expand. Surprisingly, proliferating BMEM do not acquire germinal center (GC) B cell markers before generating daughter BMEM and differentiating into plasma cells or form structurally identifiable GCs. In striking contrast to cognate antigen, inflammatory stimuli, including Toll-like receptor agonists or bystander T cell activation, fail to induce even low levels of BMEM proliferation or differentiation in vivo. Under the extreme conditions of adjuvanted protein vaccination or acute viral infection, no detectable bystander proliferation or differentiation of BMEM occurred. The absence of a BMEM response to nonspecific inflammatory signals clearly shows that BMEM proliferation and differentiation is a process tightly controlled by the availability of cognate antigen

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Evaluation of e-readiness indices for Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliographyThe report aims to contribute to a better understanding of the different indices of e-Readiness and their application in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Different institutions have used indices of e-Readiness" in search to quantify a country's preparedness for the Information Society. These indices are composed of different indicators that are based on various statistics. The weight of each component of the index, as well as the chosen statistics, differs among indices. In the majority of cases, studies of e-Readiness conclude with a "ranking", listing countries more or less advanced on their way towards the Information Society (or aspects of it). Many of these indices were created during years 2001-2003 with an annual frequency, which means that in some cases it is already possible to have three or four consecutive years of these rankings, showing comparable time series. After reviewing the main e-Readiness Indices in chapter two, the third chapter of this report identifies if a general theoretical framework exists that supports the different indices and explains the implications in relation to the index. In the fourth chapter, a comparative analysis on methodology, practical limitations and measurement implications is carried out. The fifth chapter constitutes a comparative analysis at regional and subregional level (South Cone, Andean Community, Central America, the Caribbean). It also presents an analysis of each of the 33 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) member countries, analyzing the differences in the positions that a country has in different indices, including characteristics and shortcomings of the indices. Finally, the sixth chapter presents some recommendations about the theoretical efforts that should be done in this area, including a critical reflection about the composition of e-Readiness indices. The study covers 18 countries in Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela); as well as 15 countries of the Caribbean (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominican, Granada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, San Vicente and the Grenadines, Santa Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago). These are the countries that elaborated and approved the Regional Plan of Action for the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean, eLAC2007. This study has been carried out to support action item 26 of eLAC2007, especially goal 26.2, which calls for: "Elaborate comparative studies on the economic and social impact of ICTs, particularly in reference to previously agreed national and international development goals…".

Is the Internet mobile? Measurements from the Asia-Pacific region

Analysis of mobile Internet trends presents difficulties. One problem is the lack of comparable data within and across countries. There are no standard indicators and few operators report meaningful numbers regarding subscriptions or usage. Government statistical offices and telecommunication policy-makers have also been slow to collect and disseminate statistics surrounding mobile Internet use. Another confusion surrounding the mobile Internet is the diversity of mobile systems that use different terms to mean the same thing. This paper uses actual data as examples from developed economies in the Asia-Pacific region before proposing standard mobile Internet indicators that can assist inter-country comparability and enhance understanding of trends.Mobile Cellular Internet Standard Subscriptions Asia-Pacific

Mobile cellular communications in the Southern African region

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries have mobile markets ranging from one of the world's largest GSM networks to fledging new services. Market structures, the extent of competition and the scope of regulation also vary widely. South Africa dominates regional cellular development with over 90% of SADCs nearly three million subscribers. Major factors driving cellular growth are: 1. Substitution for fixed line for customers on waiting lists. 2. The attractiveness of "prepaid", especially for people without credit options. 3. The potential for roaming. Regulation has been light-handed and not consistent across the region, missing a number of opportunities to boost mobile cellular access through license conditions, competition and tariff limitations. If all tariffs fell to the lowest level in the region, then the number of subscribers (excluding South Africa) by the year 2005 could be nearly four times the estimate at current tariffs. With the effective regulation and market stimulation, the region's mobile subscribers could exceed the number of fixed subscribers in only a few years.Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mobile Cellular

Cost effectiveness analysis of homeporting an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea

http://archive.org/details/costeffectivenes00worlNANAN