This paper targets individuals and organizations engaged in providing ICT literacy education. It offers an analysis of ICT usage in Asia-Pacific countries and defines measures for promoting ICT literacy development in the region. The e-publication was released in 2008 by the UNESCO Office in Bangkok, Thailand.

Ireland has moved from a scientific backwater of Europe to develop a vibrant effort to innovate industrially based on advances in the life sciences. In this special supplement of TheScientist.com (July 2008), the process of this transformation is reviewed and the current situation is described. The supplement has a number of articles by Irish experts, divided into three sections: Policy, Industry, and Research. Given the number of developing nations that seek to learn from the Irish success, thi more...

'Rolf Janke of SAGE Reference reports back on some of the e-book and e-reference discussions at the London Book Fair.' Research Information: June / July 2008.

India is undergoing rapid economic change with sustained high growth rates for more than a decade making skills increasingly scarce. This has brought about a substantial increase in demand for skilled labor. Despite significant improvements in the education system, it has not been able to achieve similar rapid pace of change as the national economy. As a consequence skilled labor is becoming scarce. Returns to education, in particular to Higher education, are rising. Labor costs are rising, erod more...

by Yingling Liu on June 30, 2008
China's recent plastic bag ban has been immediately accepted by consumers. In a country where billions of plastic bags are used each day, the government's top-down policy move will likely benefit the country's environment and energy security well before market forces or consumer-led efforts are able to achieve similar impact.
The ban prohibits shops, supermarkets, and sales outlets from handing out free plastic bags and bans the production, sale, and use of more...

K4D is organizing a regional learning program for East Asian countries on Developing Knowledge Economy Strategies to Improve Competitiveness, to take place in Seoul, July 15-18, 2008, in partnership with the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management.

The main aim of this program is to have a broad discussion with a wide range of stakeholders from government, private sector, and civil society from Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Philippines and Vietnam on how more...

Mexico's Transition to a Knowledge-Based Economy provides a broad assessment of the country's readiness to join the global knowledge economy, highlighting the importance of education and institutional reform, and of creating an environment that is conducive to innovation.

This transformation, however, is not only about shaping the reform agenda from the top down. It is also means trial-and-error experimentation to test what works and what doesn't in the Mexican context, and then taking succe more...

The paper describes and explains empirically the economic performance of four key copyright-based industries (the book publishing, music sound recording, film production and software industries) in five Arab countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon). Using the Porter (Diamond) model as its theoretical background, a survey was conducted in the years 2002-03 among 242 experts, covering firm representatives, industry and government experts. The results were incorporated into five nati more...

The mission of the program is defined as follows: “In order to capture the complexity of the global developments, especially those related to the
emergence of knowledge societies, UNESCO will undertake and draw on future-oriented studies and scenarios. This effort will seek to analyse and capture the main components and processes inherent in knowledge societies with a view to articulating a common and shared vision and to design strategies for developing open knowledge societies.” In the ar more...

The World Bank Trade Logistics Performance Index for 2007 has been published with data for 150 countries. The Logistics Performance Index is based on a survey of operators on the ground worldwide (global freight forwarders and express carriers), providing feedback on the logistics “friendliness” of the countries in which they operate and those with which they trade. It measures performance along the logistics supply chain within a country and has three parts:
* Perceptions of the logistics more...