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Distance Education and Community Learning Networks linked by a Library of CultureHumans are relational beings with their modeled behavior as practical examples of cultural routines that they hear, see, read, and assemble on their own from communal pieces of information to answer the needs of their everyday lives (Bandura, & Jeffrey, 1973). Yet few researchers have looked at the differing synthesis of culture and generally assume that others share similar ideas/values that lead to particular events and worldviews (Lillard, p.5 1998). Informational and cultural contact zones can be created to support CLNs, universities, and individuals in a variety of roles to encourage their interactions so they might design, and challenge the fundamentals of these programs and seek to better cooperation amongst the public itself (Tremmel, 2000). By increasing communication and collaboration of educational systems throughout the community will begin to raise the standard of living for all people (Bohn, & Schmidt, 2008). This will begin to draw people out from the digital divide and increase the access of technology and information available to all people with the community. Utilizing CLNs to support and further education will allow an interconnected web of assessments, standards, and cooperative efforts that has the potential of increasing democracy by empowering people from their communities.
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Zimbabwe Infrastructure Dialogue in Roads, Railways, Water,
 Energy, and Telecommunication Sub-SectorsIn the 1990s, Zimbabwe's economic
 growth began to slow following a balance of payments crisis
 and repeated droughts. By the late 1990s Zimbabwe's
 economy was in serious trouble driven by economic
 mismanagement, political violence, and the wider impact of
 the land reform program on food production. During 2007
 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contract by more than 6
 percent, making the cumulative output decline over 35
 percent since 1999. The unrelenting economic deterioration
 is doing long-term damage to the foundations of the
 Zimbabwean economy, private sector investment is virtually
 zero, infrastructure has deteriorated, and skilled
 professionals have left the country. With inflation
 accelerating, the Government introduced, in 2007, blanket
 price controls and ordered businesses to cut prices by half.
 Despite the strict price controls inflation continues to
 rise as the root cause of high inflation, monetization of
 the large public sector financing needs remains unaddressed.
 A large part of the high public sector deficit is due to
 quasi-fiscal spending by the central bank on mainly
 concessional credits and subsidized foreign exchange for
 priority sectors, unrealized exchange rate losses, and
 losses incurred by the central bank's open market
 operations to mop up liquidities.
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Applications of Advanced Metering Infrastructure in Electricity DistributionIn the second half of the 1980s, several electricity companies in developed countries incorporated the automation of the reads of the consumption meters installed in their customers' premises. Adoption of that approach was driven in all the cases by the need to lower the significant costs of in-site reading, reflecting high labor costs in rich countries. There are several AMI options potentially viable for each of the automated meter reading (AMI) applications, covering a wide range in terms of technical and functional specifications of hardware and software. However, the technical and economic feasibility of a specific option crucially depends on the current operational and financial performance of the involved utilities, as well as on other key characteristics (institutional, regulatory, development of communications infrastructure) of the environment in which they operate. It is very clear that, in AMI, one size does not fit all. The applicability and options for applying AMI or smart meters technology to a variety of customer management issues commonly found in public service utilities, in particular in electricity distribution companies, are described and analyzed in this report.