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Increased sensing and data collection in electric power systems from utility to minigrid to individual household scale are resulting in an explosion of data collection about users and providers of electricity services. In the push to expand energy access for poor communities, the collection, use, and curation of these data have historically taken a back seat to the goal of expanding energy access but are increasingly being recognized as important issues. We review the nascent literature on this topic, characterize current data management practices, and examine how expanding access to data and data sharing are likely to provide value and pose risks to key stakeholders: end users of electricity, microutilities, macroutilities, governments, development institutions, and researchers. We identify the key opportunities and tensions and provide recommendations for the design and implementation of new data-sharing practices and platforms. Our review and analysis suggest that although a common and open platform for sharing technical data can mitigate risks and enable efficiency, fewer benefits are likely to be realized from sharing detailed financial data. We also recommend codesigning practices with each stakeholder group, increasing legal protections for end users of electricity and using deep qualitative data in addition to quantitative metrics.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million people live without electricity. Despite ambitions of governments and donors to invest in rural electrification, decisions about how to extend electricity access are being made in the absence of rigorous evidence. In this paper, we present high-resolution spatial data on electrification rates in rural Kenya in order to quantify and visualize energy poverty in a novel way. Using our dataset of 20,000 geo-tagged structures in Western Kenya, we provide descriptive evidence that electrification rates remain very low despite significant investments in nearby grid infrastructure. This pattern holds across time and for both poor and relatively well-off households and businesses. We argue that if governments wish to leverage existing infrastructure and economies of scale, subsidies and new approaches to financing connections are necessary.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million people live without electricity. Despite ambitions of governments and donors to invest in rural electrification, decisions about how to extend electricity access are being made in the absence of rigorous evidence. Using a novel dataset of 20,000 geo-tagged structures in rural Western Kenya, we provide descriptive evidence that electrification rates remain very low despite significant investments in grid infrastructure. This pattern holds across time and for both poor and relatively well-off households and businesses. We argue that if governments wish to leverage existing infrastructure and economies of scale, subsidies and new approaches to financing connections are necessary.

This article evaluates CDMA450 as a potential solution for rural data and voice connectivity. We begin by analyzing the main strengths of CDMA450, but also some of the potential limitations for rural coverage, from both a technical and an economic standpoint. We argue that CDMA450 is a promising technology, competitive in both capacity-centric urban environments and in coverage-centric rural environments. Consequently, we discuss the opportunities of providing universal coverage by adopting a business model targeting both urban and rural deployments, and utilizing urban to rural cross-subsidization. We then explore the advantages of deploying CDMA450 using a fixed wireless (WLL) model. To this end, we explore the effective range of WLL CDMA450, and the impact of using directional antennas and receive antenna diversity in real-world commercial CDMA450 deployment in Romania. If used properly, these techniques can aid us in increasing cell radii and thus lead to substantial cost benefits.

South Korea has long been on the list of potential over-the-horizon proliferation challenges, but growing debates in Seoul about its nuclear options are quickly moving it toward the front of the US nonproliferation agenda. In particular, South Korea's emergence as a capable manufacturer and exporter of nuclear technology suggests the need for a substantively deeper relationship, to include closer cooperation in foreign markets.[55] South Korea may be the most prominent example, but it is not the only case of a US ally or partner that could contemplate nuclear weapons acquisition. Interestingly, when asked whether South Korea should develop nuclear weapons despite the possibility of economic sanctions, only 36 percent agreed, providing some evidence that majority public support for nuclear weapons acquisition is quite sensitive to potential consequences.[14] There appears to be wishful thinking about why the US might accept ROK proliferation. Some argue that South Korea's prominent international status would also deter such sanctions, or at least better enable Seoul to ride them out, presumably because countries would conclude that the risks of permanently ostracizing South Korea outweigh the benefits.[28] This "legal and transparent" strategy is notable because it stands in marked contrast with how most other proliferators have pursued nuclear weapons in the modern era; namely by trying to conceal both their intent and their capabilities from the outside world. [Extracted from the article]

The Akshaya project in the rural Malappuram district of Kerala, India is home to the first and largest district-wide e-literacy project in India, and one of the largest known Internet Protocol-based networks. Through a network of 600 kiosks, the project has been designed to reach computer literacy into over 600,000 households, and bring 3.6 million residents of the district into regular affordable access to computer use. This study uses a regional analysis of Malappuram, and its parent state, to understand the context within which the project is situated and consider questions of generalizability from inferences drawn here. Second, the authors examine the technical network itself and read logs of how residents of the district are actually using the kiosks to discuss the case for content tailored to low-income users, and the larger case of state-underwritten shared-access computer centers. (Contains 21 notes, 13 tables, and 13 figures.)

A novel algorithm efficiently develops a (2{super B-2}, 2{super B}) search tree to store 'n' entries on a message-passing MIMD architecture. The search tree uses a bidirectional ring of O(log n) processors having a large local memory. A bottom-up node-splitting algorithm requires less messages and produces lesser blocking due to synchronization compared to top-down algorithms. The algorithm permits the asynchronous performance of transformations because of changes in the tree structure from the leaf nodes upwards while retaining the accuracy of other operations.