In 2007 Smith Dharmasaroja, the former disaster czar of Thailand, pointed to the dangers posed by mountains of mud deposited by the Ganges in the Bay of Bengal. What the research below raises is the danger of soft material combined with earthquakes. Are these not high priority research areas for our scientists? In a paper published today (24 August 2012) in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Professors Dan McKenzie and James Jackson of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences describe for the first time the added factor that may have made this tsunami so severe: a huge collapse of soft material on the sea bed resulted in a far greater movement of water than would have been caused by the earthquake alone. Full report.
An unexpected benefit of our visit to Islamabad was learning that a new academic publication had been launched in December 2011 by the Bangladesh Institute for ICT in Development and the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. The working papers are listed below: * Bottom of the Pyramid Expenditure Patterns on Mobile Phone Services in Selected Emerging Asian Countries by Aileen Agüero and Harsha de Silva * Mobile banking: Overview of Regulatory Framework in Emerging Markets by Rasheda Sultana * Factors Affecting e-Government Assimilation in Developing Countries by Boni Pudjianto and Zo Hangjung * Inclusive Development through e-Governance: Political Economy of e-Government Projects in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala in India by Rajendra Kumar * New Media, Knowledge Acquisition and Participatory Governance in Rural Bangladesh by Jude William Genilo and Marium Akther * e-Krishok: A Campaign to Promote Agricultural Information and Services through ICT by Shahid Uddin Akbar, Parvez Mohd. Asheque, Shariful Islam Four out of six of the papers came from LIRNEasia/CPRsouth. The first is authored by Aileen Aguero (of DIRSI, worked up during her time at LIRNEasia) and Consultant Lead Economist Harsha de Silva. The second, third and fourth papers are from CPRsouth4.
US government gets behind big data. We agree, we’re getting into big data too. Difference is that in our countries there are not that many big data streams. Big data refers to the rising flood of digital data from many sources, including the Web, biological and industrial sensors, video, e-mail and social network communications. The emerging opportunity arises from combining these diverse data sources with improving computing tools to pinpoint profit-making opportunities, make scientific discoveries and predict crime waves, for example.
I’ve been asked about how we choose our research topics. Intuition, I answer. Lot of discussion among the team and intuition. How did we choose the case studies for the research on agricultural value chains? Here, the team assembled a lot of data too.
According the LIRNEasia’s 2011 Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) survey, stakeholders in India, Pakistan and Indonesia have identified the telecom regulatory environments in their countries as improved since 2008, the last time the survey was carried out. In contrast, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines have seen the regulatory environments decline in effectiveness, while Thailandremains more-or-less the same. The TRE Survey asks senior level stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of the telecom regulatory environment in the fixed, mobile and broadband subsectors along a Lickert scale of 1 to 5 (1 being highly ineffective and 5 being highly effective, with the mid-point of 3 being considered average performance). Seven different dimensions of regulation (market entry, tariff regulation, interconnection, universal service, anti-competitive-practices, quality of service) are evaluated by the stakeholders. This year, 349 responded participated in the 7 countries.
Over the coming months, there will be much talk about ICTs and global climate change and e waste. There will be bad and good research and tricks to raise taxes in the name of the environment. Here is a nice balanced report by the Economist: So computing does indeed have a role in fighting climate change, but that role mainly involves using computers in new ways, rather than making the machines themselves more efficient. It is time for the industry to start thinking outside the box, as it were.
According to this research finding, Google is warming the planet by giving us fast websearches. Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.
Researc h to practice is the central preoccupation of LIRNEasia. We differ from conventional researchers in our fixation on how to convey our research to policymakers, regulators, senior managers of operators and to the symbolic universe they live in. We choose our research questions and methods with this end in mind and we conduct our research on schedules determined by the need for effective communication to these key stakeholders. We measure success by whether the research that we communicate catalyzes changes in laws, policies, practices and worldviews . In this light, the SSRC organized pre-conference seemed an ideal academic event to attend after many years.