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Daily Archives: June 3, 2016

State Department releases Country Reports on Terrorism 2015

“[June 1, 2016] the State Department is issuing the Country Reports on Terrorism, which describes the counterterrorism landscape during the last calendar year and fulfills an important congressional mandate. The report allows us to regularly assess our effectiveness and make informed assessments about policies and priorities and where to place resources. In 2015, the United States faced a dynamic and evolving terrorist threat environment. The international community made important progress in degrading terrorist safe havens – in particular, a sizeable reduction in the amount of territory held by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, in Iraq and Syria, as well as the finances and foreign terrorist fighters available to it. At the same time, however, instability in key regions of the world, along with weak or nonexistent governance, sectarian conflict, and porous borders continue to provide terrorist groups like ISIL the opportunity to extend their reach, terrorize civilians, and attract and mobilize new recruits. According to the statistical annex prepared by the University of Maryland and appended to the report, the total number of terrorist attacks in 2015 decreased by 13 percent when compared to 2014. Total fatalities due to terrorist attacks decreased by 14 percent, principally as a result of fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities worldwide since 2012. At the same time, there were several countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, where terrorist attacks and total deaths increased in 2015…”

How Descriptive Metadata Changes in the UNT Libraries’ Collections: A Case Study

Tarver, Hannah; Zavalina, Oksana; Phillips, Mark Edward; Alemneh, Daniel Gelaw & Shakeri, Shadi. How Descriptive Metadata Changes in the UNT Libraries’ Collection: A Case Study. UNT Digital Library. http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc406345/. Accessed June 3, 2016. “This paper reports results of an exploratory quantitative analysis of metadata versioning in a large-scale digital library hosted by University of North… Continue Reading

Potential Increases in Hurricane Damage in the United States: Implications for the Federal Budget

“Damage from hurricanes is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades because of the effects of climate change and coastal development. In turn, potential requests for federal relief and recovery efforts will increase as well. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the magnitude of the increases in hurricane damage and the associated amounts of… Continue Reading

The Little Green Data Book 2016

World Bank new release: “The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 articulate a new global development agenda to eradicate poverty and shift the world onto a sustainable development path by 2030. The 17 SDGs and their 169 targets are designed as a web of inter-relationships and dependencies, where progress towards one goal can enhance… Continue Reading

State of Embedded Analytics Report 2016

“Logi Analytics, the leader in self-service analytics, today released findings from its fourth annual State of Embedded Analytics Report, [reg req’d] which found that the adoption rate of embedded analytics among business users is twice that of traditional BI tools. The report, which studied how organizations embed business intelligence and analytics inside their software applications,… Continue Reading

Scanning and Imaging Shipping Containers Overseas: Costs and Alternatives

Scanning and Imaging Shipping Containers Overseas: Costs and Alternatives, CBO, June 2, 2016: “Each year, about 12 million shipping containers enter U.S. ports. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, concern arose that terrorists might use containers to smuggle weapons of mass destruction—particularly nuclear weapons—into the country. To reduce that threat, the federal government implemented several security… Continue Reading

Infographic: Four in Ten Electric Power Generation Establishments

“Statistics from the 2014 County Business Patterns indicate 43 percent of electric power generation establishments convert renewable energy. One of the visualizations shows a distribution of the electric power generation industries (such as nuclear and hydroelectric) by the number of establishments and the corresponding renewable/nonrenewable split (as classified by the Department of Energy.) Also included in this… Continue Reading