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A quantized probability distribution is defined for a sequence of digital data produced by a Bernoulli source. From it, both a grouped distribution and a histogram are obtained. Their entropies are considered, and relationships between them are derived. Some applications are described, and a commentary about microscopic uncertainty versus macroscopic information is presented, with a related entropic modulation factor.

Higher education institutions around the world have increasingly come to see information and communication technology (ICT) as vital to the business of teaching and learning. Institutions invest a considerable amount of time and resources to erecting the appropriate institutional infrastructure, creating policy and practice, instituting strategy, training faculty, and building the capacity of technology staff. However, in under-resourced regions of the world, such as Africa, ICT, the availability and use of, has several challenges to overcome: a lack of institutional infrastructure, sufficient bandwidth, and limited capacity to employ ICT in the research process or the classroom. Universities report inadequate funding, poor management and infrastructure, resistance to change, inadequate training, and high costs associated with effective ICT use. Moreover, critiques of Western technopositivism surface misgivings related to the performance outcomes and appropriateness of ICT adoption in Africa. In this chapter, the author will explore the work of international organizations and regional and national research and education networks in the diffusion of ICT discourse, consider on-the-ground adoptions and innovation at universities in Nigeria, and reflect on the suitability and sustainability of technology adoption, all within an ICT for development (ICT4D) framework that lenses the evolution of technological applications in higher education. This chapter is significant in that it connects African higher education to ICT4D and frames the various discourses, policy landscapes and practice arenas, as they relate to international actors, continental initiatives, networks, universities, and faculty.

This study aims to investigate the daily performance of the proposed microgrid (MG) that comprises photovoltaic, wind turbines and is connected to the main grid. The load demand is a residential area that includes 20 houses.

The daily operational strategy of the proposed MG allows to vend and procure utterly between the main grid and MG. The smart metre of every consumer provides the supplier with the daily consumption pattern which is amended by demand side management (DSM). The daily operational cost (DOC) CO2 emission and other measures are utilized to evaluate the system performance. A grey wolf optimizer was employed to minimize DOC including the cost of procuring energy from the main grid, the emission cost and the revenue of sold energy to the main grid.

The obtained results of winter and summer days revealed that DSM significantly improved the system performance from the economic and environmental perspectives. With DSM, DOC on winter day was −26.93 ($/kWh) and on summer day, DOC was 10.59 ($/kWh). While without considering DSM, DOC on winter day was −25.42 ($/kWh) and on summer day DOC was 14.95 ($/kWh).

As opposed to previous research that predominantly addressed the long-term operation, the value of the proposed research is to investigate the short-term operation (24-hour) of MG that copes with vital contingencies associated with selling and procuring energy with the main grid considering the environmental cost. Outstandingly, the proposed research engaged the consumers by smart meters to apply demand-sideDSM, while the previous studies largely focused on supply side management.

This paper aims to present the research methodology for the global study “Landscape of public access to ICT in 25 countries” (referred to as the Landscape study), a study conducted in 2007‐2009 by the University of Washington's Center for Information and Society, with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The study looked at public access venues (public libraries, telecenters, cybercafés, other) that offer public access to information, especially through information and communication technologies (ICT), in 25 countries around the world.

The paper describes here the criteria for the country selection, selection of local research partners in each country, research design considerations, data analysis, and limitations of the study.

The scope of the research undertook meant sacrificing some depth in exchange for breadth resulting in a broad blanket of understanding over a variety of topics, but not enough depth to really understand their intricacies, causes or effects. In future steps the authors intend to explore ways to adapt the research framework to apply it to in‐depth studies of a particular country or context.

This paper presents a research methodology example that is transferrable to other multi‐national surveys.

This paper aims to offer early insight into ongoing research comparing public access venues such as libraries, cybercafés and telecentres in 25 countries around the world.

The authors studied information needs and uses of information and communication technologies (ICT) in these public access venues, with a particular focus on underserved populations.

Understanding trends, differences and similarities across venues and across countries offers an emerging map that will help researchers and policymakers conduct future research and make better decisions to strengthen public access to information through ICT.

The research was done in partnership with local research teams in 25 countries around the world, and studied public libraries, telecentres and cybercafés side by side, while most studies in the past have looked at them independently of one another.

The purpose of this study is to improve vehicles’ brake stability, the problem of constraint control for an antilock braking system (ABS) with asymmetric slip ratio constraints is concerned. A nonlinear control method based on barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is proposed not only to track the optimal slip ratio but also to guarantee no violation on slip ratio constraints.

A quarter vehicle braking model and Burckhardt’s tire model are considered. The asymmetric BLF is introduced into the controller for solving asymmetric slip ratio constraint problems.

The proposed controller can implement ABS zero steady-state error tracking of the optimal wheel slip ratio and make slip ratio constraints flexible for various runway surfaces and runway transitions. Simulation and experimental results show that the control scheme can guarantee no violation on slip ratio constraints and avoid self-locking.

The slip rate equation with uncertainties is established, and BLF is introduced into the design process of the constrained controller to realize the slip rate constrained control.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss multipurpose community information and knowledge centres (MCTs) and then describes and assesses the telecommunication facilities (and hence information access and provision) of such telecentres in Bangladesh including radio, television, telephone and internet facilities. The paper then highlights problems and prospects, in rural areas of Bangladesh, of information access through the telecentres.

The paper is based on a review of literature collected through the internet, personal visits and other secondary sources such as research reports and articles.

The paper highlights the existing MCT initiatives in rural Bangladesh and discusses their problems and prospects.

The paper is one of the very few studies which focuses on the prospects of MCTs for rural Bangladesh, particularly as regards information and knowledge access and provision, and proposes future directions for the development of MCTs in Bangladesh.

The purpose of this study is to develop a new parallel metaheuristic algorithm for solving unconstrained continuous optimization problems.

The proposed method brings several metaheuristic algorithms together to form a coalition under Weighted Superposition Attraction-Repulsion Algorithm (WSAR) in a parallel computing environment. The proposed approach runs different single solution based metaheuristic algorithms in parallel and employs WSAR (which is a recently developed and proposed swarm intelligence based optimizer) as controller.

The proposed approach is tested against the latest well-known unconstrained continuous optimization problems (CEC2020). The obtained results are compared with some other optimization algorithms. The results of the comparison prove the efficiency of the proposed method.

This study aims to combine different metaheuristic algorithms in order to provide a satisfactory performance on solving the optimization problems by benefiting their diverse characteristics. In addition, the run time is shortened by parallel execution. The proposed approach can be applied to any type of optimization problems by its problem-independent structure.