Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / The landscape of international computing is highly diverse from country to country, reflecting national differences and cultures. In addition, developments at the international level such as the post-war liberalization of international trade, and the activities of the ITU, UNESCO, the IBI, WIPO and other international organizations have done much to aid the global proliferation of information technology. However by the end of the 198Os, the world system was centralized in terms of innovation and manufacturing of information technology, and actions taken to rectify this inequality between nations were ineffective. Dependency theory, development theory and structuralism have all made contributions to understanding the effects of this global inequality and nation states have responded to this inequality according to both their economic status and their relative place within the worldwide system of innovation, manufacturing, and utilization of information technology. They have responded by throttling the supply of information technology with in their borders, its geographic reach and its applications range. These actions, combined with the undlerlying economic development of the nation state, help explain the vast differences and variations we find in information technology around the world -- they help to explain the landscape of international computing. Much empirical research needs to be done to more fully understand these variations.

Tamil Nadu will soon become the first state in India to provide telemedicine in the public sector when the local hospital in Thiruvallur is connected to the Chennai Medical College (about 40 km away) through an integrated services digital network (ISDN) line and linked terminals. Tamil Nadu cannot yet connect every district and taluk hospital to the nearest medical college because the ISDN facility is not available in many places outside Chennai. This reflects misplaced priorities in a country which has developed technologies for launching missiles and satellites and for producing nuclear bombs; provides cellular telephones, colour televisions, and luxury cars for the rich; and sends thousands of computer professionals to the United States every year. The story is the same everywhere in the developing world.

Connections 2005, Montreal, QC, May 14-15 / Information is increasingly seen as the commodity which drives both national and international trade. The legal concept of copyright can function to regulate and balance the dissemination of information to ensure that creators are fairly compensated for access to their creations. Advances in information technology have resulted in increasing interest in the harmonisation of copyright law as copying of material and transportation across borders becomes much easier and much harder to control. While owners and creators wage a desperate battle to remain in complete control of the distribution of their creations, libraries and educational institutions imagine the possible benefits of 24/7 access to information for their patrons. The important question is how to ensure the continuance of the balance between the rights of the creators of information, in order to ensure their continued production of works, and the rights of the users of information. Canada has recently amended its copyright act (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/c-42/38965.html) to further the process of coming into compliance with international treaties. In preparation for these changes, the government of Canada solicited comments on proposed changes to copyright law. These comments are available on the web and consist of the unedited submissions from 700 Canadians or interested groups, both corporate and non-profit. (http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/incrp-prda.nsf/en/h_rp01105e.html) These responses will be analysed using content analysis and informetric methods. The emphasis will be on examining how people are viewing their relationship to copyrighted works and the Copyright Act. The attitudes discovered in these responses will be compared to the published Library and Information Science literature. This material is ripe for analysis and will provide valuable insights into Canadian perspectives on copyright.

UWO Intellectual Property Workshop, London, ON, January 20-22, 2005 / This study examined the growth pattern, authorship and publication characteristics of the professional and academic library and information science literature on the subject of copyright from 1984 to 2003 based on a subject search of the descriptor field in the Library Literature database. The literature was found to have a non-linear growth pattern which appears to be strongly affected by significant moments in copyright legislation over the 20 year period of the study. Authorship trends did not follow Lotka's law, with a significantly higher proportion of authors contributing only 1 article. The spread of authorship suggests that the most prolific authors in this area tend to be professional librarians or academics who publish extensively in the professional literature. The majority of documents in this area are journals, suggesting an emphasis on rapid dissemination of knowledge. Journal publication trends followed Bradford's law with the majority of journals contributing fewer than 1 article per year of the study.

Stevan Harnad's group and our's have reported several manual measurements in order to evaluate the accuracy of Chawki Hajjem's robot program, which has been extensively used by Harnad's group. Our group has now prepared an overall metaanalysis of the manual results.

India is considered as an emerging knowledge economy; however, Indian citizens are not fully prepared to take up the challenges and opportunities of globalization. Lifelong learning helps in smooth transition in a rapidly changing workplace environment. This paper describes the lifelong learning process in the context of Indian society. This paper also elaborates how Indian public policies, particularly which are recommended by the National Knowledge Commission, supplement efficacies of knowledge economies by preparing young citizens in the country.

This is a report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) about the intellectual property responsibilities of scientists as authors. It notes "...scientists, as authors, should strive to use the leverage of their ownership of the bundle of copyright rights, whether or not they transfer copyright, to secure licensing terms that promote as much as possible ready access to and use of their published work."

Open source methodologies used in software are interrogated and then compared to the methods used in farmersâ rights groups. The use of open source methods in other contexts illustrates increasing interest in grassroots democratic movements participating in the continuing process of balance between public and private interests. These efforts provide a possible alternate framework for policy decisions concerning intellectual property.

Canadian Association for Information Science, Winnipeg, MB, June 3-5, 2004 / Open source methodologies used in software are interrogated and then compared to the methods used in farmersâ rights groups. The use of open source methods in other contexts illustrates increasing interest in grassroots democratic movements participating in the continuing process of balance between public and private interests. These efforts provide a possible alternate framework for policy decisions concerning intellectual property. (The paper is available from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_9/kipp/)

This dissertation addresses the question of choosing the best information alternative in engineering decisions. The decision maker maximizes his expected utility under uncertainty where both the action he takes and the state of the environment determines the payoff earned. The decision maker has an opportunity to gather information about the decision environment a priori at a certain cost. There might be different information alternatives, and the decision maker has to determine which alternative offers "better" prospects for improving the decision. Any decision environment that is characterized by a finite number of outcomes and a discrete probability distribution over the set of outcomes is a lottery. We analyze the value of information on a single outcome and determine the attributes in each piece of information that maximizes its value. Information is valuable when the decision is changed after gathering information. We show that if the number of optimal actions taken under different outcomes scenarios is finite, the decision maker does not require the perfect information. Further, we analyze the relation between the value of information and its determinants, and show a monotonic relation exists for a restricted class of information bundles and utility functions. We use different approaches to evaluate information and analyze the cases where preference reversals occur between different approaches. We observe that a priori pricing of information does not necessarily induce the same ranking with the expected utility approach, however both approaches agree on whether a given piece of information is valuable or not. The second part of this dissertation evaluates information in both static and dynamic coinsurance problems. In static insurance decisions, we analyze the case where the decision maker gathers information about the severity of the risk events and perform ranking of information bundles in a specific class. In dynamic insurance problems, we make a case study to analyze different physical risks that the production facilities are exposed to. The information in dynamic insurance problems involves more detail with regard to the timing of the multiple risk events. We observe that information on events that pose relatively good scenarios for the decision maker have value, however, their value may diminish as their probability of occurance decreases. The decision maker purchases more information as the profitability of the product increases and less information as the initial wealth increases. Furthermore, the decrease cost of insurance does not necessarily make information more valuable as the value is directly related to the change in the decisions rather than the cost of taking a specific action.