Knowledge Management
May 23, 2013
* Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy

"Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute, cuts through the noise and identifies 12 technologies that could drive truly massive economic transformations and disruptions in the coming years. The report also looks at exactly how these technologies could change our world, as well as their benefits and challenges, and offers guidelines to help leaders from businesses and other institutions respond. We estimate that, together, applications of the 12 technologies discussed in the report could have a potential economic impact between $14 trillion and $33 trillion a year in 2025. This estimate is neither predictive nor comprehensive. It is based on an in-depth analysis of key potential applications and the value they could create in a number of ways, including the consumer surplus that arises from better products, lower prices, a cleaner environment, and better health."

May 22, 2013
* NextGov: Massive Catalog of Streaming Government Data Set to Launch

NextGov: "Government data officials have nearly completed an exhaustive list of nearly 300 application programming interfaces that will allow outsiders to stream up-to-date information from government agencies straight to their computers, websites and mobile apps. The final version of the federal API catalog will be released Thursday on the government dataset trove Data.gov to mark the one-year anniversary of the White House’s federal digital strategy, the site’s administrator Jeanne Holm told Nextgov by email Wednesday. A nearly complete version of the API catalog includes hyperlinks to about 280 government APIs, listed individually and broken down by federal department and agency. Holm called the current site a “transparent work in progress.” Officials will continue to add more APIs to the list after Thursday as agencies launch them, she said. An API is essentially computer code that allows one machine to automatically gather updated information from another. A community organization could use the API for a national farmers’ market database recently launched by the Agriculture Department, for instance, to stream information about local farmers’ markets on its website. APIs were a key component of the digital strategy, which required agencies to have at least two of them up and running by the strategy’s one-year anniversary. (The official deadline arguably won’t come for several months because it was also tied to the six-month anniversary of a government open data policy, due in November 2012, that wasn’t published until earlier this month). A major goal for the API program is that private sector and non-profit developers will build mobile apps and other products off of streaming government data about home prices, health outcomes and other topics, either to serve the public, to turn a profit or both. One model for the initiative is the multi-billion industry built off government-gathered Global Positioning System data, which is used by industries ranging from airlines to mobile app developers."

* Scanned PDFs of about 800 historical documents related to phone phreaking are now available on the Exploding The Phone web site

"While researching the book...Exploding the Phone...Phil Lapsley amassed a bibliographic database of roughly 1,000 documents related to phone phreaking history. You can search this database by typing search terms into the box below. Many (but alas, not all) of the documents are available as scanned PDFs. For more information on what is and isn't in the database, and tips on searching it, please see the search help page."

May 19, 2013
* New on LLRX - Voice Dream e-reading app: Stellar for text to speech - and promising as a general reader

Via LLRX - Voice Dream e-reading app: Stellar for text to speech - and promising as a general reader - David H. Rothman reviews the Voice Dream Reader app for iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. At $10 it is more expensive than the average app, but David's deep dive has resulted in a recommendation that there is enough value to justify the cost.

* Technology Review - What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet

A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.

  • "HD Moore’s census involved regularly sending simple, automated messages to each one of the 3.7 billion IP addresses assigned to devices connected to the Internet around the world (Google, in contrast, collects information offered publicly by websites). Many of the two terabytes (2,000 gigabytes) worth of replies Moore received from 310 million IPs indicated that they came from devices vulnerable to well-known flaws, or configured in a way that could let anyone take control of them. On Tuesday [April 23, 2013], Moore published results on a particularly troubling segment of those vulnerable devices: ones that appear to be used for business and industrial systems. Over 114,000 of those control connections were logged as being on the Internet with known security flaws. Many could be accessed using default passwords and 13,000 offered direct access through a command prompt without a password at all."
  • May 16, 2013
    * The Informed Brain in a Digital World: Interdisciplinary Team Summaries

    "Digital media provide humans with more access to information than ever before—a computer, tablet, or smartphone can all be used to access data online and users frequently have more than one device. However, as humans continue to venture into the digital frontier, it remains to be known whether access to seemingly unlimited information is actually helping us learn and solve complex problems, or ultimately creating more difficulty and confusion for individuals and societies by offering content overload that is not always meaningful. Throughout history, technology has changed the way humans interact with the world. Improvements in tools, language, industrial machines, and now digital information technology have shaped our minds and societies. There has always been access to more information than humans can handle, but the difference now lies in the ubiquity of the Internet and digital technology, and the incredible speed with which anyone with a computer can access and participate in seemingly infinite information exchange. Humans now live in a world where mobile digital technology is everywhere, from the classroom and the doctor's office to public transportation and even the dinner table. This paradigm shift in technology comes with tremendous benefits and risks. Interdisciplinary Research (IDR) Teams at the 2012 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Conference on The Informed Brain in the Digital World explored common rewards and dangers to Humans among various fields that are being greatly impacted by the Internet and the rapid evolution of digital technology. Keynote speaker Clifford Nass of Stanford University opened the dialogue by offering insight into what we already know about how the "information overload" of the digital world may be affecting our brains. Nass presented the idea of the "media budget," which states that when a new media emerges, it takes time away from other media in a daily time budget. When additional media appear and there is no time left in a person's daily media budget, people begin to "double book" media time. Personal computers, tablets, and smartphones make it easy to use several media simultaneously, and according to Nass, this double-booking of media can result in chronic multitasking, which effects how people store and manage memory. Although current fast-paced work and learning environments often encourage multitasking, research shows that such multitasking is inefficient, decreases productivity, and may hinder cognitive function. National Academies Keck Future Initiative: The Informed Brain in a Digital World summarizes the happenings of this conference."

    * Survey of UK Academics covers resource discovery and current awareness, library collections and content access, the print to electronic format transition

    "The UK Survey of Academics 2012, conducted by Ithaka S+R, Jisc, and Research Libraries UK (RLUK), examines the attitudes and behaviours of academics at higher education institutions across the United Kingdom. Our objective is to provide the entire sector, including universities, learned societies, scholarly publishers, and especially academic libraries, with timely findings and analysis that help them plan for the future. The Survey of Academics covers broadly the population of academics across the UK, as well as the opportunity to look at disciplinary and institutional stratifications, offering an unusual depth of analysis. Thematically, the Survey of Academics covers resource discovery and current awareness, library collections and content access, the print to electronic format transition, academic research methods and practices, undergraduate instruction, publishing and research dissemination, the role and value of the academic library, and the role of the learned society."

    May 15, 2013
    * Data Journalism: GIJN’s Global Guide to Resources

    Global Investigative Journalism Network: Global Guide to Resources, by Kate Willson

  • "As our governments and businesses become increasingly flush with information, more and bigger data are becoming available from across the globe. Increasingly, investigative reporters need to know how to obtain, clean, and analyze “structured information” in this digital world. Otherwise, they and the news organizations they work for will miss some of the most important stories of our time. Even in relatively closed societies, journalists can bloksnow work their way from the outside in, using international data sets to reveal what’s happening in their home countries. Here is a list of resources to get you started, but we want to keep updating our community with the best resources available."
  • May 14, 2013
    * Paper - Are elite journals declining?

    Via arXiv.orgL: Are Elite Journals Declining?

  • "Previous work indicates that over the past 20 years, the highest quality work have been published in an increasingly diverse and larger group of journals. In this paper we examine whether this diversification has also affected the handful of elite journals that are traditionally considered to be the best. We examine citation patterns over the past 40 years of 7 long-standing traditionally elite journals and 6 journals that have been increasing in importance over the past 20 years. T o be among the top 5% or 1% cited papers, papers now need about twice as many citations as they did 40 years ago. Since the late
    1980s and early 1990s elite journals have been publishing a decreasing proportion of these top cited papers. This also applies to the two journals that are typically considered as the top venues and often used as bibliometric indicators of “excellence”, Science and Nature. On the other hand, several new and established journals are publishing an increasing proportion of most cited papers. These changes bring new challenges and opportunities for all parties. Journals can enact policies to increase or maintain their relative position in the journal hierarchy. Researchers now have the option to publish in more diverse venues knowing that their work can still reach the same audiences. Finally, evaluators and administrators need to know that although there will always be a certain prestige associated with publishing in “elite” journals, journal hierarchies are in constant flux so inclusion of journals into this group is not permanent."
  • May 13, 2013
    * McKinsey - Big data: What’s your plan?

    Many companies don’t have one. Here’s how to get started. March 2013 | by Stefan Biesdorf, David Court, and Paul Willmott

  • "The payoff from joining the big-data and advanced-analytics management revolution is no longer in doubt. The tally of successful case studies continues to build, reinforcing broader research suggesting that when companies inject data and analytics deep into their operations, they can deliver productivity and profit gains that are 5 to 6 percent higher than those of the competition. The promised land of new data-driven businesses, greater transparency into how operations actually work, better predictions, and faster testing is alluring indeed. But that doesn’t make it any easier to get from here to there. The required investment, measured both in money and management commitment, can be large. CIOs stress the need to remake data architectures and applications totally. Outside vendors hawk the power of black-box models to crunch through unstructured data in search of cause-and-effect relationships. Business managers scratch their heads—while insisting that they must know, upfront, the payoff from the spending and from the potentially disruptive organizational changes."
  • * Executive Compensation at Public Colleges, 2012 Fiscal Year

    Executive Compensation at Public Colleges, 2012 Fiscal Year: "Use The Chronicle's exclusive tool to explore the salaries of chief executives at 191 research institutions—and to get a sense of what the numbers mean."

  • Related article: 4 Public-College Presidents Pass $1-Million Mark in Pay
  • * Rethinking Macro Policy II: Getting Granular

    Rethinking Macro Policy II: Getting Granular. Olivier Blanchard, Giovanni Dell'Ariccia, Paolo Mauro, IMF Staff Discussion Note, April 15, 2013.

  • "The 2008–09 global economic and financial crisis shook the consensus on how to run macroeconomic policy. It reminded us of the dangers associated with financial sector imbalances; showed the limitations of monetary policy and cast doubt on some of the tenets of its intellectual foundations; and led to a reevaluation of what levels of public debt can be considered safe. This prompted a healthy reconsideration of what worked and what did not, and a debate on how to fix things, ranging from nitty-gritty technical points to broad-based institutional design questions. Five years from the beginning of the crisis, the contours of a new macroeconomic policy consensus remain unclear. But policies have been tried and progress has been made, both theoretical and empirical. This paper updates the status of the debate."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • May 12, 2013
    * GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Study Requests

    "Access to the underlying (patient level) data that are collected in clinical trials provides opportunities to conduct further research that can help advance medical science or improve patient care. This helps ensure the data provided by research participants are used to maximum effect in the creation of knowledge and understanding. Researchers can use this site to request access to anonymised patient level data from our clinical studies to conduct further research...How it works - Submission of requests - Researchers can submit research proposals and request anonymised data from clinical studies we have listed on this site. Studies are listed after the medicine studied has been approved by regulators or terminated from development and the study has been accepted for publication. We have initially included global studies conducted since 2007; over the next two years we will go back to the date GSK was formed (December 2000). In addition, all studies (including local studies) starting in or after 2013 will be included. There are currently approximately 200 studies listed on this site. We estimate that over 100 studies will be added in September 2013."

    May 11, 2013
    * NPR - Edward Tufte Wants You to See Better

    NPR Interview: "Data scientist Edward Tufte (dubbed the "Galileo of graphics" by BusinessWeek) pioneered the field of data visualization. Tufte discusses what he calls "forever knowledge," and his latest projects: sculpting Richard Feynman's diagrams, and helping people "see without words."

    May 10, 2013
    * Study - Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension

    Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension. Anne Mangen,Bente R. Walgermo,Kolbjørn Brønnick. International Journal of Educational Research, Volume 58, 2013, Pages 61–68.

  • "Main findings show that students who read texts in print scored significantly better on the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts digitally. Implications of these findings for policymaking and test development are discussed."
  • May 09, 2013
    * McKinsey - Givers take all: The hidden dimension of corporate culture

    Adam Grant: "After the tragic events of 9/11, a team of Harvard psychologists quietly “invaded” the US intelligence system. The team, led by Richard Hackman, wanted to determine what makes intelligence units effective. By surveying, interviewing, and observing hundreds of analysts across 64 different intelligence groups, the researchers ranked those units from best to worst...the single strongest predictor of group effectiveness was the amount of help that analysts gave to each other. In the highest-performing teams, analysts invested extensive time and energy in coaching, teaching, and consulting with their colleagues. These contributions helped analysts question their own assumptions, fill gaps in their knowledge, gain access to novel perspectives, and recognize patterns in seemingly disconnected threads of information. In the lowest-rated units, analysts exchanged little help and struggled to make sense of tangled webs of data. Just knowing the amount of help-giving that occurred allowed the Harvard researchers to predict the effectiveness rank of nearly every unit accurately."

    * McKinsey - Lessons from the leading edge of gender diversity

    Advancing women to the top may be a journey, but how to do so is no longer a mystery. New research points to four principles that can help just about any company. April 2013 | by Joanna Barsh, Sandra Nudelman, and Lareina Yee.

  • "We interviewed senior leaders (often CEOs, human-resource heads, and high-performing female executives) at 22 US companies. Two emerged as high performers by both sets of criteria. This article presents the interviewees’ up-close-and-personal insights. Encouragingly, many of the themes identified in our research over the years—for example, the importance of having company leaders take a stand on gender diversity, the impact of corporate culture, and the value of systematic talent-management processes—loom large for these companies. This continuity is reassuring: it’s becoming crystal clear what the most important priorities are for companies and leaders committed to gender-diversity progress. Here’s how the top performers do it."
  • May 08, 2013
    * Milken Global Institute - Two, Three, Many Middle Easts: A Region’s Economic Prospects

    Two, Three, Many Middle Easts: A Region’s Economic Prospects, Monday, April 29. [Andrew Young]

    May 07, 2013
    * Report - What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?

    "Today the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) released What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?, a study of the English Literacy and Mathematics required for success in the first year of community college. During a day-long meeting with key education and policy leaders, NCEE will discuss the results of the study and its implications for community college reform, school reform, teacher education, the common core state standards, and vocational education and the workplace."

    * WaPo - Words that last

    Words that last, by Wilson Andrews and David Brown, May 6, 2013

  • "A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years. Words that sound and mean the same thing in different languages are called “cognates”. These are five words that have cognates in at least four of the seven Eurasiatic language families. Those languages, about 700 in all, are spoken in an area extending from the British Isles to western China and from the Arctic to southern India. Only one word, “thou” (the singular form of “you”), has a cognate in all seven families. Read related article."

  • * American Chemical Society - Polluting plastic particles invade the Great Lakes

    News release: "Floating plastic debris — which helps populate the infamous “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the Pacific Ocean — has become a problem in the Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water in the world. Scientists reported on the latest findings from the Great Lakes here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society...Plastic production has increased 500 percent since 1980, and plastics now account for 80 to 90 percent of ocean pollution, according to Lorena M. Rios Mendoza, Ph.D. Some of this comes from plastic bags, bottles and other trash, or from fishing lines. Another source is household products like abrasive facial cleaners or synthetic fibers shed by clothes in the washing machine. The researchers also found large numbers of plastic pellets, which are shipped around the world to be melted down and molded into everything from plastic milk jugs to parts for cars."

    May 06, 2013
    * Gallup: Americans' Financial Worry Lowest Since Before Recession

    Gallup: "Americans' financial worry has eased to the lowest level since before the recession. Gallup classifies 53% of Americans as highly or moderately worried about their finances, down from a peak of 61% a year ago, and the lowest since 45% in 2007. The results are based on Gallup's annual Economy and Personal Finance survey, conducted each April beginning in 2001. As part of the survey, Gallup has asked Americans how much they worry about seven different personal financial matters, including retirement, maintaining their current standard of living, medical costs, housing costs, and paying normal monthly bills. Gallup then creates a Financial Worry Index based on the number of financial matters respondents say they are "very" or "moderately worried" about. Thus, the score ranges from 0 for those who did not worry about any of the matters to 7 for those who worried about all of them. This year, 25% of Americans are worried about six or seven of the seven items -- putting them in the "highly worried" category. Another 28% worry about three to five items and are classified as "moderately worried." The remaining 47% have few financial worries, including 23% who are worried about none of the seven items."

    * NACUBO - The 2012 Tuition Discounting Study (TDS)

    "The 2012 Tuition Discounting Study (TDS) shows a drop in enrollment, a large jump in the discount rate, and falling net tuition revenue for 2011 at private, nonprofit colleges and universities."

  • See also- MscKinsey & Co.: College for all - Open online courses are changing higher education. Traditional colleges face dangers—and opportunities. May 2013 | by André Dua
  • * Who Is Willing to Sacrifice Ethical Values for Money and Social Status?

    Who Is Willing to Sacrifice Ethical Values for Money and Social Status? Gender Differences in Reactions to Ethical Compromises. Jessica A. Kennedy, Laura J. Kray. Published online before print March 28, 2013, doi: 10.1177/1948550613482987 Social Psychological and Personality Science March 28, 2013 1948550613482987

  • "Women select into business school at a lower rate than men and are underrepresented in high-ranking positions in business organizations. We examined gender differences in reactions to ethical compromises as one possible explanation for these disparities. In Study 1, when reading decisions that compromised ethical values for social status and monetary gains, women reported feeling more moral outrage and perceived less business sense in the decisions than men. In Study 2, we established a causal relationship between aversion to ethical compromises and disinterest in business careers by manipulating the presence of ethical compromises in job descriptions. As hypothesized, an interaction between gender and presence of ethical compromises emerged. Only when jobs involved making ethical compromises did women report less interest in the jobs than men. Women’s moral reservations mediated these effects. In Study 3, we found that women implicitly associated business with immorality more than men did."
  • May 05, 2013
    * ABA Journal - Are digitization and budget cuts compromising history?

    Hollee Schwartz Temple: "When people say everything's online," says Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, "they're woefully uninformed." Dupont, founder of the LLMC, a nonprofit law library cooperative, estimates that of the 2 million unique volumes contained in America’s law libraries, only about 15 percent are available in digital form. That figure includes access via proprietary, commercial services like Westlaw and LexisNexis. Across the country, law libraries are trying to adapt to the digital revolution and preserve historic and precedential documents. But budget cuts have hit hard at academic law libraries, which historically have hosted some of the most robust legal collections. And the pressures are creating concerns that the public will lose access to essential legal documents."

    * NYT - As Works Flood In, Nation’s Library Treads Water

    New York Times, Jennifer Steinhauer: "Just as military contractors, air traffic controllers and federal workers are coping with the grim results of a partisan impasse over the federal deficit, the Library of Congress, whose services range from copyrighting written works — whether famous novels or poems scribbled on napkins — to the collection, preservation and digitalization of millions of books, photographs, maps and other materials, faces deep cuts that threaten its historic mission. Of the $85 billion in federal cuts for the current fiscal year, known as sequestration, half will come from military spending, and half from domestic programs like health care, research, education and the library. The library’s budget for the year has declined to $598.4 million, a 4 percent cut that is likely to slow its digitalization effort and has already caused copyright applications to back up. The worry spreads far beyond Washington because the Library of Congress — founded in 1800, burned and pillaged by the British in 1814 and replaced by Thomas Jefferson’s personal library — is home to an unrivaled history of the nation’s wars, presidencies, culture and place in the world."

    * Concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall Zankel Hall - Properly Performed Masterpieces

    "The Foundation For The Revival Of Classical Culture presents master pianist Tian Jiang in a concert entitled "Properly Performed Masterpieces". The concert will occur at New York City's Carnegie Hall Zankel Hall, May 28 at 7:30 pm. The program includes Beethoven's Sonata no.7 in E flat Major, op.10, no.3; the Sonata no.23 in F minor, "Appassionata" op 57; and Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Handel, op.24."

    * Accenture 2013 College Graduate Employment Survey

    Accenture 2013 College Graduate Employment Survey Key Findings: "Accenture conducted an online survey in the United States of 1,010 students graduating from college in 2013 and entering the job market, and 1,005 participants who already graduated college in 2011 or 2012. The survey was conducted between March 22 and April 1, 2013.

    • 41 percent of workers who graduated from college in the past two years (2011/2012 college grads) say they are underemployed and working in jobs that do not require their college degrees
    • Despite their degrees, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of 2011/2012 college grads say they will need more training in order to get their desired job
    • The study identified a wide gap between the expectations pending 2013 college grads have for employer provided training and what they are likely to receive when they start working more than three-quarters (77 percent) of 2013 college grads expect their first employer to provide formal training,but fewer than one-half (48 percent) of 2011/2012 college grads surveyed say they received training in their first job after graduation..."

    * Innovations at Microsoft - A leading edge development program revealed

    Matt Smith, PCWorld: "As far as 99.9 percent of the world population is concerned, Microsoft is a stodgy, old-guard technology company. Its bottom line is fully leveraged against PC operating systems and business software—hardly the building blocks of a future-thinking portfolio, right? But scratch that cold, conservative, pedestrian surface, and you’ll find a Microsoft that’s a veritable hotbed of cutting-edge innovation. Indeed, the company doesn't just loosen its purse strings when it comes to research and development. No, it practically throws money at really big thinkers to build a more wondrous, fantastical future. In 2011 alone, Microsoft's R&D budget reached a record high of $9.6 billion (yes, with a "B"). That’s a lot of Benjamins, and they’re being spent on some decidedly awesome projects..."

    May 04, 2013
    * Pew - The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society

    The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society, April 30, 2013

  • "A new Pew Research Center survey of Muslims around the globe finds that most adherents of the world’s second-largest religion are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. In all but a handful of the 39 countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims say that Islam is the one true faith leading to eternal life in heaven and that belief in G-d is necessary to be a moral person. Many also think that their religious leaders should have at least some influence over political matters. And many express a desire for sharia – traditional Islamic law – to be recognized as the official law of their country."

  • * How lawyers are mining the information mother lode for pricing, practice tips and predictions

    How lawyers are mining the information mother lode for pricing, practice tips and predictions, by Joe Dysart. ABA Journal, May 1, 2013.

  • "Law firms are using big data to identify which cases will be easy slam dunks and those that are air balls. They’re relying on the technology to get a read on what other law firms are charging, so they can adjust their rates accordingly. And big data is also popping up in law firm human resources departments, where tech-savvy department heads are crunching data on potential new hires in the hopes of coming up with recruits who are truly a good fit."
  • * Bankrate.com - How many FICO credit scores do you have?

    How many FICO credit scores do you have? By Janna Herron, Bankrate.com

  • "FICO: It's the most common credit score used by lenders in existence. But did you know you have more than one? That's right; the world's most popular credit score comes in more flavors than Baskin-Robbins offers in ice cream. There are older versions and newer ones; there are scores tailored for specific lending purposes, such as mortgages or credit cards; and there are scores custom-made for each of the three major credit reporting bureaus. Even though all these scores share the FICO brand, you likely won't score exactly the same on each one. "It's probably the No. 1 or No. 2 misunderstanding about credit scores that there (isn't) more than one FICO score," says Kenneth Lin, CEO of credit education website CreditKarma.com. "A consumer literally has three to four dozen FICO credit scores."...FICO produces several generations of its general risk score and its industry-specific credit scores, each one unique to each credit reporting bureau."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • May 01, 2013
    * Interview: Telling the Life Story of Ginkgo, the Oldest Tree on Earth

    Ginkgo: The Life Story of The Oldest Tree on Earth - Revered for its beauty and its longevity, the ginkgo is a living fossil, unchanged for more than 200 million years. Botanist Peter Crane, who has a written what he calls a biography of this unique tree, talks to Yale Environment 360 about the inspiring history and cultural significance of the ginkgo. by Roger Cohn

  • "Millions of urban dwellers know the ginkgo primarily as a street tree, with elegant, fan-shaped leaves, foul-smelling fruits, and nuts prized for their reputed medicinal properties. But botanist Peter Crane sees the ginkgo as much more — an oddity in nature because it is a single species with no known living relatives; a living fossil that has been essentially unchanged for more than 200 million years; and an inspiring example of how humans can help a species survive."
  • April 30, 2013
    * Best Places to Work in the Federal Government: Analysis - Government Innovation Slipping

    Partnership for Public Service - Most Innovative Agencies - Snapshot 2012. May 2013: "From 2011 to 2012, the government-wide innovation score dropped by 1.7 points to 61.5 out of 100. While the vast majority of employees (91 percent) said they are always looking for ways to do their jobs better, a smaller majority (57.2 percent) said they feel encouraged to do so. However, only roughly four out of 10 employees—36.3 percent—said creativity and innovation are rewarded in their agency. The latter two questions slipped by 2.0 and 2.5 points, respectively, since last year’s survey, suggesting that while federal workers remain motivated to improve the ways they do their work, they do not feel supported by their organizations in doing so."

  • See also FCW.com: "NASA is one agency that seems to have it figured out. Not only is it ranked at the top, but four of the top five agency subcomponents rated for innovation belong to the space agency. It's tempting to think that there is something in particular about the space mission that breeds innovation. But according to Dan Helfrich [a principal at Deloitte Consulting, who contributed to the report], it's more about a culture of leaders and supervisors encouraging employees to provide new ideas and then giving employees a chance to try them out."
  • April 28, 2013
    * FindTheData - Data Driven Comparison Platform

    "When it comes to researching big purchases—from smartphones to enterprise software—there are plenty of valuable sources online to help. However, the Internet is also full of untrustworthy, biased information cluttered with advertising influence. Instead of making it easier to choose, online information often confuses more than it helps. We created FindTheData to give consumers and businesses peace of mind, knowing they can access the most current, unbiased and easy-to-understand data. We cover hundreds of categories, from colleges to ski resorts to business insurance and even dog breeds...We obtain our information from three sources: Public databases, primary sources (manufacturer websites) and expert sources."

  • Example - Compare FM Radio Stations
  • * Paper - 10 Years Later: Where in the World is Equal Weight Indexing Now?

    10 Years Later: Where in the World is Equal Weight Indexing Now?, Liyu Zeng - Standard & Poor's; Frank Luo, Standard & Poor's. April 20, 2013. Via SSRN

  • "Often the most powerful investment ideas are simple. The S&P 500 EWI 10 years ago pioneered the simple concept of equal weighted indexing. It has now expanded in the U.S. into the S&P 100, a MegaCap index, S&P MidCap 400® and S&P SmallCap 600®. The equal weighting idea has also been applied to international equities, as well as in other asset classes such as fixed income indices and commodity indices. It has become one of the most popular alternatively-weighted ideas. While the headline cause of asset flows has been outperformance over market-cap indices, sophisticated investors have realized that equal weighting creates a different set of risk factor exposures than market cap weighting that seem to have worked over the long-term as noted in the paper. Furthermore, the concept randomizes factor mispricings in the market, and it can serve as a performance benchmark for alternative-weighted indices."
  • Related postings on the financial system
  • * Trends in Cognitive Science - The neurochemistry of music

    Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2013, Pages 179–193. The neurochemistry of music, Mona Lisa Chanda, Daniel J. Levitin. Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

  • "Music is used to regulate mood and arousal in everyday life and to promote physical and psychological health and well-being in clinical settings. However, scientific inquiry into the neurochemical effects of music is still in its infancy. In this review, we evaluate the evidence that music improves health and well-being through the engagement of neurochemical systems for (i) reward, motivation, and pleasure; (ii) stress and arousal; (iii) immunity; and (iv) social affiliation. We discuss the limitations of these studies and outline novel approaches for integration of conceptual and technological advances from the fields of music cognition and social neuroscience into studies of the neurochemistry of music."
  • April 27, 2013
    * American Psychological Association - Workplace issues

    "Workplace issues are of great interest to psychologists, since most people spend a third of their adult lives at work. Work defines people in the most basic way, which is one reason retirement is so difficult for many people. For psychologists, other key issues include matching people and jobs, finding ways to reduce workplace stress and studying people's motivation and job satisfaction." Includes content links in these areas: What You Can Do; Getting Help; News; Monitor on Psychology Articles; Books; APA Offices and Programs.

    * The Rise of Big Data How It's Changing the Way We Think About the World

    Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, May/June 2013- Foreign Affairs

  • "...This kind of data is being put to incredible new uses with the assistance of inexpensive computer memory, powerful processors, smart algorithms, clever software, and math that borrows from basic statistics...Using great volumes of information in this way requires three profound changes in how we approach data. The first is to collect and use a lot of data rather than settle for small amounts or samples, as statisticians have done for well over a century. The second is to shed our preference for highly curated and pristine data and instead accept messiness: in an increasing number of situations, a bit of inaccuracy can be tolerated, because the benefits of using vastly more data of variable quality outweigh the costs of using smaller amounts of very exact data. Third, in many instances, we will need to give up our quest to discover the cause of things, in return for accepting correlations. With big data, instead of trying to understand precisely why an engine breaks down or why a drug’s side effect disappears, researchers can instead collect and analyze massive quantities of information about such events and everything that is associated with them, looking for patterns that might help predict future occurrences. Big data helps answer what, not why, and often that’s good enough."

  • * FCW: Boston probe's big data use hints at the future

    FCW.com - Frank Konkel: "Less than 24 hours after two explosions killed three people and injured dozens more at the April 15 Boston Marathon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had compiled 10 terabytes of data in hopes of finding needles in haystacks of information that might lead to the suspects. The tensest part of the ongoing investigation – the death of one suspect and the capture of the second – concluded four days later in part because the FBI-led investigation analyzed mountains of cell phone tower call logs, text messages, social media data, photographs and video surveillance footage to quickly pinpoint the suspects...Still, the investigation showed a glimpse of what big data and data analytics can do -- and highlighted how far we yet have to go."

    April 25, 2013
    * Datascience of the Facebook World via Wolfram|Alpha Blog

    "More than a million people have now used our Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook. And as part of our latest update, in addition to collecting some anonymized statistics, we launched a Data Donor program that allows people to contribute detailed data to us for research purposes. A few weeks ago we decided to start analyzing all this data. And I have to say that if nothing else it’s been a terrific example of the power of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language for doing data science. We’d always planned to use the data we collect to enhance our Personal Analytics system. But I couldn’t resist also trying to do some basic science with it...So a first quantitative question to ask is: How big are these networks usually? In other words, how many friends do people typically have on Facebook? Well, at least for our users, that’s easy to answer. The median is 342—and here’s a histogram showing the distribution (there’s a cutoff at 5000 because that’s the maximum number of friends for a personal Facebook page)..."

    April 24, 2013
    * Pew presentation - The changing world of librarians

    The changing world of librarians by Lee Rainie, Apr 24, 2013
    at DC/SLA Spring Workshop

  • Lee Rainie discussed the Project’s latest research about how people use technology and how people use libraries, and the implications of this work for libraries. As librarians, we communicate with our users, staff, C-Level, patrons, and each other every day with a myriad of technological devices, languages, infographics, styles, and tones. Why does it feel like we are all talking at cross-purposes? Whether communicating your value to a VIP or just trying to stay in touch with your multi-generational staff, speaking across cultures, generations, and technology platforms while still adhering to the strategic goals of your library and parent organization can be formidable. This workshop presents a variety of different communication challenges (either generational, intercultural, or via technology) and looks at methods to strategically navigate them to get your message across. It will also help you hear and understand the communications and motivations of others more effectively."
  • * PBS Frontline - “The Retirement Gamble” Facing Us All

    Martin Smith - The Retirement Gamble: "Let’s say you sit down with an adviser at your brokerage or bank and ask for some advice on how you should allocate your retirement savings, or which funds you might want to choose for your IRA. You’ll get lots of advice, but chances are it won’t be worth much. Eighty five percent of all financial advisers and financial planners are really just brokers or salesman. Their incentive is to sell you a product that makes them a higher commission, not necessarily a product that maximizes your chances of saving more. Only 15 percent of advisers are “fiduciaries” — advisers who by law must operate with your best interests in mind."

  • See also The Online Investing Knowledge Gap 2013 Investment Literacy Survey and The Retirement Savings Drain: Hidden & Excessive Costs of 401(k)s
  • April 23, 2013
    * Stop Starving Scale: Unlocking the Potential of Global NGOs

    Stop Starving Scale: Unlocking the Potential of Global NGOs - by Jeri Eckhart Queenan, Jacob Allen, and Jari Tuomala, April 15, 2013

  • "Generous funders have fueled the spectacular growth of global NGOs in recent years. But the money comes with strings that thwart these organizations’ ability to create the platforms for scale needed to solve global problems.The Bridgespan Group’s interviews with more than two dozen global NGO leaders revealed both a shared desire to implement operational and systems changes that could make their organizations more effective and widespread consternation over how to pay for those changes. Fully 65 percent said strengthening their core functions to create platforms for scale remained a distant goal. For most, the biggest obstacle is funders’ tight-fisted approach to spending on “indirect costs” or overhead, encompassing everything from strategic planning and staff training to program evaluations and computer systems upgrades. And it’s pervasive. Seventy percent of NGO leaders surveyed by Bridgespan named “insufficient indirect cost recovery” from funders as one of their most pressing problems.
  • * 2013 Financial Services Industry Compliance Benchmark Study

    2013 Financial Services Industry Compliance Benchmark Study

  • "Beginning in mid-December 2012,Compliance 360 conducted a survey among compliance professionals in the Financial Services industry, over a six week period. Respondents were asked questions relating to budget and priority areas for their compliance departments in 2013. Approximately 121 compliance professionals responded to the survey, representing a variety of financial services organizations from across the U.S., ranging in size from organizations with less than $2 billion in assets all the way up to organizations with assets greater than $100 billion...Survey participants represented organizations largely regulated by the Federal Reserve Board (51%), the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (49%), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (45.9%)."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • April 22, 2013
    * Pew - Public's Knowledge of Science and Technology

    "The public’s knowledge of science and technology varies widely across a range of questions on current topics and basic scientific concepts, according to a new quiz by the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine. Click here to take the quiz yourself before reviewing the answers. About eight-in-ten Americans (83%) identify ultraviolet as the type of radiation that sunscreen protects against. Nearly as many (77%) know that the main concern about the overuse of antibiotics is that it can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. However, only about half (51%) of the public knows that “fracking” is a process that extracts natural gas, not coal, diamonds or silicon from the earth. Similarly, knowledge of basic scientific concepts differs greatly across questions. While most Americans (78%) know that the basic function of red blood cells is to carry oxygen to all parts of the body, just 20% could identify nitrogen as the gas that makes up most of the atmosphere."

    * This Earth Day, help the world by not recycling - Repair is Better According to iFixit.org

    "Last year, 1.75 billion phones were sold to consumers around the world. By the end of 2013, another 240 million tablets and 207 million PCs will be produced and shipped globally. Making all those fun gizmos has a huge environmental cost. Repair is better than recycling. Way better. Repairing and upgrading extends the life of electronics. It keeps things out of landfills, and out of shredders. So, this Earth Day, don’t drop off your broken phone or your old computer at the corner e-waste drive. Repair it. It's time to add another R to your sustainability checklist: Reduce. Reuse. Repair. Then recycle. Read the full story on iFixit.org"

    April 21, 2013
    * Digital Public Library of America

    "The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used, through its three main elements:

    1. A portal that delivers students, teachers, scholars, and the public to incredible resources, wherever they may be in America. Far more than a search engine, the portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, format, and topic.
    2. A platform that enables new and transformative uses of our digitized cultural heritage. With an application programming interface (API) and maximally open data, the DPLA can be used by software developers, researchers, and others to create novel environments for learning, tools for discovery, and engaging apps.
    3. An advocate for a strong public option in the twenty-first century. For most of American history, the ability to access materials for free through public libraries has been a central part of our culture, producing generations of avid readers and a knowledgeable, engaged citizenry. The DPLA will work, along with like-minded organizations and individuals, to ensure that this critical, open intellectual landscape remains vibrant and broad in the face of increasingly restrictive digital options. The DPLA will seek to multiply openly accessible materials to strengthen the public option that libraries represent in their communities."

    * Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community

    Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, April 18, 2013

  • "This year, in both content and organization, this statement illustrates how quickly and radically the world—and our threat environment—are changing. This environment is demanding reevaluations of the way we do business, expanding our analytic envelope, and altering the vocabulary of intelligence. Threats are more diverse, interconnected, and viral than at any time in history. Attacks, which might involve cyber and financial weapons, can be deniable and unattributable. Destruction can be invisible, latent, and progressive. We now monitor shifts in human geography, climate, disease, and competition for natural resources because they fuel tensions and conflicts. Local events that might seem irrelevant are more likely to affect US national security in accelerated time frames. In this threat environment, the importance and urgency of intelligence integration cannot be overstated. Our progress cannot stop. The Intelligence Community must continue to promote collaboration among experts in every field, from the political and social sciences to natural sciences,
    medicine, military issues, and space. Collectors and analysts need vision across disciplines to understand how and why developments—and both state and unaffiliated actors—can spark sudden changes with international implications."
  • * Engagement at Work: Its Effect on Performance Continues in Tough Economic Times

    "Gallup in 1997 completed its first meta-analysis -- or study of many studies -- on employee engagement using data from 1,135 business units. The central question we wanted to answer was whether workplace conditions correlate with business outcomes such as profit, productivity, customer perceptions of service, and employee retention. We just completed our eighth iteration of this same analysis, which now includes 49,928 business units across 34 countries, and analyzes even more outcomes, such as quality (defects), safety (accidents), absenteeism, and shrinkage (theft). Various iterations of this meta-analysis have been published in peer-reviewed, top tier academic journals and books, including a longitudinal causal analysis...what our study does tell us is that when business units have more engaged employees their probability of success improves substantially. In fact, those with high engagement nearly double the odds of success compared with those with low engagement. So, working on management elements, things like clarifying expectations, giving people an opportunity to do what they do best, giving employees developmental opportunities, and holding people accountable for quality work increase the odds that business units within your organization will be successful."

    April 19, 2013
    * 2013 Cycle to the Sea - Carolinas HealthCare Foundation

    "Imagine riding a bike 180 miles from Charlotte, N.C., to North Myrtle Beach, S.C., in three days. Now, imagine pedaling that distance only using your arms or without sight. This is what a group of extraordinary cyclists set out to do each spring. Cycle to the Sea is a unique ride that raises funds and awareness for the Adaptive Sports and Adventures Program (ASAP). This bike ride is held every spring and involves athletes with physical disabilities who cycle on hand cycles and/or tandem bikes. Each rider must obtain individual pledges in order to participate. This event is one of the main fundraisers for ASAP and allows us to continue to offer a variety of low-cost programs for youth and adults with physical challenges in our community and surrounding areas. Event information can be found here. For registration or additional information contact ASAP at 704-355-1062 or asap@carolinas.org"

    April 16, 2013
    * Experian reveals a quarter of time online is spent on social networking

    Experian reveals a quarter of time online is spent on social networking: London, 16 April 2013 – "Insights from Experian, the global information services company, reveals that if the time spent on the Internet was distilled into an hour then a quarter of it would be spent on social networking and forums across UK, US and Australia. In the UK 13 minutes out of every hour online is spent on social networking and forums, nine minutes on entertainment sites and six minutes shopping."

    * Big Data: Growing pressure on global storage by data created on Social Networking Sites

    Big Data: Growing pressure on global storage by data created on Social Networking Sites, Dr. Riyazuddin Qureshi, Yahya Mohammad AlManna & Dr Anwar Pasha Deshmukh.

  • "World-wide business organizations irrespective of their sizes, non-profit organizations and government agencies are witnessing Tsunami of data. Data creation is rewriting its record every day. In 2010; total data generated by the world was recorded over 1ZB. Studies estimate that this figure would reach up to 7ZB by the end of year 2014. Generation of such a huge volume of data may be attributed to a remarkable increase of installations and use of network including embedded sensor to monitor load, temperatures, locations, traffic patterns, etc. coupled with growing use of smartphones, and tablet computers. The amount of data being created, transferred and accumulated every second is a cause of concern as it is constantly putting on pressure on the infrastructure. This study is an attempt to highlight the growing amount of data being created for the sake of fun and entertainment. Similarly, it lays emphasis on explaining the additional burden on infrastructure being caused by fake and fabricated data created on social networking sites and online dating sites. The burden such data is adding to the cost of maintenance and analysis is the core issue of this study. This study is completely based on secondary data."
  • * Report - Big Data, Big Brains

    "This report on Big Data is the first MeriTalk Beacon, a new series of reports designed to shed light and provide direction on far reaching issues in government and technology. Since Beacons are designed to tackle broad concepts, each Beacon report relies on insight from a small number of big thinkers in the topic area. Less data. More insight. Real knowledge...Mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005, and 1,800 exabytes in 20112; growth that only continues to accelerate. Every minute, users: Upload 48 hours of video to YouTube; Send 204 million emails; Spend $207,000 via the web; Create 571 new websites. Within the Federal government; U.S. drone aircraft sent back 24 years worth of video footage in just 2009. Every 24 hours, NASA’s Curiosity rover can send nearly three gigabytes of data, collecting in mere days the equivalent of all human knowledge through the death of Augustus Caesar – from Mars."

    April 15, 2013
    * EUA Report on Global University Rankings in 2012

    Global University Rankings and Their Impact II, published by the European University Association

  • "New multi-indicator tools for profiling, classifying or benchmarking higher education institutions offered by the rankings providers are proliferating. These increase the pressure on and the risk of overburdening universities, obliged to collect ever more data in order to maintain as high a profile as possible. The growing volume of information being gathered on universities, and the new “products” on offer also strengthen both the influence of the ranking providers and their potential impact.
  • Rankings are beginning to impact on public policy making as demonstrated by their influence in the development of immigration policies in some countries, in determining the choice of university partner institutions, or in which cases foreign qualifications are recognised. The attention paid to rankings is also reflected in discussions on university mergers in some countries."
  • * OECD - Machine-to-Machine Communications Connecting Billions of Devices You or your institution

    Machine-to-Machine Communications - Connecting Billions of Devices, Publication Date, 30 Jan 2012. Bibliographic information No.: 192 Pages. 45. DOI 10.1787/5k9gsh2gp043-en

  • "This document examines the future of machine-to-machine communication (M2M), with a particular focus on mobile wireless networks. M2M devices are defined, in this paper, as those that are actively communicating using wired and wireless networks, are not computers in the traditional sense and are using the Internet in some form or another. While, at the global level, there are currently around five billion devices connected to mobile networks, this may by some estimates increase to 50 billion by the end of the decade. The report provides examples of some of the uses to which M2M is being put today and its potential to enhance economic and social development. It concludes that to achieve these benefits, however, changes to telecommunication policy and regulatory frameworks may be required. Some of the main areas that will need to be evaluated, and implications of M2M assessed, include: opening access to mobile wholesale markets for firms not providing public telecommunication services; numbering policy; frequency policy; privacy and security; and access to public sector information."
  • April 14, 2013
    * McKinsey: Innovators are using big data and analytics to sharpen risk assessment and drive revenue

    How advanced analytics are redefining banking: "In search of growth, banks are increasingly analyzing the massive amounts of data they collect to sharpen their decision-making processes. In a new video interview, on mckinsey.com, McKinsey director Toos Daruvala explains how three banks are applying analytics in different ways to gain a competitive edge...
    Three related articles, also on mckinsey.com, explore other ways banks are approaching the advanced-analytics challenge.

    April 13, 2013
    * Paper - The Downfall of Extroverts and the Rise of Neurotics - The Dynamic Process of Status Allocation in Task Groups

    Paper - The Downfall of Extroverts and the Rise of Neurotics - The Dynamic Process of Status Allocation in Task Groups, by Corrine Bendersky and Neha Parikh Shah, Academy of Management Journal, AMJ-2011-0316.R3.

  • "We advance previous research that has associated extraversion with high status and neuroticism with low status in newly-formed task groups by examining how variations in personality affect status changes over time. By building on research that emphasizes the dark sides of extraversion and the bright sides of neuroticism, we challenge the persistence of extraverts’ advantage and neurotics’ disadvantage in task group status hierarchies. In a field and an experimental study, we find that extraversion is associated with status losses and disappointing expectations for contributions to group tasks and neuroticism is associated with status gains due to surpassing expectations for group-task contributions. Whereas personality may inform status expectations through perceptions of competence when groups first form, as group members work together interdependently over time, actual contributions to the group’s task are an important basis for
    reallocating status."
  • * Book review - The Invisible Playground: Phone Phreaking and the Criminalization of Curiosity

    LA Times Book Review by Jason Brown of Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley

  • "Lapsley’s book is the definitive history of the Golden Age of “phone phreaking” in the 1960s and 70s, when these quirks in the system were the basic tools used by dedicated network explorers to keep in touch and share knowledge. It documents a strange time when the most complex single machine on the planet could be controlled with bird whistles."
  • See also From “phreaks” to Apple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s “eureka!” moment - In the days before Apple, an article on "phone phreaking" turned the young pioneers into tech entrepreneurs, by Phil Lapsley
  • * Interview explores topic of new book - Givers vs. Takers: The Surprising Truth about Who Gets Ahead

    Givers vs. Takers: The Surprising Truth about Who Gets Ahead. April 10, 2013.
    Knowledge@Wharton

  • "A colleague asks you for feedback on a report. A LinkedIn connection requests an introduction to one of your key contacts. A recent graduate would like an informational interview. New research from Wharton management professor Adam Grant reveals that how you respond to these requests may be a decisive indicator of where you will end up on the ladder of professional success. Grant recently spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about his findings, which are explored in his new book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success . In this interview, he delineates the differences between givers, takers and matchers; explores who gets ahead -- and who falls behind, and reveals how we can identify our own style and adapt it for greater success.
  • April 11, 2013
    * Consumer Reports - 101 secrets from our experts: The insider’s guide to practically everything

    "Consumer Reports magazine: May 2013 - The testers, reporters, and other experts who create our articles and product Ratings have a dazzling depth and breadth of knowledge about all kinds of products based on their decades of experience. For this roundup, we’ve asked them for their best tips—money savers, time savers, and just plain interesting tidbits. Enjoy."

    April 09, 2013
    * It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success

    "Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) is a national advocacy, campus action, and research initiative that champions the importance of a twenty-first century liberal education—for individuals and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality."

  • 2013 national survey of employers report, It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success. See summary of findings and powerpoint slides.
  • April 03, 2013
    * Research - The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books

    The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books, Alberto Acerbi; Vasileios Lampos; Philip Garnett; R. Alexander Bentley

  • "We report here trends in the usage of “mood” words, that is, words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more “emotional” than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language."
  • * Intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy

    Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy [ALA] - Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment.

  • Goal and Structure of the Paper: "In this whitepaper we present a case for exploring and articulating the intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy. We argue that these point to areas of strategic realignment of the roles of librarians in order for libraries to be resilient in the face of tremendous change in the scholarly information environment. Based on these intersections, this paper provides strategies that librarians from different backgrounds and responsibilities can use to construct and initiate collaborations within their own campus environments between information literacy and scholarly communication. Awareness of these intersections and strategies equips librarians with the insights they need to develop formal and informal educational programs that prepare their constituents to function in the dynamic digital environment of contemporary scholarship and to improve the current scholarly communication ecosystem."
  • April 02, 2013
    * May 13, 2013 concert - "Properly Tuned Masterpieces" - at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall

    via LLRX - On Tuesday, May 28, 2013, at 7:30 pm, a unique concert will be offered by the Foundation For The Revival Of Classical Culture at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, featuring Tian Jiang - Pianist and Inbal Segev - Cellist. Lynn J. Yen introduces the concert, entitled Properly Tuned Masterpieces will present, through "performance as demonstration", an argument for restoring the performance of the works of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn to a tuning pitch of A=432 CPS (Cycles Per Second), rather than today's prevalent "higher" [that is, inaccurate] tunings.

    April 01, 2013
    * New on LLRX - The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture

    Via LLRX.com - The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture: The mission of The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture is the reintroduction of Classical principles of musical, artistic, and scientific practice and performance into the daily lives of American and other citizens, especially youth. Lynn J. Yen, Executive Director of the foundation, discusses the organization's work to ensure that any young person that wishes to can meet and embrace the true world of Classical music, and that they should likewise be provided with the means to this music his/her own."

    March 31, 2013
    * New on LLRX - Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet 2013

    Via LLRX.com - Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet 2013: Marcus P. Zillman has updated his best practices bibliography of sites and reliable sources focused on the hot topic of statistics and big data. These sources are representative of multiple publishers, national and global - government, academia, NGOs, and industry, many of which leverage open source and collaborative applications.

    * Researchers find Bisphenol A from plastic bottles in oceans around the globe

    Chemical From Plastic Water Bottles Found Throughout Oceans, by Brandon Keim

  • "A survey of 200 sites in 20 countries around the world has found that bisphenol A, a synthetic compound that mimics estrogen and is linked to developmental disorders, is ubiquitous in Earth’s oceans. Bisphenol A, or BPA, is found mostly in shatter-proof plastics and epoxy resins. Most people have trace amounts in their bodies, likely absorbed from food containers. Its hormone-mimicking properties make it a potent endocrine system disruptor. In recent years, scientists have moved from studying BPA’s damaging effects in laboratory animals to linking it to heart disease, sterility and altered childhood development in humans. Many questions still remain about dosage effects and the full nature of those links, but in January the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that “recent studies provide reason for some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children.” The oceanic BPA survey, presented March 23 at an American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, was conducted by Nihon University chemists Katsuhiko Saido and Hideto Sato. At an ACS meeting last year, they described how soft plastic in seawater doesn’t just float or sink intact, but can break down rapidly, releasing toxins. In their new findings, they showed that BPA-containing hard plastics can break down too, and found BPA in ocean water and sand at concentrations ranging from .01 to .50 parts per million."
  • * Paper - Understanding Why Users Tag

    Understanding Why Users Tag: A Survey of Tagging Motivation Literature and Results from an Empirical Study, Markus Strohmaier, Christian Körner, Roman Kern. Journal of Web Semantics, preprint server.

  • "While recent progress has been achieved in understanding the structure and dynamics of social tagging systems, we know little about the underlying user motivations for tagging, and how they influence resulting folksonomies and tags. This paper addresses three issues related to this question: 1.) What distinctions of user motivations are identi ed by previous research, and in what ways is user motivation amenable to quantitative analysis? 2.) To what extent does tagging motivation vary across di erent social tagging systems? and 3.) How does variability in user motivation influence resulting tags and folksonomies? In this paper, we present measures to detect whether a tagger is primarily motivated by categorizing or describing resources, and apply these measures to datasets from seven di erent tagging systems. Our results show that a) users' motivation for tagging varies not only across, but also within tagging systems, and that b) tag agreement among users who are motivated by categorizing resources is signi ficantly lower than among users who are motivated by describing resources. Our findings are relevant for 1) the development of tag-based user interfaces 2) the analysis of tag semantics and 3) the design of search algorithms for social tagging systems."
  • * Paper - Understanding Why Users Tag

    Understanding Why Users Tag: A Survey of Tagging Motivation Literature and Results from an Empirical Study, Markus Strohmaier, Christian Körner, Roman Kern. Journal of Web Semantics, preprint server.

  • "While recent progress has been achieved in understanding the structure and dynamics of social tagging systems, we know little about the underlying user motivations for tagging, and how they influence resulting folksonomies and tags. This paper addresses three issues related to this question: 1.) What distinctions of user motivations are identi ed by previous research, and in what ways is user motivation amenable to quantitative analysis? 2.) To what extent does tagging motivation vary across di erent social tagging systems? and 3.) How does variability in user motivation influence resulting tags and folksonomies? In this paper, we present measures to detect whether a tagger is primarily motivated by categorizing or describing resources, and apply these measures to datasets from seven di erent tagging systems. Our results show that a) users' motivation for tagging varies not only across, but also within tagging systems, and that b) tag agreement among users who are motivated by categorizing resources is signi ficantly lower than among users who are motivated by describing resources. Our findings are relevant for 1) the development of tag-based user interfaces 2) the analysis of tag semantics and 3) the design of search algorithms for social tagging systems."
  • March 30, 2013
    * National Women's History Museum - "educates, inspires, empowers, and shapes the future"

    Elissa Blattman: "The website for the National Women's History Museum is - www.nwhm.org. The museum recently launched a new exhibit called "From Ideas to Independence: A Century of Entrepreneurial Women," which you can link to from the main page. This is a virtual museum that is trying to get the last spot on the National Mall. The museum currently has legislation pending in Congress to create a committee to determine the feasibility of the museum. Even though there is no building at the moment, the museum does host and participate in various events, such as the recent 100th anniversary reenactment of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade in DC, a joint exhibit at the National Press Club about the march, and our annual dePizan Honors gala."

    * Paper - Expanding College Opportunities for High-Achieving, Low Income Students

    Expanding College Opportunities for High-Achieving, Low Income Students. SIEPR Discussion Paper 12-014, by Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner. Published: 03/28/13

  • "Only a minority of high-achieving, low-income students apply to colleges in the same way that other high-achieving students do: applying to several selective colleges whose curriculum is designed for students with a level of achievement like their own. This is despite the fact that selective colleges typically cost them high-achieving, low-income students less while offering them more generous resources than the non-selective post secondary institutions they mainly attend. In previous work, we demonstrate that the vast majority of high-achieving, low-income students are unlikely to be reached by traditional methods of informing students about their college opportunities since such methods require the students to be concentrated geographically. In this study, we use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate interventions that provide students with semi-customized information on the application process and colleges' net costs. The interventions also provide students with no-paperwork application fee waivers. The ECO Comprehensive (ECO-C) Intervention costs about $6 per student, and we find that it causes high-achieving, low-income students to apply and be admitted to more colleges, especially those with high graduation rates and generous instructional resources. The students respond to their enlarged opportunity sets by enrolling in colleges that have stronger academic records, higher graduation rates, and more generous resources. Their freshman grades are as good as the control students', despite the fact that the control students attend less selective colleges and therefore compete with peers whose incoming preparation is substantially inferior. Benefit-to-cost ratios for the ECO-C Intervention are extremely high, even under the most conservative assumptions."
  • March 28, 2013
    * New Study via AT&T - Nearly Half of Commuters Admit to Texting While Driving

    "Nearly half of commuters self-reported texting while driving in a recent poll, and 43% of those who did called it a “habit.” Commuters are texting and driving even more than teens – 49%1, compared to 43%2. And the problem has gotten worse. Six in 10 commuters say they never texted while driving three years ago. So while efforts to raise awareness of the http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=23184 are working – 98% of commuters surveyed said they know sending a text or email while driving isn’t safe – there’s clearly more work to be done to change behaviors. Survey sponsor AT&T is calling on employers to help end texting while driving by taking action during National Distracted Driving Awareness Month in April, and beyond. It’s asking businesses to join the more than 165 organizations already engaged in the Texting & Driving-It Can Wait movement, and to use the policies, technologies and communications materials available free at att.com/itcanwait to help move their employees beyond being aware of the danger to making a personal commitment not to text and drive."

    March 24, 2013
    * Indexing Linked Bibliographic Data for sharing bibliographic metadata

    Thomas Johnson, Indexing Linked Bibliographic Data with JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch: "Linked Data is a powerful tool for sharing bibliographic metadata. By combining the decentralization of the web with the use of globally defined metadata vocabularies, data from many sources can be treated as a single, aggregated graph. Supporting search across these distributed data sources within the same application, however, requires considerable work in vocabulary alignment and data transformation. Aggregate systems must convert data into a unified model which must (almost inevitably) be generic at the expense of the structure and granularity of the original data. This paper presents a novel solution for representing and indexing bibliographic resources that retains the data integrity and extensibility of Linked Data while supporting fast, customizable indexes in an application-friendly data format. The methodology makes use of JSON-LD to represent RDF graphs in JSON suitable for indexing with Elasticsearch. BibJSON is used as a common index format capable of handling a wide range of library resources. Since all three technologies (RDF/JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch) share an emphasis on extensibility, it is possible to create an index of bibliographic data that is both generalized and flexible enough to handle Linked Data from multiple sources."

    * WSJ - New research shows that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence

    Frans De Waal: "How do you give a chimp—or an elephant or an octopus or a horse—an IQ test? It may sound like the setup to a joke, but it is actually one of the thorniest questions facing science today. Over the past decade, researchers on animal cognition have come up with some ingenious solutions to the testing problem. Their findings have started to upend a view of humankind's unique place in the universe that dates back at least to ancient Greece...A growing body of evidence shows, however, that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence...Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species. Scientists are now finally meeting animals on their own terms instead of treating them like furry (or feathery) humans, and this shift is fundamentally reshaping our understanding."

    March 23, 2013
    * The Economist: Google's Google problem

    "Google is killing Google Reader...What Google has actually done is create a powerful infrastructure. The shape of that infrastructure influences everything that goes online. And it influences the allocation of mental resources of everyone who interacts with the online world. But there isn't much to the real human world that isn't shaped by the mental activity of the people in it! That's a lot of power to put in the hands of a company that now seems interested, mostly, in identifying core mass-market services it can use to maximise its return on investment. Now in the short run, that may mostly be a problem for all of us. To the extent that we become worried about this phenomenon, we may go out and find back-up services or other alternatives. This will be less convenient and more costly, in terms of time and money, but those sufficiently foresighted might feel it's a better option than opening up gmail one day to read that the email service, and the 10-year's worth of communication it holds, will soon be gone."

    * Mapping the Dead: Gun Deaths Since Sandy Hook

    Mapping the Dead: Gun Deaths Since Sandy Hook Posted: 03/22/2013 6:07 pm EST | Updated: 03/22/2013 11:29 pm EST: "The Huffington Post compiled news reports of gun-related homicides and accidental deaths in the U.S. since the massacre in Newtown, Conn. on the morning of Dec. 14." [Note: there have been 2,243 Americans killed with guns since Sandy Hook as of March 22, 2013]

    March 20, 2013
    * Paper - Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?

    Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, David White, Donna Lanclos, & Alison Le Cornu. 2013. Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment? Information Research, 18,1 (paper 556).

  • "The project is an attempt to fill the gap in user behavior studies identified in the JISC Digital Information Seeker Report...Although the project continues through 2014, the initial findings indicate that students in the emerging educational stage (late stage secondary school to first year undergraduate) use smart phones and laptop computers to access Wikipedia, Google, teachers or professors, friends and peers to get information for their academic studies."
  • * Forrester - Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions

    The Forrester Wave™: Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions, Q1 2013

  • "Predictive analytics enables firms to reduce risks, make intelligent decisions, and create differentiated, more personal customer experiences. But predictive analytics is hard to do without the right tools and technologies, given the increasing challenge of storing, processing, and accessing the volume, velocity, and variety of big data. In Forrester's 51-criteria evaluation of big data predictive analytics solution vendors, we evaluated 10 solutions from Angoss Software, IBM, KXEN, Oracle, Revolution Analytics, Salford Systems, SAP, SAS, StatSoft, and Tibco Software. This report details our findings about how well each solution fulfills the criteria and where they stand in relation to each other, and it helps application development and delivery professionals select the right big data predictive analytics solution."
  • March 19, 2013
    * Electronic Waste is on the rise - check out the National Center for Electronics Recycling

    "The National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed in 2005 that is dedicated to the development and enhancement of a national infrastructure for the recycling of used electronics in the U.S. If you are searching for electronics recycling options in your area, please see the Recycling Basics section of our website."

    March 18, 2013
    * 2013 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?

    "This is the twelfth edition of the Brown Center Report. The structure of the report remains the same from year to year. Part I examines the latest data from state, national, or international assessments. This year the focus is on the latest results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) released in December, 2012. The U.S. did relatively well, posting gains in reading, math, and science...Part II explores a perennial theme in education studies—the topics that never seem to go away in terms of research and debate. This year it’s on the controversial topics of tracking and ability grouping...Part III is on a prominent policy or program. This year’s analysis is on the national push for eighth graders to take algebra and other high school math courses. Algebra is now the single most popular math course in eighth grade."

    * Pew - State of the News Media 2013

    Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism: "In the news media, a continued erosion of reporting resources has converged with growing opportunities for newsmakers, such as political figures, government agencies, companies and others, to take their messages directly to the public. The public, for its part, is not very aware of the financial struggles that have led to the news industry’s cutbacks in reporting, but nearly one-in-three (31%) say they have stopped turning to a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the news they were accustomed to getting. These are among the major findings in the Pew Research Center’s 2013 State of the News Media report, its 10th annual report on the health and status of American journalism. The report pinpoints multiple signs of shrinking reporting power. For newspapers, estimates for newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put industry employment down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 employees for the first time since 1978. On local television, where audiences were down across every key time slot in 2012, news stories have shrunk in length, and, compared with 2005, coverage of government has been cut in half and sports, weather and traffic now account for 40% of the content. On cable, coverage of live events during the day, which often requires a crew and correspondent, fell 30% from 2007 to 2012, while interview segments were up 31%. And among news magazines, the end of Newsweek’s print edition coincided with another round of staff cuts, and Time, the only general news print magazine left, announced cuts of roughly 5% in early 2013 as a part of broader company layoffs."

    * Paper - The Dietary Intake of Wheat and other Cereal Grains and Their Role in Inflammation

    The Dietary Intake of Wheat and other Cereal Grains and Their Role in Inflammation, Karin de Punder and Leo Pruimboom. Nutrients 2013, 5(3), 771-787; doi:10.3390/nu5030771. Published: March 12, 2013

  • "Wheat is one of the most consumed cereal grains worldwide and makes up a substantial part of the human diet. Although government-supported dietary guidelines in Europe and the U.S.A advise individuals to eat adequate amounts of (whole) grain products per day, cereal grains contain “anti-nutrients,” such as wheat gluten and wheat lectin, that in humans can elicit dysfunction and disease. In this review we discuss evidence from in vitro, in vivo and human intervention studies that describe how the consumption of wheat, but also other cereal grains, can contribute to the manifestation of chronic inflammation and autoimmune diseases by increasing intestinal permeability and initiating a pro-inflammatory immune response."
  • * Paper - Dividends as Signaling Device and the Disappearing Dividend Puzzle

    Shapiro, Dmitry and Zhuang, Anan, Dividends as Signaling Device and the Disappearing Dividend Puzzle (March 14, 2013). Available at SSRN

  • "In the paper we provide an extension of the Baker and Wurgler (2012) model where managers use dividends to signal firm’s earning to investors. We introduce heterogeneity among investors and firms; we also introduce investors' choice of firms based on their preferences. In this setting we study which firms’ characteristics make it more likely that a firm pays positive dividends. We show that firms with higher future returns and higher volatility of future returns are less likely to pay dividends. However, those firms that do pay, pay out more. We also show that firms whose managers have higher share of stock options are less likely to pay dividends. Finally, there is a clientele effect in that investors’ preferences impact the dividend policy. If firm’s investors are less sensitive to dividend cuts, for example, due to a larger presence of active institutional investors, then this firm is less likely to pay dividends."
  • March 17, 2013
    * Paper - The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students

    The Missing "One-Offs": The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students, by Caroline M. Hoxby, Christopher Avery. NBER Working Paper No. 18586, December 2012, via SSRN. See related article and chart via New York Times.

  • "We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource-poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply. Moreover, high-achieving, low-income students who do apply to selective institutions are admitted and graduate at high rates. We demonstrate that these low-income students' application behavior differs greatly from that of their high-income counterparts who have similar achievement. The latter group generally follows the advice to apply to a few "par" colleges, a few "reach" colleges, and a couple of "safety" schools. We separate the low-income, high-achieving students into those whose application behavior is similar to that of their high-income counterparts ("achievement-typical" behavior) and those whose apply to no selective institutions ("income-typical" behavior). We show that income-typical students do not come from families or neighborhoods that are more disadvantaged than those of achievement-typical students. However, in contrast to the achievement-typical students, the income-typical students come from districts too small to support selective public high schools, are not in a critical mass of fellow high achievers, and are unlikely to encounter a teacher or schoolmate from an older cohort who attended a selective college. We demonstrate that widely-used policies–college admissions staff recruiting, college campus visits, college access programs–are likely to be ineffective with income-typical students, and we suggest policies that will be effective must depend less on geographic concentration of high achievers."
  • * Report - Key Metrics Series: Women on Boards

    Key Metrics Series: Women on Boards, March 13, 2013: "Gender diversity improves board functioning, and may also contribute to stock price performance in certain circumstances. [A new report helps] identify companies whose boards are lagging with regard to female representation."

    * New Pew Report on Modern Parenthood

    Modern Parenthood - Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family, by Kim Parker and Wendy Wang

  • "The way mothers and fathers spend their time has changed dramatically in the past half century. Dads are doing more housework and child care; moms more paid work outside the home. Neither has overtaken the other in their “traditional” realms, but their roles are converging, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of long-term data on time use. At the same time, roughly equal shares of working mothers and fathers report in a new Pew Research Center survey feeling stressed about juggling work and family life: 56% of working moms and 50% of working dads say they find it very or somewhat difficult to balance these responsibilities."
  • * Grading Government Transparency Scientists’ Freedom to Speak (and Tweet) at Federal Agencies

    Union of Concerned Scientists - "A strong democracy depends on transparency, accountability, and trust in the government to make evidence-based decisions that protect public health and the environment. Federal scientists play an important role in fulfilling this mandate by providing critical expertise to decision makers and the American people. But sometimes, political or commercial forces interfere with this process, preventing scientific information from reaching those who need it. Strong policies governing external communications serve as the first line of defense against such abuses. Our 2013 report, Grading Government Transparency, looks at the policies governing scientists' communications through both traditional and social media at 17 federal agencies, evaluating the policies in a variety of categories and summarizing each evaluation with a letter grade."

    March 10, 2013
    * State Higher Education Finance Report for FY2012

    The association of State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) has released its annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report, which provides a comprehensive review of state and local funding, tuition revenue, and enrollment trends for public higher education. This is the fourth SHEF report since the 2007-2008 academic year when state and local support for higher education was $88.8 billion, enrollment in public institutions reached 10.3 million full-time-equivalent students, and the national economy entered a recession. In 2012, the effects of the recession continue with total state and local support at $81.2 billion–down 7 percent from 2011. In 2012, enrollment declined slightly from the prior year to 11.5 million full-time equivalent students but still 1.2 million more FTE students (12.4 percent) enrolled than in 2008. Although enrollment stabilized in 2012, the reduction in state and local support combined with an increase in inflation contributed to a 9 percent decrease in state and local support per student in constant dollars from 2011. Per student support in 2012 is $5,896, the lowest level in the 25 years shown in the SHEF report."

    March 06, 2013
    * Electronics Disposal Efficiency (EDE): An It Recycling Metric for Enterprises and Data Centers

    White Paper #53 - Electronics Disposal Efficiency (EDE): An It Recycling Metric for Enterprises and Data Centers, March 6, 2013

  • "This white paper outlines the new Electronics Disposal Efficiency (EDE) metric. EDE is the first universal metric launched by The Green Grid to help end-users of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) measure their success in the responsible management of outdated equipment. EDE is a simple metric that helps organizations calculate and measure their progress in improving equipment disposal processes over time."
  • March 04, 2013
    * OATs: Open Access Textbooks

    OATs: Open Access Textbooks: "The OATs Libguide provides access to descriptions and links to known initiatives and organizations that support the development and promotion of Open Access textbooks, and to OA and low-cost e-books and textbook catalogs and databases." [Gerry McKiernan]

    March 03, 2013
    * Article - Twitter as a reporting tool for breaking news

    "This study focuses on journalists Paul Lewis (The Guardian) and Ravi Somaiya (The New York Times), the most frequently mentioned national and international journalists on Twitter during the 2011 UK summer riots. Both actively tweeted throughout the four-day riot period and this article highlights how they used Twitter as a reporting tool. It discusses a series of Twitter conventions in detail, including the use of links, the taking and sharing of images, the sharing of mainstream media content and the use of hashtags. The article offers an in-depth overview of methods for studying Twitter, reflecting critically on commonly used data collection strategies, offering possible alternatives as well as highlighting the possibilities for combining different methodological approaches. Finally, the article makes a series of suggestions for further research into the use of Twitter by professional journalists."

    March 01, 2013
    * How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms

    How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms, by Kristen Purcell, Alan Heaps, Judy Buchanan, Linda Friedrich, Feb 28, 2013

  • "A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and secondary school students finds that digital technologies have become central to their teaching and professionalization. At the same time, the internet, mobile phones, and social media have brought new challenges to teachers, and they report striking differences in access to the latest digital technologies between lower and higher income students and school districts. Asked about the impact of the internet and digital tools in their role as middle and high school educators, these teachers say the following about the overall impact on their teaching and their classroom work..."
  • February 28, 2013
    * Pessimism About the Future May Lead to Longer, Healthier Life, Research Finds

    "Older people who have low expectations for a satisfying future may be more likely to live longer, healthier lives than those who see brighter days ahead, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade," said lead author Frieder R. Lang, PhD, of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. "Pessimism about the future may encourage people to live more carefully, taking health and safety precautions." The study was published online in the journal Psychology and Aging®. Lang and colleagues examined data collected from 1993 to 2003 for the national German Socio-Economic Panel, an annual survey of private households consisting of approximately 40,000 people 18 to 96 years old. The researchers divided the data according to age groups: 18 to 39 years old, 40 to 64 years old and 65 years old and above. Through mostly in-person interviews, respondents were asked to rate how satisfied they were with their lives and how satisfied they thought they would be in five years."

    February 27, 2013
    * Appraising our Digital Investment: Sustainability of Digitized Special Collections in ARL Libraries

    Appraising our Digital Investment: Sustainability of Digitized Special Collections in ARL Libraries - A Report from Ithaka S+R and the Association of Research Libraries. Nancy L. Maron, Ithaka S+R, Sarah Pickle, Ithaka S+R. February 2013

  • "Special collections have long been a vital part of libraries, offering users access to rare or archival materials and creating
    unique value for their host institutions. Research libraries are well aware of the particular value that their special collections hold and are increasingly placing greater emphasis on efforts like digitization that can make them more accessible to their users...Most library leaders feel that digitized special collections are critical to the libraries’ future, but few feel their institutions’ investments in updates and upgrades are sufficient. Over 80% agreed that digitized special collections are “critical to our current strategic direction” and yet almost a third feel they are under investing in this area. Over half of respondents cited funding of this activity as their greatest sustainability concern.
  • February 24, 2013
    * New on LLRX - New Economy Resources 2013

    Via LLRX.com - New Economy Resources 2013 - The world is rapidly changing as government data transparency, Big Data and the ability to access actionable information from institutional databases is increasingly released on the web without restrictive fees or subscriptions. This new guide by web research guru Marcus P. Zillman comprises the leading world wide web resources for discovering new knowledge and leveraging the latest reliable data on the New Economy.

    February 20, 2013
    * How to Guide - Communicating Professionally Using Outlook

    How White & Case tamed its information overload, By Oz Benamram. See also Communicating Professionally Using Outlook, by Oz Benamram, last updated: October 2012.

    February 17, 2013
    * Concurrent EEG-Eyetracking Evidence from the Reading of Books and Digital Media

    PLOS ONE Research article - Subjective Impressions Do Not Mirror Online Reading Effort: Concurrent EEG-Eyetracking Evidence from the Reading of Books and Digital Media: Franziska Kretzschmar, Dominique Pleimling, Jana Hosemann, Stephan Füssel, Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Matthias Schlesewsky. Published: February 6, 2013

  • "In the rapidly changing circumstances of our increasingly digital world, reading is also becoming an increasingly digital experience: electronic books (e-books) are now outselling print books in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, many readers still view e-books as less readable than print books. The present study thus used combined EEG and eyetracking measures in order to test whether reading from digital media requires higher cognitive effort than reading conventional books. Young and elderly adults read short texts on three different reading devices: a paper page, an e-reader and a tablet computer and answered comprehension questions about them while their eye movements and EEG were recorded. The results of a debriefing questionnaire replicated previous findings in that participants overwhelmingly chose the paper page over the two electronic devices as their preferred reading medium. Online measures, by contrast, showed shorter mean fixation durations and lower EEG theta band voltage density – known to covary with memory encoding and retrieval – for the older adults when reading from a tablet computer in comparison to the other two devices...."

  • February 14, 2013
    * EU grey literature / Long-term preservation, access, and discovery

    EU grey literature - Long-term preservation, access, and discovery

  • "The preservation of the historical memory of the development of the European Union and its policies, which have helped to mould European history for almost 60 years, has never been more important in a world of rapid change. The growth of ‘fast’ publication of documents in print or on the various websites of Europa, with no long-term repository or stable URL, not deposited in the EU Bookshop, or in the repositories that form the basis of the registers of the institutions, is alarming. Librarians traditionally preserved resources. Many of these resources have lasting value and significance and should be protected and preserved for current and future generations. The issues to be considered are legal, technical and, particularly in the case of the EU institutions, organisational."
  • February 13, 2013
    * European Commission launches online service to promote semantic interoperability

    "On January 25, 2013 the European Commission has launched a online service to make it easier for public administrations to find and re-use semantic assets. More than one thousand assets from fifteen organisations, including several Member States and standardization bodies, can be found via the European Commission Joinup Portal. By increasing the visibility and promoting the re-use of existing semantic assets the European Commission fosters semantic interoperability among information systems developed in different Member States...The Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) Programme of the European Commission addresses this need by promoting the re-use of data exchange models, taxonomies, data definitions and reference data, such as country codes. We call these semantic assets. In short, the re-use of semantic assets is vital for information to flow freely between Public Administrations and, unlike before, these semantic assets can now be found through a single search on Joinup."

    * Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the United Kingdom and Ireland

    Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the United Kingdom and Ireland, An OCLC Research Report.

  • "Special collections and archives play a key role in the future of research libraries. However, significant challenges face institutions that wish to capitalize on that value, to leverage and make fully available the rich content in special collections in order to support research, teaching, and community engagement.
    This report, produced in collaboration by OCLC Research and RLUK, builds on the foundation established by Taking Our Pulse: The OCLC Research Survey of Special Collections and Archives, a report published in 2010 that provides a rigorous, evidence-based appraisal of the state of special collections in the US and Canada. The survey provides both evidence and a basis for action as part of the RLUK's Unique and Distinctive Collections workstrand and OCLC Research's Mobilizing Unique Materials theme. This report provides institutional leaders, curators, special collections staff, and archivists both evidence and inspiration to plan for much needed and deserved transformation of special collections. Specifically, it contains twenty recommendations that the authors feel will have a positive impact toward addressing the issues identified."
  • February 10, 2013
    * The new library of Babel? Borges, digitisation, and the myth of the universal library

    Via First Monday - The new library of Babel? Borges, digitisation and the myth of the universal library by Christopher Rowe

  • "The growing capacity of digital encoding and storage has opened up vast new avenues for the archiving and distribution of texts in virtual space, prompting many to declare the imminent obsolescence of print media, the book included. An interesting correlate to this situation is the revival of interest in and support for the idea of the universal library, a collection of every text in existence, albeit reimagined as an immense database of digitised material with online accessibility. Drawing mainly upon two texts by Jorge Luis Borges, a short story and an essay, this article challenges the premise that such a project would be possible or even desirable, and problematises the perceived equivalencies between print and digital media, reading a book and reading onscreen text, and library and database."
  • February 09, 2013
    * WSJ opens entire website to readers - no fee, until Sunday night

    WSJ - Blizzard Sweeps Through Northeast - this site is free to all readers until midnight on Sunday, February 10, 2013.

    February 05, 2013
    * America's Call For Higher Education Redesign

    America's Call For Higher Education Redesign, The 2012 Lumina Foundation Study of the American Public's Opinion on Higher Education, January 2013. SNAPSHOT OF FINDINGS:

    • "Nearly all Americans (97%) say having a degree or certificate beyond high school is at least somewhat important.
    • Nearly all Americans (97%) say having a degree or certificate beyond high school is at least somewhat important to a person’s financial security.
    • More than two-thirds (67%) say getting a good job is a very important reason for getting education beyond high school. Nearly as many, 65%, say earning more money is a very important reason to get education beyond high school.
    • Of Americans who do not have a postsecondary degree or certificate, the majority agree or strongly agree that they would feel more secure in their job and their financial future if they did have one.
    • About four in 10 (41%) Americans without a postsecondary degree or certificate say they have thought about going back to school to earn one."

    February 03, 2013
    * A Theory of Aggregate Consumption

    Kim, Yun, Setterfield , Mark and Mei, Yuan, A Theory of Aggregate Consumption (January 1, 2013). Trinity College of Economics Working Paper 13-01. Available at SSRN

  • "We develop a Keynesian model of aggregate consumption. Our theory emphasizes the importance of the relative income hypothesis and debt-finance for understanding household consumption behavior. It is shown that particular importance attaches to how net debtor households service their debts, and that the treatment of debt servicing commitments as a substitute for savings by these households creates the potential for “sudden stops” in consumption spending (and hence aggregate demand). The implications for aggregate consumption of changes in the distribution of income and changes in the composition of employment are also explored."
  • * MIT - The New Initiative on the Digital Economy

    "The Initiative for the Digital Economy (IDE) is a major effort addressing the impact of digital technology on businesses, the economy, and society. Drawing upon MIT Sloan’s strengths in technology and innovation, its internationally recognized faculty, and over a decade of research and partnership with MIT Sloan’s Center for Digital Business, the new Initiative will analyze the broad sociological changes brought about by digital technology. Many of the key issues are described in a recent book by Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and Dr. Andrew McAfee, Race Against the Machine - How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. In the book, they outline the relevant issues the new initiative will address..."

    February 02, 2013
    * Update on the Twitter Archive At the Library of Congress

    News release: "In April, 2010, the Library of Congress and Twitter signed an agreement providing the Library the public tweets from the company’s inception through the date of the agreement, an archive of tweets from 2006 through April, 2010. Additionally, the Library and Twitter agreed that Twitter would provide all public tweets on an ongoing basis under the same terms. The Library’s first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006-10 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date. This month, all those objectives will be completed. To date, the Library has an archive of approximately 170 billion tweets."

    January 30, 2013
    * Twitter Transparency Report v2 is released

    "Last July we released our first Twitter Transparency Report (#TTR), publishing six months of data detailing the volume of government requests we receive for user information, government requests to withhold content, and Digital Millennium Copyright Act-related complaints from copyright holders. Since then we’ve been thinking about ways in which we can more effectively share this information, with an aim to make it more meaningful and accessible to the community at large. In celebration of #DataPrivacyDay, today, we’re rolling out a new home for our transparency report: transparency.twitter.com. In addition to publishing the second report, we’re also introducing more granular details regarding information requests from the United States, expanding the scope of the removal requests and copyright notices sections, and adding Twitter site accessibility data from our partners at Herdict."

    January 29, 2013
    * PWC - Dealing with disruption Adapting to survive and thrive

    16th Annual Global CEO Survey - Dealing with disruption Adapting to survive and thrive, December 2012.

  • "The global economic outlook is certainly enough to test even the strongest enterprises. The eurozone is still mired in recession and the US economy is forecast to expand by just 2.2% this year. The situation in some of the growth markets is also getting harder, as the slowdown in the BRIC economies demonstrates. While market conditions in many countries are still very difficult, CEOs are more positive about the prognosis than they were last year: 52% think the global economy will stay the same for the next 12 months and only 28% believe it will shrink. In 2012, by contrast, 48% were convinced the global economy would contract. But economic plateaux aren’t exactly grounds for cheer. That’s why shortterm confidence about the prospects for revenue growth has continued falling. CEOs in Western Europe are especially nervous. Only 22% feel very confident they can increase their company’s revenues in the coming 12 months, compared with 53% of CEOs in the Middle East and Latin America."
  • January 28, 2013
    * Pew - Tracking for Health

    Tracking for Health by Susannah Fox, Maeve Duggan, Jan 28, 2013

  • "This is the first national survey measuring health data tracking, which has been shown in clinical studies to be a tool for improving outcomes, particularly among people trying to lose weight or manage a chronic condition. The Pew Internet survey finds that:
    • 46% of trackers say that this activity has changed their overall approach to maintaining their health or the health of someone for whom they provide care.
    • 40% of trackers say it has led them to ask a doctor new questions or to get a second opinion from another doctor.
    • 34% of trackers say it has affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition."
  • January 27, 2013
    * New on LLRX - Knowledge Discovery Resources 2013

    Via LLRX.com - Knowledge Discovery Resources 2013 - An Internet Annotated Link Dataset Compilation - Marcus P. Zillman's current annotated link compilation encompasses top value-added resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. The selected resources and sites provide a wide range of actionable knowledge and avenues for information discovery to leverage as part of your overall research project strategy.

    January 26, 2013
    * MappyHealth - We are tracking disease trends, 140 characters at a time

    "MappyHealth mines twitter data looking for health term trends. It is hypothesized that social data could be a predictor to outbreaks of disease. We track disease terms and associated qualifiers to present these social trends. We have found that every term and condition trend tracked on our site has a band of “social noise”. This social noise is the everyday ebb and flow of tweets associated with a certain term. Spikes in volume and duration signal events that occur related to these terms. These events could be both positive and negative. MappyHealth seeks to foster awareness of these spikes through various mapping and analytical views."

    * JSTOR offers free online reading access to the archives of 1,200 of the world’s most prominent journals

    "JSTOR, the not-for-profit digital library of thousands of academic journals and other content, announced [January 9, 2013] that the archives of more than 1,200 journals are now available for limited reading by the public. This is part of a major expansion of JSTOR’s experimental program Register & Read, in which people can sign up for a JSTOR account and, every two weeks, read up to three articles online for free. [The January announcement follows a successful 10-month test during which more than 150,000 people registered for reading access to an initial set of 76 journals. “Our goal is for everyone around the world to be able to use the content we have put online and are preserving,” said Laura Brown, JSTOR managing director. “Register & Read provides a virtual way for anyone to walk into the JSTOR library, register at the door, and ‘check out’ a limited number of articles for reading.” Journal archives from nearly 800 scholarly societies, university presses, and academic publishers are now included in Register & Read. These organizations license and entrust their content to JSTOR and share the goal of providing far-reaching access to scholarship."

    January 24, 2013
    * Columbia Journalism Report - Post Industrial Journalism

    Post Industrial Journalism by C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky

  • "The effect of the current changes in the news ecosystem has already been a reduction in the quality of news in the United States. On present evidence, we are convinced that journalism in this country will get worse before it gets better, and, in some places (principally midsize and small cities with no daily paper) it will get markedly worse. Our hope is to limit the scope, depth and duration of that decay by pointing to ways to create useful journalism using tools, techniques and assumptions that weren’t even possible 10 years ago."
  • * Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog

    "Published on 10 December 2012, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog: Scale, Workflow, Attention, by Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Vice President, Research and Chief Strategist, discusses the position of the catalog and uses it to illustrate more general discovery and workflow directions. There is a renaissance of interest in the catalog and catalog data, yet it comes at a time when the catalog itself is being reconfigured in ways which may result in its disappearance as an individually identifiable component of library service. It is being subsumed within larger library discovery environments and catalog data is flowing into other systems and services."

    January 20, 2013
    * Nature - Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing

    Episciences Project to launch series of community-run, open-access journals, by Richard Van Noorden

  • "Mathematicians plan to launch a series of free open-access journals that will host their peer-reviewed articles on the preprint server arXiv. The project was publicly revealed [January 16, 2013] in a blog post by Tim Gowers, a Fields Medal winner and mathematician at the University of Cambridge, UK. The initiative, called the Episciences Project, hopes to show that researchers can organize the peer review and publication of their work at minimal cost, without involving commercial publishers."
  • January 19, 2013
    * Space Data and Information Transfer Systems -- Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories

    Via OCLC - SO 16363:2012. Space Data and Information Transfer Systems (see authors link)— Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories outlines actions a repository can take to be considered trustworthy, but research examining whether the repository’s designated community of users associates such actions with trustworthiness has been limited. Drawing from this ISO document and the management and information systems literatures, this paper discusses findings from interviews with 66 archaeologists and quantitative social scientists. We found similarities and differences across the disciplines and among the social scientists. Both disciplinary communities associated trust with a repository’s transparency. However, archaeologists mentioned guarantees of preservation and sustainability more frequently than the social scientists who talked about institutional reputation. Repository processes were also linked to trust, with archaeologists more frequently citing metadata issues and social scientists discussing data selection and cleaning processes. Among the social scientists, novices mentioned the influence colleagues have on trust in repositories almost twice as much as the experts. We discuss the implications our findings have for identifying trustworthy repositories and how they extend the models presented in the management and information systems literatures."

    January 18, 2013
    * Comparison of Curation Platforms

    Via SocialCompare: "Curation Platforms are tools enabling you to select manually content online, to edit and share it. This comparison table is part of a French IT news article about Curoriginal articleation Tools: "Le Guide de la Curation". For more details about products and criteria, please read to the original article. This comparison is associated to another one about the automatic publishing tools, that automatically select content.
    You are free to update this comparison and rate your favorite tools!"

    January 14, 2013
    * Estimating the Price Elasticity of Beer: Meta-Analysis of Data with Heterogeneity, Dependence, and Publication Bias

    Via SSRN: Estimating the Price Elasticity of Beer: Meta-Analysis of Data with Heterogeneity, Dependence, and Publication Bias, Jon P. Nelson, Pennsylvania State University - College of the Liberal Arts - Department of Economics, January 14, 2013

  • "Precise estimates of price elasticities are important for alcohol tax policy. Using meta-analysis, this paper corrects average beer elasticities for heterogeneity, dependence, and publication selection bias. A sample of 191 estimates is obtained from 114 primary studies. Simple and weighted means are reported. Dependence is addressed by restricting the number of estimates per study, author-restricted samples, and author-specific variables. Publication bias is addressed using a funnel graph, trim-and-fill, and Egger’s intercept model. Heterogeneity and selection bias are examined jointly in meta-regressions containing moderator variables for econometric methodology, primary data, and precision of estimates. Results for fixed- and random-effects regressions are reported. Country-specific effects and sample time period are unimportant, but several methodology variables help explain the dispersion of estimates. In models that correct for selection bias and heterogeneity, the average beer price elasticity is about -0.20, which is less elastic than values used in alcohol tax policy simulations."
  • January 13, 2013
    * Wayback Machine: Now with 240,000,000,000 URLs

    Internet Archives Blog: "Today we updated the Wayback Machine with much more data and some code improvements. Now we cover from late 1996 to December 9, 2012 so you can surf the web as it was up until a month ago. Also, we have gone from having 150,000,000,000 URLs to having 240,000,000,000 URLs, a total of about 5 petabytes of data. (Want a humorous description of a petabyte? start at 28:55) This database is queried over 1,000 times a second by over 500,000 people a day helping make archive.org the 250th most popular website."

    * Report on NYC Public Libraries - Branches of Opportunity

    Branches of Opportunity, January 2013, Center for an Urban Future - "As more and more New Yorkers turn to digital books, Wikipedia and other online tools for information and entertainment, there is a growing sense that the age of the public library is over. But, in reality, New York City’s public libraries are more essential than ever. Far from becoming obsolete, the city’s three public library systems— Brooklyn, Queens and New York, which encompasses the branches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island — have experienced a 40 percent spike in the number of people attending programs and a 59 percent increase in circulation over the past decade. During that time, 48 different branches citywide have at least doubled annual attendance at programs, ranging from computer literacy classes to workshops on entrepreneurship, while 18 have more than doubled their circulation. These trends are grounded in the new realities of today’s knowledge economy, where it is difficult to achieve economic success or enjoy a decent quality of life without a range of basic literacy, language and technological skills. A distressingly large segment of the city’s population lacks these basic building blocks, but the public library has stepped in, becoming the second chance human capital institution. No other institution, public or private, does a better job of reaching people who have been left behind in today’s economy, have failed to reach their potential in the city’s public school system or who
    simply need help navigating an increasingly complex world."

    * White House - National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding

    "This National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding (Strategy) aims to strike the proper balance between sharing information with those who need it to keep our country safe and safeguarding it from those who would do us harm. While these two priorities—sharing and safeguarding—are often seen as mutually exclusive, in reality they are mutually reinforcing. This Strategy, therefore, emphasizes how strengthening the protection of classified and sensitive information can help to build confidence and trust so that such information can be shared with authorized users."

    * Digital Licenses Replace Print Prices as Accurate Reflection of Real Journal Costs

    Digital Licenses Replace Print Prices as Accurate Reflection of Real Journal Costs by Paula Gantz, Association of American Publishers - Scholarly Publishing Division, Volume 11, No. 3, Summer/Fall 2012

  • "Instead of purchasing subscriptions to individual journals, librarians are pursuing licensing agreements that provide perpetual digital access to a body of content. For major institutions with research needs across multiple disciplines, this means purchasing journal bundles or packages. At one end of the spectrum is the so-called “Big Deal” (i.e., licensing all the journal content a publisher distributes digitally). For smaller institutions, bundles allow licensing for collections of titles, based on particular subject concentrations or interest profiles. As a rule, these institutional commitments span a several-year period providing modest price increases based on anticipated inflation and content growth, but usually below the increases reflected in individual print subscription prices."
  • * EU - Digital Agenda: Turning government data into gold

    News release: "The Commission has launched an Open Data Strategy for Europe, which is expected to deliver a €40 billion boost to the EU's economy each year. Europe’s public administrations are sitting on a goldmine of unrealised economic potential: the large volumes of information collected by numerous public authorities and services. Member States such as the United Kingdom and France are already demonstrating this value. The strategy to lift performance EU-wide is three-fold: firstly the Commission will lead by example, opening its vaults of information to the public for free through a new data portal. Secondly, a level playing field for open data across the EU will be established. Finally, these new measures are backed by the €100 million which will be granted in 2011-2013 to fund research into improved data-handling technologies. These actions position the EU as the global leader in the re-use of public sector information. They will boost the thriving industry that turns raw data into the material that hundreds of millions of ICT users depend on, for example smart phone apps, such as maps, real-time traffic and weather information, price comparison tools and more. Other leading beneficiaries will include journalists and academics."

  • See also: The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) aims to reboot Europe's economy and help Europe's citizens and businesses to get the most out of digital technologies. It is the first of seven flagships initiatives under Europe 2020, the EU's strategy to deliver smart sustainable and inclusive growth."
  • January 12, 2013
    * JSTOR opens free access to limited number of articles

    Via Meredith Schwartz: "The archives of more than 1,200 journals are now available for limited free reading by the public, JSTOR announced [January 9, 2013]. Anyone can sign up for a JSTOR account and read up to three articles for free every two weeks."

    January 01, 2013
    * A Timeline of Information History

    "This timeline presents significant events and developments in the innovation and management of information and documents from cave paintings (ca 30,000 BC) to the present. To keep recent electronic developments from dominating the listing, only the most significant digital innovations are included."

    December 30, 2012
    * CIO - Top 12 Big Data Stories of 2012

    "As 2012 winds down, it's time to take a look at the year in Big Data. This year saw Big Data begin to emerge from the hype cycle, with more attention paid to how organizations can actually leverage their data assets to gain competitive advantage. Here are 12 of the most-read Big Data articles of 2012."

    * An Efficient Sampling Alternative for Big Data Aggregation

    Data Interpolation - An Efficient Sampling Alternative for Big Data Aggregation (Technical Report) Hadassa Daltrophe, Shlomi Dolevy, Zvi Lotkerz. October 12, 2012

  • "Given a large set of measurement sensor data, in order to identify a simple function that captures the essence of the data gathered by the sensors, we suggest representing the data by (spatial) functions, in particular by polynomials. Given a (sampled) set of values, we interpolate the datapoints to defi ne a polynomial that would represent the data. The interpolation is challenging, since in practice the data can be noisy and even Byzantine, where the Byzantine data represents an adversarial value that is not limited to being close to the correct measured data. We present two solutions, one that extends the Welch Berlekamp technique in the case of multidimensional data, and copes with discrete noise and Byzantine data, and the other based on Arora and Khot techniques, extending them in the case of multidimensional noisy and Byzantine data."
  • December 27, 2012
    * Cultivating Young Women’s Leadership for a Kinder, Braver World

    Cultivating Young Women’s Leadership for a Kinder, Braver World,
    Anna Rorem and Dr. Monisha Bajaj. December 17, 2012

  • "There is not much research exploring leadership development and civic participation among youth, and even less among young women. Policymakers and others seeking to better serve youth in pursuit of a “kinder, braver world” should take into account the research that does exist. This research indicates that youth who engage in service to their communities learn leadership skills through civic action and may be more likely to vote and be civically engaged as adults. Youth who demonstrate leadership skills can, and should, be considered current assets to their communities."
  • December 26, 2012
    * Working Paper - Generosity and Political Preferences

    Generosity and Political Preferences, Christopher T. Dawes, Magnus Johannesson, Erik Lindqvist, Peter Loewen, Robert Östling, Marianne Bonde and Frida Priks. Research Institute of Financial Economics, IFN Working Paper No. 941, 2012.

  • "We test whether generosity is related to political preferences and partisanship in Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States using incentivized dictator games. The total sample consists of more than 5,000 respondents. We document that support for social spending and redistribution is positively correlated with generosity in all four countries. Further, we show that donors are more generous towards co-partisans in all countries, and that this e¤ect is stronger among supporters of left-wing political parties. All results are robust to the inclusion to an extensive set of control variables, including income and education."
  • * Paper - Optimal Control of Global Warming

    Optimal Control of Global Warming, Gary Erickson, University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business. December 26, 2012. Available at SSRN

  • "An optimal control model of global warming is presented and analyzed. The model has two state variables, representing the anthropogenic concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the temperature increase due to the greenhouse gas concentration. The state equation for greenhouse gas concentration includes absorption by the environment, but at a rate that is negatively related to temperature increase. Sufficient conditions are offered for a solution with two steady states to exist, and for at least one of the steady states to yield a positive absorption capacity rate. A numerical illustration is offered. Also, a special case of the model is analyzed, in which the environmental absorption capacity rate is assumed fixed."
  • December 25, 2012
    * Commentary - the evolving workplace extends to home and beyond

    Brett Caine writing in Forbes: "We have become a society that communicates and shares just about everything we do, with one notable exception – work. Work is the place where social firewalls go up when they really should come down. After all, our teams are about teamwork. Social is the perfect tool to get our teams to work more collaboratively. And as it catches on, productivity is improving – people can work and play from anywhere and (finally) debunking the notion that workers need to be in an office to produce. The number of work-at-home employees is increasing dramatically and not just day-extenders. For the first time we are seeing companies implement work-at-home policies and practices that make it possible to work from home as a full member of the team. Everyone wants flexibility, more and more ask for it and the millennials will demand it. What does this changing workforce (and workplace) mean for leaders and managers in the workplace?"

    December 23, 2012
    * Wired - 29 Years of Beautiful, Inspiring and Important Images of Earth from Space

    Betsy Mason - "The longest-operating Earth observing satellite is ending its mission after nearly 29 years, more than 150,000 orbits and 2.5 million images. Landsat 5 outlived its planned 3-year operation almost 10 times over, saving the continuity of the Landsat mission. Landsat 5's longevity became critical after Landsat 6 failed to reach orbit in 1993. The U.S. Geological Survey was able to rescue the satellite from failures several times over the years, but recently a broken gyroscope has permanently hobbled the aging craft. Landsat 7, launched in 1999 and also well past its planned 5-year mission, is still keeping an eye on the planet until Landsat 8's launch, which is planned for February 2013. To celebrate this mighty spacecraft's contribution to our understanding of the Earth, here are some of our favorite images Landsat 5 has taken over its three decades in space."

    December 22, 2012
    * NYT - Affluent Students Have an Advantage and the Gap Is Widening

    Graphic - "Low-income students with above-average scores on eighth grade tests have a college graduation rate of 26 percent — lower than more affluent students with worse test scores. Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference in the share of affluent and poor students who earned a college degree. Now the gap is 45 points. The gap has also grown in college entrance rates and spending per child on tutors, sports, music and other enrichment activities." Related Article

    * How to Engage Young People: Lessons from Lowell, MA

    How to Engage Young People: Lessons from Lowell, MA. December 17, 2012 Sopheap Linda C. Sou, Darcie DeAngelo, Masada Jones, and Monica Veth

  • "A youth organization’s success depends on young people’s participation within the local community. Many of the issues facing young people today reflect a poor engagement with community politics, cultural identity formation, and risk-taking behaviors based on that identity formation. The Teen Block was founded in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1990 with the goal of addressing these issues. Since that time, it has served over 8,000 young people, integrating social, behavioral, mental, and physical health."
  • December 21, 2012
    * WSJ - Public School, Big Tab - Searchable database

    "The cost of attending public colleges is rising faster than the cost of private colleges, as states reduce funding. This graphic shows the published tuition and fees for state residents in 2012-13, and in 2006-07, for 72 public universities with substantial research activity, including many state “flagship” schools."

    December 20, 2012
    * Pew - Reading Habits in Different Communities

    Reading Habits in Different Communities, by Carolyn Miller, Kristen Purcell and Lee Rainie. December 20, 2012

  • "Reading is foundational to learning and the information acquisition upon which people make decisions. For centuries, the capacity to read has been a benchmark of literacy and involvement in community life. In the 21st Century, across all types of U.S. communities, reading is a common activity that is pursued in myriad ways. As technology and the digital world expand and offer new types of reading opportunities, residents of urban, suburban, and rural communities at times experience reading and e-reading differently. In the most meaningful ways, these differences are associated with the demographic composition of different kinds of communities — the age of the population, their overall level of educational attainment, and the general level of household income."

  • December 19, 2012
    * Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library

    "The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is very proud to present the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a free online digitized virtual library of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hundreds of manuscripts made up of thousands of fragments - discovered from 1947 and until the early 1960's in the Judean Desert along the western shore of the Dead Sea - are now available to the public online. The high resolution images are extremely detailed and can be accessed through various search options on the site. With the generous lead support of the Leon Levy Foundation and additional generous support of the Arcadia Fund, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google joined forces to develop the most advanced imaging and web technologies to bring to the web hundreds of Dead Sea Scrolls images as well as specially developed supporting resources in a user-friendly platform intended for the public, students and scholars alike."

    December 17, 2012
    * New from LLRX - Deep Web Research and Discovery Resources 2013

    Via LLRX.com - Marcus P. Zillman's new research focuses on Deep Web Research and Discovery Resources 2013, comprising in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located in various files and formats that the current search engines cannot find, or have difficulty accessing. Some of the more comprehensive search engines have written algorithms to search the deeper portions of the world wide web by attempting to find files such as .pdf, .docx, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others.  These files are predominately used by businesses to communicate within their organization or to disseminate topical information and work product to customers and potential clients. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers access to a vast amount of actionable corporate information and intelligence. Research has also shown that even deeper information can be obtained from these files by searching and accessing the "properties" information on these files.

    December 16, 2012
    * Report - College Spending in a Turbulent Decade

    College Spending in a Turbulent Decade: Findings From the Delta Cost Project, A Delta Data Update 2000–2010, December 2012

  • "Two years after the onset of the Great Recession, nonprofit colleges and universities found themselves struggling with their finances. Average per-student spending on academics declined in fiscal year (FY) 2010, and despite per-student spending cuts to prerecession levels at four-year institutions, students shouldered a larger share of the cost this time around. Even in private nonprofit colleges, average educational spending per student declined for the first time in a decade. However, it is higher education’s most accessible institutions—community colleges—that took the greatest financial hit in 2010.1 As funding failed to keep pace with historic increases in enrollment, educational spending per student plummeted to its lowest level in a decade."
  • * Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present

    Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present, a report by C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell, Clay Shirky. Columbia Journalism School, Tow Center for Digital Journalism

  • "This essay is part survey and part manifesto, one that concerns itself with the practice of journalism and the practices of journalists in the United States. It is not, however, about “the future of the news industry,” both because much of that future is already here and because there is no such thing as the news industry anymore. There used to be one, held together by the usual things that hold an industry together: similarity of methods among a relatively small and coherent group of businesses, and an inability for anyone outside that group to produce a competitive product. Those conditions no longer hold true. If you wanted to sum up the past decade of the news ecosystem in a single phrase, it might be this: Everybody suddenly got a lot more freedom. The newsmakers, the advertisers, the startups, and, especially, the people formerly known as the audience have all been given new freedom to communicate, narrowly and broadly, outside the old strictures of the broadcast and publishing models. The past 15 years have seen an explosion of new tools and techniques, and, more importantly, new assumptions and expectations, and these changes have wrecked the old clarity."
  • December 15, 2012
    * Lorcan Dempsey on Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog

    Dempsey is OCLC Vice President and Chief Strategist: "This article discusses the position of the catalog and uses it to illustrate more general discovery and workflow directions for libraries. There is a renaissance of interest in the catalog and catalog data. Yet it comes at a time when the catalog itself is being reconfigured in ways which may result in its disappearance as an individually identifiable component of library service. The catalog is being subsumed within larger library discovery environments and catalog data is flowing into other systems and services. This article should be of interest to those who manage or make decisions about discovery services in libraries, or who are interested in how general Internet trends are affecting library services."

    December 12, 2012
    * Commentary - The life span of email

    Curt Hopkins for The Daily Dot: "When a user “deletes” an email in the normal fashion, it becomes invisible to that user and is immediately a candidate to be overwritten. But until it is in fact overwritten, it exists. And it may persist longer on company servers. So, even if it is taken off your computer, it may still be available on the host’s server. Given that email-hosting companies are legally obliged to turn over user information to law enforcement and intelligence authorities with warrants—and these days even without them—the impossibility of being certain of a deletion means you must presume that any email you compose will be available remain accessible forever."

  • See also “A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons”: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email
  • * Jackie Dooley's "Digital Archives and Society" Presentation

    "In this presentation, Jackie discusses how things like national security, international activism and crowdsourcing impact the work of archivists. OCLC Research Program Officer and President of the Society of American Archivists Jackie Dooley gave this presentation at the Archival Leaders Advocate Annual Seminar on 13 November 2013 at the Center for Jewish History in New York City."

    December 07, 2012
    * Relationship Between Healthy Diet and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among Patients on Drug Therapies for Secondary Prevention

    Relationship Between Healthy Diet and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among Patients on Drug Therapies for Secondary Prevention - A Prospective Cohort Study of 31,546 High-Risk Individuals From 40 Countries. Circulation. 2012; 126: 2705-2712 doi: 10.1161/​CIRCULATIONAHA.112.103234

    • Background—Diet quality is strongly related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence, but little is known about its impact on CVD events in older people at high risk of CVD and receiving effective drugs for secondary prevention. This
      study assessed the association between diet quality and CVD events in a large population of subjects from 40 countries with CVD or diabetes mellitus with end-organ damage receiving proven medications.
    • Methods and Results—Overall, 31,546 women and men 66.56.2 years of age enrolled in 2 randomized trials, the
      Ongoing Telmisartan Alone and in Combination With Ramipril Global End Point Trial (ONTARGET) and the Telmisartan Randomized Assessment Study in ACEI Intolerant Subjects With Cardiovascular Disease (TRANSCEND), were studied. We used 2 dietary indexes: the modified Alternative Healthy Eating Index and the Diet Risk Score.
      The association between diet quality and the primary composite outcome of CV death, myocardial infarction, stroke, or congestive heart failure was assessed with Cox proportional hazard regression with adjustment for age, sex, trial enrollment allocation, region, and other known confounders. During the 56-month follow-up, there were 5190 events. Patients in the healthier quintiles of modified Alternative Healthy Eating Index scores had a significantly lower risk of CVD (hazard ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence interval, 0.71– 0.87, top versus lowest quintile of modified Alternative Healthy Eating Index). The reductions in risk for CV death, myocardial infarction, and stroke were 35%, 14%, and 19%, respectively. The protective association was consistent regardless of whether patients were receiving proven drugs.
    • Conclusions—A higher-quality diet was associated with a lower risk of recurrent CVD events among people 55 years of age with CVD or diabetes mellitus. Highlighting the importance of healthy eating by health professionals would substantially reduce CVD recurrence and save lives globally.

    December 06, 2012
    * Characteristics of U.S. Science and Engineering Doctorates Detailed in New Report

    News release: "The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) yesterday released a report titled Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2010 that unveils important trends in U.S. doctoral education. The report calls attention to the changing characteristics of U.S. doctorate recipients over time, including the increased representation of women, minorities and foreign nationals; the emergence of new fields of study; the time it takes to complete doctoral study; the expansion of the postdoctoral pool; and employment opportunities after graduation."

    * National Science Foundation - Predicting Seasonal Weather

    "Large-scale weather patterns which occur in various locations around the Earth, from the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the tropics to the high latitude Arctic Oscillation (AO) play a significant part in controlling the weather on a seasonal time scale. Knowing the condition of these atmospheric oscillations in advance would greatly improve long-range weather predictions. Scientists search for clues in the earth’s surface conditions such as tropical sea surface temperatures and snow cover at higher latitudes. Reliable and accurate weather prediction is vitally important in numerous areas of society, particularly agriculture and water management and weather risks are evaluated by a wide range of businesses, including power distributors who make fewer sales during cool summers and more sales during cold winters. The portion of the U.S. economy sensitive to weather conditions is estimated to be at least $3 trillion."

    December 02, 2012
    * New on LLRX - New Economy Web Guide 2013 Under Obama

    Via LLRX - New Economy Web Guide 2013 Under Obama - Internet research guru Marcus P. Zillman's new guide is an essential resource for researchers in all sectors for whom identifying and leveraging economic data, news and scholarly publications is a requirement. It identifies comprehensive, accurate knowledge available through reliable and current sources from government, NGOs, advocacy groups and the private sector that is critical to effective and actionable work product.

    December 01, 2012
    * State of College Admission Report

    "The 10th anniversary edition of the State of College Admission report (free to members) provides a detailed look at some of the trends observed in data collected by NACAC over the last ten years. It also offers a recap of some shorter-term observations, which are reflected in periodic research NACAC conducted into issues of concern to students, families, and college admission counseling professionals. Issues such as transfer admission, homeschooling, and student loan debt are among those that gained prominence during the past decade. NACAC’s 2012 State of College Admission report is based on ten years of surveys of school counselors and colleges and universities nationwide. The report presents information on a variety of topics related to the transition to college and the counseling and admission professions, including:

    • High school graduation and college enrollment
    • Applications to college
    • Early Decision, Early Action, and wait lists
    • Factors in the admission decision
    • School counselors and college counseling in high schools
    • The college admission office"

    November 28, 2012
    * Survey - Americans believe higher education must innovate

    "Although a majority of Amer­i­cans believes higher edu­ca­tion remains crit­ical to the nation’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and the best way for indi­vid­uals to achieve the Amer­ican Dream, 83 per­cent say that higher edu­ca­tion must inno­vate for the United States to main­tain its global lead­er­ship, according to a new North­eastern Uni­ver­sity survey. The national opinion poll, con­ducted for North­eastern by FTI Con­sulting, under­scores the cen­trality of higher edu­ca­tion to the country’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and char­acter, but also illus­trates the belief of most Amer­i­cans — par­tic­u­larly those under 30 — that the world’s pre­em­i­nent higher edu­ca­tion system must change."

    November 27, 2012
    * For Attribution -- Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards

    The growth of electronic publishing of literature has created new challenges, such as the need for mechanisms for citing online references in ways that can assure discoverability and retrieval for many years into the future. The growth in online datasets presents related, yet more complex challenges. It depends upon the ability to reliably identify, locate, access, interpret, and verify the version, integrity, and provenance of digital datasets. Data citation standards and good practices can form the basis for increased incentives, recognition, and rewards for scientific data activities that in many cases are currently lacking in many fields of research. The rapidly-expanding universe of online digital data holds the promise of allowing peer-examination and review of conclusions or analysis based on experimental or observational data, the integration of data into new forms of scholarly publishing, and the ability for subsequent users to make new and unforeseen uses and analyses of the same data-either in isolation, or in combination with, other datasets. The problem of citing online data is complicated by the lack of established practices for referring to portions or subsets of data. There are a number of initiatives in different organizations, countries, and disciplines already underway. An important set of technical and policy approaches have already been launched by the U.S. National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and other standards bodies regarding persistent identifiers and online linking. The workshop summarized in For Attribution -- Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards: Summary of an International Workshop was organized by a steering committee under the National Research Council's (NRC's) Board on Research Data and Information, in collaboration with an international CODATA-ICSTI Task Group on Data Citation Standards and Practices. The purpose of the symposium was to examine a number of key issues related to data identification, attribution, citation, and linking to help coordinate activities in this area internationally, and to promote common practices and standards in the scientific community."

    November 23, 2012
    * Efficiency Measurement in Data Envelopment Analysis: Some Selected Applications

    Efficiency Measurement in Data Envelopment Analysis: Some Selected Applications, Biresh K. Sahoo - Xavier Institute of Management, 2011. Saarbrücken (Germany), Lap Lambert Academic Publishing (2011)

  • "In a competitive environment most of the business firms face an irritatingly limited supply of resources. This has led to a significant emphasis on the efficient utilization and allocation of on-hand resources in a firm. Productivity generally indicates a firm’s efficiency in converting physical inputs to physical outputs and is considered an important index of its performance. Enhancing productivity is an effective means for a firm to survive and prosper in a competitive economy. From the standpoint of planning the utilization of resources, productivity management based on an inter-period comparison of productivity is considered to be an important tool. Similarly, a firm’s relative productivity in the industry is a significant determinant of its competitive position. The firm's management, therefore, needs to not only know its productivity per se, but also understand the properties of inter-firm differences in productivity so as to appraise its competitive position in the industry and to appreciate its weakness in utilizing and allocating resources. The comprehension of this weakness can help the management to correctly guide the firm towards the best utilization of resources. This present monograph discusses the uses of various variants of data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for evaluating firm productivity in terms of various performance parameters such as efficiency, returns to scale, total factor productivity growth (TFPG)."
  • November 22, 2012
    * U.Va. Study Identifies Four Family Cultures in America

    "Four types of family cultures – the Faithful, the Engaged Progressives, the Detached and the American Dreamers – are molding the next generation of Americans, a three-year study by the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture finds. The project findings are being released Thursday at a national conference in Washington, D.C. Each type represents a complex configuration of moral beliefs, values and dispositions – often implicit and rarely articulated in daily life – largely independent of basic demographic factors, such as race, ethnicity and social class, the “Culture of American Families” study reports. Most parenting research of the past 30 years, which undergirds notions of “tiger mothers” and “helicopter parents,” has been based in psychology and focused on parenting styles, said project co-director James Davison Hunter, LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory and executive director of the institute. This study, funded by an $850,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, goes beyond parenting styles “to tell the complex story of parents’ habits, dispositions, hopes, fears, assumptions and expectations for their children,” Hunter said." “Though largely invisible, these family cultures are powerful, constituting the worlds that children are raised in, and may well be more consequential than parenting styles,” he said. The report is based on data collected in two stages from September 2011 through March 2012, explained project co-director Carl Desportes Bowman, director of survey research at the institute."

    November 19, 2012
    * NAR - Existing-Home Sales Rise in October with Ongoing Price and Equity Gains

    News release: "Sales of existing homes increased in October, even with some regional impact from Hurricane Sandy, while home prices continued to rise due to lower levels of inventory supply, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, rose 2.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.79 million in October from a downwardly revised 4.69 million in September, and are 10.9 percent above the 4.32 million-unit level in October 2011...The national median existing-home price2 for all housing types was $178,600 in October, which is 11.1 percent above a year ago. This marks eight consecutive monthly year-over-year increases, which last occurred from October 2005 to May 2006."

    November 18, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Hurricane Sandy and the national digital library issue: Could we have stopped or slowed down global warming?

    Via LLRX.com - Hurricane Sandy and the national digital library issue: Could we have stopped or slowed down global warming? - David H. Rothman's commentary maintains it is imperative that civic matters, including those that resulted in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, not become lost opportunities to find and share information, and to make best use of lessons learned. Accountability, effective communications, access to actionable information, building reliable infrastructures, and providing dynamic access to agile solutions during times of national crisis provide opportunities to leverage the evolving Digital Public Library of America.

    * Prudential’s biennial study on the Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women

    Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women

  • "Our 2012-13 study found that women are increasingly the primary breadwinners of many households. They are more likely to be single than a generation ago, either as a result of being widowed or the decision to remain single, marry later or divorce. This is increasingly the case for women in their 50s or later. Our data confirms the long-term trend we have seen of women playing a key role in making financial decisions, but notes that increasingly this is not a matter of choice. This survey also shows generational differences in attitudes toward money, as well as differences based on ethnicity. Women close to or about to retire clearly have had different life experiences and expectations than women in their 20s or 30s. As more women assume greater responsibility for financial decisions out of need, they are doing so at a time when both men and women are taking on an increased responsibility for managing retirement and benefits choices due in part to the shift from traditional defined benefit pension to defined contribution plans."
  • November 12, 2012
    * Gallup - U.S. Workers Least Happy With Their Work Stress and Pay

    News release, by Lydia Saad: "U.S. workers are the least satisfied with their on-the-job stress and money they make, out of 13 aspects of work conditions rated in Gallup's annual Work and Education poll. Fewer than a third say they are completely satisfied with each. They are most satisfied with the physical safety conditions of their workplace, followed by their relations with coworkers...Both for the good of individuals and the health of the economy, it is important that workers feel encouraged and connected at work. The good news out of these data is that nearly 7 in 10 U.S. workers report high satisfaction with their fellow employees. Of concern, however, relative to fostering highly engaged workplaces, is that barely half of workers feel the same level of satisfaction with their boss or immediate supervisor."

    * Milliman analysis: October’s $45 billion funded status decline pushes pension deficit to $498 billion

    "For the past 12 years, Milliman has conducted an annual study of the 100 largest defined benefit pension plans sponsored by U.S. public companies. The Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index projects the funded status for pension plans included in our study, reflecting the impact of market returns and interest rate changes on pension funded status, utilizing the actual reported asset values, liabilities, and asset allocations of the companies’ pension plans...Pension liabilities of the 100 largest corporate defined benefit pension plans increased by $43 billion in October while the assets backing those pension promises dropped by $2 billion, bringing the Milliman 100 PFI funded status deficit to $498 billion and a 72.6% funded ratio, down from 74.5% at the end of September. The erosion in funded status follows funded status improvements in both August and September. October’s funded status decline was primarily due to a decrease in the corporate bond interest rates that are the benchmarks used to value pension liabilities."

  • Related postings on the financial system
  • November 11, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Litigation, trial and pre-trail iPad apps for lawyers

    Via LLRX - Litigation, trial and pre-trail iPad apps for lawyers: One of the most popular and rapidly growing categories of apps for lawyers are those developed for litigation, during trials and during the pretrial discovery phase. In this article, attorney, legal blogger and legal tech expert Nicole Black recommends more than a dozen affordable, flexible and innovative iPad apps to assist attorneys in their work to develop, streamline, simplify and track critical litigation processes.

    * conceptClassifier for SharePoint 2010 White Paper

    conceptClassifier for SharePoint 2010 White Paper - The Optimal Solution for Leveraging SharePoint to Manage Unstructured Content, Prepared by: Concept Searching

  • "The purpose of this white paper is to provide a broad overview of conceptClassifier for SharePoint and the key functionality available in the product that is still unique in the industry, and to explain why it is the optimal choice for managing unstructured content in SharePoint 2010. This paper explores the uses of conceptClassifier for SharePoint and how it is being used by Concept Searching clients as an information governance solution in SharePoint, which addresses search, records management, compliance, data privacy, intelligent migration, and Enterprise 2.0."
  • * Short-Sale Constraints and Securities Lending by Exchange-Traded Funds

    Bansal, Naresh, McKeon, Ryan and Svetina, Marko, Short-Sale Constraints and Securities Lending by Exchange-Traded Funds (2012). Managerial Finance, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN

  • "A stock's inclusion in an ETF has the potential to reduce its short sale constraints by decreasing search costs and lowering recall risk. This paper examines how the introduction of ETFs impacts short interest levels of their constituent stocks. We find that short selling in the underlying securities significantly increases after ETFs are introduced. The increase in short interest is largest for firms which are most short-sale constrained prior to the inclusion. The analysis of subsequent additions of stocks to ETFs reveals that the effect of increased short interest is significantly attenuated when compared to the first-time additions. Overall, our evidence suggests that the introduction of ETFs helps to alleviate short-sale constraints for stocks that they hold."
  • November 06, 2012
    * WSJ.com is free to non-subscribers for election day and day that follows

    "All WSJ.com content is free to read and share until 5 p.m. ET Wednesday." In addition, the New York Times is also fully accessible to readers. Additional free sites to track election, via Online 2012 Election Results and Trackers.

    November 04, 2012
    * Pew - How Teens Do Research in the Digital World

    How Teens Do Research in the Digital World - A survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers finds that teens’ research habits are changing in the digital age, November 2, 2012

  • "Three-quarters of AP and NWP teachers say that the internet and digital search tools have had a “mostly positive” impact on their students’ research habits, but 87% say these technologies are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans” and 64% say today’s digital technologies “do more to distract students than to help them academically.” These complex and at times contradictory judgments emerge from 1) an online survey of more than 2,000 middle and high school teachers drawn from the Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) communities; and 2) a series of online and offline focus groups with middle and high school teachers and some of their students. The study was designed to explore teachers’ views of the ways today’s digital environment is shaping the research and writing habits of middle and high school students. Building on the Pew Internet Project’s prior work about how people use the internet and, especially, the information-saturated digital lives of teens, this research looks at teachers’ experiences and observations about how the rise of digital material affects the research skills of today’s students. Overall, teachers who participated in this study characterize the impact of today’s digital environment on their students’ research habits and skills as mostly positive, yet multi-faceted and not without drawbacks. Among the more positive impacts they see: the best students access a greater depth and breadth of information on topics that interest them; students can take advantage of the availability of educational material in engaging multimedia formats; and many become more self-reliant researchers."
  • November 01, 2012
    * Pew - How Teens Do Research in the Digital World

    How Teens Do Research in the Digital World - by Kristen Purcell, Lee Rainie, Alan Heaps, Judy Buchanan, Linda Friedrich, Amanda Jacklin, Clara Chen, Kathryn Zickuhr, Nov 1, 2012.

  • The teachers who instruct the most advanced American secondary school students render mixed verdicts about students’ research habits and the impact of technology on their studies. Some 77% of advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed say that the internet and digital search tools have had a “mostly positive” impact on their students’ research work. But 87% say these technologies are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans” and 64% say today’s digital technologies “do more to distract students than to help them academically.” According to this survey of teachers, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in collaboration with the College Board and the National Writing Project, the internet has opened up a vast world of information for today’s students, yet students’ digital literacy skills have yet to catch up..."
  • * Learn everything you need to know about being safe on a bike in NYC

    A new street code for New York cyclists - post Sandy, residents dust off their bicycles and hit the streets to get to their destinations.

    October 30, 2012
    * New on LLRX - DPLA Grant: Possible Synergy Between Libraries, Schools and Newspapers

    Via LLRX.com - DPLA Grant: Possible Synergy Between Libraries, Schools and Newspapers - David H. Rothman, a leading national digital library advocate, continues his series on the evolving framework for the Digital Public Library of America. In this column, he discusses the impact of new program funding from the Knight Foundation. Rothman believes the potential result could be the start of new synergies between libraries, schools, and newspapers - leading to more interest in civic participation, better monitoring of government at all levels, and maybe even a revival of many young people’s interest in newspapers.

    * NYC/NJ initiatives coordinating volunteer efforts for Sandy's victims

    Via WSJ.com: "...the Facebook page of NYC Service, a New York City government initiative which runs a year-round calendar of volunteer efforts, but is now helping to coordinate volunteers for Sandy’s victims.

    • NYCService urges would-be volunteers to email nycservice@cityhall.nyc.gov with their name, email address and borough. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg described @NYCService in a recent tweet as the “best way” to help. The program is one of several retooled for the storm, or created to help harness an outpouring of concern, energy and money for storm victims. New York City public advocate Bill de Blasio has his own volunteer program, hosted on his website. His staff is collecting information on volunteers through a Google form. About 700 volunteers have stepped forward so far. “The need is considerable and is going to grow,” said Mr. de Blasio’s press secretary, Wiley Norvell.
    • Volunteers in New Jersey are being coordinated through an emergency response hotline, 1-800-JERSEY-7 (1-800-537-7397). Alternate numbers, for when the hotline isn’t staffed, include 609-775-5236 and 908-303-0471 or emails can be sent to Rowena.Madden@sos.state.nj.us.
    • The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) takes donations to rescue and shelter animals affected by the storm. According to spokesperson Emily Schneider, the group’s efforts are currently focused in the New York City area, where nearly 240 animals are staying with their owners in pet-friendly Red Cross shelters. The ASPCA is also setting up a distribution center in Syracuse, New York with 4,000 sheltering units, which contain pet food, crates, food bowls, toys, and anything else an animal may need. They’re also standing with water rescue units should they be called."
    • The Huffington Post - How To Help The Victims Of Hurricane Sandy
    • The Lower East Side Recovers community-powered disaster recovery

    * WSJ - Live Updates on Sandy - More than 8 million people have lost power

    WSJ.com free again today - live updates: "More than 8 million people have lost power, three nuclear plants have shut down, New York subway faces a massive recovery effort, and Connecticut has re-opened highways."

    October 28, 2012
    * WSJ.com offers all readers free access on October 29, 2012

    From live Hurricane Sandy storm updates to national and global financial news, all content on WSJ.com is open to non-subscribers October 29, 2012.

    * The Hygienic Efficacy of Different Hand-Drying Methods: A Review of the Evidence

    The Hygienic Efficacy of Different Hand-Drying Methods: A Review of the Evidence. Cunrui Huang, Wenjun Ma, Susan Stack. Mayo Clinic Proceedings - August 2012 (Vol. 87, Issue 8, Pages 791-798, DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2012.02.019)

  • "The transmission of bacteria is more likely to occur from wet skin than from dry skin; therefore, the proper drying of hands after washing should be an integral part of the hand hygiene process in health care. This article systematically reviews the research on the hygienic efficacy of different hand-drying methods. A literature search was conducted in April 2011 using the electronic databases PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Search terms used were hand dryer and hand drying. The search was limited to articles published in English from January 1970 through March 2011. Twelve studies were included in the review. Hand-drying effectiveness includes the speed of drying, degree of dryness, effective removal of bacteria, and prevention of cross-contamination. This review found little agreement regarding the relative effectiveness of electric air dryers. However, most studies suggest that paper towels can dry hands efficiently, remove bacteria effectively, and cause less contamination of the washroom environment. From a hygiene viewpoint, paper towels are superior to electric air dryers. Paper towels should be recommended in locations where hygiene is paramount, such as hospitals and clinics."
  • October 27, 2012
    * Librarians are educating voters on issues and referendums in Washington state

    Christina Ortiz: "After watching the U.S. Presidential debates, it's clear the country could really use a non-combative way to discuss issues and disseminate information. Sites like Procon.org do this for national issues, ranging from legalizing marijuana to illegal immigration, but sometimes the most heated political discussions happen on the local scene. Instead of relying on fact-checking websites, the University of Washington started the Living Voters Guide, a site dedicated educating voters on issues and referendums in Washington state."

    * Survey - America's Ideal Employers 2012

    "The results of the UNIVERSUM American Student Survey reveal how students perceive organizations as employers in the United States. The research functions as a basis for decision-making when choosing target groups, messages and channels for future employer branding campaigns, and as a control instrument for measuring the appeal an organization has over its specific target groups. The rankings [Engineering / IT / Natural Sciences / Humanities] reveal how attractive an employer is among students and indicates a company’s position in relation to other ideal employers in the recruitment market. The rankings enable employers to track and set targets for measuring their level of employer attractiveness."

    October 25, 2012
    * Editorial - Delivering on a Network-Enabled Literature

    Neylon C (2012) More Than Just Access: Delivering on a Network-Enabled Literature. PLoS Biol 10(10): e1001417. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001417

  • "By any measure it has been a huge year for the open-access movement. At the beginning of the year, it looked possible that the public access policy of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) might be rolled back by the Research Works Act, a legislative attempt supported by Elsevier and the Association of American Publishers to make such policies illegal. But as we move towards year's end, the momentum behind open access looks unstoppable with the announcement of major policy initiatives in the United States, the European Union, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, there is still much to be done and the challenges remain large, but the remaining questions are largely ones of implementation, not principle."
  • October 24, 2012
    * Report - Emerging Trends in Real Estate® 2013

    "Emerging Trends in Real Estate® is an annual series of trends and forecast publications that reflect the views of leading real estate executives in three global regions—Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Undertaken jointly with PWC and the Urban Land Institute, Emerging Trends in Real Estate® provides an outlook on real estate investment and development trends, real estate finance and capital markets, property sectors, metropolitan areas, and other real estate issues. The reports:

    • Tell you what to expect and where the best opportunities are.
    • Elaborate on trends in the capital markets, including sources and flows of equity and debt capital.
    • Indicate which property sectors offer the best opportunities and which ones to avoid.
    • Report how the economy and concerns about credit issues are affecting real estate.
    • Discusses which metropolitan areas offer the most and least potential.
    • Describes the impact of social and political trends on real estate.
    • Explains how locational preferences are changing."

    * Graduating to a Pay Gap The Earnings of Women and Men One Year after College Graduation

    Graduating to a Pay Gap The Earnings of Women and Men One Year after College Graduation, Christianne Corbett, M.A. and Catherine Hill, Ph.D., October 2012

  • "Women are paid significantly less than men are in nearly every occupation. Because pay equity affects women and their families in all walks of life, it is not surprising that many women consider the issue important. Many business leaders also believe that pay equity is “good business,” because it improves morale and productivity. Yet progress in closing the gap between men’s and women’s pay has been slow and, in recent years, has stagnated. For more than 130 years, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has advocated for gender equity in education and the workplace. During this time, women have gone from a small minority on college campuses to a majority of the student body. Today, women make up half the workforce, but they continue to earn less than men do throughout their careers. Why does this gender pay gap persist? This question is a focal point of AAUW’s research and advocacy work. Graduating to a Pay Gap finds that women working full time already earn less than their male counterparts do just one year after college graduation. Taking a closer look at the data, we find that women’s choices—college major, occupation, hours at work—do account for part of the pay gap. But about one-third of the gap remains unexplained, suggesting that bias and discrimination are still problems in the workplace."
  • October 23, 2012
    * Study - Women as Academic Authors, 1665-2010

    Women as Academic Authors, 1665-2010: "Women’s presence in higher education has increased, but as authors of scholarly papers—keys to career success—their publishing patterns differ from those of men. Explore nearly 1,800 fields and subfields, across four centuries, to see which areas have the most female authors and which have the fewest, in this exclusive Chronicle report. See how overall percentages differ from the important first-author position and—in two major bioscience fields—from the prestigious last-author position. See "About these data" for details. Source: Gender analysis led by Jevin West and Jennifer Jacquet at the University of Washington’s Eigenfactor Project."

    October 22, 2012
    * Good practices for university open-access policies

    "In anticipation of worldwide Open Access Week, the Harvard Open Access Project is pleased to release version 1.0 of a guide to good practices for university open-access policies. Gathering together recommendations on drafting, adopting, and implementing OA policies, the guide is based on policies adopted at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and a couple of dozen other institutions around the world. But it's not limited to policies of this type and includes recommendations that should be useful to institutions taking other approaches. The guide is designed to evolve. As co-authors, we plan to revise and enlarge it over time, building on our own experience and the experience of colleagues elsewhere. We welcome suggestions. The guide deliberately refers to "good practices" rather than "best practices". On many points, there are multiple, divergent good practices. Good practices are easier to identify than best practices. And there can be wider agreement on which practices are good than on which practices are best. The current version of the guide has the benefit of the advice of expert colleagues, and the endorsement of projects and organizations devoted to the spread of effective university OA policies. It has been written in consultation with Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Ada Emmett, Heather Joseph, Iryna Kuchma, and Alma Swan, and has already been endorsed by the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI), Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS), Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP), Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and SPARC Europe."

    October 16, 2012
    * Report - Can Consumers Avoid Checking Fees?

    "The purpose of this Consumer Federation of America (CFA) project is to determine the cost of typical checking accounts at the largest banks for consumers who are unable to meet the rising thresholds to waive bank fees and to demonstrate the impact of just a few mistakes on the annual cost of bank accounts. Consumer Federation of America examined data on the pattern of bank account use by consumers from research conducted by the Raddon Financial Group and surveyed three types of accounts2 at the twenty-five largest banks to determine the affordability of mainstream checking accounts for consumers in an era of rising bank fees and thresholds to avoid bank fees."

    * Report - Global Wealth 2012: The Year in Review

    Global Wealth 2012: The Year in Review. Michael O'Sullivan, Credit Suisse Research Institute, Richard Kersley, Investment Banking Securities, October 10, 2012: "The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report aims to provide the most reliable and comprehensive data on global household wealth, covering all components of wealth and spanning the entire wealth spectrum. Subdued economic growth and collapses in equity prices have made the past year a challenging one for wealth creation and preservation. In this article important aspects of the recent economic environment are reviewed."

  • See also - The Economist Special report - Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time.
  • October 15, 2012
    * Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment

    Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment, Sally Vermaaten, Brian Lavoie and Priscilla Caplan. D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2012. Volume 18, Number 9/10

  • "Developing a successful digital preservation strategy amounts to accounting for, and mitigating, the impact of various threats to the accessibility and usability of digital materials over time. Typologies of threats are practical tools that can aid in the development of preservation strategies. This paper proposes a new outcome-based model, the Simple Property-Oriented Threat (SPOT) Model for Risk Assessment, which defines six essential properties of successful digital preservation and identifies a limited set of threats which, if manifested, would seriously diminish the ability of a repository to achieve these properties. We demonstrate that the SPOT Model possesses the attributes of conceptual clarity, balanced granularity, comprehensiveness and simplicity, and provide examples of practical uses of the model and suggestions for future work."
  • October 14, 2012
    * How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace

    How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace. October 16, 2012 | Alison J. Head

  • "Qualitative findings about the information-seeking behavior of today’s college graduates as they transition from the campus to the workplace. Included are findings from interviews with 23 US
    employers and focus groups with 33 recent graduates from four US colleges and universities, conducted as an exploratory study for Project Information Literacy’s (PIL’s) Passage Studies. Most graduates in our focus groups said they found it difficult to solve information problems in the workplace, where unlike college, a sense of urgency pervaded and where personal contacts often reaped more useful results than online searches. Graduates said they leveraged essential information competencies from college for extracting content and also developed adaptive information-seeking strategies for reaching out to trusted colleagues in order to compensate for what they lacked. At the same time, employers said they recruited graduates, in part, for their online searching skills but still expected and needed more traditional research competencies, such as thumbing through bound reports, picking up the telephone, and interpreting research results with team members. They found that their college hires rarely demonstrated these competencies. Overall, our findings suggest there is a distinct difference between today’s graduates who demonstrated how quickly they found answers online and seasoned employers who needed college hires to use a combination of online and traditional methods to conduct comprehensive research."
  • * Dremel: Interactive Analysis of WebScale Datasets

    Dremel: Interactive Analysis of WebScale Datasets - Sergey Melnik, Andrey Gubarev, Jing Jing Long, Geoffrey Romer,
    Shiva Shivakumar, Matt Tolton, Theo Vassilakis - Google, Inc.

  • "Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Dremel, and explain how it complements MapReduce-based computing. We present a novel columnar storage representation for nested records and discuss experiments on few-thousand node instances of the system."
  • October 13, 2012
    * Infographic - The Right (and Wrong) Way to Sit at Your Desk

    Emily Nickerson: "Sitting up straight is a simple way to boost your metabolism, keep your blood pressure in check, lower your stress levels, and more—but it’s so easy to find yourself slouching lower and lower at your desk as the workday goes on. Check out this infographic for quick posture tips your whole body will thank you for."

    * Research - The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes

    The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes. Glenn De’atha, Katharina E. Fabriciusa, Hugh Sweatmana, and Marji Puotinenb - doi: 10.1073/pnas.1208909109 PNAS October 1, 2012

  • The world’s coral reefs are being degraded, and the need to reduce local pressures to offset the effects of increasing global pressures is now widely recognized. This study investigates the spatial and temporal dynamics of coral cover, identifies the main drivers of coral mortality, and quantifies the rates of potential recovery of the Great Barrier Reef. Based on the world’s most extensive time series data on reef condition (2,258 surveys of 214 reefs over 1985–2012), we show a major decline in coral cover from 28.0%to 13.8%(0.53%y−1), a loss of 50.7% of initial coral cover. Tropical cyclones, coral predation by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), and coral bleaching accounted for 48%, 42%,and 10% of the respective estimated losses,amounting to 3.38% y−1 mortality rate. Importantly, the relatively pristine northern region showed no overall decline. The estimated rate of increase in coral cover in the absence of cyclones, COTS, and bleaching was 2.85%y−1, demonstrating substantial capacity for recovery of reefs. In the absence of COTS, coral cover would increase at 0.89% y−1, despite ongoing losses due to cyclones and bleaching. Thus, reducing
    COTS populations, by improving water quality and developing alternative control measures, could prevent further coral decline and improve the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef. Such strategies can, however, only be successful if climatic conditions are stabilized, as losses due to bleaching and cyclones will otherwise increase."
  • * 3D Paper Crafted Infographic Resume

    Forbes - Erica Swallow: "Mohit Lakhmani — art director, paper sculptor, and 3D graphics artist — is the creator of the best infographic résumé I have yet to see. Bonus: it’s 3D! The résumé, which features three-dimensional charts, bars, pop-up descriptions, and decorative details, took Lakhmani four days to design in Adobe Photoshop and an additional day to construct. Lakhmani says he was inspired to design a 3D résumé, because “people appreciate things they can touch and feel” or that show rather than tell. As Lakhmani’s skill set lies in 3D modeling and graphic design, this particular résumé enables him to showcase his talents and gives potential employers and clients a first-hand look at his abilities."

    October 12, 2012
    * Gallup - Americans Who Like Where They Live Are in Better Health

    Gallup news release: "Americans who are either satisfied with their community or feel that their community is becoming a better place to live have Physical Health Index scores that are roughly nine points higher than score for Americans who are not satisfied with their communities or feel that their community is becoming a worse place to live...Specifically, those who are satisfied with the city in which they live or feel that it is becoming a better place to live are less likely to report having experienced physical pain, having health problems, being obese, having headaches, or having ever been diagnosed with asthma or high cholesterol. They are also more likely to report feeling well-rested and having enough energy."

    October 11, 2012
    * Judge Issues Ruling in Favor of Favorable Ruling in HathiTrust Fair-Use Case

    the Chronicle of Higher Education - Jennifer Howard: "Academic libraries’ indexing of digitized works counts as fair use. So says the federal judge overseeing a major copyright-infringement lawsuit brought last year by the Authors Guild against the HathiTrust digital repository and its university partners. At stake was the uses the libraries could make of millions of scanned books. “I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses” made by the defendants, Judge Harold Baer, of the U.S. District Court in New York, wrote in a ruling issued late Wednesday [copy of which is via EFF]."

    October 09, 2012
    * CoreLogic Reports Shadow Inventory Continues to Decline in July 2012

    "CoreLogic® a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, reported today that the current residential shadow inventory as of July 2012 fell to 2.3 million units, representing a supply of six months. This was a 10.2 percent drop from July 2011, when shadow inventory stood at 2.6 million units, which is approximately the same level the country was experiencing in March 2009. Currently, the flow of new seriously delinquent (90 days or more) loans into the shadow inventory has been roughly offset by the equal volume of distressed (short and real estate owned) sales..."CoreLogic shadow inventory measurements have been updated. Please refer to the extended methodology section of this report for more detail..."

    * Pew - One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation

    “Nones” on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation - "The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)."

    October 08, 2012
    * New on LLRX.com - Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet

    Via LLRX.com: Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman has compiled a best practices bibliography of sites and reliable sources focused on the hot topic of statistics and big data. These sources are representative of multiple publishers, national and global - government, academia, NGOs, and industry, many of which leverage open source and collaborative applications.

    October 05, 2012
    * Required for Nearly a Year, Many College Net Price Calculators Still Hard to Find, Use, Compare

    News release: "Since October 2011, nearly all U.S. colleges have been required to post “net price calculators” on their websites. Based on an in-depth look at 50 randomly selected colleges’ calculators, a new report from The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) found that many of these online tools are difficult for prospective college students and their families to find, use, and compare. Congress required net price calculators to ensure that consumers could look past “sticker price” and get an early, individualized estimate of what a specific college might cost them. Net price is the full cost of attendance minus expected grants and scholarships, and it can be much lower than the sticker price. In a recent poll, the majority of students surveyed ruled out colleges based on sticker price alone. Adding It All Up 2012: Are College Net Price Calculators Easy to Find, Use, and Compare? examines the state of net price calculators nearly a year after the federal requirement. It analyzes them from the perspective of students and families, who might not otherwise know that a college is within or beyond their financial reach...The report urges the Department of Education to provide the guidance and enforcement necessary to ensure that colleges make their net price calculators more user friendly, so prospective students and their families can make more informed decisions about which colleges to apply to and attend."

    * Brooking's Hamilton Project - Regardless of the Cost, College Still Matters

    "In this month’s analysis, The Hamilton Project confirms its previous findings that the returns to college attendance are much higher than other investments, such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. We also find that the returns to college have been largely constant over the last 35 years, indicating that the rising tuition costs have been offset by the increased earnings premium for college graduates. Finally, we continue to explore the nation’s “jobs gap,” or the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels."


    October 04, 2012
    * Publishers and Google Reach Settlement Over Copyright and Digital Book Scanning

    News releases: The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google today announced a settlement agreement that will provide access to publishers’ in-copyright books and journals digitized by Google for its Google Library Project. The dismissal of the lawsuit will end seven years of litigation. The agreement settles a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google on October 19, 2005 by five AAP member publishers. As the settlement is between the parties to the litigation, the court is not required to approve its terms. The settlement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders. US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project. Those deciding not to remove their works will have the option to receive a digital copy for their use."

    * Mother Jones Profiles Do It Yourself Repair and Recycling Gurus at iFixit

    Behind the scenes at iFixit, where DIY repair is more than just a business, by Dashka Slater, November/December 2012 Issue

  • "iFixit - a fixture on Inc. magazine's list of fastest-growing US firms—aims to change that assumption. It sells tools and parts and provides free, crowd sourced manuals showing how to repair everything from smartphones to bikes and coffeemakers. At last count, there were more than 6,000 photo-heavy how-tos on its website, two-thirds of them generated wiki-style by the company's global community of around 50,000 fixers. (Millions more use the site but don't contribute content.)"
  • Related review - iPhone 5 Ranks Higher than Galaxy S III in New Study on Toxic Chemicals in Mobile Phones
  • * Report - Women at the Wheel: Do Female Executives Drive Start-Up Success?

    "What industries have women influenced? How have women on management teams affected exit options? At what stage do women join startups? What verticals see the highest number of females? This exclusive study, produced by the research team at Dow Jones VentureSource, answers these questions and further examines the impact female executives have had on the U.S venture capital industry over the past 15 years."

    October 03, 2012
    * Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government

    TechAmerica Foundation's Big Data Commission report, Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government

  • "Big Data has the potential to transform government and society itself. Hidden in the immense volume, variety and velocity of data that is produced today is new information, facts, relationships, indicators and pointers, that either could not be practically discovered in the past, or simply did not exist before. This new information, effectively captured, managed, and analyzed, has the power to enhance profoundly the effectiveness of government. Imagine a world with an expanding population but a reduced strain on services and infrastructure; dramatically improved healthcare outcomes with greater efficiency and less investment; intensified threats to public safety and national borders, but greater levels of security; more frequent and intense weather events, but greater accuracy in prediction and management...Success in capturing the transformation lies in leveraging the skills and experiences of our business and mission leaders, rather than creating a universal Big Data architecture. It lies in understanding a specific agency’s critical business imperatives and requirements, developing the right questions to ask, understanding the art of the possible, and taking initial steps focused on serving a set of clearly defined use cases. The experiences and value gained in these initial steps lead to more questions, more value, and an evolutionary expansion of Big Data capability that continually leverages prior investments."
  • October 02, 2012
    * Losing My Revolution: How Many Resources Shared on Social Media Have Been Lost?

    Losing My Revolution - How Many Resources Shared on Social Media Have Been Lost? Hany M. SalahEldeen and Michael L. Nelson, Old Dominion University, Department of Computer Science. September 13, 2012

  • "Social media content has grown exponentially in the recent years and the role of social media has evolved from just narrating life events to actually shaping them. In this paper we explore how many resources shared in social media are still available on the live web or in public web archives. By analyzing six diff erent event-centric datasets of resources shared in social media in the period from June 2009 to March 2012, we found about 11% lost and 20% archived after just a year and an average of 27% lost and 41% archived after two and a half years. Furthermore, we found a nearly linear relationship between time of sharing of the resource and the percentage lost, with a slightly less linear relationship between time of sharing and archiving coverage of the resource. From this model we conclude that after the first year of
    publishing, nearly 11% of shared resources will be lost and after that we will continue to lose 0.02% per day."
  • September 30, 2012
    * Gallup - When Americans Use Their Strengths More, They Stress Less

    Gallup: But most [Americans] do not use their strengths enough to maximize mood benefits, by Jim Asplund: "The more hours per day Americans get to use their strengths to do what they do best, the less likely they are to report experiencing worry, stress, anger, sadness, or physical pain "yesterday." Fifty-two percent of Americans who use their strengths for zero to three hours a day are stressed, but this falls to 36% for Americans who use their strengths for 10 hours per day or more."

  • See also the Clifton StrengthsFinder Technical Report: "This is a valuable resource for researchers interested in in-depth statistical information and an overview of the research underpinning the development and validation of the Clifton StrengthsFinder"
  • September 28, 2012
    * Managing Our Online Professional Lives Presentation Stresses Importance of Managing Your Online Identity

    "The presentation includes random notes and interesting quotes that illustrate not only how researchers are using social media but also how measurements of their social web impact relates to their personal brand and altmetrics. Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC's Vice President, Research, and Chief Strategist, gave this presentation to staff at the University of Pittsburgh Library System on 7 September 2012. Several takeaways from Lorcan's presentation include:

    • There are different ways of participating in a network world, and they are always changing.
    • There is real value in being active online and developing a visible online profile around your professional role.
    • The first page of Google results for you is your real homepage.
    • Consider your personal brand: how can you ensure that the right you—your professional skill set, not your personal life—surfaces first when people search you on the web?
    • This presentation is available from the OCLC Research website and on SlideShare."

    September 27, 2012
    * Pew - In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable

    Trends in News Consumption: 1991-2012, September 27, 2012

  • "The transformation of the nation’s news landscape has already taken a heavy toll on print news sources, particularly print newspapers. But there are now signs that television news – which so far has held onto its audience through the rise of the internet – also is increasingly vulnerable, as it may be losing its hold on the next generation of news consumers. Online and digital news consumption, meanwhile, continues to increase, with many more people now getting news on cell phones, tablets or other mobile platforms. And perhaps the most dramatic change in the news environment has been the rise of social networking sites. The percentage of Americans saying they saw news or news headlines on a social networking site yesterday has doubled – from 9% to 19% – since 2010. Among adults younger than age 30, as many saw news on a social networking site the previous day (33%) as saw any television news (34%), with just 13% having read a newspaper either in print or digital form."
  • * IBM - What is Big Data?

    "What is big data? Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data."

    September 26, 2012
    * Pew Research Center - How people get local news and information in different communities

    How people get local news and information in different communities, September 26, 2012

  • "The percentage of Americans who indicate they enjoy keeping up with the news 'a lot' ranges from 53% to 60% across the four community types, and similar percentages follow international news closely regardless of what is happening (ranging from 54% to 58%). More residents in all community types follow local news this closely, with percentages ranging from 68% in large cities to 73% in rural areas. Interest in national news is highest among suburban residents, with three quarters (74%) following closely regardless of what is going on, compared with two-thirds (67%) of residents of other types of communities."

  • Related graphic - Small town and rural residents most likely to stick to stick with traditional media
  • * Environmental Working Group's Guide to Healthy Cleaning

    2012 Guide to Healthy Cleaning - Search more than 2,000 products.

  • "Environmental Working Group’s mission is to use the power of information to protect human health and the environment. EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning gives you practical solutions to protect yourself and your family from everyday exposures to potentially harmful chemicals. U.S. law allows manufacturers of cleaning products to use almost any ingredient they wish, including known carcinogens and substances that can harm fetal and infant development. And the government doesn’t review the safety of products before they’re sold. To fill those gaps, EWG’s staff scientists compared the ingredients listed on cleaning product labels, websites and worker safety documents with the information available in the top government, industry and academic toxicity databases and the scientific literature on health and environmental problems tied to cleaning products. They used that information to create EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning, which provides you with easy-to-navigate safety ratings for a wide range of cleaners and ingredients."
  • September 24, 2012
    * SAT® Report: Only 43 Percent of 2012 College-Bound Seniors Are College Ready

    News release: "The SAT Report on College & Career Readiness released today revealed that only 43 percent of SAT® takers in the class of 2012 graduated from high school with the level of academic preparedness associated with a high likelihood of college success. These findings are based on the percentage of students in the class of 2012 who met the SAT College & Career Readiness Benchmark, which research shows is associated with higher rates of enrollment in four-year colleges, higher first-year college GPAs and higher rates of retention beyond the first year."

    * The Debunking Handbook - free download

    "The Debunking Handbook, a guide to debunking misinformation, is now freely available to download. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there's no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths. The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation."

    September 23, 2012
    * NYT: How ‘Silent Spring’ Ignited the Environmental Movement

    Eliza Griswold is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship: "On June 4, 1963, less than a year after the controversial environmental classic “Silent Spring” was published, its author, Rachel Carson, testified before a Senate subcommittee on pesticides. She was 56 and dying of breast cancer. She told almost no one...“Every once in a while in the history of mankind, a book has appeared which has substantially altered the course of history,” Senator Ernest Gruen­ing, a Democrat from Alaska, told Carson at the time. “Silent Spring” was published 50 years ago this month. Though she did not set out to do so, Carson influenced the environmental movement as no one had since the 19th century’s most celebrated hermit, Henry David Thoreau, wrote about Walden Pond. “Silent Spring” presents a view of nature compromised by synthetic pesticides, especially DDT. Once these pesticides entered the biosphere, Carson argued, they not only killed bugs but also made their way up the food chain to threaten bird and fish populations and could eventually sicken children. Much of the data and case studies that Carson drew from weren’t new; the scientific community had known of these findings for some time, but Carson was the first to put them all together for the general public and to draw stark and far-reaching conclusions. In doing so, Carson, the citizen-scientist, spawned a revolution. “Silent Spring,” which has sold more than two million copies, made a powerful case for the idea that if humankind poisoned nature, nature would in turn poison humankind. “Our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth and in time return to bring hazard to ourselves,” she told the subcommittee. We still see the effects of unfettered human intervention through Carson’s eyes: she popularized modern ecology."

  • Via the Silent Spring Institute, see also The Science and Policy of Environmental Toxics and Breast Cancer
  • September 21, 2012
    * Study - History, As Recorded on Twitter, Is Vanishing From The Web

    Technology Review: "Almost 30 per cent of recorded history, shared over social media such as Twitter, has disappeared, according to a new study of the Egyptian uprising and other significant events."

  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1209.3026: How Many Resources Shared on Social Media Have Been Lost?
  • September 20, 2012
    * Wired: The New MakerBot Replicator Might Just Change Your World

    Chris Anderson: "The BotCave is home to MakerBot, a company that for nearly four years has been bringing affordable 3-D printers to the masses. But nothing MakerBot has ever built looks like the new printer these workers are currently constructing. The Replicator 2 isn’t a kit; it doesn’t require a weekend of wrestling with software that makes Linux look easy. Instead, it’s driven by a simple desktop application, and it will allow you to turn CAD files into physical things as easily as printing a photo. The entry-level Replicator 2, priced at $2,199, is for generating objects up to 11 by 6 inches in an ecofriendly material; the higher-end Replicator 2X, which costs $2,799, can produce only smaller items, up to 9 by 6 inches, but it has dual heads that let it print more sophisticated objects. With these two machines, MakerBot is putting down a multimillion-dollar wager that 3-D printing has hit its mainstream moment."

    September 19, 2012
    * Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review

    "The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to share a new literature review by the Youth and Media team, contributing to The Kinder & Braver World Project led by danah boyd and John Palfrey - Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review, by Nathaniel Levy, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Edward Crowley, Meredith Beaton, June Casey, and Caroline Nolan, presents an aggregation and summary of recent academic literature on youth bullying and seeks to make scholarly work on this important topic more broadly accessible to a concerned public audience, including parents, caregivers, educators, and practitioners. The document is guided by two questions: “What is bullying?” and “What can be done about bullying?” and focuses on the online and offline contexts in which bullying occurs. Although the medium or means through which bullying takes place influence bullying dynamics, as previous research demonstrates, online and offline bullying are more similar than different. This dynamic is especially true as a result of the increasing convergence of technologies. Looking broadly at the commonalities as well as the differences between offline and online phenomena fosters greater understanding of the overall system of which each is a part and highlights both the off- and online experiences of young people – whose involvement is not typically limited to one end of the spectrum."

    September 17, 2012
    * Scientists, Foundations, Libraries, Universities, and Advocates Unite and Issue New Recommendations to Make Research Freely Available to All Online

    News release: "In response to the growing demand to make research free and available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, a diverse coalition today issued new recommendations that could usher in huge advances in the sciences, medicine, and health.The recommendations were developed by leaders of the Open Access movement, which has worked for the past decade to provide the public with unrestricted, free access to scholarly research — much of which is publicly funded. Making the research publicly available to everyone — free of charge and without most copyright and licensing restrictions — will accelerate scientific research efforts and allow authors to reach a larger number of readers."

    * Career and Technical Education: Five Ways That Pay Along the Way to the B.A.

    "Getting a Bachelor's degree is the best way for most workers to make middle-class wages. In this report, however, we show there are 29 million jobs (21% of all jobs) for workers without Bachelor's degrees. The report also details five major sub-baccaulareate, career and technical education (CTE) pathways: employer-based training, industry-based certifications, apprenticeships, postsecondary certificates, and associate's degrees."

  • "There are 29 million jobs that pay middle-class wages (between $35,000 and $75,000 annually). Nearly 40 percent pay more than $50,000 a year, according to the new study released jointly by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and Civic Enterprises. There are five pathways that provide career and technical training that lead to these jobs. Altogether, these Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways account for $524 billion of investment in postsecondary education and training each year. The study examines each of these five CTE pathways in major detail."
  • September 16, 2012
    * The Gender Wage Gap: 2011

    The Gender Wage Gap: 2011. by Ariane Hegewisch, Angela Edwards (September 2012). Institute for Women's Policy Research

  • "The ratio of women’s and men’s median annual earnings was 77.0 for full-time/year-round workers in 2011, essentially unchanged from 77.4 in 2010. (This means the gender wage gap for full-time/year-round workers is now 23 percent.) During the last decade the wage gap narrowed by less than half of one percentage point. In the previous decade, between 1991 and 2000, it closed by almost four, and in the decade prior to that, 1981 and 1990, by over ten percentage points."
  • September 14, 2012
    * Fidelity Outlines Age-Based Savings Guidelines to Help Workers Stay on Track for Retirement

    News release: "Fidelity Investments® today outlined an easy-to-understand set of savings guidelines to help workers evaluate whether they are on track to meet their income needs in retirement based on their current savings. According to Fidelity’s calculation, most employees should aim to save at least 8 times their ending salary in order to meet basic income needs in retirement. While every individual’s situation will differ greatly based on desired lifestyle in retirement, the average worker may replace 85 percent of his pre-retirement income by saving at least 8 times his ending salary3. In order to reach the 8X level by age 674, Fidelity suggests workers have saved about 1 times their salary at age 35, 3 times at age 45, and 5 times at age 55."

    September 12, 2012
    * Bank Executive Overconfidence and Delayed Expected Loss Recognition

    Black, Dirk E. and Gallemore, John, Bank Executive Overconfidence and Delayed Expected Loss Recognition (August 22, 2012). Available at SSRN

  • "While prior work shows that delayed expected loan loss recognition is related to lending propensity (Beatty and Liao, 2011), bank risk (Bushman and Williams, 2011), and bank risk taking (Bushman and Williams, 2012), we provide evidence that executive overconfidence is a potential driver of delayed expected loan loss recognition. We find that overconfident bank CEOs and CFOs recognize lower loan loss provisions and incorporate current and future deterioration in nonperforming loans in their loan loss provisions less than other bank CEOs and CFOs. Our evidence of delayed expected loss recognition is driven primarily by CFOs, consistent with CFOs being closer to the financial reporting function than CEOs. The study is important because it demonstrates that manager characteristics can have meaningful economic consequences for financial institutions through the reporting of asset risk."
  • Related postings on the financial system
  • September 11, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Tutorial Resources on the Internet

    Via LLRX.com - Tutorial Resources on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman's guide is a wide ranging and immediately useful listing of tutorial resources and sites on the Internet. This guide will assist you to discover, review and select the most relevant and reliable sources for your requirements, on topics that include: e-training, health sciences and biomedical research, educational opportunities for unemployed workers, effective web searching, statistical data mining, free college and university courses, programming in various open source applications, and technical support, user guides and repair services too!

    * Report: "Swatting the Long Tail of Digital Media: A Call for Collaboration"

    OCLC news release: "This report urges a collaborative approach for conversion of content on various types of digital media. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, Swatting the Long Tail of Digital Media: A Call for Collaboration, is intended for managers who are making decisions on where to invest their born-digital time and money. It should help them understand that any expectations that local staff will be able to handle everything are probably impractical. We hope it will also help archivists (and others) in the trenches breathe a sigh of relief to think that perhaps they won’t have to deal with an array of obsolete media all on their own."

    September 05, 2012
    * Users increasingly sharing photos over text on social media

    eMarketer - Users turn to Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter itself to post pictures. "As the number of Twitter users grows, consumers are using the site to share photos, videos and other links with their followers. eMarketer forecasts that US adult Twitter users will reach 31.8 million in 2013, up 14.9% from the 27.7 million users in 2012. As the base grows, the way consumers use the site and what they share is also changing.In July 2012, website analysis company Diffbot looked at 750,000 links posted to Twitter worldwide and found that 36% were images, 16% were articles and 9% were videos. Additionally, 8% linked to a product, and 7% each linked to a site’s front page, a status update or a page error. Games, location-sharing, recipes and reviews each made up less than 2% of links."

    September 04, 2012
    * Big Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards

    Big Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards, Darrell M. West

  • "In this report, I examine the potential for improved research, evaluation, and accountability through data mining, data analytics, and web dashboards. So-called “big data” make it possible to mine learning information for insights regarding student performance and learning approaches.1 Rather than rely on periodic test performance, instructors can analyze what students know and what techniques are most effective for each pupil. By focusing on data analytics, teachers can study learning in far more nuanced ways.2 Online tools enable evaluation of a much wider range of student actions, such as how long they devote to readings, where they get electronic resources, and how quickly they master key concepts."
  • * Wharton - Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men?

    Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men? Analyzing the Search for High-paying Jobs

  • "Why do women continue to earn less money than men -- approximately 20% less, according to some estimates -- and what can be done about it? At least half the pay gap reflects the fact that women tend to work in different kinds of occupations and industries than men, a phenomenon known as "gender segregation." Understanding the causes of that gender segregation is a key part of any attempt to address the pay differential. Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell and Roxana Barbulescu, a management professor at McGill University in Montreal, set out to understand the causes of gender segregation by taking a different approach than studies that typically look at variances in the kinds of jobs that men and women choose, or at the decisions made by employers during the job application process. Bidwell and Barbulescu opted instead to look at job applicants themselves to determine whether the decisions they make during their job search process have a significant impact on which offer they accept. Their results are presented in a paper titled, Do Women Choose Different Jobs from Men? Mechanisms of Application Segregation in the Market for Managerial Workers, forthcoming in the journal Organization Science."

  • * Forrester: Industrializing IT Workload Automation

    "In this study, Forrester developed a hypothesis that tested the need for automation, the issues raised by a tactical and punctual deployment of job scheduling solutions, and the benefits of a more strategic usage of enterprisewide workload automation. Key Findings Include:

    • A majority of enterprises want a more efficient IT department
    • Scattered efforts using ad hoc or embedded job scheduling solutions lead to problems
    • Workload automation, on the other hand, provides centralized control. Sponsor: BMC Software

    September 03, 2012
    * August 2012 Manufacturing ISM Report On Business

    News release: "Economic activity in the manufacturing sector contracted in August for the third time since July 2009; however, the overall economy grew for the 39th consecutive month, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®. The report was issued today by Bradley J. Holcomb, CPSM, CPSD, chair of the Institute for Supply Management™ Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. "The PMI™ registered 49.6 percent, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from July's reading of 49.8 percent, indicating contraction in the manufacturing sector for the third consecutive month. This is also the lowest reading for the PMI™ since July 2009. The New Orders Index registered 47.1 percent, a decrease of 0.9 percentage point from July, indicating contraction in new orders for the third consecutive month. The Production Index registered 47.2 percent, a decrease of 4.1 percentage points and indicating contraction in production for the first time since May 2009. The Employment Index remained in growth territory at 51.6 percent, but registered its lowest reading since November 2009 when the Employment Index registered 51 percent. The Prices Index increased 14.5 percentage points from its July reading to 54 percent. Comments from the panel generally reflect a slowdown in orders and demand, with continuing concern over the uncertain state of global economies."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • * Stanford Study - Organic Produce Reduces Exposure to Pesticides

    Environmental Working Group: "Consumers can markedly reduce their intake of pesticide residues and their exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria by choosing organic produce and meat, according to researchers at Stanford University who reviewed a massive body of scientific studies on the much-debated issue. The Stanford team analyzed more than 230 field studies and 17 human studies conducted in the United States and Europe to compare pesticide residues, antibiotic resistance and vitamin and nutrient levels in organic and conventionally produced foods. The study, published Monday, September 3, 2012 is available online at the website of The Annals of Internal Medicine (abstract only)...Based on its review of the available research, the Stanford team also concluded that conventionally raised meat harbors more antibiotic resistant bacteria. It found that consumers of non-organic chicken or pork are 33 percent more likely to ingest three or more strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than those who eat organic meat."

  • A Few Things to Remind People Quoting That Organic Food Study
  • August 29, 2012
    * CareerBuilder Study Finds More Workers Feeling Bullied in the Workplace

    Bullying Causing Some Workers to Experience Health Issues and Leave Their Jobs: "A new study by CareerBuilder finds the number of workers encountering bullies at the office is on the rise. Thirty-five percent of workers said they have felt bullied at work, up from 27 percent last year. Sixteen percent of these workers reported they suffered health-related problems as a result of bullying and 17 percent decided to quit their jobs to escape the situation. The study also found nearly half of workers don’t confront their bullies and the majority of incidents go unreported."

    August 26, 2012
    * Research article - Oxygen Gas–Filled Microparticles Provide Intravenous Oxygen Delivery

    News release, Children's Hospital of Boston: "Dr. John Kheir and colleagues [Inventors: John Kheir, Mark Borden, Francis McGowan] have developed a platform technology that packages oxygen in microbubbles for direct delivery via injection to blood and tissues. This technology is platform in nature and could revolutionize the practice of critical care medicine. An early and promising application is in treatment of patients who have undergone a myocardial infarction and experience cardiac arrest. The ability to keep blood oxygenated for even a short period of time under cardiac arrest circumstances or other circumstances in which a patient is unable to breathe or has no blood flow can prevent the tissue damage, including brain damage, that results from lack of oxygen."

  • See also How 'Oxygen Foam' Can Save People Who Aren't Breathing
  • * Report - Internet2 eTextbook Spring 2012 Pilot

    Internet2 eTextbook Spring 2012 Pilot, Final Project Report. August 1, 2012

  • "In October 2011, the Provosts at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) institutions expressed interest in initiating a quick‐turn‐around multi‐institutional eTextbook pilot. The next month, Indiana University approached the Internet2 organization to put together an eText pilot for the spring 2012 semester, based on IU’s eTexts Initiative. In January 2012 IU, along with Internet2, McGraw‐Hill, and Courseload launched the Spring 2012 eTexts Pilot. The University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and the University of Virginia joined the pilot and evaluation..." Selected research results:
    • The lower cost of an eTextbook was considered the most important factor for students considering future purchase of an eText.
    • The portability of eTexts also ranked very high as a factor leading to future purchase.
    • Other important factors in future eText purchases included that it should be accessible without an internet connection and available throughout a student’s academic career, not just for a semester.
    • Difficult readability of the text (e.g., difficult zoom feature) was mentioned numerous times by students as well as lack of native functionality on tablets such as the iPad.
    • Faculty, for the most part, did not report using the enhanced eText features (sharing notes, tracking students, question/answer, additional links, etc.) and indicated the need for additional training.
    • Because faculty did not use the enhanced features students saw little benefit from the eText platform’s capability of promoting collaboration with other students or with the professor."
  • August 25, 2012
    * The Moscow Declaration on Media and Information Literacy

    "The changing media landscape and the rapid growth in information are affecting individuals and societies now more than ever. In order to succeed in this environment, and to resolve problems effectively in every facet of life, individuals, communities and nations should obtain a critical set of competencies to be able to seek, critically evaluate and create new information and knowledge in different forms using existing tools, and share these through various channels. This literacy creates new opportunities to improve quality of life. However, individuals, organizations, and societies have to address existing and emerging barriers and challenges to the free and effective use of information...With this context, the International Conference Media and Information Literacy for Knowledge Societies that was held in Moscow on 24-28 June 2012 aimed at raising public awareness of the significance, scale and topicality of the tasks of media and information literacy advocacy among information, media and educational professionals, government executives, and the public at large; at identifying key challenges and outlining policies and professional strategies in this field; and at contributing to improving international, regional and national response to Media and Information Literacy (MIL) issues."

    * Inc. Magazine's Annual List of America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies -- the Inc. 500|5000

    "America’s fastest growers span 25 industries, all 50 states, and metro areas ranging from Boston to San Diego. New York City had the most honorees, with 350--three more than runner-up Washington, D.C. While nearly half the winners had revenues between $2 million and $10 million, more than 50 took in over $1 billion."

    August 24, 2012
    * The New Knowledge Services: Next Steps for Career Professionals

    Specialist Librarians as Knowledge Strategists, by Guy St. Clair. Presented at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference, Chicago IL USA July 16, 2012 in a “Spotlight Session” sponsored by SLA’s Information Technology and Knowledge Management Divisions

  • "Your job exists and you are in that job because you are employed by your parent organization to see that the knowledge development and knowledge sharing function – the very foundation of KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy – is performed in your company as well as it can be performed. As the specialist librarian – or whatever job title has been assigned to the work you do – it is your responsibility to ensure that knowledge development and knowledge sharing – that exalted function to which we attach the acronym “KD/KS” – is supported and performed to the highest standards of service delivery you can provide."
  • * NBER Working Paper - The Value of Bosses

    The Value of Bosses, Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw, Christopher T. Stanton. NBER Working Paper No. 18317. Issued in August 2012

  • "Do supervisors enhance productivity? Arguably, the most important relationship in the firm is between worker and supervisor. The supervisor may hire, fire, assign work, instruct, motivate and reward workers. Models of incentives and productivity build at least some subset of these functions in explicitly, but because of lack of data, little work exists that demonstrates the importance of bosses and the channels through which their productivity enhancing effects operate. As more data become available, it is possible to examine the effects of people and practices on productivity. Using a company-based data set on the productivity of technology-based services workers, supervisor effects are estimated and found to be large. Three findings stand out. First, the choice of boss matters. There is substantial variation in boss quality as measured by the effect on worker productivity. Replacing a boss who is in the lower 10% of boss quality with one who is in the upper 10% of boss quality increases a team’s total output by about the same amount as would adding one worker to a nine member team. Using a normalization, this implies that the average boss is about 1.75 times as productive as the average worker. Second, boss’s primary activity is teaching skills that persist. Third, efficient assignment allocates the better bosses to the better workers because good bosses increase the productivity of high quality workers by more than that of low quality workers."
  • * 2011 Risks and Process of Retirement Survey

    Society of Actuaries' new report shows increasing longevity as a major retirement planning risk: "Life spans are continuing to increase. In the past half-century, life expectancy for newborn American males improved by an average of almost two years each decade, from 66.6 years in 1960 to 75.7 years by 2010. For females, the average increase was about 1.5 years per decade, from 73.1 years in 1960 to 80.8 years by 2010.

    • Inflation has not been a major concern recently with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increasing only 2.4 percent a year, on average, in the first decade of the 2000s. However, the CPI may not reflect price increases people are experiencing; so, for the longer term, those who have to make retirement assets last for several decades need to be aware of inflation’s potential to erode purchasing power.
    • Products for managing longevity risk continue to proliferate even though traditional annuity products continue to have a poor image and are not widely purchased.
    • Employer-sponsored defined-benefit plans continue to decline in prevalence, and more of these plans have been and are being frozen. While about half of all retired people today receive some income from defined-benefit plans, this income source is steadily declining, making personal responsibility to manage retirement risk ever more critical. This trend increases the importance of managing longevity risk and makes it more challenging."

    August 23, 2012
    * You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media

    "This report is geared to those tasked with gaining preliminary control over the digital media in an archives' collections, including those who don’t know where to begin in managing born-digital materials. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media errs on the side of simplicity and describes what is truly necessary to start managing born-digital content on physical media. It presents a list of the basic steps without expanding on archival theory or the use of particular software tools. It does not assume that policies are in place or that those performing the tasks are familiar with traditional archival practices, nor does it assume that significant IT support is available. Eighteen well-respected advisors weighed in on the guidance, ensuring that it was not just simple, but authoritative."

    August 21, 2012
    * New Report: America Trashes Forty Percent of Food Supply

    New analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council: "Food is simply too good to waste. Even the most sustainably farmed food does us no good if the food is never eaten. Getting food to our tables eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. That is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Not only does this mean that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also 25 percent of all freshwater and huge amounts of unnecessary chemicals, energy, and land. Moreover, almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills where it accounts for almost 25 percent of U.S. methane emissions. Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm To Fork to Landfill – analyzes the latest case studies and government data on the causes and extent of food losses at every level of the U.S. food supply chain. It also provides examples and recommendations for reducing this waste."

    * Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century

    "Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills." Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills - such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments."

    * Pew presentation - Networked Learners

    Networked Learners, Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet Project - "teaching and learning in the age of the Internet."

    August 20, 2012
    * Chronicle of Philanthropy Report - How America Gives

    "The nation’s generosity divide is vast, according to a new Chronicle of Philanthropy study that charts giving patterns in every state, city, and ZIP code. In states like Utah and Mississippi, the typical household gives more than 7 percent of its income to charity, while the average household in Massachusetts and three other New England states gives less than 3 percent. The same holds for the nation’s 50 biggest metropolitan areas. The Chronicle found that residents of Salt Lake City, Memphis, and Birmingham, Ala., typically give at least 7 percent of their discretionary income to charity, while those in Boston and Providence average less than 3 percent. (See our interactive tool to find giving data for any place in the United States.)"

    August 15, 2012
    * Deloitte: Why water is a CFO issue

    CFO Insights - Ripple effects: Why water is a CFO issue

  • "Much of the world is parched. In July, just under 56 percent of the contiguous United States was experiencing drought conditions, the most extensive area in the 12-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor. Elsewhere drought-like conditions may be in store for India and Pakistan, where monsoon rains have been significantly lower than normal2; parts of the Korean Peninsula continue to endure the worst drought in more than a century; and dryness in Russia is threatening vital wheat crops in that country. Basically, water, the once plentiful resource, is growing scarcer. And that scarcity is a finance issue — one that has the potential to disrupt business and supply chain operations, lead to increased costs, and increase the price of commodity products. Part of the problem is that the demand for fresh water has doubled over the past 50 years. Moreover, it is likely that things may get worse. So much worse that it is projected that about half of the world’s population may experience water scarcity by 2030."
  • August 14, 2012
    * American Banker - 9 Big Data Challenges Banks Face

    "Banks have begun dusting off some of the ambitious data management projects they began in the early 2000s, then shelved when the financial crisis and recession hit. But according to SAP's top banking executives, who met with us last week, these projects are being scaled down to handle a single problem, such as improving same-day liquidity risk reporting, rather than trying to transform data systems across the entire company at once. The Walldorf, Germany-based software company's executives shared what they're seeing and hearing from their U.S. bank customers about the challenges of managing large data silos (sometimes referred to by the overused yet ill-defined term Big Data). The Big Data myth. This is not a bank-specific issue, but the basic premise of the hyped-up term Big Data is the idea that companies' (and social media networks') data sets have grown so large and complex that they are awkward to work with using standard database management tools. But often it makes sense to narrow the data set first."

    August 13, 2012
    * Brookings - Cut Off at the Pass: The Limits of Leadership in the 21st Century

    Cut Off at the Pass: The Limits of Leadership in the 21st Century: "America has a leadership deficit, argues Barbara Kellerman in a new paper that examines the current state of leadership in the United States. Surveying leadership’s genesis and its role as a compelling, powerful concept through history, Kellerman asserts that our current understanding of leadership and fixation on leadership development is badly misplaced. As leaders in the Boomer generation give way to Gen Xers and Gen Yers, the established leader-centric model, with the leader at the helm controlling the action, no longer holds – it’s passé, obsolete in today’s modern, bottom-up world, states Kellerman."

    August 12, 2012
    * OverDrive, safeguarding classics, the Jane Austen-'Hunger Games' connection, and a few other priorities for the DPLA to ponder

    via LLRX.com - OverDrive, safeguarding classics, the Jane Austen-'Hunger Games' connection, and a few other priorities for the DPLA to ponder: David H. Rothman's current commentary on the Harvard-hosted Digital Public Library of America highlights successful components of the project and prospective concepts that would support attaining the goal of a national digital library system.

    * The Problem of Data - Council on Library and Information Resources

    The Problem of Data, Lori Jahnke and Andrew Asher, Spencer D. C. Keralis with an introduction by Charles Henry. August 2012. CLIR Pubublication No. 154. “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.” IBM, Bringing Big Data to the Enterprise

  • This extraordinary and often cited statistic is an apt quantitative introduction to our technological era, increasingly referred to as the era of Big Data. The massive scale of data creation and accumulation, together with the increasing dependence on data in research and scholarship, are profoundly changing the nature of knowledge discovery, organization, and reuse. As our intellectual heritage moves more deeply into online research and teaching environments, new modes of inquiry emerge; digital data afford investigations across disciplinary boundaries in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, further muddling traditional boundaries of inquiry. Jahnke and Asher explore workflows and methodologies at a variety of academic data curation sites, and Keralis delves into the academic milieu of library and information schools that offer instruction in data curation. Their conclusions point to the urgent need for a reliable and increasingly sophisticated professional cohort to support data-intensive research in our colleges, universities, and research centers."
  • * CNNmoney - How much will that college really cost?

    How much will that college really cost? -("includes tuition, fees, room and board and books; excludes grants or scholarships")

    August 07, 2012
    * The Happy Planet Index 2012

    "The Happy Planet Index is a new measure of progress that focusses on what matters: sustainable well-being for all. It tells us how well nations are doing in terms of supporting their inhabitants to live good lives now, while ensuring that others can do the same in the future. In a time of uncertainty, the Index provides a clear compass pointing nations in the direction they need to travel, and helping groups around the world to advocate for a vision of progress that is truly about people’s lives." The New Economics Foundation

    * A Primer on Mathematical Modelling in Economics

    Rai, Birendra K., So, Chiu Ki and Nicholas, Aaron, A Primer on Mathematical Modelling in Economics (September 2012). Journal of Economic Surveys, Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 594-615, 2012. Available at SSRN

  • "The Commission on Graduate Education in Economics had raised several concerns regarding the role of mathematics in graduate training in economics (Krueger, 1991; Colander, 1998, 2005). This paper undertakes a detailed scrutiny of the notion of a utility function to motivate and describe the common patterns across mathematical concepts and results that are used by economists. In the process one arrives at a classification of mathematical terms which is used to state mathematical results in economics. The usefulness of the classification scheme is illustrated with the help of a discussion of Arrow's impossibility theorem. Common knowledge of the patterns in mathematical concepts and results could be effective in enhancing communication between students, teachers and researchers specializing in different sub‐fields of economics."
  • August 06, 2012
    * OCLC recommends Open Data Commons Attribution License for WorldCat data

    News release: "OCLC is recommending the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) for member institutions that would like to release their library catalog data on the Web. This open data license provides the means for users to share WorldCat-derived data in a manner that is consistent with the cooperative’s community norms defined in the “WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities.” Data can be freely shared subject only to attribution and OCLC's request that those making use of WorldCat derived data conform to the community norms."
    See also OCLC adds Linked Data to WorldCat.org

    August 05, 2012
    * Did the British burn all the books? Remembering the war of 1812 and the first Library of Congress

    Via LLRX.com: Did the British burn all the books? Remembering the war of 1812 and the first Library of Congress

  • Nicholas Pengelley has once again contributed his expertise as a historian, librarian, writer, and scholar with his article on the War of 1812, from the Canadian perspective. This month marks the anniversary of events that are largely overlooked on our Nation's Capital, yet had an overarching impact on many aspects of our lives as librarians, researchers, students and citizens. The Library of Congress was at the time of the British invasion in the summer of 1814 a solid working collection, with an emphasis on law and parliamentary history, but with a smattering of works considered as entertainment. If it still existed, a number of the works on its shelves would be counted as great rarities and doubtless displayed in glass cases. This library perished in the flames of war, but it was created anew the following year - arising phoenix-like from the ashes on the foundation of Thomas Jefferson's personal library of nearly 7,000 volumes, which he sold to the nation for $23,950. Nick offers us many lessons and food for thought - not the least that the rush into the embrace of technology's myriad applications should be complemented by acknowledging how the deliberation and actions of individuals 200 years ago continues to enrich our society, and our lives."
  • August 04, 2012
    * Nissan's Pioneering Move to Manufacture Cars in US Remains Highwater Mark

    NYT: In Wooing of Nissan, a Lesson for Tech Jobs? "But the migration of Japanese auto manufacturing to the United States over the last 30 years offers a case study in how the unlikeliest of transformations can unfold. Despite the decline of American car companies, the United States today remains one of the top auto manufacturers and employers in the world. Japanese and other foreign companies account for more than 40 percent of cars built in the United States, employing about 95,000 people directly and hundreds of thousands more among parts suppliers."

    * IBM - A Step-by-Step Approach to Successful Business Intelligence

    A Step-by-Step Approach to Successful Business Intelligence - "Organizations that have the most success with BI typically approach it incrementally. Discover a step-by-step strategy for success in this newsletter featuring research from Gartner."

    July 29, 2012
    * Pew - The Future of Higher Education

    The Future of Higher Education, by Janna Anderson, Jan Lauren Boyles, Lee Rainie. July 27, 2012

  • "For a millennium, universities have been considered the main societal hub for knowledge and learning. And for a millennium, the basic structures of how universities produce and disseminate knowledge and evaluate students have survived intact through the sweeping societal changes created by technology—the moveable-type printing press, the Industrial Revolution, the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and computers. Today, though, the business of higher education seems to some as susceptible to tech disruption as other information-centric industries such as the news media, magazines and journals, encyclopedias, music, motion pictures, and television. The transmission of knowledge need no longer be tethered to a college campus. The technical affordances of cloud-based computing, digital textbooks, mobile connectivity, high-quality streaming video, and “just-in-time” information gathering have pushed vast amounts of knowledge to the “placeless” Web. This has sparked a robust re-examination of the modern university’s mission and its role within networked society."
  • July 28, 2012
    * Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class

    "A new report from the McKinsey Global Institute, Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class, finds that the 600 cities making the largest contribution to a higher global GDP—the City 600—will generate nearly 65 percent of world economic growth by 2025. However, the most dramatic story within the City 600 involves just over 440 cities in emerging economies; by 2025, the Emerging 440 will account for close to half of overall growth. One billion people will enter the global consuming class by 2025. They will have incomes high enough to classify them as significant consumers of goods and services, and around 600 million of them will live in the Emerging 440."

    July 27, 2012
    * Responding to AIDS at Home & Abroad: How the U.S. and Other High Income Countries Compare

    Responding to AIDS at Home & Abroad: How the U.S. and Other High Income Countries Compare, July 2012, by Mike Isbell - consultant, Jen Kates and Josh Michaud, Kaiser Family Foundation

  • "This report examines the United States' response to HIV over the last 30 years compared to that of other high-income countries. The report compares the U.S. to seven other similarly situated nations – Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – noting patterns and themes that have emerged from their experiences. Key areas examined include governance of the national responses, the roles of affected communities and non-governmental actors, policies relating to HIV testing, prevention, care and treatment, and stigma and discrimination."
  • July 26, 2012
    * Pew - The Future of Big Data

    Big Data: "Experts say new forms of information analysis will help people be more nimble and adaptive, but worry over humans’ capacity to understand and use these new tools well Tech experts believe the vast quantities of data that humans and machines will be creating by the year 2020 could enhance productivity, improve organizational transparency, and expand the frontier of the “knowable future.” But they worry about “humanity’s dashboard” being in government and corporate hands and they are anxious about people’s ability to analyze it wisely." Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University
    Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
    July 20, 2012

  • See also - Big Data In 2020: More Info, More Problems by Sarah Kessler
  • * Research Study - Financial Experience and Behaviors Among Women

    Prudential's 2012-2013 Research Study, Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women, reveals that while women are more in control of their finances than ever, they are facing significant challenges with financial decision making. For the first time, the study gauges not only women's financial attitudes but men's as well, seeking to identify key ways in which men and women differ in their financial perceptions, approaches, goals, and confidence. The study also focuses on the experiences of Asian American, African American, and Hispanic women, and provides a regional snapshot that highlights key financial differences among women by their geographic location. Key findings:

    • 53% of the more than 1,400 women surveyed were primary earners, as a result of partners losing jobs during the financial crisis, divorce, and deciding to marry later.
    • Only 23% of women feel “well prepared” to make financial decisions compared with 45% of men. See the differences in financial attitudes, perceptions, goals, and confidence between women and men
    • Only 10% of female breadwinners feel very knowledgeable about financial products and services, and are only half as likely to feel well prepared to make wise financial decisions than men.
    • 33% of Asian American and 31 percent of African American married women are the higher-income earners, compared with 19 percent of white women. See the differences in the financial experiences and behaviors among women of different ethnic groups
    • Baby Boomer and younger women are “not prepared” for retirement, but women under 35 show more interest in both financial empowerment and the value of financial advice."

    July 24, 2012
    * Australasian Colonial Legal History Library is Launched

    Via Graham Greenleaf: "AustLII will today launch the Australasian Colonial Legal History Library. This is the first version of the Library, containing over 220,000 searchable documents from before 1900, from the seven Australasian colonies (including New Zealand). It is being developed in conjunction with NZLII. Development of further databases is underway and will expand the Library's contents considerably over the next year. A paper that AustLII presented at the Australian Historical Association Conference to explain the Library, 'Digitising and Searching Australasian Colonial Legal History', is now available for download at SSRN."

    July 22, 2012
    * HIV/AIDS: The State of the Epidemic After 3 Decades

    HIV/AIDS: The State of the Epidemic After 3 Decades. Source: Kaiser Family Foundation analysis. Original data and detailed source information are available here.

  • "This month's Visualizing Health Policy takes a look at the state of the HIV/AIDS epidemic after 3 decades, including global estimates of HIV prevalence in 2009 and how the number of people living with HIV has grown over the past 30 years, donor government funding for HIV/AIDS in developing countries, rates of new HIV diagnoses in the United States by race/ethnicity, and how the public's perception of HIV/AIDS as the most urgent public health problem has diminished since 2000. For a more complete view, select the PDF available in the upper right article toolbar."
  • * From Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges

    "IT powers today’s enterprises, which is particularly true for the world’s most data-intensive industries. Organizations in these highly specialized industries increasingly require focused IT solutions, including those developed specifically for their industry, to meet their most pressing business challenges, manage and extract insight from ever-growing data volumes, improve customer service, and, most importantly, capitalize on new business opportunities. The need for better data management is all too acute, but how are enterprises doing? Oracle surveyed 333 C-level executives from U.S. and Canadian enterprises spanning 11 industries to determine the pain points they face regarding managing the deluge of data coming into their organizations and how well they are able to use information to drive profit and growth.

    • 94% of C-level executives say their organization is collecting and managing more business information today than two years ago, by an average of 86% more
    • 29% of executives give their organization a “D” or “F” in preparedness to manage the data deluge
    • 93% of executives believe their organization is losing revenue – on average, 14% annually – as a result of not being able to fully leverage the information they collect.
    • Nearly all surveyed (97%) say their organization must make a change to improve information optimization over the next two years.
    • Industry-specific applications are an important part of the mix – 77% of organizations surveyed use them today to run their enterprises…and they are looking for more tailored options."

    * Big Data, Bigger Opportunities: Plans and Preparedness for the Data Deluge

    News release: "Smart grid deployments are creating exponentially more data for utilities and giving them access to information they’ve never had before. Accessing, analyzing, managing, and delivering this information – to optimize business operations and enhance customer relationships – is proving to be a daunting task. Somewhere in this data deluge lies the path to greater efficiencies, but how will access to this new data change the way utilities drive their businesses? Will predictive analytics spur operational change? Oracle recently surveyed 151 North American senior-level executives at utilities with smart meter programs in place and gauged their perceptions on the business impact of “big data,” preparedness to handle data growth, and plans to extract optimal business value from this data to better target, engage with and serve customers. The "Big Data, Bigger Opportunities" report is the first in Oracle's “Utility Transformations” series, which will examine how utilities use information generated from smart grid deployments to drive greater organizational efficiency, more reliable service, and stronger customer relationships."

    July 16, 2012
    * UK Government to open up publicly funded research

    "The government has announced that it will make publicly funded scientific research available for anyone to read for free, accepting recommendations in a report on open access by Dame Janet Finch. This will likely see a major increase in the number of taxpayer-funded research papers freely available to the public...Science Minister David Willetts said: “Removing paywalls that surround taxpayer funded research will have real economic and social benefits. It will allow academics and businesses to develop and commercialise their research more easily and herald a new era of academic discovery."

  • The government's decision is outlined in a formal response to recommendations made in the Finch Report."
  • July 15, 2012
    * Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated

    Via LLRX.com - Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated - July 2012

  • Sabrina I. Pacifici's comprehensive current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a selected but wide range of reliable, topical, predominantly free websites and resources. The goal is to support an effective research process to search, discover, access, monitor, analyze and review current and historical data, news, reports and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective. Sabrina's guide is a "best of the Web" resource that encompasses search engines, portals, databases, alerts, data archives, publisher specific services and applications. All of her recommendations are accompanied by links to trusted content targeted sources that are produced by top media and publishing companies, business, government, academia and NGOs.
  • * Kaiser - Reporting Manual on HIV/AIDS

    Reporting Manual on HIV/AIDS: "This reporting guide is designed for journalists who are covering the global epidemic for the first time and for those who have covered it previously. The Kaiser Family Foundation undertook this project as part of its continuing commitment to supporting good journalism and to combating HIV/AIDS through public education and awareness. The material in this special AIDS 2012 edition covers a broad range of subjects including the unique challenges of reporting on HIV/AIDS, treatment and prevention strategies and global efforts to finance the campaign against HIV/AIDS...The epidemic is not only a battle against a virus. It can also be a battle about ideas, cultural taboos, stigma and discrimination. For that reason, we have included information about the political and social aspects of the epidemic and provide journalists with guidance about navigating these issues effectively. Additionally, there is information about malaria and tuberculosis."

    * Kaiser Fact Sheet - Women and HIV/AIDS in the United States

    Women and HIV/AIDS in the United States, July 2012

  • "Women have been affected by HIV/AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic, an impact that has grown over time. Women of color, particularly Black women, have been especially hard hit and represent the majority of new HIV infections and AIDS diagnoses among women, and the majority of women living with the disease. Many women with HIV are low-income and most have important family responsibilities, potentially complicating the management of their illness. Research suggests that women with HIV face limited access to care and experience disparities in access, relative to men. Women also experience different clinical symptoms and complications. Given these trends and issues, efforts to stem the tide of the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic will increasingly depend on how and to what extent its effect on women and girls is addressed."
  • July 13, 2012
    * Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2012

    The Reuters Institute Digital Report 2012, edited by Nic Newman "reveals new insights about digital news consumption across Europe and the United States. Based on a representative survey of online news consumers across five countries – UK, US, Germany, France and Denmark – the report is the start of an ambitious project to track changing digital news behaviour over the next decade. Key international findings

    • "There are significant differences in how regularly people keep up with the news across our surveyed countries. More than 9 in 10 Germans access the news at least once a day compared with only 3 in 4 people in the United Kingdom.
    • The rapid switch from print to digital in the United States is not being replicated exactly in European countries. Germany is showing the strongest allegiance to traditional viewing and reading habits and has the lowest levels of internet news use.
    • In the UK, news about politics is perceived to be less important – and celebrity news more important – compared to the other countries surveyed.
    • There is more interest in business and especially economic news in the UK and the US than in the European countries surveyed."

    July 11, 2012
    * SEC Approves New Rule Requiring Consolidated Audit Trail to Monitor and Analyze Trading Activity

    "The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted to require the national securities exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to establish a market-wide consolidated audit trail that will significantly enhance regulators’ ability to monitor and analyze trading activity. The new rule adopted by the Commission requires the exchanges and FINRA to jointly submit a comprehensive plan detailing how they would develop, implement, and maintain a consolidated audit trail that must collect and accurately identify every order, cancellation, modification, and trade execution for all exchange-listed equities and equity options across all U.S. markets. Currently, there is no single database of comprehensive and readily accessible data regarding orders and executions. Each SRO instead uses its own separate audit trail system to track information relating to orders in its respective markets. Existing audit trail requirements vary significantly among markets, which means that regulators must obtain and merge together large volumes of disparate data from different entities when analyzing market activity."

    July 08, 2012
    * Paper - The top ten similarities between playing hockey and building a better Internet

    The top ten similarities between playing hockey and building a better Internet, Martin Arlitt, HP Laboratories, HPL-2012-1

  • "Time tends to pass more quickly than we would like. Sometimes it is helpful to reflect on what you have accomplished, and to derive what you have learned from the experiences. These "lessons learned" may then be leveraged by yourself or others in the future. Occasionally, an external event will motivate this self reflection. For me, it was the 50th anniversary reunion of the St. Walburg Eagles, held in July 2011. The Eagles are a full-contact (ice) hockey team I played with between 1988 and 1996, while attending university. What would I tell my friends and former teammates that I had been doing for the past 15 years? After some thought, I realized that my time as an Eagle had prepared me for a research career, in ways I would never have imagined. This article shares some of these similarities, to motivate others to reflect on their own careers and achievements, and perhaps make proactive changes as a result."
  • * Paper - Open Access Scientific Publishing and the Developing World

    Open Access Scientific Publishing and the Developing World, Jorge L. Contreras, American University - Washington College of Law, May 24, 2012 via SSRN

  • "Responding to rapid and steep increases in the cost of scientific journals, a growing number of scholars and librarians have advocated “open access” (OA) to the scientific literature. OA publishing models are having a significant impact on the dissemination of scientific information. Despite the success of these initiatives, their impact on researchers in the developing world is uncertain. This article analyses major OA approaches adopted in the industrialized world (so-called Green OA, Gold OA, and OA mandates, as well as non-OA information philanthropy) as they relate to the consumption and production of research in the developing world. The article concludes that while the consumption of scientific literature by developing world researchers is likely to be significantly enhanced through such programs, promoting the production of research in the developing world requires additional measures. These could include the introduction of better South-focused journal indexing systems that identify high-quality journals published in the developing world, coupled with the adjustment of academic norms to reward publication in such journals. Financial models must also be developed to decrease the reliance by institutions in the developing world on information philanthropy and to level the playing field between OA journals in industrialized and developing countries."
  • July 06, 2012
    * June 2012 Non-Manufacturing ISM Report On Business

    News release: "Economic activity in the non-manufacturing sector grew in June for the 30th consecutive month, say the nation's purchasing and supply executives in the latest Non-Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®...The NMI registered 52.1 percent in June, 1.6 percentage points lower than the 53.7 percent registered in May. This indicates continued growth this month at a slower rate in the non-manufacturing sector. The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index registered 51.7 percent, which is 3.9 percentage points lower than the 55.6 percent reported in May, reflecting growth for the 35th consecutive month. The New Orders Index decreased by 2.2 percentage points to 53.3 percent, and the Employment Index increased by 1.5 percentage points to 52.3 percent, indicating continued growth in employment at a faster rate. The Prices Index decreased 0.9 percentage point to 48.9 percent, indicating lower month-over-month prices for the second consecutive month. According to the NMI, 12 non-manufacturing industries reported growth in June. Respondents' comments are mixed and vary by industry and company.

  • "Industry Performance - The 12 non-manufacturing industries reporting growth in June — listed in order — are: Educational Services; Arts, Entertainment & Recreation; Management of Companies & Support Services; Retail Trade; Utilities; Transportation & Warehousing; Accommodation & Food Services; Public Administration; Construction; Information; Finance & Insurance; and Wholesale Trade. The five industries reporting contraction in June are: Mining; Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting; Health Care & Social Assistance; Real Estate, Rental & Leasing; and Professional, Scientific & Technical Services."
  • July 04, 2012
    * USTR Introduces New Copyright Exceptions and Limitations Provision at San Diego TPP Talks

    "For the first time in any U.S. trade agreement, the United States is proposing a new provision, consistent with the internationally-recognized “3-step test," that will obligate Parties to seek to achieve an appropriate balance in their copyright systems in providing copyright exceptions and limitations for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. These principles are critical aspects of the U.S. copyright system, and appear in both our law and jurisprudence. The balance sought by the U.S. TPP proposal recognizes and promotes respect for the important interests of individuals, businesses, and institutions who rely on appropriate exceptions and limitations in the TPP region. The United States is proposing this at the current round of TPP talks in San Diego. The proposal has benefited from the input of a wide range of stakeholders, and we look forward to discussing it further and sharing more information as the TPP negotiations progress."

    July 01, 2012
    * The Externality of High Frequency Trading

    Ye, Mao, Yao, Chen and Gai, Jiading, The Externality of High Frequency Trading (May 25, 2012). Available at SSRN.

  • "Exogenous technology shocks that increase the speed of trading from microseconds to nanoseconds dramatically increase order cancellation/execution ratio from 26:1 to 32:1 but do not have real impact on liquidity, price efficiency and trading volume. We find evidence consistent with “quote stuffing:” a manipulative practice that involves submitting a large number of orders with immediate cancellation to generate congestion. The stock data are handled by six randomly grouped channels in NASDAQ, and message flow of a stock can slow down the trading of stocks in the same channel but not stocks in a different channel. We detect an abnormally high level of co-movement of message flow for stocks in the same channel through factor regression and discontinuity test. These results suggest that investment in speed at the sub-millisecond level may allow high frequency traders to play more complex trading games without a consummate social benefit. "
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  • * Recyled tires added to pavement around the world for noise abatement

    The Economist: "Around one heart attack in 50 in rich European countries is caused by chronic exposure to loud traffic, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The ill-effects of noise pollution in such countries are second only to those from dirty air, says the WHO. Long-term exposure can cause hormonal imbalances as well as mental-health problems. Roadside barriers can help dampen the racket, but they are expensive—up to $600,000 per kilometre—and they often serve as magnets for graffiti. Besides, they work less well on windy days and are impractical along city streets. Happily, there is another option. By adding rubber “crumbs”, reclaimed from shredded tyres, to the bitumen and crushed stone used to make asphalt, engineers are designing quieter streets. First used experimentally in the 1960s, this rubberised, softer asphalt cuts traffic noise by around 25%. Even better, it also lasts longer than the normal sort."

  • Reference: Burden of disease from environmental noise - Quantification of healthy life years lost in Europe. The WHO European Centre for Environment and Health. "...These results
    indicate that at least one million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic related noise in the western part of Europe."
  • June 28, 2012
    * UK Open Data White Paper: Unleashing the Potential

    "Today we publish our Open Data command paper, which sets out how we’re putting data and transparency at the heart of government and public services. We’re making it easier to access public data; easier for data publishers to release data in standardised, open formats; and engraining a ‘presumption to publish’ unless specific reasons (such as privacy or national security) can be clearly articulated. From the Prime Minister down, central Government is committed to making Open Data an effective engine of economic growth, social wellbeing, political accountability and public service improvement."

    June 27, 2012
    * Who Owns the News Media - interactive database of companies that own news properties in the U.S.

    News Corp Split, Buffett’s Bet Top Year of Big Media Ownership Changes: "According to the investment banking firm of Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, which monitors newspaper transactions, a total of 71 daily newspapers were sold as part of 11 different transactions during 2011, the busiest year for sales since 2007. And newspapers were not the only media to undergo major changes. The last 18 months also saw local television sales reach new heights, the merging of Newsweek and the Daily Beast, Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, the Huffington Post's movement into web TV and further reach among U.S. broadcast companies into the Hispanic market. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has compiled a new interactive database to help users make sense of the changes at the highest levels. Who Owns the News Media provides detailed statistics on the companies that now own our nation's news media outlets, from newspapers to local television news stations to radio to digital, and this accompanying summary highlights the major changes of the year."

    June 24, 2012
    * McKinsey Quarterly - Manufacturing resource productivity

    Manufacturing resource productivity. Stephan Mohr, Ken Somers, Steven Swartz, and Helga Vanthournout - June 2012

  • "Rapid growth in emerging markets is causing a dramatic increase in demand for resources, and supplies of many raw materials have become more difficult to secure. Commodity prices are likely to continue to rise and will remain volatile. Manufacturers are already feeling the effects in their operations and bottom lines, and these challenges will persist, if not intensify. Consequently, manufacturers’ variable costs have increased. Between 2000 and 2010, for instance, the variable costs of one Western steel company rose from 50 to 70 percent of its total production expenses, mainly due to jumps in commodity prices. For one Chinese steel company, 90 percent of production costs are now variable. And for a manufacturer of LCD televisions, energy represents 45 percent of the total cost of production. But companies that take steps to increase resource productivity could unlock significant value, minimizing costs while establishing greater operational stability. Our experience suggests that manufacturers could reduce the amount of energy they use in production by 20 to 30 percent. They could also design their products to reduce material use by 30 percent while increasing their potential for recycling and reuse."
  • June 23, 2012
    * Commentary - Fifty Years After Silent Spring, Assault on Science Continues

    Fifty Years After Silent Spring, Assault on Science Continues, by Frank Graham Jr.

  • "When Silent Spring was published in 1962, author Rachel Carson was subjected to vicious personal assaults that had nothing do with the science or the merits of pesticide use. Those attacks find a troubling parallel today in the campaigns against climate scientists who point to evidence of a rapidly warming world."
  • June 21, 2012
    * Moody's Downgrades 15 Big Banks in US and UK

    News release: "Moody's Investors Service today repositioned the ratings of 15 banks and securities firms with global capital markets operations. The long-term senior debt ratings of 4 of these firms were downgraded by 1 notch, the ratings of 10 firms were downgraded by 2 notches and 1 firm was downgraded by 3 notches. In addition, for four firms, the short-term ratings of their operating companies were downgraded to Prime-2. All four of those firms also now have holding company short-term ratings at Prime-2. The holding company short-term ratings of another two firms were downgraded to Prime-2 as well. "All of the banks affected by today's actions have significant exposure to the volatility and risk of outsized losses inherent to capital markets activities", says Moody's Global Banking Managing Director Greg Bauer. "However, they also engage in other, often market leading business activities that are central to Moody's assessment of their credit profiles. These activities can provide important 'shock absorbers' that mitigate the potential volatility of capital markets operations, but they also present unique risks and challenges." The specific credit drivers for each affected firm are summarized below. Today's rating actions conclude the review initiated on 15 February 2012 when Moody's announced a ratings review prompted by its reassessment of the volatility and risks that creditors of firms with global capital markets operations face. In the past, these risks have led many institutions to fail or to require outside support, including several firms affected by today's rating actions. Today's actions, however, reflect not only the credit implications of capital markets operations. They also reflect (i) the size and stability of earnings from non-capital markets activities of each firm, (ii) capitalization, (iii) liquidity buffers, and (iv) other considerations, including, as applicable, exposure to the operating environment in Europe, any record of risk management problems, and risks from exposure to US residential mortgages, commercial real estate or legacy portfolios."

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  • June 20, 2012
    * UK Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings – the Finch Group

    Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications - Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, June 2012

  • "This report tackles the important question of how to achieve better, faster access to research publications for anyone who wants to read or use them. It has been produced by an independent working group made up of representatives of universities, research funders, learned societies, publishers, and libraries. The group’s remit has been to examine how to expand access to the peer-reviewed publications that arise from research undertaken both in the UK and in the rest of the world; and to propose a programme of action to that end. We have concentrated on journals which publish research results and findings. Virtually all are now published online, and they increasingly include sophisticated navigation, linking and interactive services. Making them freely accessible at the point of use, with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used, offers the potential to reap the full social, economic and cultural benefits that can come from research."
  • June 19, 2012
    * Beta version Directory of Open access Books

    "The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. [Currently there are 1098 Academic peer-reviewed books from 27 publishers.] Metadata will be harvestable in order to maximize dissemination, visibility and impact. Aggregators can integrate the records in their commercial services and libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, helping scholars and students to discover the books. The directory will be open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards."

    * Conserving Bumble Bees. Guidelines for Creating and Managing Habitat for America’s Declining Pollinators

    "Bumble bees, key pollinators of crops and wildflowers across the country and essential for a healthy environment, are declining at an alarming rate. Bee biologists discovered that several previously common species are now absent from much of their former territory. Creating, protecting and restoring habitat is a very important way to conserve the populations of bees that remain. To help landowners and managers achieve this, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has just released Conserving Bumble Bees - Guidelines for Creating and Managing Habitat for America’s Declining Pollinators. The causes of these declines are not fully understood, but likely playing a role are: loss or fragmentation of habitat, pesticide use, overgrazing, competition with honey bees, climate change, low genetic diversity, and perhaps most significant of all, the introduction of nonnative pathogens. Regardless of the ultimate cause of bumble bee declines, surviving populations need high quality habitat to persist. Protecting, restoring, enhancing, and creating new bumble bee habitat is the best way to conserve populations of these indispensable animals and hopefully reverse population trends. Conserving Bumble Bees includes sections on the important role these animals play in both agricultural and wild plant pollination, details the threats they face, and provides information on creating, restoring, and managing high quality habitat. Importantly, these guidelines also describe how land managers can alter current practices to be more in sync with the needs and lifecycle of bumble bees. They also include regional bumble bee identification guides and lists of important bumble bee plants by region."

    June 18, 2012
    * Data Citation Brochure published by UK's Economic and Social Research Council

    "Just to let you all know that here at the Economic and Social Data Service in the UK we have been working with the ESRC on a brochure to encourage data citation amongst our social scientists and journal publishers. In October 2011 we minted over 5000 DOIs for our ESDS Collection with Datacite, using a methodology we developed to deal with version changes to our data. You can view our Webinar that explains how we do this. We have also spoken at various Datacite events. We are currently sending out over 1000 brochures to all the major UK and key European social science publishers and professional societies in the UK. View our brochure and feel free to borrow from it!"

    * OCLC - Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories

    Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories "offers a quick environmental scan of the repository landscape and then focuses on disciplinary repositories—those subject-based, often researcher-initiated loci for research information. Seven of these repositories are profiled, with a focus on their varied business models. The report concludes with a discussion of sustainability, including funding models, factors that contribute to a repository's success, and ways to bring in additional revenue. It is intended to help librarians support researchers in accessing and disseminating research information."

    June 17, 2012
    * LLRX.com - Should libraries start their own, more trustworthy Facebook?

    Via LLRX.com: Should libraries start their own, more trustworthy Facebook? - David Rothman proposes that the time may be fast upon us for libraries — perhaps allied with academic institutions, newspapers and other local media — to start their own more trustworthy Facebook. His involvement with the Digital Public Library of America provides a reference point and support for the integral role that this new model of virtual connectivity and knowledge sharing can play moving forward.

    June 16, 2012
    * McKinsey - The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people

    "Over the past three decades, as developing economies industrialized and began to compete in world markets, a global labor market started taking shape. As more than one billion people entered the labor force, a massive movement from “farm to factory” sharply accelerated growth of productivity and per capita GDP in China and other traditionally rural nations, helping to bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. To raise productivity, developed economies invested in labor-saving technologies and tapped global sources of low-cost labor. Today, the strains on this market are becoming increasingly apparent. In advanced economies, demand for high-skill labor is now growing faster than supply, while demand for low-skill labor remains weak. Labor’s overall share of income, or the share of national income that goes to worker compensation, has fallen, and income inequality is growing as lower-skill workers—including 75 million young people—experience unemployment, underemployment, and stagnating wages. The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds these trends gathering force and spreading to China and other developing economies, as the global labor force approaches 3.5 billion in 2030. Based on current trends in population, education, and labor demand, the report projects that by 2020 the global economy could face the following hurdles:

    • 38 million to 40 million fewer workers with tertiary education (college or postgraduate degrees) than employers will need, or 13 percent of the demand for such workers
    • 45 million too few workers with secondary education in developing economies, or 15 percent of the demand for such workers
    • 90 million to 95 million more low-skill workers (those without college training in advanced economies or without even secondary education in developing economies) than employers will need, or 11 percent oversupply of such workers

    June 13, 2012
    * Digital Library of Tobacco Documents

    University of California, San Francisco - "The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) contains more than 13 million documents (70+ million pages) created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities."

    June 11, 2012
    * State of Internal Audit Survey 2012

    "Thomson Reuters GRC surveyed more than 1,500 internal audit practitioners from firms around the world in March 2012 to canvass their views on the state of internal audit and their greatest challenges for the year ahead. The results reflect an evolving professional discipline that is focused on internal control, IT risk and security, risk management, compliance and fraud. The responses received covered Europe, the Americas, Australasia, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. They represent firms from across a wide set of industries including financial services, manufacturing, government, education, life sciences, energy and other highly regulated industries. Feedback came from internal audit departments of all sizes, ranging from those whose departments were comprised of less than five auditors to global conglomerates with departments exceeding 100 auditors."

    * Pew - Still Risky: An Update on the Safety and Transparency of Checking Accounts

    "In this update to Hidden Risks: The Case for Safe and Transparent Checking Accounts (April 2011), Pew’s Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project continues its study of checking account terms and conditions to examine both the state of the marketplace and the effect of current regulations. This study revisits and expands on the original research of the 10 largest banks by collecting additional data found online from the 12 largest banks and the 12 largest credit unions (as determined by their domestic deposit volumes). There continue to be key banking practices that put consumers at financial risk and potentially expose them to high and unexpected costs for little benefit."

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  • June 10, 2012
    * National Trust for Historic Preservation - America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2012

    Announcing America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2012, June 6, 2012 by David Garber

  • "This year marks the 25th anniversary of the National Trust's annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Since our first list in 1988, we have identified more than 230 threatened one-of-a-kind historic treasures. Whether these sites are urban districts or rural landscapes, Native American landmarks or 20th-century sports arenas, entire communities or single buildings, the list spotlights historic places across America that are threatened by neglect, insufficient funds, inappropriate development, or insensitive public policy. The unveiling of the list is always a bittersweet moment. A culmination of hundreds of hours of hard work by hundreds of people, the list becomes a rallying cry for supporters of incredibly important -- yet unfortunately threatened -- historic sites nationwide. But the fact that the list even exists means that there's a lot more work still to be done."
  • * Report - ‘Recession-Tested’ Women-Owned Small Businesses Offer Key Lessons for Economic Recovery

    New release: "Many of today’s women-owned businesses (WOBs) are led by recession-tested entrepreneurs whose experiences provide valuable insight into the challenges that may await aspiring small business owners. A new study released by Chase Card Services, a division of JPMorgan Chase & Co., NFIB and the Center for Women's Business Research, looks at how women small business owners performed during the “Great Recession.” The study, Small Business Lessons of the Recession - Women-Owned Small Businesses Adapt and Emerge Stronger - revealed how WOBs are dealing with the recession, including:

    • Focus on cost control: 45% of WOBs focused on controlling costs in response to economic challenges, while 31% concentrated on increasing sales.
    • Use social media as a business tool: Half of WOBs owners now use social media compared to 4% before the recession. Of those surveyed, 56% said social media is “very important” or “important” to their business.
    • Promote the business through community activities: 39% of WOBs increased their involvement in civic, social or school activities to boost their exposure and create value for their communities."
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    June 09, 2012
    * American Banker - New Technology Emerges to Archive Web Pages

    New Technology Emerges to Archive Web Pages by John Adams

  • "Smarsh's web archiving captures a web site's individual pages, and the content of those pages, in the original format. That provides a record to what was published online at any point in time. Archived web pages are rendered with the original design and experience. The interactive elements are still functional and the links between pages are preserved. That includes full websites, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, audio and video files, as well as interactive elements such as YouTube Videos, slideshows, Javascript and Flash content. Each file is time-stamped and stored in Smarsh's data centers. Smarsh says the data centers are geographically diverse and SAS 70 Type II audited."
  • * The Retirement Savings Drain - The Hidden & Excessive Costs of 401(K)s

    The Retirement Savings Drain - The Hidden & Excessive Costs of 401(K)s - by Robert Hiltonsmith, May 29, 2012

  • "Though your retirement or bank accounts statements contain no evidence of it, everyone who has an IRA, 401k, or any other individual retirement savings account pays a variety of fees every year. But because these fees are taken “off the top” of investment returns or share prices account holders generally have no idea how much all of this is costing them. These fees can be substantial: over a lifetime, fees can cost a median-income two-earner family nearly $155,000 and consume nearly one-third of their investment returns. Worse, these fees are often excessive and financial services companies can get away with charging higher-than-necessary fees for a number of reasons, namely: the savers’ lack of information, the inefficiency of financial markets and individualized investing, and the substantial costs—both in money and time—associated with switching between investment brokers."
  • June 07, 2012
    * Bing introduces New Britannica Online Encyclopedia Answers

    Bing Search Blog: "Starting today, we’re excited to announce a partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica to include Britannica Online answers directly in the Bing results page. The answer provides a quick overview of the subject, a thumbnail image, and useful facts and figures making it easier than ever to get trusted content in search. We also pull in direct links to other trusted sources."

    * The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2011

    The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2011. Prepared by the Staff of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, Higher Education Research Institute, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

  • "The 46th administration of the CIRP Freshman Survey finds the political and social views of incoming first-year students leaning in a more liberal direction. We also see a shift in students being more academically oriented, with behaviors in high school and expectations for college moving in this direction. We continue to see the effects of the global economic situation impacting students entering college in both the reasons why students choose to go to college and the ways in which college is financed. Revisiting the main findings from last year’s administration of the CIRP Freshman Survey, we continue to see high levels of feeling overwhelmed and low levels of self-efficacy in emotional health in our incoming first-year students."
  • June 04, 2012
    * New on LLRX.com - Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources - An Annotated Link Compilation

    via LLRX.com - Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources - An Annotated Link Compilation - This new guide by research guru Marcus P. Zillman focuses on the latest and most significant academic and scholar search engines and sources. With the addition of new and pertinent information released online from every sector continually, it is very easy to experience information overload. A real asset in responding to the challenges of so much data is to apply techniques to identify and locate significant, reliable academic and scholarly information that resides in both the visible and invisible web. The following selected academic and scholar search engines and sources offer a wide range of actionable information retrieval and extraction sources to help you accomplish your research goals.

    * Gallup: Majority in U.S. Dissatisfied With Next Generation's Prospects

    Gallup Politics: "Nearly six in 10 Americans are currently dissatisfied with the opportunity for the next generation of Americans to live better than their parents. Older Americans are particularly unhappy on this question, but on balance, the majority of young adults are negative as well. The idea of America as a place where citizens can rise above their economic position at birth depends partly on an economic system that rewards people based on effort and merit -- not race, class, title, or other social barriers -- and partly on Americans' willingness to make a serious effort to succeed. Americans themselves currently have doubts about both aspects of that equation. Fifty percent of U.S. adults are satisfied with "the opportunity for a poor person in this nation to get ahead by working hard"; 48% are dissatisfied. Satisfaction with "Americans' willingness to work hard to better themselves" is similarly mixed, with 52% satisfied and 45% dissatisfied."

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  • * Pew - When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity

    When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity by Paul Taylor, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jessica Hamar Martínez and Gabriel Velasco

  • "Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label. Moreover, by a ratio of more than two-to-one (69% versus 29%), survey respondents say that the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. have many different cultures rather than a common culture. Respondents do, however, express a strong, shared connection to the Spanish language. More than eight-in-ten (82%) Latino adults say they speak Spanish, and nearly all (95%) say it is important for future generations to continue to do so."
  • June 03, 2012
    * Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information

    Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information, Shema H, Bar-Ilan J, Thelwall M (2012) Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information. PLoS ONE 7(5): e35869. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035869: "The research blog has become a popular mechanism for the quick discussion of scholarly information. However, unlike peer-reviewed journals, the characteristics of this form of scientific discourse are not well understood, for example in terms of the spread of blogger levels of education, gender and institutional affiliations. In this paper we fill this gap by analyzing a sample of blog posts discussing science via an aggregator called ResearchBlogging.org (RB). ResearchBlogging.org aggregates posts based on peer-reviewed research and allows bloggers to cite their sources in a scholarly manner. We studied the bloggers, blog posts and referenced journals of bloggers who posted at least 20 items. We found that RB bloggers show a preference for papers from high-impact journals and blog mostly about research in the life and behavioral sciences. The most frequently referenced journal sources in the sample were: Science, Nature, PNAS and PLoS One. Most of the bloggers in our sample had active Twitter accounts connected with their blogs, and at least 90% of these accounts connect to at least one other RB-related Twitter account. The average RB blogger in our sample is male, either a graduate student or has been awarded a PhD and blogs under his own name."

    * NYT Infographic - 32 Innovations that will change your tomorrow

    New York Times Magazine - 32 Innovations that will change your tomorrow - topics include: morning routine; commute; work; play; health; and home.

  • "We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do. When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. If you don’t know that the incandescent light was a failure before it was a success, it’s easy to write off some modern energy innovations — like solar panels — because they haven’t hit the big time fast enough. Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. The incandescent light was a 19th-century failure and a 20th- century success. Now it’s a failure again, edged out by new technologies, like LEDs, that were, themselves, failures for many years. That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome. Maggie Koerth-Baker."

  • June 02, 2012
    * National Science Board Science and Engineering Indicators 2012

    National Science Board Science and Engineering Indicators 2012

  • "In most broad aspects of S&T activities, the United States continues to maintain a position of leadership. But it has experienced a gradual erosion of its position in many specific areas. Two contributing developments to this erosion are the rapid increase in a broad range of Asian S&T capabilities outside of Japan and the effects of EU efforts to boost its relative competitiveness in R&D, innovation, and high technology. Asia's rapid ascent as a major world S&T center is chiefly driven by developments in China, which on most indicators continues to show long-term growth that would normally be regarded as unsustainable. But several other Asian economies (the Asia-8) have also played a role. All are intent on boosting quality of, and access to, higher education and developing world-class research and S&T infrastructures. The Asia-8 functions like a loosely structured supplier zone for China's high-technology manufacturing export industries. This supplier zone increasingly appears to include Japan. Japan, a preeminent S&T nation, is continuing to lose ground relative to China and the Asia-8 in high-technology manufacturing and trade. India's high gross domestic product (GDP) growth continues to contrast with a fledgling overall S&T performance."
  • May 31, 2012
    * Report - Affordable Housing Dilemma: The Preservation vs. Mobility Debate

    Affordable Housing Dilemma: The Preservation vs. Mobility Debate, May 2012

  • "A report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition takes a new look at one of the thorniest housing policy issues: Should policy favor the preservation of housing in low income neighborhoods or should policy favor helping low income people move to higher income neighborhoods? The report traces the history of the debate and shows how the pendulum swings in policy preferences. Interviews with ten stakeholders with varying perspectives, including five low income people, offer a deeper understanding of the dimensions of the debate."
  • * Out of Reach 2012- America's Forgotten Housing Crisis

    National Low Income Housing Coalition, March 2012 - "Out of Reach 2012 - America's Forgotten Housing Crisis is a side-by-side comparison of wages and rents in every county, Metropolitan Area (MSAs/HMFAs), combined non metropolitan area and state in the United States. For each jurisdiction, the report calculates the amount of money a household must earn in order to afford a rental unit in a range of sizes (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 bedrooms) at the area’s Fair Market Rent (FMR), based on the generally accepted affordability standard of paying no more than 30% of income for housing costs. From these calculations the hourly wage a worker must earn to afford the FMR for a two-bedroom home is derived. This figure is the Housing Wage. Out of Reach 2012 demonstrates that a mismatch exists between the cost of living, the availability of rental assistance and the wages people earn day to day across the country. The Housing Wage consistently exceeds the actual wages earned by renters, in both urban and rural communities nationwide. With more households choose renting over homeownership, the demand for affordably priced rental housing is surging, pushing rents upward and vacancy rates down. These trends have the most severe implications for extremely low income (ELI) households (those earning at or below 30% of area median income). Out of Reach 2012 findings show that for extremely low income Americans, including those on fixed incomes, finding an affordable, decent apartment continues to be incredibly challenging."

    * New study predicts that global cancer burden is set to surge more than 75% by 2030

    Global cancer transitions according to the Human Development Index (2008—2030): a population-based study. The Lancet Oncology, 1 June 2012 doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(12)70211-5: "Cancer is set to become a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the coming decades in every region of the world. We aimed to assess the changing patterns of cancer according to varying levels of human development."

    May 30, 2012
    * Deloitte Shadow Banking Index - 'Only' $9.53 Trillion in Size at End of 2011

    "The shadow banking system in the United States might not be as large today as regulators and market participants feared, according to a new quarterly index introduced today by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services. However, with regulatory changes and financial innovation looming, the shadow banking system could creep back very quickly, the Deloitte research group cautions. The Deloitte Shadow Banking Index shows the volatile shadow banking system totaled $9.53 trillion at the end of 2011 ‒ more than 50 percent below its peak in 2008 ‒ and a figure considerably lower than many estimates."

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  • * Federal Reserve assembles inventory of historical materials on central banking in the United States

    "The Federal Reserve System is preparing an inventory of historical materials (PDF) to enhance transparency through improved web access to records of the Federal Reserve's past. The initiative is motivated by the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Federal Reserve Act in December 2013 and the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Federal Reserve Banks in November 2014. The inventory will serve as a resource for researchers, academics, and others interested in studying the history of the nation's central bank. The initial inventory captures the Federal Reserve's first efforts to create a single point of access to historical records, documents, and other materials such as photographs and audio and video recordings related to the Federal Reserve System and its leaders. This inventory identifies materials that are currently available from a variety of sources, including the websites of the Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research, websites housed at universities, and other private collections. It also includes information about material that is not yet available online that will be considered for digitization and posting."

    * New GAO Reports: Budget and Spending, Indigent Defense, Securities Regulation, Tribal Law and Order Act,VA Administrative Investigations
    • Budget and Spending GAO Schedule Assessment Guide, GAO-12-120G, May 30, 2012
    • Indigent Defense - Surveys of Grant Recipients, Select Tribes, and Indigent Defense Providers, GAO-12-661SP, May 30, 2012
    • Securities Regulation - Opportunities Exist to Improve SEC's Oversight of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, GAO-12-625, May 30, 2012
    • Tribal Law and Order Act - None of the Surveyed Tribes Reported Exercising the New Sentencing Authority, and the Department of Justice Could Clarify Tribal Eligibility for Certain Grant Funds, GAO-12-658R, May 30, 2012
    • VA Administrative Investigations, Improvements Needed in Collecting and Sharing Information, GAO-12-483, April 30, 2012
    May 28, 2012
    * Collection of stories and images of historic places in Washington, D.C.

    Streets of Washington - A collection of stories and images of historic places in Washington, D.C. "John DeFerrari is a native Washingtonian with a lifelong passion for local history. He has a Master’s Degree in English Literature from Harvard University and works for the federal government. He is also a trustee of the D.C. Preservation League."

    * World No Tobacco Day 2012 - March 31, 2012

    Via World Health Organization (WHO): "Tobacco industry interference is the theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day, which takes place on 31 May 2012. The campaign will focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry's brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine global tobacco control efforts."

  • See also WHO Tobacco industry monitoring database: "This database contains articles in English that is continuously populated through publicly available Internet resources, mainly news outlets, wire services and news releases. It includes articles related to the tobacco industry and groups and individuals that operate to advance goals that benefit the tobacco industry’s interests. Whenever possible, preference is given to the inclusion of articles that contain quotations from, or specific references to, tobacco industry representatives or tobacco industry representatives declining to comment. In some cases, analysis of the tobacco industry in a certain country or region is included, particularly for areas where direct quotations are not as easily found in the English-language publicly available sources."
  • May 24, 2012
    * AP Report - Top CEO pay equals 3,489 years for typical worker
    • Seth Bornstein - AP: "David Simon of Simon Property received a pay package worth more than $137 million for last year, and the typical CEO took home $9.6 million, according to an analysis by The Associated Press."
    • "Top U.S. public companies made only modest increases to CEO pay levels in 2011, despite strong company profitability, according to results from The Wall Street Journal/Hay Group 2011 CEO Compensation Study released [May 21, 2012]. The Wall Street Journal partnered with Hay Group for the fifth year on its annual study, which examined how large company CEOs were compensated across all forms of pay in fiscal year 2011. After seeing CEO pay jump a marked 11 percent in 2010, total direct compensation grew by only 2.8 percent in 2011 to $10.3 million. Base salaries grew 1.5 percent to $1.2 million, while annual incentive payments were flat at $2.3 million, yielding no increase in overall median cash compensation at $3.6 million. For the second year in a row, long-term incentives (LTI) increased, growing 5.5 percent to $7 million. Company performance, on the other hand, was mixed. The median company included in Hay Group’s study showed a 13 percent increase in net income from 2010, but only a modest 3 percent total shareholder return (TSR)."
    • Related postings on the financial system
    May 23, 2012
    * Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People Strategy

    "The Digital Government Strategy complements several initiatives aimed at building a 21st century government that works better for the American people. These include Executive Order 13571 (Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service), Executive Order 13576 (Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government), the President’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, OMB Memorandum M-10-06 (Open Government Directive), the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), and the 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management (IT Reform). Through IT Reform, the Federal Government has made progress in foundational execution areas such as adopting “light technologies” (e.g. cloud computing), shared services (e.g. commodity IT), modular approaches for IT development and acquisition, and improved IT program management. The strategy leverages this progress while focusing on the next key priority area that requires government-wide action: innovating with less to deliver better digital services. It specifically draws upon the overall approach to increase return on IT investments, reduce waste and duplication, and improve the effectiveness of IT solutions defined in the Federal Shared Services Strategy."

    May 22, 2012
    * Leveraging Data Analytics in Federal Organizations

    Leveraging Data Analytics in Federal Organizations: "Data analytics is a powerful tool that can help government agencies reduce fraud, waste and abuse. The commercial sector has used data analytics for years to improve decision making, achieve better financial outcomes and improve customer service. The use of data analytics is growing at a rapid rate. The International Data Corporation, a provider of market intelligence in the information technology field, estimates that the business analytics market for software, hardware and consulting services is expected to grow at an 8 percent rate worldwide, reaching nearly $33 billion in 2012. AGA set out to determine how the federal government is using data analytics and what it is doing with the resulting information. We interviewed eight agencies and surveyed a broad spectrum of federal financial officials. From this, we learned that some federal agencies have embraced data analytics and have demonstrated the benefits of integrating analytics tools into their operations. As a result, the federal government is in a position to build on the analytic advances it has already made. Some organizations are poised to share their capabilities with other federal organizations and possibly with other levels of government that implement federally funded programs. However, there is no clear plan to leverage the government’s investment in data analytics."

    * Not Coming to America: Why the US is Falling Behind in the Global Race for Talent

    Not Coming to America: Why the US is Falling Behind in the Global Race for Talent - May 22, 2012, "is a first-ever comparative study of the immigration reforms other countries employ to boost their economies and lure the high and low-skilled workers needed for continued economic growth. The report by the Partnership for a New American Economy and Partnership for New York City identifies risks facing the US economy if it does not reform its immigration laws and explores the recruitment strategies Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Singapore and the United Kingdom use to attract the workers needed to grow their economies. The report also tells the stories of individuals recruited to other countries by immigration reforms that made it easy for them to contribute to their new country’s economy and concludes by recommending six immigration reforms the US can adopt to resume its position as the magnet for the world’s most talented and necessary workers."

    May 21, 2012
    * The New Bullying - News, Resources, Legislation and Updates from Michigan Journalism Project

    Follow up to previous postings on bullying, see The New Bullying: "This project on bullying was launched by an advanced journalism class at Michigan State University in January, 2012, the month after Michigan passed anti-bullying legislation. The class is developing this website and a book, published in April, 2012.

    May 20, 2012
    * Environmental Working Group - 286 Sunscreens Exposed: Nine Surprising Truths

    "286 Sunscreens Exposed: Nine Surprising Truths - Sunscreens prevent sunburns, but beyond that simple fact surprisingly little is known about the safety and efficacy of these ubiquitous creams and sprays. EWG’s review of the latest research unearthed troubling facts that might tempt you to give up on sunscreens altogether. That’s not the right answer. Despite the unknowns about sunscreens’ efficacy, public health agencies still recommend using them, just not as your first line of defense against the sun. At EWG we use sunscreens, but we look for shade, wear protective clothing and avoid the noontime sun before we smear on the cream. Here are the surprising facts..."

  • American Academy of Dermatoloty: Sunscreen remains a safe, effective form of sun protection
  • * America's Most Endangered Rivers for 2012

    The 2012 list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers® - From pollution to fracking to dams and dredging, this year we’re highlighting issues that have a direct impact on our clean water, public health, and wildlife. Every year since 1986, this report has put a spotlight on ten rivers at risk. With the 2012 list, we have zeroed in on key actions and, working with our local partners – and you - we are going to get decision-makers to do the right thing."

  • 1. Potomac River - Location: Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Washington D.C. The Potomac is the "nation's river," rich in culture and history and the lifeblood of our nation’s capital. The river provides drinking water to more than five million people and offers abundant opportunities for recreation. However, the Potomac is threatened by agricultural and urban pollution that will only get worse if Congress rolls back national clean water protections."
  • See also EPA Draft Guidance on Identifying Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act
  • * Text mining for user perspectives on the physical workplace

    Text mining for user perspectives on the physical workplace
    Goins, John, Center for the Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley; Moezzi, Mithra, Portland State University, 03-01-2011- Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)

  • "This paper reports on analysis of open-ended survey responses from a commercial building indoor environment satisfaction survey database maintained by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. Building from satisfaction ratings and standardised categorical responses collected in surveys for 192 U.S. office buildings, text analysis software is used to analyse text responses to open-ended survey questions, focusing on occupants’ perspectives on the workplace and building overall, temperature, and acoustics. These occupant texts detail interactions between occupants and their physical environment in a technical sense but also interpret these interactions, assess their consequences, and reflect on social relationships and workplace. Attending to this perspective could lead to improvements in occupant experience, building and technology design, building operations, and survey research, as well as inform initiatives that require occupant adaptation and cooperation, including those for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
    other matters that lie outside dimension-by-dimension assessments of the physical environment. Viewed together these texts reveal a user-centred perspective that points to issues that rest below
    the surface of more technical analyses of buildings, such as over airconditioning, worker stress and frustration, workplace usability, and relationships between physical and other aspects of the workplace. Attending to this perspective could lead to improvements in occupant experience, building and technology design, building operations, and survey research, as well as inform initiatives that require occupant adaptation and cooperation, including those for greenhouse gas emissions reductions."
  • NYT: From Cubicles, Cry for Quiet Pierces Office Buzz
  • May 19, 2012
    * The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

    "The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities - IATH is a research unit of the University of Virginia established by the University of Virginia in 1992. Our goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, we provide our Fellows with consulting, technical support, applications development, and networked publishing facilities. We also cultivate partnerships and participate in humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information technology companies, scholarly organizations, and other groups residing at the intersection of computers and cultural heritage. The research projects, essays, and documentation presented here are the products of a unique collaboration between humanities and computer science research faculty, computer professionals, student assistants and project managers, and library faculty and staff. In many cases, this work is supported by private or federal funding agencies. In all cases, it is supported by the Fellows' home departments; the College or School to which those departments belong; the University of Virginia Library; the Vice President for Research and Public Service; the Vice President and Chief Information Officer; the Provost; and the President of the University of Virginia."

  • Current Projects
  • * Dow Jones Announces Twitter Content Incorporated into Factiva

    News release: "The curated Twitter content in Factiva covers 31 industries, including energy, financial services and technology, with a focus on the most influential tweeters from around the globe. The real time content is available via Factiva Snapshot, a business search tool with news dashboards that help businesses to efficiently gather intelligence and identify trends, opportunities and risks. Factiva leverages a combination of technology and editorial staff to curate content from Twitter’s “firehose.” The selected Twitter streams complement the wide range of content in Factiva, including more than 35,000 leading media sources, of which 8,000 are top business blogs. Many of these leading sources are not available on the Web."

    May 18, 2012
    * New Book - China's Remarkable Economic Growth

    FYI - no affiliation implied: China's Remarkable Economic Growth by John Knight and Sai Ding, Oxford University Press: "How has the Chinese economy managed to grow at such a remarkable rate - no less than ten per cent per annum - for over three decades? This well-integrated book combines economic theory, empirical estimation, and institutional analysis to address one of the most important questions facing contemporary economists. A common thread that runs throughout the book is the underlying political economy: why China became a 'developmental state', and how it has maintained itself as a 'developmental state'. The book examines the causal processes at work in the evolution of China's institutions and policies. It estimates cross-country and cross-province growth equations to shed light on the proximate, and some of the underlying, determinants of the growth rate. It explores important consequences of China's growth, posing a series of key questions, such as: is the economy running out of unskilled labour; why and how has inequality risen; has economic growth raised happiness; what are the social costs of the overriding priority accorded to growth objectives; can China continue to grow rapidly, or will the maturing economy, or the macroeconomic imbalances, or financial crisis, or social instability, bring it to an end? Based mainly on original research, this book will be of interest to growth economists, development economists, transition economists, China specialists, policy-makers, and indeed all those who are intrigued by the Chinese growth phenomenon."

    May 17, 2012
    * The Economist - Special Report on Retail Banking

    Retail renaissance - The internet and mobile phones are at long last turning boring old retail banking into an exciting industry, says Jonathan Rosenthal

  • "The effect of the debt bubble was more insidious than it appeared at first glance. In encouraging universal banks to build up their investment side, and some retail banks to dabble in exotic instruments that they did not always understand (demonstrating that even boring retail banks can blow up), it made them take their eyes off their bread-and-butter business. Yet basic retail banking was, and remains, their main engine of profitability. McKinsey, a consulting firm, reckons that it accounts for more than half banks’ worldwide annual revenue, which in 2010 amounted to $3.4 trillion (see chart). It has also proved, in the longer run, to be the most reliable generator of consistent profits and high returns on equity. A ranking of the world’s biggest banks by return on equity correlates closely with the proportion of revenue they make from retail banking, rather than from racier investment banking."
  • Related postings on the financial system
  • * Women's Well-Being: Ranking America’s Top 25 Metro Areas

    "In which U.S. cities are women living the longest, earning the most money, and boasting the highest levels of educational attainment? Lots of studies compare American cities—where is the rent cheapest, the commutes shortest, the crime lowest, the weather balmiest? Women’s Well-Being: Ranking America’s Top 25 Metro Areas explores where women are doing best, ranking the twenty-five most populous U.S. metropolitan areas by their score on the American Human Development Index...The study finds that women living in most major metro areas are doing better than the typical American woman. However, not all urban and suburban women have the same choices and opportunities: the study shows how basic indicators in health, education, and income intersect with other important factors, among them race, ethnicity, age, the opportunities of the marketplace, and marital status, to form a more complete picture of the critical factors shaping women’s well-being and access to opportunity."

    May 16, 2012
    * Google Introduces Introducing the Knowledge Graph

    Google Official Blog: "The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do. Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web."

    * A Future Without Key Social and Economic Statistics for the Country

    United States Census Directors Blog: "Our country faces important Federal funding challenges linked to the current recession and its aftermath. On the Census Bureau’s part, we have been striving to cut administrative costs, reengineer our survey processes, and find innovative ways to squeeze every cent of taxpayer money we get...It is also my duty to inform the country of the impact of budgets on the scope and quality of the nonpartisan statistical information the Census Bureau provides. This blog post provides information about the implications of the recent budget passed by the House of Representatives. The Appropriations Bill eliminates the Economic Census, which measures the health of our economy. It terminates the American Community Survey, which produces the social and demographic information that monitors the impact of economic trends on communities throughout the country. It halts crucial development of ways to save money on the next decennial census. In the last three years the Census Bureau has reacted to budget and technological challenges by mounting aggressive operational efficiency programs to make these key statistical cornerstones of the country more cost efficient. Eliminating them halts all the progress to build 21st century statistical tools through those innovations. This bill thus devastates the nation’s statistical information about the status of the economy and the larger society."

    May 15, 2012
    * New study: Wasted time in meetings costs the UK economy £26 billion

    Europe Business Review:

    • "£26 billion: the amount lost from UK economy through time wasted in meetings in 2011
    • 2 hours 39 minutes: the number of hours workers feel are wasted in meetings during an average week
    • 49 minutes: the number of wasted minutes in meetings not made up for later
    • 10 hours or over: the amount of time one in five senior managers and directors say they spend in meetings per week
    • 11 minutes: the average amount of time it takes for people’s attention to drift in a meeting
    • Time wasted by office workers during meetings cost the UK economy approximately £26 billion in 2011, according to new research from Epson and the Cebr. Based on a survey of over 1000 UK office workers carried out by Opinion Matters on behalf of Epson, the report found that if these wasted hours had been spent productively this would equate to roughly 13 million more productive hours per week and an annual increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of approximately 1.7 percent."

    May 14, 2012
    * Working the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government

    Working the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government, Ines Mergel - Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. May 14, 2012.

  • "As of this writing, the federal government operates over 1,000 Twitter feeds. Federal civilian agencies maintain over 360 Twitter feeds, while the Department of Defense hosts more than 650. In addition to its official English feed, the State Department produces Twitter feeds in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish, and French. It is fair to say that the federal government is embracing Twitter as a tool for citizen engagement. But is government realizing the panoply of benefits that a comprehensive understanding of this tool promises? Beyond acting as a broadcasting channel—supplementing the website by promoting press releases or announcing new initiatives—Twitter can help agencies follow public conversations on issues relevant to their organizations."
  • * Annual NOAA report shows a record number of rebuilt fisheries

    News release: "A record six fish populations were declared rebuilt to healthy levels in 2011, bringing the number of rebuilt U.S. marine fish populations in the last 11 years to 27, according to a report to Congress out today from NOAA’s Fisheries Service. This report documents historic progress toward ending overfishing and rebuilding our nation’s fisheries, due to the commitment of fishermen, fishing communities, non-governmental organizations, scientists, and managers...To read the full report, regional reports on fish populations and to see photos, go to the NOAA Fisheries Service home page."

    * U21 Rankings of National Higher Education Systems 2012

    "U21 has published new research into national education systems gives the first ranking of countries which are the ‘best’ at providing higher education. The Universitas 21 ranking of national higher education systems has been developed to highlight the importance of creating a strong environment for higher education institutions to contribute to economic and cultural development, provide a high-quality experience for students and help institutions compete for overseas applicants. Research authors at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, looked at the most recent data from 48 countries and territories across 20 different measures. The measures are grouped under four headings: resources (investment by government and private sector), output (research and its impact, as well as the production of an educated workforce which meets labour market needs), connectivity (international networks and collaboration which protects a system against insularity) and environment (government policy and regulation, diversity and participation opportunities). It also takes population size into account and produces some interesting results. Overall, in the Universitas 21 Ranking of higher education systems, the top five were found to be the United States, Sweden, Canada, Finland and Denmark."

    May 13, 2012
    * Free Online Data Journalism Handbook

    "The Data Journalism Handbook (Beta) is an initiative of the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is published by O'Reilly Media and freely available online under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license."

  • Data Journalism Handbook Infographic
  • May 11, 2012
    * OCLC Report - Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories

    "This report offers a quick environmental scan of the repository landscape and then focuses on disciplinary repositories--those subject-based, often researcher-initiated loci for research information. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories is intended to help librarians support researchers in accessing and disseminating research information. The report includes profiles of seven repositories with a focus on their varied business models. It concludes with a discussion of sustainability, including funding models, factors that contribute to a repository's success, and ways to bring in additional revenue."

    May 10, 2012
    * The Economist: New data on the amount of plastic washing around the Pacific

    The Plastic Ocean: "Much of the plastic swirling around the sea ends up in the North Pacific Gyre, where four great ocean currents meet to create a swirl of water moving clockwise that is twice the size of the United States. Its less polite name is the North Pacific Garbage Patch. A new study led by Miriam Goldstein of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and published in Biology Letters has quantified the increase in scraps of plastic there between 1972-87 and 1999-2010. The number of small particles of less than 5mm in diameter floating in the areas sampled increased about 100 times (from virtually nothing). This is bad news for almost everything apart from Halobates sericeus, a small insect that now has lots of nice little floating platforms on which to lay its eggs."

    May 06, 2012
    * UK Guardian - Open access scientific publishing - Wikipedia founder to help in government's research scheme

    Academic spring campaign aims to make all taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online: "The government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. The initiative, which has the backing of No 10 and should be up and running in two years, will be announced by the universities and science minister, David Willetts, in a speech to the Publishers Association on Wednesday. The move will embolden what has been dubbed the "academic spring" – a growing campaign among academics and research funders for open access in academic publishing. They want to unlock the results of research from behind the lucrative paywalls of journals controlled by publishing companies. Almost 11,000 researchers have signed up to a boycott of journals owned by the huge academic publisher Elsevier. Subscriptions to the thousands of research journals can cost a big university library millions of pounds each year – costs that have started to bite as budgets are squeezed. Harvard University, frustrated by the rising costs of journal subscriptions, recently encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls."

  • See also The Cost of Knowledge - 11212 Researchers Taking a Stand - see the list, updated regularly.
  • * LLRX.com - Pet Overpopulation Infographic

    Via LLRX.com - Pet Overpopulation Infographic - Spencer Belkofer's Infographic documents the critical importance of spaying and neutering cats and dogs to saves lives, promote health and to facilitate adoption. For all the readers who are involved in "rescue", and those who are considering this option, Spencer brings us key facts to help support our decision to become involved in making a difference in the lives of companion animals.

    May 05, 2012
    * Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

    Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want - An OCLC Report: "In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org (OCLC’s freely available end user interface on the Web) and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The Online Catalogs report presents findings from these research efforts. The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog’s delivery-related information is just as important to end users. In addition, the report presents findings on:

    • The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
    • The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
    • The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work."

    * Joint venture builds on MITx and Harvard distance learning; aims to benefit campus-based education and beyond

    News release: "Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners. EdX will build on both universities’ experience in offering online instructional content. The technological platform recently established by MITx, which will serve as the foundation for the new learning system, was designed to offer online versions of MIT courses featuring video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories, and student paced learning. Certificates of mastery will be available for those motivated and able to demonstrate their knowledge of the course material. MIT and Harvard expect that over time other universities will join them in offering courses on the edX platform. The gathering of many universities’ educational content together on one site will enable learners worldwide to access the course content of any participating university from a single website, and to use a set of online educational tools shared by all participating universities. EdX will release its learning platform as open source software so it can be used by other universities and organizations who wish to host the platform themselves. Because the learning technology will be available as open-source software, other universities and individuals will be able to help edX improve and add features to the technology."

    May 02, 2012
    * WSJ Tracking Performance of 150 companies online

    Now Reporting: Earnings - Track the performances of 150 companies as they report and compare their results with analyst estimates. Sort by reporting date and industry. Numbers may exclude items that analysts typically exclude in their forecasts, such as one-time gains and losses. (Complete earnings coverage / subscribers only).

    * New global report: 15 million babies born too soon, over 1 million die each year

    "Born Too Soon: The Global Action Report on Preterm Birth 2012 provides the first-ever national, regional and global estimates of preterm birth. The report shows the extent to which preterm birth is on the rise in most countries, and is now the second leading cause of death globally for children under five, after pneumonia. Addressing preterm birth is now an urgent priority for reaching Millennium Development Goal 4, calling for the reduction of child deaths by two-thirds by 2015. This report shows that rapid change is possible and identifies priority actions for everyone."

    May 01, 2012
    * TIME: The 100 Most Influential People in the World

    "They are the people who inspire us, entertain us, challenge us and change our world. Meet the breakouts, pioneers, moguls, leaders and icons who make up this year's TIME 100."


    April 30, 2012
    * Research by CFA and Unum shows workers know little about disability insurance, despite expecting financial hardship if unable to work

    "In a national survey of nearly 1,200 employees, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and Unum learned that workers know little about group disability insurance, even important characteristics of what coverage they may have. But when given information about this financial protection benefit, nine out of 10 employees say they want this coverage and would pay for it. In the CFA-Unum survey, only 13 percent of all employees say they know "a lot" about this insurance, and less than half of those who say they have coverage know how much it costs (41%) or what its benefits are (47%). When given information about disability insurance, a very large majority (90%) say they want this coverage, and nearly as many (86%) say that, if required, they would pay half of a $30 monthly premium, with more than half (56%) saying they would pay all of this premium, to gain income protection."

    * Briefing Paper on Embedding Creative Commons Licences into Digital Resources

    Briefing Paper on Embedding Creative Commons Licences into Digital Resources - Naomi Korn, Strategic Content Alliance IPR Consultant, March 2011

  • "Creative Commons licences (also referred to as CC licences) can facilitate the copying, reuse, distribution, and in some cases, the modification of the original owner’s creative work without needing to get permission each time from the rights holder. There are a number of different types of these licences. Across the UK’s public sector, CC licences are increasingly used to provide access to cultural heritage and teaching, learning and research outputs. Creative Commons licensed resources are also helpful for public sector bodies who wish to use third party resources which place the least restrictive licensing terms on the user. This short briefing paper accompanies further information on CC licences produced by the Strategic Content Alliance, available here demonstrates how the terms of CC licences can be embedded into a variety of resources, such as PowerPoint, images, Word docs, elearning resources, podcasts and other audio visual resources." {via Robin Good]

  • April 26, 2012
    * Pew Presentation - News in a networked world

    "At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, Lee Rainie will discuss the Project’s latest findings about how people use the internet, smartphones, and social media tools to get news, share news, and create news. He will describe how the very definition of news is expanding in the age of “me media.” He will discuss the Project’s new research about how people use different platforms to get news about different topics: that is, they use different media channels to learn about the weather and learn about local government. He will also describe how social networks have become essential transmitters of news and evaluators of the meaning of news in people’s civic lives."

    April 24, 2012
    * Millions of Harvard Library Catalog Records Publicly Available

    News release: "The Harvard Library announced it is making more than 12 million catalog records from Harvard’s 73 libraries publicly available. The records contain bibliographic information about books, videos, audio recordings, images, manuscripts, maps, and more. The Harvard Library is making these records available in accordance with its Open Metadata Policy and under a Creative Commons 0 (CC0) public domain license. In addition, the Harvard Library announced its open distribution of metadata from its Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) scholarly article repository under a similar CC0 license...The catalog records are available for bulk download from Harvard, and are available for programmatic access by software applications via API's at the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The records are in the standard MARC21 format."

    April 23, 2012
    * Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Part 3: Recommendations and Readings

    Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Part 3: Recommendations and Readings, Karen Smith-Yoshimura OCLC Research and Rose Holley National Library of Australia

  • "Social media tools are needed to generate user-contributed content, which includes “social metadata”— information from users that helps people find, understand, or evaluate a site’s content. Social media and social metadata overlap; you cannot have social metadata without the social media functions that create it. Your objectives will determine which of the following recommendations apply. What’s needed to support a Facebook presence differs from what you’ll need to integrate social metadata and other user-generated content into your own site. We believe it is riskier to do nothing and become irrelevant to your user communities than to start using social media features. Given the wide variety of cultural heritage organizations, and the range of objectives and resources available, there is no one recommendation that would fit all types of institutions."
  • April 22, 2012
    * Report - Reclaiming the American Dream - Community Colleges and the Nation's Future

    Reclaiming the American Dream: A report from the 21st Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges. American Association of Community Colleges. (2012, April).

  • "The American Dream is imperiled. Upward mobility, the contract between one generation of Americans and the next, is under siege. Once unchallenged, this nation’s primacy in college graduation rates has already been overtaken by committed competitors from abroad. The nation can take great pride in what America’s community
    colleges have accomplished, but the message of this Commission is simple and direct: If community colleges are to contribute powerfully to meeting the needs of 21st-century students and the 21st-century economy, education leaders must reimagine what these institutions are—and are capable of becoming. In a rapidly changing America and a drastically reshaped world, the ground beneath the nation’s feet has shifted so dramatically that community colleges need to reimagine their roles and the ways they do their work. The premise of this Commission can be summarized in three sentences: The American Dream is at risk. Because a highly educated population is fundamental to economic growth and a vibrant democracy, community colleges can help reclaim that dream. But stepping up to this challenge will require dramatic redesign of these institutions, their mission, and, most critically, their students’ educational experiences."

  • April 21, 2012
    * New Study - Obesity Rate In America Higher Than Previously Documented

    Measuring Adiposity in Patients: The Utility of Body Mass Index (BMI), Percent Body Fat, and Leptin - by: Nirav R. Shah, Eric R. Braverman, PLoS ONE, Vol. 7, No. 4. (2 April 2012)

  • "Obesity is a serious disease that is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and cancer, among other diseases. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates a 20% obesity rate in the 50 states, with 12 states having rates of over 30%. Currently, the body mass index (BMI) is most commonly used to determine adiposity. However, BMI presents as an inaccurate obesity classification method that underestimates the epidemic and contributes to failed treatment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of precise biomarkers and duel-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) to help diagnose and treat obesity. A cross-sectional study of adults with BMI, DXA, fasting leptin and insulin results were measured from 1998–2009. Of the participants, 63% were females, 37% were males, 75% white, with a mean age = 51.4 (SD = 14.2). Mean BMI was 27.3 (SD = 5.9) and mean percent body fat was 31.3% (SD = 9.3). BMI characterized 26% of the subjects as obese, while DXA indicated that 64% of them were obese. 39% of the subjects were classified as non-obese by BMI, but were found to be obese by DXA. BMI misclassified 25% men and 48% women. Meanwhile, a strong relationship was demonstrated between increased leptin and increased body fat. Our results demonstrate the prevalence of false-negative BMIs, increased misclassifications in women of advancing age, and the reliability of gender-specific revised BMI cutoffs. BMI underestimates obesity prevalence, especially in women with high leptin levels (>30 ng/mL). Clinicians can use leptin-revised levels to enhance the accuracy of BMI estimates of percentage body fat when DXA is unavailable."
  • April 20, 2012
    * Graphic Documents Growing Wage Disparity in America

    WSJ graphic - The gap between America's highest and lowest-paid workers is widening

    * Report - World’s Richest Worth $1 Trillion on Billionaire List

    "The 40 richest individuals on Earth lost a combined $6.2 billion yesterday as stocks dropped amid disappointing U.S. earnings, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the wealthiest people."

    April 19, 2012
    * Pew Report - 72% of Americans follow local news closely

    72% of Americans follow local news closely, by Carolyn Miller, Kristen Purcell, Tom Rosenstiel, Apr 12, 2012

  • "Nearly three quarters (72%) of adults are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need. In fact, local news enthusiasts are substantially more wedded to their local newspapers than others. They are much more likely than others to say that if their local newspaper vanished, it would have a major impact on their ability to get the local information they want. This is especially true of local news followers age 40 and older, who differ from younger local news enthusiasts in some key ways. One-third of local news enthusiasts (32%) say it would have a major impact on them if their local newspaper no longer existed, compared with just 19% of those less interested in local news. Most likely to report a major impact if their newspaper disappeared are local news followers age 40 and older (35%), though even among younger local news followers 26% say losing the local paper would have a major impact on them. In contrast, just 19% of adults who do not follow local news closely say they would feel a major impact and fully half (51%) say they would feel no impact at all from the loss of their local paper. Only 34% of local news enthusiasts feel this way."
  • April 17, 2012
    * 2012 Global Cities Index and Emerging Cities Outlook

    2012 Global Cities Index and Emerging Cities Outlook - "Macro forces continue to have an impact on the global influence of cities. Political power is rotating back from West to East, and with economic drivers having shifted from agrarian to industrial to information-based, more people live in cities than in rural areas. While New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo still rank among today's top cities, it appears that Beijing and Shanghai may become significant rivals in the next 10 to 20 years. These are among the highlights of the 2012 Global Cities Index (GCI), a joint study performed by A.T. Kearney and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. In addition, a panel of academic and corporate executive advisors informed and challenged the study results. We've expanded this year's study; in addition to classifying the current global influence of 66 cities, we have also developed an Emerging Cities Outlook (ECO) to project which emerging-market cities may eventually rival the established global leaders for dominance."

    * FAIR Health Helps You Estimate Your Health Care Costs

    "FAIR Health is a national independent, not-for-profit corporation whose mission is to bring transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information through comprehensive data products and consumer resources. FAIR Health uses its database of billions of billed medical and dental services to power a free website that enables consumers to estimate and plan their medical and dental expenditures. The website also offers clear, unbiased educational articles and videos about the healthcare insurance reimbursement system."

    April 16, 2012
    * WSJ: The Guide to Beating a Heart Attack

    First Line of Defense Is Lowering Risk, Even When Genetics Isn't on Your Side: "Here's the good news: Heart disease and its consequences are largely preventable. The bad news is that nearly one million Americans will suffer a heart attack this year. Deaths from coronary heart disease in the U.S. have been cut by 75% during the past 40 years. Hospital admissions for heart attack among the elderly fell by nearly 25% in a five-year period during the last decade, a remarkable feat when many experts had expected the aging population to cause an increase in the problem. Still, cardiovascular disease remains the leading killer of both men and women. Doctors worry that the steady progress from an intense public-health campaign beginning in the 1960s is in jeopardy thanks to the obesity epidemic and rising prevalence of diabetes. Only a relative handful of people are fully compliant with recommendations for diet, exercise and other personal habits well proven to help keep hearts healthy."

    April 15, 2012
    * Directory of Open Access Books - DOAB

    "The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. Metadata will be harvestable in order to maximize dissemination, visibility and impact. Aggregators can integrate the records in their commercial services and libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, helping scholars and students to discover the books. The directory will be open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards."

    April 13, 2012
    * Hospitals' Geographic Expansion in Quest of Well-Insured Patients: Will the Outcome be Better Care, More Cost, or Both?

    Hospitals' Geographic Expansion in Quest of Well-Insured Patients: Will the Outcome be Better Care, More Cost, or Both?, April 2012
    Health Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 4 - Emily Carrier, Marisa K. Dowling, Robert A. Berenson

  • "The emphasis that hospitals place on cutting-edge technology and niche specialty services to attract physicians and patients has set the stage for health care's most recent competitive trend: an increased level of targeted, geographic service expansion to "capture" well-insured patients. Researchers conducted interviews in twelve U.S. communities in 2010 and found that many hospital systems—some with facilities in geographically undesirable areas—have expanded to compete for better-insured patients by building or buying facilities and physician practices in nearby, more affluent communities. Along with extending services to new markets, these hospital outposts often serve to pull well-insured patients to flagship facilities. The acceleration and expansion of such geographically competitive strategies by hospitals has implications for cost and access. Although payers and competitors contend such strategies will lead to higher costs, hospitals assert the expansions will increase efficiency, increase access, and improve the quality of care provided to patients. Access to this article is available at the Health Affairs Web site - Free - until April 9, 2013.)"
  • * 2012 Federal Media and Marketing Study Overview

    2012 Federal Media and Marketing Study Overview, April 12, 2012, Fourth Annual Release

  • "Knowing where and how to reach senior decision-makers at civilian and defense agencies is a vital component to every marketing effort aimed at the federal government. This popular syndicated study combines actual media usage of mid- to senior-level federal decision makers with their demographics, job function and purchasing habits. Survey responses from more than 3,700 decision makers highlight their media usage spanning print, broadcast, social, mobile and online. Improve reach to these senior executives inside the federal government with the unique ability of this survey to slice and dice each demographic by multiple job functions or purchasing areas and then map each to specific media habits."
  • April 12, 2012
    * The Wealth Report 2012 - A Gobal Perspective on Prime Property and Wealth

    The Wealth Report 2012, Knight Frank, April 2012

  • "Never before have wealth creation, economic risk and politics been so closely intertwined with the performance of prime residential and commercial property markets. Drawing on insight from Knight Frank, Citi Private Bank and other leading commentators, The Wealth Report 2012 pulls together all these strands and explains their connections and likely implications. Using exclusive data and survey results, we uncover how the wealth being generated by the world’s fastest growing economies is an integral part of the equation, but also discover on page 16 that economic growth alone is not enough to create cities considered genuinely important by the world’s wealthiest people. The central trend dominating prime property markets has been the relentless growth of “plutonomy” economics, a phenomenon that sees the wealth of the richest 1% growing far quicker than that of the general population – a trend we initially examined in our first Wealth Report in 2007. A year later, in the eye of the global economic storm, plutonomy seemed under threat as asset values plummeted. Ironically the response to the financial crisis did more to revive the value of investments held by the wealthy than improve the position of the wider population."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • April 10, 2012
    * World Bank Publications and Research Now Easier to Access, Reuse

    News release: "Two years after opening its vast storehouse of data to the public, the World Bank is consolidating more than 2,000 books, articles, reports and research papers in a search-engine friendly Open Knowledge Repository, and allowing the public to distribute, reuse and build upon much of its work—including commercially. The repository, launched today, is a one-stop-shop for most of the Bank’s research outputs and knowledge products, providing free and unrestricted access to students, libraries, government officials and anyone interested in the Bank’s knowledge. Additional material, including foreign language editions and links to datasets, will be added in the coming year. And, in a bid to promote knowledge-sharing around the world, the Bank has become the first major international organization to require open access under copyright licensing from Creative Commons — a non-profit organization whose copyright licenses are designed to accommodate the expanded access to information afforded by the Internet."

    April 09, 2012
    April 08, 2012
    * UNESCO: Open Access to scientific information - Policy guidelines released

    Policy guidelines for the development and promotion of open access: "Besides strengthening capacities to adopt Open Access (OA) and to serve as a clearing-house on global OA debate, the 187th session of the Executive Board identified provision of upstream policy advice as the core priority while approving the Open Access Strategy on UNESCO’s contribution to promotion of Open Access to scientific information and research. Building capacities in Member States for Open Access is a necessary but not sufficient condition for promotion of OA. Creating an enabling policy environment in Member States for OA is therefore a priority. The new publication will serve the needs of OA policy development at the government, institutional and funding agency level. The overall objective of the Policy Guidelines is to promote Open Access in Member States by facilitating understanding of all relevant issues related to Open Access. Specifically, it is expected that the document shall:

    • enable Member State institutions to review their position on access to scientific information in the light of the Policy Guidelines;
    • assist in the choice of appropriate OA policy in the specific contexts of Member States; and
    • facilitate adoption of OA policy in research funding bodies and institutions by integrating relevant issues in the national research systems."

    April 06, 2012
    * Mysteries of Killer Whales Uncovered in the Antarctic

    Mysteries of Killer Whales Uncovered in the Antarctic, by fen Montaigne: "Two of the world’s leading experts on the world’s top marine predator are now in Antarctica, tagging and photographing a creature whose remarkably cooperative hunting behavior and transmission of knowledge across generations may be rivaled only by humans."

    April 05, 2012
    * New Program - Teaching Future Scientists to Talk

    "Our program is a collaboration between life scientists at the University of Missouri at Columbia and faculty members in the School of Journalism. We pay students to work in research laboratories and develop independent research projects, and, at the same time, we train them in journalistic and communication techniques. Participating students produce blogs, news articles, videos, and other science-news reports using our media lab and the SciXchange Web portal. They meet weekly or biweekly with members of the journalism school for mentoring and to discuss the relationship between research and the public's perception of it. Our goal is to produce a generation of researchers who appreciate the need for public communication and are prepared to do it well." Chronicle of Higher Education via Jack C. Schultz, director of the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center at the University of Missouri at Columbia and Jon T. Stemmle, director of the Health Communication Research Center at the Missouri School of Journalism.

    * Working Paper - The Unwanted Self: Projective Identification in Leaders' Identity Work

    The Unwanted Self: Projective Identification in Leaders' Identity Work - Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD - Organisational Behavior; Mark Stein, University of Leicester School of Management. March 28, 2012

  • "This paper employs a psychodynamic perspective to examine the development and maintenance of a leader's identity, building on the premise that such identity work involves both conscious and unconscious processes. We focus on the latter by suggesting that those in coveted leadership roles may engage in projective identification to shape and sustain an identity befitting those roles. Projective identification is the unconscious projection of unwanted aspects of one's self into others, leading to the bolstering of a conscious self-view concordant with one's role requirements. Recipients of a leader's projections may manage these by projecting them back into the leader or into third parties, which may lead to ongoing conflict and the creation of a toxic culture. We use examples from the Gucci family business to illustrate this process."
  • April 04, 2012
    * Pew Survey - The rise of e-reading

    The rise of e-reading, by Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr, Kristen Purcell, Mary Madden and Joanna Brenner

  • "One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, and this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks. In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%. The rise of e-books in American culture is part of a larger story about a shift from printed to digital material. Using a broader definition of e-content in a survey ending in December 2011, some 43% of Americans age 16 and older say they have either read an e-book in the past year or have read other long-form content such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone. Those who have taken the plunge into reading e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers. Foremost, they are relatively avid readers of books in all formats: 88% of those who read e-books in the past 12 months also read printed books. Compared with other book readers, they read more books. They read more frequently for a host of reasons: for pleasure, for research, for current events, and for work or school. They are also more likely than others to have bought their most recent book, rather than borrowed it, and they are more likely than others to say they prefer to purchase books in general, often starting their search online."
  • * One year Anniversary of CPSC Consumer Safety Information Database’s First Postings

    "Consumer Federation of America (CFA), Kids In Danger (KID) and Consumers Union (CU) mark the one year anniversary of the posting of consumer reports on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) consumer database, SaferProducts.gov, that allows people to share and access safety information about the products they own and consider buying. To mark the first year anniversary, CFA and KID conducted an analysis of the reports published in the database thru January 2012. These groups championed the creation of the database and have hailed it as an important tool to educate consumers about product safety hazards and improve the CPSC’s ability to identify and act on problems in the marketplace. The database is online at www.SaferProducts.gov"

    April 03, 2012
    * Pew: When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity

    When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity - by Paul Taylor, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jessica Hamar Martínez and Gabriel Velasco, April 4, 2012

  • "Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label. Moreover, by a ratio of more than two-to-one (69% versus 29%), survey respondents say that the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. have many different cultures rather than a common culture. Respondents do, however, express a strong, shared connection to the Spanish language. More than eight-in-ten (82%) Latino adults say they speak Spanish, and nearly all (95%) say it is important for future generations to continue to do so. Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans. About half (47%) say they consider themselves to be very different from the typical American. And just one-in-five (21%) say they use the term “American” most often to describe their identity. On these two measures, U.S.-born Hispanics (who now make up 48% of Hispanic adults in the country) express a stronger sense of affinity with other Americans and America than do immigrant Hispanics."
  • April 02, 2012
    * Measurement, Governance and Long-term Investing

    Measurement, Governance and Long-term Investing, World Economic Forum USA Inc., March 2012

  • "This report focuses on the first of those obstacles – measurement and governance. It discusses in depth issues related to the estimated US$ 2.4 trillion invested in illiquid assets, which can be subject to substantial distortions and misallocations resulting from inadequate measurement. Traditional metrics for valuing those assets all have significant drawbacks, and more worryingly tend to misstate key risks such as market risk, illiquidity risk and liability risk. The research finds that it is useful to use a limited number of consistent measurements matching a long-term investing horizon. Such metrics should be directionally correct (roughly right rather than precisely wrong) and used to critically evaluate positive or negative investment outliers on a periodic basis. It is found that purported lower volatility and correlations in illiquid assets often result from stale prices rather than fundamentals. Yet a more aggressive mark-to-market approach needs to be tempered to adjust to pro-cyclical pressures."
  • * OMB Memo Implementing PortfolioStat

    Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies - Implementing PortfolioStat, March 30, 2012 - Steven VanRoekel, Federal Chief Information Officer

  • "PortfolioStat will be a new tool that agencies use to assess the current maturity of their IT portfolio management process, make decisions on eliminating duplication, augment current CIOled capital planning and investment control processes, and move to shared solutions in order to maximize the return on IT investments across the portfolio. While TechStat examines IT performance at the specific project or investment-level, PortfolioStat examines the portfolio as a whole and draws on the agency's enterprise architecture to help identify and eliminate areas of duplication and waste. POlifolioStat will help implement the Shared First initiative and the requirements set forth in the Executive Order 13589 (Promoting Efficient Spending),6 which targets employee IT devices as a primary area for eliminating waste and duplication. This effort should also assist agencies in meeting the targets and requirements under other initiatives, such as Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI), the Cloud Computing Initiative, and the draft IT Shared Services Strategy. CIOs, CFOs, and CAOs must support the PortfolioStat process by providing the necessary data and analysis, attending the PortfolioStat meeting, and support all decisions made through the process. This is necessary so that the portfolio-wide review results in concrete actions to maximize the investment in mission and support IT, consolidate the acquisition and management of commodity IT, reduce duplication, and eliminate waste."
  • April 01, 2012
    * Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force - Managing a crucial link in ocean food webs

    Managing a crucial link in ocean food webs - Summary of a report from the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, March 2012

  • "Forage fish are small to medium-sized species that include anchovies, herring, menhaden, and sardines. Direct catch of forage fish makes up more than one-third of the world’s marine fish catch and has contributed to the collapse of some forage fish populations. In the most comprehensive global analysis of forage fish management to date, the Task Force found that conventional management can be risky for forage fish because it does not adequately account for their wide population swings and high catchability. It also fails to capture the critical role of forage fish as food for marine mammals, seabirds, and commercially important fish such as tuna, salmon, and cod. The report recommends cutting catch rates in half in many ecosystems and doubling the minimum biomass of forage fish that must be left in the water, compared to conventional management targets. Even more stringent measures are advised when important biological information is missing."
  • * Report - Restoring Contemplation How Disconnecting Bolsters the Knowledge Economy

    Restoring Contemplation: How Disconnecting Bolsters the Knowledge Economy, by Jessie L. Mannisto

  • "While constant access to information enabled by digital devices has done much to improve our lives, it also exacts costs with respect to our attention and productivity that are especially harmful in a knowledge based economy. Increased public awareness of the impact of our information consumption habits—and ways to develop a healthier “information diet”—will help mitigate the negative impacts of constant connectivity. To build this awareness, librarians and educators can teach information consumers to differentiate actively between gathering and processing information and help them understand when and how each of these modes of thought will benefit them. Libraries also can provide services and spaces that promote contemplation within the modern information infrastructure. Software developers and system engineers can contribute by creating products and services that promote contemplation. Researchers can help us better understand the costs of constant connectivity and tailor an information infrastructure that better supports creative and analytical thought—and, ultimately, a higher quality of life."
  • March 31, 2012
    * Attorney Guide to Using iOS 5 Devices in Litigation

    How to Use iOS 5 Devices in Litigation, by Brian Malcom

  • You have an iPad. You're an attorney and, worse yet, a litigator. Now what? The iPad is nothing new. That sentence is shocking to read, but it is true. The iPad first hit stores in April 2010. The iPad 2 followed a year later, and is widely considered a success. Meanwhile, the third-generation iPad was released at the beginning of March. What the iPad has lost in novelty, it has gained in utility. The native iOS 5 software and the App Store contain useful tools and applications to help you, the litigator, get the most out of your iPad or iPhone. The following are some iPad and iOS features, applications, and tips that litigators might find useful."
  • March 29, 2012
    * iVillage’s 50 Best to Worst States for Women

    "There has been a great deal of talk of late about women and politics: What we want, how we’ll vote, what is good for us. Politicians and pundits love to stir up arguments around the most divisive social and moral issues, but we know what is truly most important to us as women: We want to live in a land where women can thrive; where we can live in good health, get quality care for our kids, and have a government that truly gets our priorities. To help American women make the best decisions in those voting booths come November, iVillage examined the quality of life for women in our country today -- and we found that all states are not created equal. So, we made a list of the 50 Best to Worst States for Women."

    March 27, 2012
    * The Mind is a Metaphor - by Brad Pasanek

    "The Mind is a Metaphor, is an evolving work of reference, an ever more interactive, more solidly constructed collection of mental metaphorics. This collection of eighteenth-century metaphors of mind serves as the basis for a scholarly study of the metaphors and root-images appealed to by the novelists, poets, dramatists, essayists, philosophers, belle-lettrists, preachers, and pamphleteers of the long eighteenth century. While the database does include metaphors from classical sources, from Shakespeare and Milton, from the King James Bible, and from more recent texts, it does not pretend to any depth or density of coverage in literature other than that of the British eighteenth century. The database was assembled and taxonomized and is maintained by Brad Pasanek."

    March 25, 2012
    * Commentary - Big Philanthropy's Role in Higher Education

    Big Philanthropy's Role in Higher Education, by Stanley N. Katz

  • "According to a recent Chronicle study, America's top 50 donors gave a total of $10.4-billion in 2011, rebounding from the $3.3-billion of the previous year, with its recession worries. Those numbers reflect the continued growth in the number of private philanthropic foundations in this country — 10,093 were created in the 1990s, and more than 8,500 appeared between 2000 and 2009 (as opposed, for instance, to the 1,264 created in the 1970s). There are now more than 33,000 foundations in the United States. But what grabs my attention is the number with megaresources, almost all of which have emerged over the past two decades. This is truly the era of the megafoundation."
  • * LLRX.com - Fiction is harder than fact, but the Web helps

    Via LLRX.com - Fiction is harder than fact, but the Web helps - Nicholas Pengelley's wide ranging global career spans law librarian, lawyer, law professor and analyst for a major international NGO. Now as the author of a new political thriller he explains why writing fiction is much harder to write than fact, based on comparison to work accomplished to publish academic articles in his fields of expertise, and opinion pieces on political issues. He attributes the success of aspects of this project to effective and expansive Web research for sources and information to facilitate fact checking and information gathering, as well as to the use of a manuscript editing software, AutoCrit.

    * Research Brief - Foundation Funding for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

    Foundation Funding for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene - Foundation Center's WASHfunders.org

  • "In recent years, the number of U.S. charitable foundations awarding grants for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects around the world has more than tripled. A new research brief by the Foundation Center...finds that between 2003 and 2010 this growth in the number of active funders was accompanied by a nearly five-fold increase in the number of organizations receiving these grants, to the tune of $144 million in 2009-2010. And, while WASH funding as a proportion of international grantmaking overall has grown from 0.2 percent in 2003, it remains very small (1.7 percent in 2010)."
  • March 23, 2012
    * The Web Is Dead? No. Experts expect apps and Web to converge in the cloud

    Pew: The Web Is Dead? No. Experts expect apps and the Web to converge in the cloud; but many worry that simplicity for users will come at a price, Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University - Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, March 23, 2012

  • "According to estimates by Cisco, by 2016 there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in use globally. The world population is expected to be 7.3 billion in 2016, so that’s 1.4 devices per person on the planet. Smartphone traffic will grow to 50 times the size it is today by 2016. In fact, Cisco’s "Visual Networking Index,” released in February, reports there will be so much traffic generated between 2015 and 2016 by smartphones, tablets, and laptops that the amount of Internet data movement added for that year alone will be three times the estimated size of the entire mobile Internet in 2012."
  • * MIT - Researchers show that memories reside in specific brain cells

    Cathryn Delude, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory: "Our fond or fearful memories — that first kiss or a bump in the night — leave memory traces that we may conjure up in the remembrance of things past, complete with time, place and all the sensations of the experience. Neuroscientists call these traces memory engrams. But are engrams conceptual, or are they a physical network of neurons in the brain? In a new MIT study, researchers used optogenetics to show that memories really do reside in very specific brain cells, and that simply activating a tiny fraction of brain cells can recall an entire memory — explaining, for example, how Marcel Proust could recapitulate his childhood from the aroma of a once-beloved madeleine cookie."

    March 20, 2012
    * Study Reveals Striking Differences in Strategy and Challenges among CEOs in Emerging and Mature Economies

    News release: "Top executives in Europe and the U.S. say global political and economic risk, and government regulation are their most pressing concerns, while Asian CEOs name innovation as their top challenge, closely followed by human capital—attracting, retaining, and rewarding talent. So finds The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2012, a global survey of business leaders, which discovered striking differences in focus and strategy between Asia’s emerging economies and the mature economies of the West. The complete findings of the annual survey were announced in a report published today. Between September and December 2011, CEOs, presidents, and chairmen from the world’s leading companies were asked to identify the most pressing challenges they face in today’s business environment. Nearly 800 survey respondents then named their top strategies for addressing each problem, creating a dynamic picture of executive thinking across continents and industries."

    * Study - Student Debt and the Class of 2010

    News release: "College seniors who graduated with student loans in 2010 owed an average of $25,250, up five percent from the previous year, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt at the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS). The Class of 2010 also faced the highest unemployment levels for new college graduates in recent history: 9.1 percent (still less than half the unemployment rate for young adults with only a high school diploma). Student Debt and the Class of 2010 focuses on graduates of public and private nonprofit four-year colleges who had federal and/or private (non-federal) student loans. It includes lists of high- and low-debt colleges and states...At the college level, the report found that average loan debt for the Class of 2010 ranged from $950 to $55,250, and the proportion of students who graduated with loans ranged from two to 100 percent. A total of 98 colleges reported that their 2010 graduates owed an average of more than $35,000, and 73 colleges reported that more than 90 percent of their Class of 2010 graduated with debt. The data for this report came from more than 1,000 colleges, representing half of all public and private nonprofit four-year schools and three-quarters of the class.

  • The report and a companion interactive map, which includes average debt levels for the 50 states and District of Columbia and for more than 1,000 individual U.S. colleges and universities are here."
  • March 19, 2012
    * Pew Research Center - State of the News Media 2012

    "In 2011, the digital revolution entered a new era. The age of mobile, in which people are connected to the web wherever they are, arrived in earnest. More than four in ten American adults now own a smartphone. One in five owns a tablet. New cars are manufactured with internet built in. With more mobility comes deeper immersion into social networking. For news, the new era brings mixed blessings. New research released in this report, The State of the News Media 2012, finds that mobile devices are adding to people’s news consumption, strengthening the lure of traditional news brands and providing a boost to long-form journalism. Eight in ten who get news on smartphones or tablets, for instance, get news on conventional computers as well. People are taking advantage, in other words, of having easier access to news throughout the day – in their pocket, on their desks and in their laps. At the same time, a more fundamental challenge that we identified in this report last year has intensified — the extent to which technology intermediaries now control the future of news. Two trends in the last year overlap and reinforce the sense that the gap between the news and technology industries is widening. First, the explosion of new mobile platforms and social media channels represents another layer of technology with which news organizations must keep pace. Second, in the last year a small number of technology giants began rapidly moving to consolidate their power by becoming makers of “everything” in our digital lives. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and a few others are maneuvering to make the hardware people use, the operating systems that run those devices, the browsers on which people navigate, the e-mail services on which they communicate, the social networks on which they share and the web platforms on which they shop and play. And all of this will provide these companies with detailed personal data about each consumer."

    * Hormones and Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Low-Dose Effects and Nonmonotonic Dose Responses

    Hormones and Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Low-Dose Effects and Nonmonotonic Dose Responses - Laura N. Vandenberg, Theo Colborn, Tyrone B. Hayes, Jerrold J. Heindel, David R. Jacobs Jr., Duk-Hee Lee, Toshi Shioda, Ana M. Soto, Frederick S. vom Saal, Wade V. Welshons, R. Thomas Zoeller and John Peterson Myers. Endocrine Reviews March 14, 2012 er.2011-1050

  • "For decades, studies of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have challenged traditional concepts in toxicology, in particular the dogma of “the dose makes the poison,” because EDCs can have effects at low doses that are not predicted by effects at higher doses. Here, we review two major concepts in EDC studies: low dose and nonmonotonicity. Low-dose effects were defined by the National Toxicology Program as those that occur in the range of human exposures or effects observed at doses below those used for traditional toxicological studies. We review the mechanistic data for low-dose effects and use a weight-of-evidence approach to analyze five examples from the EDC literature. Additionally, we explore nonmonotonic dose-response curves, defined as a nonlinear relationship between dose and effect where the slope of the curve changes sign somewhere within the range of doses examined. We provide a detailed discussion of the mechanisms responsible for generating these phenomena, plus hundreds of examples from the cell culture, animal, and epidemiology literature. We illustrate that nonmonotonic responses and low-dose effects are remarkably common in studies of natural hormones and EDCs. Whether low doses of EDCs influence certain human disorders is no longer conjecture, because epidemiological studies show that environmental exposures to EDCs are associated with human diseases and disabilities. We conclude that when nonmonotonic dose-response curves occur, the effects of low doses cannot be predicted by the effects observed at high doses. Thus, fundamental changes in chemical testing and safety determination are needed to protect human health."
  • March 16, 2012
    * IG Audit - Review of NASA's Lessons Learned Information System

    Review of NASA's Lessons Learned Information System, March 6, 2012: "NASA’s policy on lessons learned requires the collection, validation, assessment, and codification of lessons learned submitted by individuals, NASA directorates, programs and projects, and any supporting organizations and personnel. To this end, the Lessons Learned Information System LLIS is designed to be searchable and available across the Agency to the broadest extent possible. The usefulness and value of LLIS is contingent on managers and engineers routinely consulting and submitting information to the system...NASA’s project managers do not routinely use LLIS to search for lessons identified by other projects or routinely contribute new information to LLIS. We found NASA’s policies regarding the input of lessons learned into LLIS have weakened over time; inconsistent policy direction and implementation for the Agency’s overall lessons learned program; disparate levels of funding for LLIS activities across NASA Centers; and deficient monitoring of critical Center-based LLIS activities. In addition, we found the Chief Engineer’s overall strategy for knowledge management, lessons learned, and LLIS is not well defined. Consequently, LLIS has been marginalized in favor of other NASA knowledge sharing system components and is of diminishing and questionable value."

    March 11, 2012
    * Gallup: In U.S., $5.30 Gas Would Force Major Life Changes

    GALLUP Economy: "Americans on average say gas prices of $5.30 to $5.35 per gallon are the tipping point that would make them cut back on spending in other areas or make significant changes in the way they live their lives...Americans on average say gas prices of $5.30 to $5.35 per gallon are the tipping point that would make them cut back on spending in other areas or make significant changes in the way they live their lives."

    March 09, 2012
    * SLA Presentation on Cloud Computing

    A New Way to Compute or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud - Robert Bohn, NIST, March 7, 2012 - DC/SLA Washington, DC Chapter

    "NIST Cloud Computing Program Goal - Accelerate the federal government’s adoption of cloud computing*

    • Build a USG Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap which focuses on the highest priority USG cloud computing security, interoperability and portability requirements
    • Lead efforts to develop standards and guidelines in close consultation and collaboration with standards bodies, the private sector, and other stakeholders"

    * March is National Autoimmune Diseases Awareness Month

    News release: "March is National Autoimmune Diseases Awareness Month, and the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) is working to educate the public on risk factors, prevalence, and the severe lack of awareness surrounding autoimmune diseases. During March, AARDA hopes to educate the public on the top five things everyone should know about autoimmune disease: (1) 50 Million Americans have an autoimmune disease, comprising a major U.S. health crisis. (2) There are 100+ autoimmune diseases including Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), vasculitis, and Addison’s disease. (3) Autoimmune diseases “cluster” in families; for example, if your grandmother had lupus, you could be at greater risk for developing an autoimmune disease. (4) Fewer than 13 percent of Americans can name an autoimmune disease. (5) Autoimmune diseases target women 75 percent more often than men; and combined, autoimmune diseases are one of the top ten killers of women under the age of 65."

    March 08, 2012
    * Women's Economic Opportunity 2012 Index and Report

    Women’s economic opportunity 2012 - A global index and ranking from the Economist Intelligence Unit

  • "Women are the world’s greatest undeveloped source of labour: nearly one-half of working-age women are not currently active in the formal global economy. By working disproportionately in unpaid labour, particularly in developing countries, women traditionally have had less access than men to income and resources. Thus, they are often less productive than men, which holds back the overall economy. As governments worldwide seek short- and long-term fixes to waning economic performance, expanding opportunities for the 1.5bn women not employed in the formal sector will take on even greater importance. But simply increasing the number of working women will not be enough. The poorest regions of the world have among the highest levels of female labour force participation, and poverty in those regions persists. Rather, to realise greater returns from female economic activity, the legal, social, financial and educational barriers hindering women’s productivity need to be removed. Indeed, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that giving male and female farmers equal access to time- and labour-saving tools could increase agricultural output in developing countries by as much as 2.5-4%. Women who are better educated, healthier and have greater control over household financial resources are also more likely to invest time in their children’s health and education—an investment in the workforce of tomorrow."
  • March 07, 2012
    * 2012 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures report

    News release: "Facts and Figures, an annual report released by the Alzheimer’s Association, reveals the burden of Alzheimer's and dementia on individuals, caregivers, government and the nation's healthcare system."

    • 2012 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures report
    • 5.4 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease.
    • One in eight older Americans has Alzheimer's disease.
    • Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States and the only cause of death among the top 10 in the United States that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed.
    • More than 15 million Americans provide unpaid care valued at $210 billion for persons with Alzheimer's and other dementias.
    • Payments for care are estimated to be $200 billion in the United States in 2012."

    March 05, 2012
    * Studies - Telecommuting Creates Happier and More Productive Employees

    Diann Daniel: "The arguments for allowing your workforce to have more telecommuting options are many. There's the environmental argument, to begin with: Telecommuting raises your company's green profile; it keeps cars off the road and reduces traffic congestion. Telecommuting already saves 10 million barrels of oil per year, according to a 2011 study (PDF) from the Mobility Choice coalition. (See this infographic for more connections between telecommuting and green practices.) Environmental sustainability and greater work business continuity are valid reasons to create more flexibility in your company's work arrangements. Another, arguably more pressing one? Your employees want it. Also see A Manager’s Guide to Telecommuting for mentoring advice.

  • Telecommuting programs can increase employee productivity and satisfaction According to the Telework Research Network, a public-private partnership focused on demonstrating the tangible value of telework and serving the emerging educational and communication requirements of the Federal teleworker community, telecommuting can make employees more productive, not less—despite what many managers fear. It points to heavy hitters like Best Buy, Dow Chemical, and American Express as just a few companies that have found teleworkers are more productive by 35% to 40%."
  • * The Search for a New Business Model: in-depth look at how newspapers are faring trying to build digital revenue

    The Search for a New Business Model: An in-depth look at how newspapers are faring trying to build digital revenue, March 5, 2012

  • "A new study, which combines detailed proprietary data from individual newspapers with in-depth interviews at more than a dozen major media companies, finds that the search for a new revenue model to revive the newspaper industry is making only halting progress but that some individual newspapers are faring much better than the industry overall and may provide signs of a path forward. In general, the shift to replace losses in print ad revenue with new digital revenue is taking longer and proving more difficult than executives want and at the current rate most newspapers continue to contract with alarming speed, according to the study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Cultural inertia is a major factor. Most papers are not putting significant effort into the new digital revenue categories that, while small now, are expected to provide most the growth in the future. To different degrees, executives predict newsrooms will continue to shrink, more papers will close and many surviving papers will deliver a print edition only a few days a week. But some papers are performing quite differently than the norm, some much better and some far worse. These variances suggest that the future of newspapers, rather than being determined entirely by sweeping trends, can be significantly affected by company culture and management-even at papers of quite different sizes."
  • March 04, 2012
    * Chronicle of Higher Ed: Who graduates from college, who doesn’t, and why it matters

    "A Web site on who graduates from college, who doesn’t, and why it matters, from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

  • Editor’s note
  • About the data
  • * Open Access Publishing in European Networks

    "OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe."

    March 02, 2012
    * Pew - The emerging information landscape - 8 realities of the "new normal"

    "Pew Director Lee Rainie gave a keynote at the NFAIS annual conference about the way the internet and mobile connectivity have transformed the worlds of networked individuals. He discussed how normal life has changed in the past decade because of three revolutions in technology: 1) the spread of broadband; 2) the rise of mobile connectivity; and 3) the emergence of technological social networks. He discussed trends and likely future developments in technology that will shape the way people learn, share, and create information. The slides in PDF are here."

    March 01, 2012
    * Misinformation and Fact-checking: Research Findings from Social Science

    Misinformation and Fact-checking: Research Findings from Social Science, by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, February 2012

  • "Citizens and journalists are concerned about the prevalence of misinformation in contemporary politics, which may pollute democratic discourse and undermine citizens’ ability to cast informed votes and participate meaningfully in public debate. Academic research in this area paints a pessimistic picture—the most salient misperceptions are widely held, easily spread, and difficult to correct. Corrections can fail due to factors including motivated reasoning, limitations of memory and cognition, and identity factors such as race and ethnicity. Nonetheless, there is reason to be optimistic about the potential for effectively correcting misperceptions, particularly among people who are genuinely open to the facts. In this report, we offer a series of practical recommendations for journalists, civic educators, and others who hope to reduce misperceptions..."
  • February 29, 2012
    * Pew - Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives

    Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives - by Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie, February 29, 2012

  • "Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders, according to a new survey of technology experts. Many of the experts surveyed by Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Internet Project said the effects of hyperconnectivity and the always-on lifestyles of young people will be mostly positive between now and 2020. But the experts in this survey also predicted this generation will exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep-thinking ability due to what one referred to as “fast-twitch wiring.”
  • February 28, 2012
    * What You Must Know to Help Combat Youth Bullying, Meanness, and Cruelty

    What You Must Know to Help Combat Youth Bullying, Meanness, and Cruelty, Draft Published February 28, 2012 - by danah boyd, John Palfrey

  • "In order to empower youth to create a kinder and braver world, we must begin by making sure that youth are safe. Youth are not safe when they are being bullied, harassed, or threatened. Thus, one of the first things that we must do to help youth be safe is combat the culture of meanness and cruelty that is at the root of bullying, peer violence, and abuse. Bullying is a systems problem and many well-intended people don’t realize the complexity of the issue. This document contains research-driven elements of bullying that should ground any discussion of how to address this complex issue."
  • * The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® Increases

    News release: "The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had decreased in January, increased in February. The Index now stands at 70.8 (1985=100), up from 61.5 in January. The Present Situation Index increased to 45.0 from 38.8. The Expectations Index rose to 88.0 from 76.7 in January. The monthly Consumer Confidence Survey®, based on a probability-design random sample, is conducted for The Conference Board by Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and analytics around what consumers buy and watch. The cutoff date for the preliminary results was February 15."

    * Microsoft Paper Focuses on Evolved Security, Privacy and Reliability Strategies for Cloud and Big Data

    News release: "Today at the RSA Conference 2012, Scott Charney, corporate vice president of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, shared his vision for the road ahead as society and computing intersect in an increasingly interconnected world. In a new paper, Trustworthy Computing (TwC) Next, Charney encouraged industry and governments to develop more effective privacy principles focused on use and accountability, improve end-to-end reliability of cloud services through increased fault modeling and standards efforts, and adopt more holistic security strategies including improved hygiene and greater attention to detection and containment."

    February 27, 2012
    * Help with SharePoint is on the way in The Adventures of SharePoint Reading Bee© Animated Series

    Via LLRX.com: Help with SharePoint is on the way in The Adventures of SharePoint Reading Bee© Animated Series

  • "Microsoft SharePoint expert Lorette S.J. Weldon asks us to imagine walking into the library without worrying about file compatibilities and adjustments of applications to do what you want when you want. All you would see is a library with your workstation. When SharePoint is properly implemented, it could blend into the background. You would never know that it was there. Lorette created an animated series to assist librarians to leverage this application, and has included a very short survey to offer suggestions for future episodes."
  • February 26, 2012
    * Early Spring has widespread ramifications - gardens, farms, wildlife.

    Amid Winter Blooms, Wondering What That Means for Spring

  • "One concern with premature flowers is pollination. While honeybees were in evidence at the New York Botanical Garden, there were fewer at the United States Botanic Garden. “When plants get in this off-kilter blooming, sometimes it doesn’t coincide with the life cycle of the pollinator,” Ms. Shimizu said. “If pollination doesn’t occur, then we don’t get the fruit production.” ...“If this becomes the new normal, then we have to change the way we think about the plants we use and how we protect them.”
  • See also related postings on climate change
  • * Report - Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

    Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality - New Report and Infographic, the Berkman Center, by Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, & Ashley Lee.

  • "Building upon a process- and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality — primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies — reveals patterns in youth’s information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure. "

  • * McKinsey - Will 'big data' transform your industry?

    "The volume of data that businesses collect is exploding: in 15 of the US economy’s 17 sectors, for example, companies with upward of 1,000 employees store, on average, more information than the Library of Congress does. New academic research suggests that companies using this kind of “big data” and business analytics to guide their decisions are more productive and have higher returns on equity than competitors that do not. As big data changes the game for virtually all industries, it will tilt the playing field, favoring some over others. The financial and information sectors rank among those with the highest potential to create value in the near term."

    February 23, 2012
    * Bachelor's Degree Attainment Tops 30 Percent for the First Time, Census Bureau Reports

    News release: "In March 2011, for the first time ever, more than 30 percent of U.S. adults 25 and older had at least a bachelor's degree, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. As recently as 1998, fewer than one-quarter of people this age had this level of education. From 2001 to 2011, the number of Hispanics with a bachelor's or higher education increased 80 percent from 2.1 million to 3.8 million. The percentage of Hispanics with a bachelor's or higher education increased from 11.1 percent in 2001 to 14.1 percent in 2011. Overall, the increase in the proportion of the population with a bachelor's degree or higher went from 26.2 percent to 30.4 percent...This information comes from Educational Attainment in the United States: 2011, a collection of national-level tables from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). These tables present statistics on the levels of education achieved by various demographic characteristics, as well as changes over time. Historical tables go back to the late 1940s, when the CPS first began collecting data on attainment. This table package is one of five education-related statistical products released today. More findings."

    February 21, 2012
    * The 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education

    "The 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education distills the results of studies to examine the state of education in the United States. In particular, the report focuses on education policy, student learning measures, trends on achievement test scores and education reform outcomes."

  • How Well Students Are Learning - With sections on predicting the effect of the Common Core State Standards, achievement gaps on the two NAEP tests, and misinterpreting international test scores.
  • February 20, 2012
    * Who Gives A Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value

    Who Gives A Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value, Paul André - Carnegie Mellon; Michael Bernstein - MIT, and Kurt Luther - Georgia Tech, February 2012

  • "While microblog readers have a wide variety of reactions to the content they see, studies have tended to focus on extremes such as retweeting and unfollowing. To understand the broad continuum of reactions in-between, which are typically not shared publicly, we designed a website that collected the first large corpus of follower ratings on Twitter updates. Using our dataset of over 43,000 voluntary ratings, we find that nearly 36% of the rated tweets are worth reading, 25% are not, and 39% are middling. These results suggest that users tolerate a large amount of less-desired content in their feeds. We find that users value information sharing and random thoughts above
    me-oriented or presence updates. We also offer insight into evolving social norms, such as lack of context and misuse of @mentions and hashtags. We discuss implications for emerging practice and tool design."
  • See also via Atlantic, Be Better at Twitter: The Definitive, Data-Driven Guide
  • February 15, 2012
    * OCLC Announces Downloadable Version of FAST Now Available

    News release: "OCLC Research has made FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) available for bulk download, along with some minor improvements based on user feedback and routine updates. As with other FAST data, the bulk downloadable versions are available at no charge. FAST is an enumerative, faceted subject heading schema derived from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). OCLC made FAST available as Linked Open Data in December 2011. The bulk downloadable versions of FAST are offered at no charge. Like FAST content available through the FAST Experimental Linked Data Service, the downloadable versions of FAST are made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution (ODC-By) license. FAST may be downloaded in either SKOS/RDF format or MARC XML (Authorities format). Users may download the entire FAST file including all eight facets (Personal Names, Corporate Names, Event, Uniform Titles, Chronological, Topical, Geographic, Form/Genre) or choose to download individual facets (see the download information page for more details)."

    February 14, 2012
    * Gallup - Fewer Americans Have Employer-Based Health Insurance

    "Fewer Americans got their health insurance from an employer in 2011 (44.6%) than in 2010 (45.8%), continuing the downward trend Gallup and Healthways have documented since 2008. As employer-based health insurance has declined, the percentage of Americans who are uninsured has increased, rising to 17.1% this year, the highest seen since 2008. The 25.2% of Americans who had government health insurance -- Medicare, Medicaid, or military/veterans' benefits -- is unchanged from 2010, but remains slightly elevated compared with 2008 and 2009 levels. The percentage of Americans who report they receive healthcare through some other means, which would include buying their own coverage, has been stable over the past four years. Two factors appear to be driving up the percentage of uninsured Americans. First, more Americans were unemployed or underemployed in 2011 than in 2008. Second, fewer employees had health insurance from their employer, which may be because employers no longer offered it or the cost was too high for employees to afford."

    February 13, 2012
    * ArchiveGrid connects you with primary source material held in archives around the world

    "ArchiveGrid connects you with primary source material held in archives around the world. You will find historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. ArchiveGrid also helps researchers contact archives to request information, arrange a visit, and order copies. ArchiveGrid includes archival collection descriptions from WorldCat bibliographic records and from finding aids harvested from ArchiveGrid contributors' websites. If you have questions about your collection descriptions in ArchiveGrid, please get in touch with us. Interested in contributing? Please let us know that as well. This prototype system from OCLC Research is in its early stages of development, and we're interested in your comments and suggestions. We'll be updating the site regularly with more archival descriptions and more features, so check back with us to see what's new."

    February 12, 2012
    * Deloitte’s 3rd Annual Tech Trends Report: Top 10 Trends to Help Elevate Information Technology for Digital Business

    "The unique convergence of five emerging technology forces – analytics, mobility, social, cloud and cyber security – provide the opportunity for businesses to accelerate performance in 2012, according to Deloitte’s 3rd annual Tech Trends report Elevate IT for Digital Business, released February 6, 2012. The Deloitte report identifies the top 10 technology trends that will have the most potential to impact businesses over the next 18-24 months, grouping the trends into two categories: Disruptors and Enablers.

    • Disruptors – Social Business, Gamification, Enterprise Mobility Unleashed, User Empowerment and Hyper-hybrid Cloud – are technologies that can create sustainable positive disruption in IT capabilities, business operations and sometimes even business models.
    • Enablers – Big Data Goes to Work, Geospatial Visualization, Digital Identities, Measured Innovation and Outside-in Architecture – are technologies in which many CIOs have already invested time and effort, but which may warrant another look this year because of new developments."

    February 11, 2012
    * McKinsey - Deep analytical talent: Where are they now?

    Via The Age of Big Data by Steve Lohr, New York Times: "Analyzing large data sets—so called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus as long as the right policies and enablers are in place. Research by MGI and McKinsey's Business Technology Office examines the state of digital data and documents the significant value that can potentially be unlocked. However, companies and policy makers must tackle significant hurdles to fully capture big data's potential - including a shortage of skilled analysts and managers. The United States alone faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytical expertise and 1.5 million managers and analysts with the skills to understand and make decisions based on the analysis of big data. In this interactive we explore where in the US economy analytical talent is employed."

    February 08, 2012
    * From The Atlantic - 150th Anniversary Edition - The Duty to Think

    "On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, we present this commemorative issue featuring Atlantic stories by Mark Twain, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and many more."

  • James Bennet editor of The Atlantic: "It is possible, in these pages, to enter into both the humanity of figures consecrated or condemned by history and the uncertainty the writers must have felt during the rush of events...It seemed to us that these Atlantic pieces have a way of conversing across the decades. And so in this issue, one finds Garry Wills’s account from 1992 of how Lincoln used the Gettysburg Address to reinterpret the Constitution and thereby “revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely.” And then, equipped with that explication of how Lincoln purified the nation’s meaning, and with President Obama’s summation of what that meaning is, the reader can then encounter, with fresh appreciation, Lowell’s epitaph for Lincoln: “New birth of our new soil, the first American.”
  • February 07, 2012
    * Fostering innovation-led clusters A review of leading global practices

    Fostering innovation-led clusters - A review of leading global practices. A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, December 2011.

  • "There are few economic development policies as popular as clusters. It is hard today to find a country, region, or even city that is not trying to develop a network of complementary and competitive firms. The political appeal is obvious, particularly now that the world’s economic crisis has put a spotlight on innovation to diversify economies and create jobs. However, the difficulty lies in turning a newly announced “science park” or “hi-tech corridor” into a genuinely competitive centre for innovation. In this report, we review some of the practices and ideas being used by clusters around the world. The aim is to offer a detailed assessment of which of these practices and ideas might be applicable to the Middle East region as it seeks to develop its own innovation-led clusters."
  • February 05, 2012
    * Stress in America Report: Our Health at Risk, 2011

    "Since 2007, the American Psychological Association has commissioned an annual nationwide survey as part of its Mind/Body Health campaign to examine the state of stress across the country and understand its impact. The Stress in America™ survey measures attitudes and perceptions of stress among the general public and identifies leading sources of stress, common behaviors used to manage stress and the impact of stress on our lives. The results of the survey draw attention to the serious physical and emotional implications of stress and the inextricable link between the mind and body."

    * Perkins+Will Transparency Site - Data on Precautionary Built Environment Materials

    News release: "...leading design firm Perkins+Will launched the built environment’s first free, universally accessible database aimed at creating greater transparency into building materials containing substances that are publically known or suspected to be associated with an adverse finding in relation to human and environmental health.
    The database is the result of over two years of review of governmentally published scientific papers, which identify “precautionary”- substances that are known or suspected to cause harm to humans and the environment. This research is based on the Precautionary Principle, the idea that in the absence of scientific consensus, an action merits precautionary treatment if it has a suspected risk of causing harm to humans or to the environment. The intent of the list is to encourage the building product marketplace to become more transparent from extraction to end of life for all points of contact, from manufacturers to de-constructors, so that people are further empowered make informed decisions about specifying, maintaining and disposing of the products in their buildings."

    February 04, 2012
    * The Marriage Gap: The Impact of Economic and Technological Change on Marriage Rates

    Brookings: The Marriage Gap: The Impact of Economic and Technological Change on Marriage Rates, Michael Greenstone, Director, The Hamilton Project, and Senior Fellow, Economic Studies; Adam Looney, Policy Director, The Hamilton Project, and Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

  • "Today's employment report provided hopeful signals that momentum is continuing to develop in the labor market. The unemployment rate continued to edge down and expansions in employer payrolls continued to grow. Although still too high, the unemployment rate ticked down from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent in January. Employer payrolls increased by 243,000 jobs in January—and an average of 201,000 jobs over the last three months—with the private sector again leading the way with 257,000 additional jobs...Fewer Americans are married today than at any point in at least 50 years. The causes of this trend and the consequences for Americans’ well-being are naturally the subject of much debate. Charles Murray's new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, argues that the decline in marriage, and the concurrent decline in work, is the product of changes in values or social norms that have eroded both industriousness and marital values."
  • January 31, 2012
    * Boycott Against Scientific Journal Publisher Gathering Supporters

    Wired Campus by Josh Fischman: "Elsevier, the global publishing company, is responsible for The Lancet, Cell, and about 2,000 other important journals; the iconic reference work Gray’s Anatomy, along with 20,000 other books—and one fed-up, award-winning mathematician. Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge, who won the Fields Medal for his research, has organized a boycott of Elsevier because, he says, its pricing and policies restrict access to work that should be much more easily available. He asked for a boycott in a blog post on January 21, and as of Monday evening, on the boycott’s Web site The Cost of Knowledge, nearly 1,900 scientists have signed up, pledging not to publish, referee, or do editorial work for any Elsevier journal. The company has sinned in three areas, according to the boycotters: It charges too much for its journals; it bundles subscriptions to lesser journals together with valuable ones, forcing libraries to spend money to buy things they don’t want in order to get a few things they do want; and, most recently, it has supported a proposed federal law (called the Research Works Act) that would prevent agencies like the National Institutes of Health from making all articles written by its grant recipients freely available."

    * UK Houses of Parliament - Open Access to Scientific Information

    Open Access to Scientific Information, Published 25 January 2012 | POST Notes 397, by Chandrika Nath

  • "The internet has transformed the nature of scientific research, opening up new ways to collect, use and disseminate scientific information. This has led to increased demand for access to such information. Open Access (OA) to scientific journal publications means making them freely available online, rather than charging readers to view them. OA to research data means making research data more widely available for re-use by others to support research, innovation and wider public use."
  • See also Boycott Against Scientific Journal Publisher Gathering Supporters
  • January 30, 2012
    * CFA Releases Study on Economic Harm to LMI Households From Over Price Auto Insurance

    "A study, Lower-Income Households and the Auto Insurance Marketplace: Challenges and Opportunities, released today by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) concludes that the auto insurance marketplace denies important economic opportunities, especially those related to employment, to low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. The study also explains how state insurance regulators could ensure that mandated auto insurance coverage is fairly priced and affordable for these families so that they have greater access to car ownership and jobs. The research, undertaken by CFA Executive Director Stephen Brobeck and Director of Insurance J. Robert Hunter with support from The Ford Foundation, reveals that:

    • For the large majority of LMI households, automobile ownership greatly increases economic opportunities, particularly access to jobs.
    • These households cannot legally own a car without purchasing auto insurance, whose premiums often exceed $700 and sometimes cost thousands of dollars.
    • These premiums reflect not only considerable disparate impacts but also some discriminatory treatment, such as being charged more for less liability coverage when all other factors are held constant.
    • In large part because of high costs and disparate impacts, a significant minority -- perhaps one-quarter to one-third -- of LMI drivers do not carry auto insurance and are driving illegally.
    • State-based policies and programs -- especially reduced mandatory coverages, programs offering lower premiums to safe drivers, and more vigorous efforts to eliminate disparate treatment and reduce disparate impacts -- have the potential to equitably reduce auto insurance costs for responsible LMI drivers."

    January 25, 2012
    * Bankers Report Mixed Results in 2011 Exams

    American Bankers Association And State Bankers Associations Regulatory Feedback Initiative, Banker Reports on Recent Bank Examination Experiences For the Calendar Year 2011, Summary Report. January 25, 2012

  • "Bankers’ regulatory examination experiences in 2011 can best be described as "mixed," according to a report released yesterday on the ABA-state bankers associations’ Regulatory Feedback Initiative."
    Since June 1, 2011, bankers have been reporting, anonymously, on their recent regulatory examination experiences. Reports have been made through a standardized, confidential survey developed and maintained by the American Bankers Association and an alliance of State Bankers Associations...As of year-end 2012, bankers had filed 1015 surveys. Banks of nearly all sizes are represented in the surveys, community banks most heavily represented. What follows is a report on some of the findings from surveys filed by banks recently examined by the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the OCC, and the OTS (prior to merger with the OCC). This is a follow up to a report that ABA provided to ABA members in October 2011."
  • January 24, 2012
    * Stop Motion Animation Starring Books

    via 5 things I learned today: Stop Motion Animation Starring Books

    * How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time

    How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time, Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, University of Washington's Information School, October 12, 2011

  • "The paper presents findings from 560 interviews with undergraduates on 10 campuses distributed across the US, as part of Project Information Literacy (PIL). Overall, the findings suggest that students use a “less is more” approach to manage and control all of the IT devices and information systems available to them while they are in the library during the final weeks of the term. In the hour before we approached them for an interview, more respondents had checked for messages (e.g., Facebook, email, texts, IMs) more than any other task while they were in the library. A majority of respondents who had checked for messages during the previous hour had also prepared assignments and/or studied for courses. More respondents reported using library equipment, such as computers and printers, more than they had used any other library resource or service. Over half the sample considered their laptop their most essential IT device and most had a Web browser and, to a lesser extent, a word processing application running at the time of the interviews. Most students were using one or two Web sites at the time of the interviews, but there was little overlap among the Web sites they were using. A large majority of the respondents could be classified as “light” technology users, i.e., students who use one or two IT devices to support one or two primary activities (at the time of the interviews). A preliminary theory is introduced that describes how studentsʼ technology usage may be influenced by locale (i.e., the campus library) and circumstance (i.e., crunch time). Recommendations are made for how campus-wide stakeholders—faculty, librarians, higher education administrators, and commercial publishers—can work together to improve pedagogies for 21st century undergraduates."
  • * New on LLRX.com - SharePoint Blogging with Permission

    Via LLRX.com - SharePoint Blogging with Permission - Lorette S.J. Weldon continues to share her guides on how librarians in various sectors can effectively leverage SharePoint within the enterprise, in groups, and with individuals outside the organization. She refers to her 2010 survey, "How is SharePoint used in Libraries?" that found 16 out of 54 participants used SharePoint's site features, such as the blog. Lorette provides insights and associated documentation on this application's limitations, features, and operational structure.

    January 22, 2012
    * 2011 Global Go To Think Tank Index

    2011 Global Go To Think Tank Index, January 2012

  • "Given that today’s world is faster paced and more dynamic than ever before, and the increasingly complex and overwhelming amount of information that is therefore available, the rise of organizations whose primary goals include the generation of research and the provision of information should, perhaps, come as no great surprise. Indeed, think tanks have enjoyed massive growth – both in number and in their role in global policymaking – over the last decade. As policymakers have come to rely on think tanks for the thoughtful research and analysis needed for the generation and implementation of successful policy responses to global issues, think tanks have expanded and diversified, rising to meet the challenge of an increasing informed and globalized world. In this way, think tanks have sought to fill the “operational gap,” as it has been described – policymakers’ lack of access to the information and tools needed to respond to contemporary issues. To be sure, the information is available, perhaps in excess. It is here, in part, that think tanks are so important, filtering, sorting, and synthesizing information that they then provide to policymakers."
  • January 20, 2012
    * How Top Companies Create Clarity, Confidence and Community to Build Sustainable Performance

    Clear Direction in a Complex World - How Top Companies Create Clarity, Confidence and Community to Build Sustainable Performance. "In a challenging and dynamic business world,
    success depends on establishing a clear path to navigate through complexity. Organizations and their leaders — wherever they are around the world and whatever business environment they face — must be able to chart the right course and deliver results. Organizations that are doing this best have leaders, managers, communication and change practices that create:

    • Clarity: Conveying to employees the direction of the
      business along with ways they can contribute to the enterprise
    • Confidence: Supporting development of leaders and managers to better deliver confidence, and using a disciplined process to ensure effective use of change and communication resources
    • Community: Building a shared experience, a sense that employees and leaders are in it together — sharing both the challenges and rewards of working This report describes what the companies that communicate and manage change effectively are doing, and how practices compare globally. Read on to find the steps you can take to create a clear direction for your organization."

    January 19, 2012
    * National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education - Workforce Framework

    "The NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework offers a working taxonomy and common lexicon that can be overlaid onto any organization's existing occupational structure. Although much work has gone into this framework, we need to ensure that it can be adopted and used across the nation. We are actively seeking to refine this framework with input from every sector of our nation's cybersecurity stakeholders. You are an integral part of this process. NICE requests that you please contribute your expertise in the field of cybersecurity by reviewing the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework document and providing your public comments using the comments template."

    January 17, 2012
    * LLRX: Forensic Bibliometrics: Information Quality Assurance in Scientific Literature

    Forensic Bibliometrics: Information Quality Assurance in Scientific Literature: Everyone is familiar with the "corrections" columns in newspapers and the errata pages in the backs of books. But those corrigenda are a far cry from identifying the problems created when authors deliberately offer for publication fraudulent results. Research misconduct and the publication of fraudulent results in scholarly publications and news media has become a growing concern in many disciplines. Ken Strutin has researched, annotated and compiled core documents that address the causes of misconduct, spotting faked data, and repairing the damage to the information stream.

    * LLRX - Deep Web Research 2012

    Via LLRX - Deep Web Research 2012: Marcus P. Zillman's extensive research over the years into the "invisible" or "deep" web indicates that it covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion plus pages of information located throughout the Internet in various files and formats that current search engines either cannot locate, or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines find hundreds of billions of pages at the time of this publication. His guide provides extensive and targeted resources to facilitate both a better understanding of the history of deep web research as well to effectively and productively search for and locate these often undiscovered but critical documents.

    January 16, 2012
    * BBC News: Twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now

    Twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now: "Last week we asked readers for their predictions of life in 100 years time. Inspired by ten 100-year predictions made by American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins in 1900, many of you wrote in with your vision of the world in 2112. Many of the "strange, almost impossible" predictions made by Watkins came true. Here is what futurologists Ian Pearson (IP) and Patrick Tucker (PT) think of your ideas."

    * Report: Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Part 2: Survey Analysis

    News release: "This report analyzes the results from a social metadata survey that focused on the motivations for creating a website, moderation policies, staffing and site management, technologies used, and criteria for assessing success. Metadata helps users locate resources that meet their specific needs. But metadata also helps us to understand the data we find and helps us to evaluate what we should spend our time on. Traditionally, staff at libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) create metadata for the content they manage. However, social metadata—content contributed by users—is evolving as a way to both augment and recontexutalize the content and metadata created by LAMs...In our first report, Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Part 1: Site Reviews, the 21-member RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group reviewed 76 sites relevant to libraries, archives, and museums that supported such social media features as tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists, links to related articles, etc. Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Part 2: Survey Analysis is the second report in a series of three. The analyzed survey results that are presented in this second report were from a survey conducted in October-November 2009. Forty percent of the responses came from outside the United States. More than 70 percent had been offering social media features for two years or less. Engaging new or existing audiences is used as a success criteria more frequently than any other criteria, and the vast majority of respondents considered their sites to be successful. The survey results indicate that engagement is best measured by quality, not quantity."

    January 15, 2012
    * Commentary: Libraries Succeed by Constantly Evolving

    Susan H. Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services: "People depend on libraries now more than ever. Not only do visits and circulation continue to rise, the role of public libraries in providing Internet resources to the public continues to increase as well. Public libraries have also increased their program offerings to meet greater demand and provide more targeted services. In the business world, such demand for an industry's services would mean big profits for that sector. But despite the demonstrated ability of libraries to adjust to meet the growing needs of the public, many libraries across the country face severe budget cuts. There is no doubt that the future success of libraries depends on their ability to change and evolve to meet the changing ways that people access and use information. As director of the Institute of Museums and Library Services, the federal voice for library and museum service in the U.S. -- I see three big goals for libraries: provide engaging learning experiences, become community anchors, and provide access to content even as the devices for accessing that content change rapidly."

    * ProgrammableWeb's database of 100 government APIs released in 2011

    Programmable Web Services Directory of over 100 government [local, state and federal] APIs released in 2011.

    January 14, 2012
    * Standard & Poor's Takes Various Rating Actions On 16 Eurozone Sovereign Governments

    News release: "Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today announced its rating actions on 16 members of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU or eurozone) following completion of its review. We have lowered the long-term ratings on Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, and Spain by two notches; lowered the long-term ratings on Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia, by one notch; and affirmed the long-term ratings on Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. All ratings have been removed from CreditWatch, where they were placed with negative implications on Dec. 5, 2011 (except for Cyprus, which was first placed on CreditWatch on Aug. 12, 2011)."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • January 12, 2012
    * Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict - Addressing Complex Crisis Scenarios in the 21st Century

    Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict - Addressing Complex Crisis Scenarios in the 21st Century, By Michael Werz, Laura Conley | January 3, 2012: "This report provides the foundation and overview for a series of papers focusing on the particular challenges posed by the cumulative effects of climate change, migration, and conflict in some of our world’s most complex environments. In the papers following this report, we plan to outline the effects of this nexus in northwest Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in the Andean region of South America, and in China. In this paper we detail that nexus across our planet and offer wideranging recommendations about how the United States, its allies in the global community, and the community at large can deal with the coming climate-driven crises with comprehensive sustainable security solutions encompassing national security, diplomacy, and economic, social, and environmental development."

    January 10, 2012
    * Atlantic - The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods

    Ari LeVaux: "Chinese researchers have found small pieces of ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to proteins in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood. The type of RNA in question is called microRNA, due to its small size. MicroRNAs have been studied extensively since their discovery ten years ago, and have been linked to human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. The Chinese research provides the first example of ingested plant microRNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function. Should the research survive scientific scrutiny, it could prove a game changer in many fields. It would mean that we're eating not just vitamins, protein, and fuel, but information as well."

    January 08, 2012
    * NASA expands open source activities with launch of code.nasa.gov

    News release: "...we are launching code.nasa.gov, the latest member of the open NASA web family. Through this website, we will continue, unify, and expand NASA’s open source activities. The site will serve to surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution. In our initial release, we are focusing on providing a home for the current state of open source at the Agency. This includes guidance on how to engage the open source process, points of contact, and a directory of existing projects. By elucidating the process, we hope to lower the barriers to building open technology in partnership with the public. Phase two will concentrate on providing a robust forum for ongoing discussion of open source concepts, policies, and projects at the Agency. In our third phase, we will turn to the tools and mechanisms development projects generally need to be successful, such as distributed version control, issue tracking, continuous integration, documentation, communication, and planning/management. During this phase, we will create and host a tool, service, and process chain to further lower the burden to going open. Ultimately, our goal is to create a highly visible community hub that will imbue open concepts into the formulation stages of new hardware and software projects, and help existing projects transition to open modes of development and operation."

    * Potomac Conservancy fifth annual State of the Nation's River report

    News release: "The Potomac Conservancy released its fifth annual State of the Nation’s River report, scoring the rivers’ health at a barely passing “D” grade, a downgrade from the group’s previous D+ in 2007. The report points to reasons for the low grade: growing population and poor land use practices are the primary culprits for a polluted and degraded Potomac River. The report also focuses on the two worlds of the Potomac, the rural farms and mountains to the west and the urban cityscape in the south. These “two worlds” pose different challenges to the Nation’s River. According to the report, upstream, forestry and farming practices play a big role in influencing the river’s health; downstream, sprawling building projects and sewage treatment challenges loom large."

  • The Potomac Agenda can be downloaded here.
  • See also the State of the Nation's River website
  • January 07, 2012
    * The Atlantic Reviews Impact of Recession Over Past Three Years

    What the Great Recession Wrought: The State of the U.S. in 3 Years of Polls

  • "The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor surveys have explored American attitudes on the changing economy each quarter since April 2009...One theme consistently winding through the polls is the emergence of what could be called a "reluctant self-reliance," as Americans look increasingly to reconstruct economic security from their own efforts, in part because they don't trust outside institutions to provide it for them. The surveys suggest that the battered economy has crystallized a gestating crisis of confidence in virtually all of the nation's public and private leadership class--from elected officials to the captains of business and labor. Taken together, the results render a stark judgment: At a time when they believe they are navigating much more turbulent economic waters than earlier generations, most Americans feel they are paddling alone."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • January 04, 2012
    * Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal

    News release: "Unemployment figures show the jobless rate for recent college graduates with Bachelor’s Degrees has been running at an unacceptable 8.9 percent. But, a new study, Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal, from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce finds that unemployment among job seekers with no better than a high school diploma is a catastrophic 22.9 percent – and an almost unthinkable 31.5 percent among high school dropouts. So, is college still worth it? A major conclusion of the new report is that it all depends on your major. And while a college degree gives job seekers a formidable advantage over those without, the study points out, not all degrees are created equal, and there are a number of factors that prospective students should consider before sending off their college applications."

    January 03, 2012
    * LLRX - Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated

    Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated - December 2011: Sabrina I. Pacifici's comprehensive, current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a wide but selected range of reliable, focused, predominantly free websites and resources to effectively track, monitor, analyze, background and review current and historical data, news, reports, and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people, and issues, from a global perspective. Sabrina's guide is a "best of" web resource that encompasses search engines, databases, alerts, publisher specific services and tools, along with links to content targeted sources produced by leading media organizations, governments, academia, NGOs and independent researchers.

    January 01, 2012
    * Wordnik - a new way to discover meaning

    "Wordnik is a new way to discover meaning. This page will give you a quick overview of what you can do, learn, and share with Wordnik. Wordnik shows definitions from multiple sources, so you can see as many different takes on a word's meaning as possible. For more information about the sources of our dictionary definitions, please see the Colophon page."

  • Dow Jones Launches a Wordnik-Powered Financial Dictionary - 'Meaning discovery engine' will add words over time
  • NYT: Defining Words, Without the Arbiters
  • * 2011 Training Industry Report

    "Now in its 30th year, The Industry Report is recognized as the training industry’s most trusted source of data on budgets, staffing, and programs. This year, the study was conducted by an outside research firm in May/June 2011, when members from the Training magazine database were e-mailed an invitation to participate in an online survey. Only U.S.-based corporations and educational institutions with 100 or more employees were included in the analysis. Agencies of the state, local, and federal government were not included in the analysis. The data represents a cross-section of industries and company sizes...The economic roller coaster ride continues, but training appears to be on an upswing: Total 2011 U.S. training expenditures—including payroll and spending on external products and services—jumped 13 percent to $59.7 billion. Some 32 percent of respondents reported that their training budget increased—up from 24 percent last year. Likewise, training payroll increased substantially, from $25.7 billion to $31.3 billion, and spending on outside products and services jumped more than $2 billion to $9.1 billion."

    December 31, 2011
    * Gallup - In the U.S., Health Insurance Linked to Better Health Habits

    News release: "Americans who have health insurance have higher Healthy Behaviors Index scores than the uninsured at any age in the 18 to 64 cohort. This holds true even after controlling for age, gender, education, ethnicity, employment, and income. Overall, 80% of American adults younger than 65 report having health insurance coverage. This analysis is based on about 200,000 interviews conducted between January and October 2011 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which includes the Healthy Behaviors Index as a sub-component. Specifically, respondents are asked to report on whether they smoke, on how many days in the last week they exercised for at least 30 minutes, if they ate healthy all day "yesterday," and on how many days they consumed five or more servings of fruits and vegetables in the last seven days."

    December 28, 2011
    * Commentary - Online Archives Disappear Along With Unique Collections

    Print libraries, book collections, book shops - targets of fiscal austerity, the growing impact and power of e-books, social media, pay walls, e-commerce structures, and changing values about print media itself - are increasing disappearing. Regardless of the application of specific determining factors, the results are increased thresholds to open access to "knowledge." There is also a corresponding assault on the lifespan of websites, blogs, databases, metadata and web enabled content such as documents and emails, as users with no notice discover information simply going offline. There is however a cadre of official and unofficial guardians of the written word, photos, databases and other archival materials. This article by Matt Schwartz, with reporting by Eva Talmadge, in Technology Review, provides insight into the work of some individuals with a mission is to salvage the "intellectual" property of millions of web users whose terabytes of words, work and documents are disappearing despite quick, creative and technologically adroit efforts to save what can be called modern internet "history" on a global scale. This article documents some of the challenges in the struggle to manage massive data loss, the folks who are data defenders, and how truly valuable libraries collections are in serious danger. Variable associated with digitizing collections (copyright, cost, shear volume of the task, and global conflict to name just a few), continue to impact this dynamic problem.

  • "People tend to believe that Web operators will keep their data safe in perpetuity. They entrust much more than poetry to unseen servers maintained by system administrators they've never met. Terabytes of confidential business documents, e-mail correspondence, and irreplaceable photos are uploaded as well, even though vast troves of user data have been lost to changes of ownership, abrupt shutdowns, attacks by hackers, and other discontinuities of service. Users of GeoCities, once the third-most-trafficked site on the Web, lost 38 million homemade pages when its owner, Yahoo, shuttered the site in 2009 rather than continue to bear the cost of hosting it."
  • December 27, 2011
    * Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Again Top Most Admired List Clinton Most Admired Woman a record 16th time

    Gallup news release, by Jeffrey M. Jones: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama continue to be named by Americans as the Most Admired Woman and Most Admired Man living today in any part of the world. Clinton has been the Most Admired Woman each of the last 10 years, and Obama has been the Most Admired Man four years in a row. Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, and Condoleezza Rice round out the top five Most Admired women, while the top five Most Admired men also include George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Billy Graham, and Warren Buffett."

    December 26, 2011
    * Draft Report: Enhancing Personnel Reliability among Individuals with Access to Select Agents

    Enhancing Personnel Reliability among Individuals with Access to Select Agents, Report of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), December 2011

  • "Scientific research on highly pathogenic microorganisms and toxins underpins our ability to successfully combat infectious diseases affecting humans, animals and plants, and enables the development of effective countermeasures against bioterrorism threats. An in-depth understanding of biological select agents has been essential to the development of new and improved detection and diagnostic capabilities, antimicrobial and antitoxin treatments, and preventative measures. Such research has been responsible for the development of countless vaccines, therapeutic antibodies, antimicrobial treatments, and strategies aimed at augmenting the human immune response to more effectively target pathogens. Historically, research on select agents, such as the variola virus, has resulted in vaccines and/or therapies that have greatly reduced the rates of human morbidity and mortality across the globe, and, in turn, significantly lengthened the human lifespan. Such research conducted on plant and animal pathogens has greatly contributed to the development of a safe and nutritious food supply that is readily available at a fairly low cost. In addition, select agent research is critical to developing rapid detection and diagnostic technologies that will greatly enhance our capabilities to respond to disease outbreaks and acts of bioterrorism."
  • See also Dangerous Bird-Flu Papers Should Be Partly Censored, Federal Panel Says
  • December 25, 2011
    * World Giving Index 2011 - A global view of giving trends

    "This is the second edition of the World Giving Index, the largest study into charitable behaviour across the globe involving 153 countries in total. Using data from Gallup's Worldview World Poll, the report is based on three measures of giving behaviour - giving money, volunteering time and helping a stranger. The results show that the USA is officially the most charitable nation in the world, moving from fifth place last year to first place this year. Ireland is the second most charitable country and Australia the third. Overall the World Giving Index, demonstrates that the world has become a more charitable place over the last 12 months - with a 2% increase in the global population 'helping a stranger' and a 1% increase in people volunteering. The analysis includes: the global view; changes in the three giving behaviours; regional comparisons; comparisons between 2010 and 2011 data."

    * ComScore: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed

    It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed, December 21, 2011

  • "The importance of social networking in today’s online experience cannot be overstated. Social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online in October 2011, and reaches 82 percent of the world’s Internet population, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe. This report analyzes the current state of social networking activity around the globe, providing key insights into how social networking has influenced the digital landscape and implications for marketers operating in this social world."
  • * From Flat Foot to Fat Foot: Structure, Ontogeny, Function, and Evolution of Elephant “Sixth Toes”

    via Nature: "Even though an elephant’s leg looks like a solid column, it actually stands on tip-toe like a horse or a dog. Its heel rests on a large pad of fat that gives it a flat-footed appearance. The pad hides a sixth toe — a backward-pointing strut that evolved from one of their sesamoids, a set of small tendon-anchoring bones in the animal's ankle. This extra digit, between 5 and 10 centimetres long, had been dismissed as an irrelevant piece of cartilage. Almost 300 years after it was first described, Hutchinson finally confirmed that it is a true bone that supports the squishy back of the elephant’s foot. The ones on the hindfeet even seem to have joints." The full-text is available to subscribers, Hutchinson, J. R. et al. Science 334, 1699–1703(2011)."

    * FCC Launches Beta version of MyFCC

    "Welcome to the Beta version of MyFCC, a new tool that lets you create a customized FCC online experience, with quick access to the tools and information that you need...Personalization options built into MyFCC make it possible to easily create, save and manage a customized page, or “dashboard.” Choose from a menu of “widgets” featuring a wide variety of the FCC’s most frequently used tools and services by simply dragging and dropping your selections onto your screen. MyFCC also makes it possible for you to share your MyFCC selections with colleagues or on the Web, either as a customized dashboard or by embedding individual widgets on a website or blog."

    December 22, 2011
    * Using tablet computers, e-libraries, and family literacy initiatives to encourage young children to read

    Via LLRX.com - Using tablet computers, e-libraries, and family literacy initiatives to encourage young children to read: David H. Rotham continues to articulate and comprehensively document the case that a public national digital library system should serve people of all income levels and all ages, centenarians included. In this article he focuses on how books for young, disadvantaged children are one area where it could make a special difference, and how better-off families would benefit along the way.

    * Long-Term Unemployed Survey and What is Happening to America's Less-Skilled Workers?

    "As the country struggles to recover from the impact of the Great Recession, one much discussed and analyzed economic measure has been the number of Americans who are unemployed. NPR News and the Kaiser Family Foundation partnered on the Long-Term Unemployed Survey to better describe the experiences and views of two groups of individuals: the long-term unemployed (those who have been out of work for a year or more and would prefer to be working) and the long-term underemployed (those who are working part-time and have been without full-time work for over one year, but are interested in full-time employment)."

    December 21, 2011
    * The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions

    The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, International Journal of Communication 5 (2011), Feature 1375–1405 1932–8036/2011FEA1375 [via gigaom]

  • "This article details the networked production and dissemination of news on Twitter during snapshots of the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions as seen through information flows—sets of near-duplicate tweets—across activists, bloggers, journalists, mainstream media outlets, and other engaged participants. We differentiate between these user types and analyze patterns of sourcing and routing information among them. We describe the symbiotic relationship between media outlets and individuals and the distinct roles particular user types appear to play. Using this analysis, we discuss how Twitter plays a key role in amplifying and spreading timely information across the globe."
  • Arab World: Global Voices Bridges on Twitter - Part of Global Voices special coverage - Egypt Revolution 2011 and Tunisia Revolution 2011.

  • * State of the Federal Web Report

    State of the Federal Web Report, December 16, 2011. Produced by the .gov Reform Task Force

  • "This report presents a summary of data and findings about the state of Federal websites, collected as part of the .gov Reform Initiative. The report is intended to highlight—for the first time—the size and scope of websites in the Federal Executive Branch, how agencies are managing them, and opportunities for improvement. Though not a comprehensive assessment of every Federal Executive Branch website, this data provides a high-level overview and is the first step to more effectively collecting data to make better decisions about our Federal web operations. The .gov Reform Task Force and its partners will use this data to develop a Federal Web Strategy and create tools, best practices, and other resources that will make Federal websites more efficient and useful for citizens...The .gov Reform Initiative is part of the President Obama's Campaign to Cut Waste and Executive Order 13571, Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service, which call for agencies to improve customer service and manage their web operations more efficiently. Read more about the .gov Reform Initiative."
  • December 18, 2011
    * Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity

    Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, December 15, 2011. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

  • "For many years, experiments using chimpanzees have been instrumental in advancing scientific knowledge and have led to new medicines to prevent life-threatening and debilitating diseases. However, recent advances in alternate research tools have rendered chimpanzees largely unnecessary as research subjects. At the request of the NIH and in response to congressional inquiry, the IOM, in collaboration with the National Research Council, conducted an in-depth analysis of the scientific necessity of chimpanzees for NIH-funded biomedical and behavioral research. The committee evaluated ongoing biomedical and behavioral research to determine whether chimpanzees are necessary for research discoveries. The committee described chimpanzees’ unique attributes in order to determine when to use chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral research."
  • December 17, 2011
    * GMI Pay Survey Reveals Real CEO Compensation at Big Firms Rose 36% in 2010

    "GMI’s CEO Pay Survey 2011, one of the largest surveys of CEO compensation in North America, is based on analysis of the Russell 3000 and S&P 500 companies. Only 2,132 CEOs were in the job for the whole of the last two fiscal years, so it is on this smaller sample that changes in CEO compensation were calculated. This is a survey of annual and realized compensation paid to CEOs in 2011 for fiscal year 2010. Key findings of the survey include:

    • Total Realized Compensation in the S&P 500 rose by about 36 percent.
    • Total Realized Compensation in the Russell 1000 rose by more than 38 percent.
    • Total Realized Compensation in the Russell 3000 rose by 27 percent.
    • Total Annual Compensation in the Russell 3000 increased by 13 percent.
    • Three of the 10 highest-paid CEOs of 2010 are from the Health Care Providers & Services industry, including the top two.
    • Four of the 10 highest-paid CEOs of 2010 were retired or terminated executives receiving exit packages.
    • Perks in the S&P 500 rose 11 percent from 2009 to 2010.
    • Three of the five highest-paid CEOs of 2010 received single-year pension and deferred compensation increases of roughly $14 million."

    December 15, 2011
    * Memories for the Future - Japan: Before and After the Earthquake and Tsunami

    Follow up to previous postings on the 2010 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, see Japan: Before and After the Earthquake and Tsunami Pre- and post-disaster imagery in Google Street View

  • "Google is now also providing thousands of miles of Street View imagery in the affected areas that were collected before and after the disaster. Seeing the street-level imagery of the affected areas puts the plight of these communities into perspective and ensures that the memories of the disaster remain relevant and tangible for future generations. Click the Before or After links at the top of this page and use the Google Maps display to see the areas where we have Street View coverage. Find an image in Street View by dragging the yellow “Pegman” icon onto the map where you see a blue overlay. Then click between the “Before” and “After” links to see how the earthquake and tsunami impacted that area."
  • December 13, 2011
    * Pew: Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low

    Pew Research Center: Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low, New Marriages Down 5% from 2009 to 2010, by D’Vera Cohn, Jeffrey Passel and Wendy Wang

  • "In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years. Other adult living arrangements—including cohabitation, single-person households and single parenthood—have all grown more prevalent in recent decades.
    The Pew Research analysis also finds that the number of new marriages in the U.S. declined by 5% between 2009 and 2010, a sharp one-year drop that may or may not be related to the sour economy. The United States is by no means the only nation where marriage has been losing "market share" for the past half century. The same trend has taken hold in most other advanced post-industrial societies, and these long-term declines appear to be largely unrelated to the business cycle. The declines have persisted through good economic times and bad."
  • * TIME's Person of the Year - The Protestor

    The Protester, by Kurt Andersen: "It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats. Two decades after the final failure and abandonment of communism, they believe they're experiencing the failure of hell-bent megascaled crony hypercapitalism and pine for some third way, a new social contract."

  • "TIME's Person of the Year is bestowed by the editors on the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year. See who made the grade over TIME's first eight decades."
  • * National Center for Education Statistics - Academic Libraries: 2010 First Look

    "The Academic Libraries: 2010 First Look summarizes services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in 2- and 4-year, degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia."

  • "This report presents tabulations for the 2010 Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences. The 2010 ALS population included postsecondary institutions with all of the following: total library expenditures that exceed $10,000; an organized collection of printed or other materials, or a combination thereof; a staff trained to provide and interpret such materials as required to meet the informational, cultural, recreational, or educational needs of the clientele; an established schedule in which services of the staff are available to the clientele; and the physical facilities necessary to support such a collection, staff, and schedule. This definition includes libraries that are part of learning resource centers. Branch and independent libraries are defined as auxiliary library service outlets with quarters separate from the central library that houses the basic collection. The central library administers the branches. In ALS, libraries on branch campuses that have separate NCES identification numbers are reported as separate libraries."
  • December 12, 2011
    * Cambridge Digital Library - Newton Papers

    "Cambridge University Library holds the largest and most important collection of the scientific works of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). We present here an initial selection of Newton's manuscripts, concentrating on his mathematical work in the 1660s. Over the next few months we will be adding further works until the majority of our Newton Papers are available on this site."

    * United Health Foundation’s America’s Health Rankings®

    News release: "United Health Foundation’s 2011 America’s Heath Rankings® finds that troubling increases in obesity, diabetes and children in poverty are offsetting improvements in smoking cessation, preventable hospitalizations and cardiovascular deaths. The report finds that the country’s overall health did not improve between 2010 and 2011 – a drop from the 0.5 percent average annual rate of improvement between 2000 and 2010 and the 1.6 percent average annual rate of improvement seen in the 1990s."

  • To see the Rankings in full, visit: www.americashealthrankings.org
  • December 11, 2011
    * NYT Timeline Predicting the Future of Computing

    Predicting the Future of Computing: "Since no supercomputer can yet predict the future, we need your help. Readers are invited to make predictions and collaboratively edit this timeline, which is divided into three sections: a sampling of past advances, future predictions that you can push forward or backward in time (but not, of course, into the past), and a form for making and voting on predictions. The most prescient prophet might receive an iPad 2 in 2050. But if the past is any guide, this prediction will almost surely be wrong."

  • See also Everyone Speaks Text Message: "For the vast majority of the world, the cellphone, not the Internet, is the coolest available technology. And they are using those phones to text rather than to talk. Though most of the world’s languages have no written form, people are beginning to transliterate their mother tongues into the alphabet of a national language. Now they can text in the language they grew up speaking."
  • December 09, 2011
    * Pew - Twitter and the Campaign

    Twitter and the Campaign - How the Discussion on Twitter Varies from Blogs and News Coverage And Ron Paul’s Twitter Triumph, December 8, 2011

  • "A detailed examination of more than 20 million Tweets about the race for president finds that the political discussion on Twitter is measurably different than the one found in the blogosphere — more voluminous, more fluid and even less neutral. But both forms of social media differ markedly from the political narrative that Americans receive from news coverage, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which examines campaign coverage and the online conversation from May 2-November 27. One distinguishing factor about the campaign discourse on Twitter is that it is more intensely opinionated, and less neutral, than in both blogs and news. Tweets contain a smaller percentage of statements about candidates that are simply factual in nature without reflecting positively or negatively on a candidate. In general, that means the discourse on Twitter about the candidates has also been more negative."
  • December 07, 2011
    * MIT Energy Initiative: The Future of the Electric Grid

    The Future of the Electric Grid: "For well over a century, electricity has made vital contributions to the growth of the U.S. economy and the quality of American life. The U.S. electric grid is a remarkable achievement, linking electric generation units reliably and efficiently to millions of residential, commercial, and industrial users of electricity through more than six million miles of lines and associated equipment that are designed and managed by more than 3,000 organizations, many of which are in turn regulated by both federal and state agencies. While this remarkable system of systems will continue to serve us well, it will face serious challenges in the next two decades that will demand the intelligent use of new technologies and the adoption of more appropriate regulatory policies. This report aims to provide a comprehensive, objective portrait of the U.S. electric grid and the challenges and opportunities it is likely to face over the next two decades. It also highlights a number of areas in which policy changes, focused research and demonstration, and the collection and sharing of important data can facilitate meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities that the grid will face. This study is the sixth in the MIT Energy Initiative's "Future of" series. Its predecessors have shed light on a range of complex and important issues involving energy and the environment. While the previous studies have focused on particular technologies and energy supply, our study of the grid necessarily considers many technologies and multiple overlapping physical and regulatory systems. Because of this breadth, our efforts were focused on integrating and evaluating existing knowledge rather than performing original research and analysis. In addition, this study's predecessors focused on implications of national policies limiting carbon emissions, while we do not make assumptions regarding future carbon policy initiatives. Instead, we mainly consider the implications of a set of ongoing trends and existing policies."

    * North American Energy Inventory December 2011

    North American Energy Inventory December 2011, Institute for Energy Research (IER)

  • "In 1980, official estimates of proved oil reserves in the United States stood at roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet over the past 30 years, more than 77 billion barrels of oil have been produced here. In other words, over the last 30 years, the United States produced more than two and a half times the proved reserves we thought we had available in 1980. Thanks to new and continuing innovations in exploration and production technology, there’s every reason to believe that today’s estimates of reserves are only a fraction of what will be produced and delivered tomorrow—not only here in the United States, but across the entire North American continent."
  • See related postings on hydraulic fracturing and climate change
  • December 06, 2011
    * A mandate to preserve - Assessing the inaugural Newspaper Archive Summit

    A mandate to preserve - Assessing the inaugural Newspaper Archive Summit, by Victoria McCargar

  • "Historically, when a newspaper ceased publication, the photographs, clippings and bound volumes were handed off to the local historical society or public library. They sat there, and many continue to sit there, until the organization decided what to do with them. While newspapers have been around for centuries, they weren’t considered worthy of preservation and indexing until the late 19th Century. Today, newspapers are largely digital. Their content is multimedia, and there is a dwindling presence of the physical edition as news moves online. Unfortunately, this revolution in newsgathering has made obsolete the tried‐and‐true archives methods (known as benign neglect), and along with them the old handoff paradigm. Instead, historical societies and libraries are struggling to deal with this new digital content and how it will be preserved for future generations. The fact that digital archives are much more fragile than paper ones is a problem of which many publishers are completely unaware."
  • * Commentary - We're Still in Love With Books

    William Pannapacker is an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Mich: "Contrary to many futuristic projections—even from bibliophiles who, as a group, enjoy melancholy reveries—the recent technological revolution has only deepened the affection that many scholars have for books and libraries, and highlighted the need for the preservation, study, and cherishing of both."

    December 04, 2011
    * NIST Cloud Computing Program

    "Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics (On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource pooling, Rapid elasticity, Measured Service); three service models (Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)); and, four deployment models (Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud, Hybrid cloud). Key enabling technologies include: (1) fast wide-area networks, (2) powerful, inexpensive server computers, and (3) high-performance virtualization for commodity hardware." Draft Documents as follows:

    * Harvard Law/Computer Scientist Declares PCs Dead

    "The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared in the Nov. 30 edition of the Technology Review - The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don't merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we're seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on the one hand, to operating system vendors on the other—and even those who keep their PCs are being swept along. This is a little for the better, and much for the worse. The transformation is one from product to service. The platforms we used to purchase every few years—like operating systems—have become ongoing relationships with vendors, both for end users and software developers. I wrote about this impending shift, driven by a desire for better security and more convenience, in my 2008 book The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It."

    * The Forbes 400 - The Richest People in America

    "The Forbes 400 is the definitive list of wealth in America, profiling and ranking the country's richest citizens by their estimated net worths."

  • Also via Forbes, The World's Most Powerful People and With Vaccines, Bill Gates Changes The World Again - "Gates currently has two of history’s greatest scourges in his sights: malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that infects 250 million a year, killing 800,000 of them; and polio. For the former he spent $200 million to rescue a vaccine that was in development at Glaxo but had no chance of ever being profitable—a recent study indicated that it will cut the infection rate in half. He’s dedicated to stamping out polio entirely, which would make it only the second disease ever to be extinguished from the face of the Earth, after smallpox." And from previous beSpacific posting - Microsoft Research: How fighting email spam is helping the search for an HIV vaccine.
  • December 02, 2011
    * Infographic answers common health questions

    Does the Cold Make You Sick? Busting Common Health Myths, The Daily Muse. Glad to know it is ok to eat after 8pm and that walking every day in the cold weather will not make me sick. Hasn't stopped me yet!

    November 30, 2011
    * Expedia's 2011 Vacation Deprivation Study

    "Expedia’s Vacation Deprivation study is an annual analysis of vacation habits across multiple countries and continents. The 2011 study spans North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. It reveals who gets – and takes – the most vacation time, as well as attitudes toward vacation. Common themes impacting how and where respondents vacation include money, romance and disapproving bosses."

  • See also NPR - Survey: Americans Will Forfeit $34 Billion Worth Of Vacation Days In 2011
  • November 27, 2011
    * Digitized: Audubon’s Birds of America, accompanied by his Ornithological Biography

    "The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System (ULS). Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist. While Audubon was creating Birds of America, he was also working on a companion publication, namely, his Ornithological Biography. Both of these sets were acquired by William M. Darlington in the mid-nineteenth century and later donated, as part of his extensive library, to the University of Pittsburgh. Recognizing that the Darlington Library includes significant historical materials, such as rare books, maps, atlases, illustrations, and manuscripts, the ULS charted an ambitious course to digitize a large portion of Mr. Darlington’s collection, including the Birds of America. We are pleased to present our complete double elephant folio set of Audubon’s Birds of America, accompanied by his Ornithological Biography, through this Web site. Together these sets constitute an unprecedented online combination."

    * Antibiotic Use Visualizations on ResistanceMap and the Drug Resistance Index

    News release via Andrea Titus: "Two big updates from Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy's [CDDEP] Extending the Cure project... First, ResistanceMap has released its first ever interactive visualizations on antibiotic use. The new maps show trends in outpatient prescribing across the United States over time, and viewers can sort data by geography (at the state level) and/or antibiotic class. You can check out the new visualizations in the "antibiotic use" module found here. The second is the introduction of the Drug Resistance Index (DRI). Termed a "Dow Jones for Drug Resistance" by Science magazine, the DRI aggregates resistance and antibiotic use patterns to assess and communicate overall trends in antibiotic resistance over time. Head over to BMJ Open for a demonstration of the tool...The CDC estimates that $1.1 billion is spent annually on unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions for adult upper respiratory infections alone. These prescriptions also speed the development of resistance to important antibiotic therapies."

  • See also, CDC now tracking antibiotic use in hospitals
  • * Ernst & Young - Renewable energy country attractiveness indices

    "The Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Indices track and rank 40 countries' renewable energy markets across a selection of technologies each quarter. As policy-makers scramble to stop recession tightening its grip on major economies, demographic changes and growth in emerging markets appear to be driving renewable energy investment. Developed countries are focused on slowing demand and cutting costs, while rapid growth markets have a huge appetite for energy. A revolution is underway, and the renewable energy industry is adapting to a changed world."

    * Fish Barcode of Life Campaign (FISH-BOL)

    "The Fish Barcode of Life Initiative (FISH-BOL), is a global effort to coordinate an assembly of a standardised reference sequence library for all fish species, one that is derived from voucher specimens with authoritative taxonomic identifications. The benefits of barcoding fishes include facilitating species identification for all potential users, including taxonomists; highlighting specimens that represent a range expansion of known species; flagging previously unrecognized species; and perhaps most importantly, enabling identifications where traditional methods are not applicable. The Fish Barcode of Life effort is creating a valuable public resource in the form of an electronic database containing DNA barcodes, images, and geospatial coordinates of examined specimens. The database contains linkages to voucher specimens, information on species distributions, nomenclature, authoritative taxonomic information, collateral natural history information and literature citations. FISH-BOL thus complements and enhances existing information resources, including FishBase and various genomics databases."

  • "Barcode of Life Database (BOLD) was created and is maintained by University of Guelph in Ontario. It offers researchers a way to collect, manage, and analyze DNA barcode data."
  • November 24, 2011
    * McKinsey report - Resource Revolution: Meeting the world’s energy, materials, food, and water need

    "The November 2011 McKinsey report, Resource Revolution: Meeting the world’s energy, materials, food, and water needs shows that the resource challenge can be met through a combination of expanding the supply of resources and a step change in the way they are extracted, converted, and used. Such resource productivity improvements, using existing technology, could satisfy nearly 30 percent of demand in 2030. Just 15 areas, from more energy-efficient buildings to improved irrigation, could deliver 75 percent of the potential for higher resource productivity. Meeting the resource-supply and productivity challenges will be far from easy—only 20 percent of the potential is readily achievable and 40 percent will be hard to capture. There are many barriers, including the fact that the capital needed each year to create a resource revolution will rise from roughly $2 trillion today to more than $3 trillion, with additional capital requirements to pursue climate change and universal-energy-access agendas. The benefits could be as high as $3.7 trillion a year, however, if carbon had a price of $30 per metric ton and if governments removed substantial resource subsidies and taxes."

    * UK Guardian - US road accident casualties: every one mapped across America

    Simon Rogers: "US road accident casualties: every one mapped across America - 369,629 people died on America's roads between 2001 and 2009. Following its analysis of UK casualties last week, transport data mapping experts ITO World have taken the official data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - and produced this powerful map using OpenStreetMap. You can zoom around the map using the controls on the left or search for your town using the box on the right - and the key is on the top left. Each dot represents a life."

    * Google Enables Virtual Access to Dead Sea Scrolls and Museum Galleries Around the World

    Follow up to previous postings on The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls project, via NYT - "When the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, home to the Dead Sea Scrolls, reopened last year after an extensive renovation, it attracted a million visitors in the first 12 months. When the museum opened an enhanced Web site with newly digitized versions of the scrolls in September, it drew a million virtual visitors in three and a half days. The scrolls, scanned with ultrahigh-resolution imaging technology, have been viewed on the Web from 210 countries — including some, like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria, that provide few real-world visitors to the Israel Museum...Previous Google cultural programs have also been incorporated into the center, including the Google Art Project, a digital repository of pictures from museums like the National Gallery in London, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence."

    November 23, 2011
    * McKinsey - How social technologies are extending the organization

    "Our fifth annual survey on the way organizations use social tools and technologies finds that they continue to seep into many organizations, transforming business processes and raising performance". November 2011 • Jacques Bughin, Angela Hung Byers, and Michael Chui, McKinsey Global Institute

  • "Companies are improving their mastery of social technologies, using them to enhance operations and exploit new market opportunities—key findings of our fifth annual survey on these tools and technologies, in which we asked more than 4,200 global executives how organizations deploy them and the benefits they confer.1 When adopted at scale across an emerging type of networked enterprise and integrated into the work processes of employees, social technologies can boost a company’s financial performance and market share, respondents say, confirming last year’s survey results."
  • November 22, 2011
    * DOD Reading Lists Aim to Promote Personal, Professional Growth

    Reading Lists Aim to Promote Personal, Professional Growth, By Donna Miles
    American Forces Press Service: "Legend has it that Alexander the Great slept with a copy of The Iliad, Homer's epic tale set during the Trojan War, under his pillow. Almost 2,500 years later, professional reading remains an important part of the military culture. Every service, most professional military schools and an increasing number of geographic and combatant commands offer up reading programs and reading lists as part of their professional development efforts. In fact, many have multiple reading lists, aimed at different groups within the military at different ranks and stages of their careers. Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, recently took this initiative to a new level with an online video encouraging all of his command to check out the Eucom reading list. The list is divided into sections with books about different phases of European history, culture and languages, as well as works of literary fiction that provide insight into European culture."

    * Google Scholar Citations Open To All

    Google Scholar Blog: "A few months ago, we introduced a limited release of Google Scholar Citations, a simple way for authors to compute their citation metrics and track them over time. Today, we’re delighted to make this service available to everyone! Click here and follow the instructions to get started. Here’s how it works. You can quickly identify which articles are yours, by selecting one or more groups of articles that are computed statistically. Then, we collect citations to your articles, graph them over time, and compute your citation metrics - the widely used h-index; the i-10 index, which is simply the number of articles with at least ten citations; and, of course, the total number of citations to your articles. Each metric is computed over all citations and also over citations in articles published in the last five years."

    November 21, 2011
    * The Chronicle Review - The Reach of 'Prospect Theory'

    "Based on thousands of citation records from Thomson Reuters, this chart shows the scholarly influence of "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," written by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and published in Econometrica in 1979. The theory has turned up as a reference for an increasing number of journal articles and book chapters (nearly 8,000 items in all), and it has spread into a diverse range of disciplines. Thomson Reuters makes an effort to classify the major scholarship within journals and books into 280 categories; this representation of the paper’s influence condenses these classifications even further."

    November 20, 2011
    * Managing the Risks of Shale Gas: Identifying a Pathway toward Responsible Development

    "For decades, natural gas has played an important role in electricity generation, industrial uses, and heating in the United States—and with recent improvements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) of shale formations, drillers can now access a vastly greater amount of gas at lower cost than in the past. The rapid growth in drilling and extraction, however, has resulted in tensions—from the community level to the federal policy level. Questions about the risks and safety of shale gas development continue, even as industry has improved disclosure, shared best practices, and assured the public that hydraulic fracturing techniques are safe. Given these challenges, this year RFF’s Center for Energy Economics and Policy (CEEP) launched an initiative to identify the priority risks associated with shale gas development and recommend strategies for responsible development."

    * Corporate Governance of Political Expenditures: 2011 Benchmark Report on S&P 500 Companies

    Corporate Governance of Political Expenditures: 2011 Benchmark Report on S&P 500 Companies, By Heidi Welsh and Robin Young, November 2011 "This study takes a close look at the nature and extent of the voluntary governance reforms companies have made, using a broad definition of “political spending,” to see how these practices affect key disclosure and accountability concerns raised by critics. We examined:

    • Direct contributions to state-level candidates, party committees and ballot initiative committees;
    • Direct contributions to political committees registered with the Federal Election Commission
      (FEC), known as “527 committees” for their tax code designation;
    • Direct federal lobbying expenditures; and
    • Available information on indirect contributions made through trade associations and other nonprofit groups."

    * Commentary and Graphic - The New, Convoluted Life Cycle Of A Newspaper Story

    The New, Convoluted Life Cycle Of A Newspaper Story, by Lauren Rabaino

  • "News must be really hard to follow for an everyday consumer of a newspaper website. First tweets go out, sometimes with no links to additional coverage. Then a few grafs go up on a blog, followed by additional updates, either to the top of that post or as new posts. Eventually, a print story gets started, which is posted through an entirely different workflow onto a different-looking story page. This version is usually written as an hourglass-style narrative, following typical print conventions. For the rest of the day, new updates start going to this story rather than the original blog post. Having a hard time following? Here’s a graphic to help.."

  • November 19, 2011
    * Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation

    First Joint Session of Working Groups I and II IPCC SREX Summary for Policymakers, November 18, 2011

  • "This Summary for Policymakers presents key findings from the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The SREX approaches the topic by assessing the scientific literature on issues that range from the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events (“climate extremes”) to the implications of these events for society and sustainable development. The assessment concerns the interaction of climatic, environmental, and human factors that can lead to impacts and disasters, options for managing the risks posed by impacts and disasters, and the important role that non-climatic factors play in determining impacts. The character and severity of impacts from climate extremes depend not only on the extremes themselves but also on exposure and vulnerability. In this report, adverse impacts are considered disasters when they produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of communities or societies. Climate extremes, exposure, and vulnerability are influenced by a wide range of factors, including anthropogenic climate change, natural climate variability, and socioeconomic development. Disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change focus on reducing exposure and vulnerability and increasing resilience to the potential adverse impacts of climate extremes, even though risks cannot fully be eliminated. Although mitigation of climate change is not the focus of this report, adaptation and mitigation can complement each other and together can significantly reduce the risks of climate change."
  • November 17, 2011
    * The Top 25 US Public Libraries’ Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat

    The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat "characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat.">The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat."

    * 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report

    News release: "Demonstrating the increasing role of the network in people's lives, an international workforce study announced today by Cisco revealed that one in three college students and young professionals considers the Internet to be as important as fundamental human resources like air, water, food and shelter. The 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report also found that more than half of the study's respondents say they could not live without the Internet and cite it as an "integral part of their lives" – in some cases more integral than cars, dating, and partying. These and numerous other findings provide insight into the mindset, expectations, and behavior of the world's next generation of workers and how they will influence everything from business communications and mobile lifestyles to hiring, corporate security, and companies' abilities to compete."

    November 16, 2011
    * Fostering Student Engagement Campuswide - Annual Results 2011

    How Much Time College Students Spend Studying Varies By Major and Corresponds to Faculty Expectations, Survey Finds: "Findings released today show that on average, full-time college students study 15 hours a week. However, study time differed by academic majors, with seniors in engineering averaging about 19 hours per week, while their peers in the social sciences and business averaged five fewer hours per week. Faculty expectations for study time by field corresponded closely to what students reported, but there were exceptions. Social sciences faculty, for example, expected four more
    hours per week than the average social sciences senior reported. Students who devoted at least 20 hours per week to studying did not always attend class fully prepared. These findings, released by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), raise questions about areas where a mismatch may exist between the work asked of students and what they believe necessary to succeed, and also whether faculty expectations for study time
    may need to be recalibrated. The survey also documents a variety of student approaches to studying and learning. Taking careful notes during class was widespread, but only two out of three students frequently reviewed their notes after class. Only half said they frequently outlined major topics and ideas from course materials or discussed effective study strategies with faculty or students. All of the effective learning strategies were positively related to other measures."

  • Fostering Student Engagement Campuswide—Annual Results 2011
  • * Strength through Global Leadership and Engagement: U.S. Higher Education in the 21st Century

    Strength through Global Leadership and Engagement: U.S. Higher Education in the 21st Century November 2011

  • "U.S. institutions have set the benchmark for excellence. American universities populate the top of various ratings of higher education
    no matter what methodology is used. As just one example, American institutions represented 53 of the top 100 universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2011. American institutions increasingly are the model for the development of new universities and colleges around the world. Most recently, for example, there has been increasing international interest in the U.S. community college as a model that provides postsecondary education that is inexpensive, accessible, flexible, and closely tied to business and industry (American Association of Community Colleges, Democracy’s Colleges, August 2010).
  • * OCLC Research Library Partnership Rapid Capture Webinar Recording Now Available

    "This webinar featured innovative ways to increase access to special collectons. The report, Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections, focused on the actual moment of digitization of non-book materials and on innovative ways to speed things up. But speeding things up in one part of the process often uncovers bottlenecks in other parts. In this webinar, experts from special collections and archives offered up creative ways to speed up other parts of the process to provide greater access to special collections..."

  • "Although this webinar was held exclusively for OCLC Research Library Partners, its slides and chat transcript and recording are available publicly for the benefit of all on the OCLC Research website. The webinar recording is also available in iTunes."
  • November 15, 2011
    * Pew - How Mainstream Media Outlets Use Twitter

    How Mainstream Media Outlets Use Twitter Content Analysis Shows an Evolving Relationship - November 14, 2011

  • "For nearly every news organization, Twitter has become a regular part of the daily news outreach. But there are questions about how those organizations actually use the technology: How often do they tweet? What kind of news do they distribute? To what extent is Twitter used as a new reporting tool or as a mechanism for gathering insights from followers? To answer some of these questions, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs collaborated on a study of Twitter feeds from 13 major news organizations. The research, which examined more than 3,600 tweets over the course of a week, reveals that these news organizations use Twitter in limited ways—primarily as an added means to disseminate their own material. Both the sharing of outside content and engagement with followers are rare. The news content posted, moreover, matches closely the news events given priority on the news organizations’ legacy platforms."
  • November 14, 2011
    * The Economist - What are the world's biggest sources of renewable energy and where are they located?

    What are the world's biggest sources of renewable energy and where are they located?: "Efforts to tackle climate change include heavy investment in renewable sources of electricity around the world. Solar power saw the biggest leap in 2010, with the installed base jumping 70% compared with 2009 to 40 gigawatts. Wind power also grew strongly, adding 24% of generating capacity. Yet the biggest source of renewable electricity, hydropower, and the smallest, geothermal, both only added 3% to capacity. Finding usable sources of either is becoming increasingly hard or costly. The region that saw the biggest growth in renewable energy projects was power-hungry Asia. Investment in renewables also saw the biggest leap since 2007, with $243 billion spent, a 30% increase over 2009."

    * Recent Open Access meeting focused on promoting Internet as medium for disseminating global knowledge

    Jennifer Howard, Wired Campus: "Impact, not ideology, was the watchword at the Berlin 9 Open Access Conference, held...at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute {Betheda, MD, November 9-10, 2011] The 260 high-level researchers, fund providers, and open-access advocates who attended didn’t waste time bashing publishers who keep research behind paywalls. (Some commercial publishers, including Elsevier, attended.) Instead they focused on the benefits of putting research—in the humanities and social sciences as well as in the sciences—quickly and freely into the hands of scholars, students, innovators, and the general public."

  • See also the Max Planck Society’s website on the subject of Open Access and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
  • November 13, 2011
    * Teach.gov and Microsoft Partner to Support Educators Around the World

    Teach.gov: "Teaching is a rewarding and challenging profession where you can make a lasting impact. You can have a positive influence on students, schools, and communities now and into the future. Schools across the nation are in need of a diverse set of talented teachers, especially in our big cities and rural areas, and especially in the areas of Math, Science, Technology, Special Education, and English Language Learning. The TEACH campaign is an initiative of the United States Department of Education designed to raise awareness of the teaching profession and get a new generation of teachers to join the ones who are already making a difference in the classroom. At TEACH.gov you can learn what it’s really like to be a teacher and get the tools you need to launch your own career in education. Are you ready to make a difference? Discover your path to teaching and get started today."

  • "Microsoft Corp. announced new and continuing collaborations with the U.S. Department of Education, the British Council and the Smithsonian Institution to engage educators from their initial desire to enter the profession to successfully inspiring students in their classrooms. Microsoft believes that well-prepared educators can help today’s youth overcome the emerging opportunity divide and can help put students on a path toward the education, skills and opportunities they need to prosper in the 21st century."
  • * An Analysis of Faculty Instructional and Grant-based Productivity at The University of Texas at Austin

    An Analysis of Faculty Instructional and Grant-based Productivity at The University of Texas at Austin - Marc A. Musick, Associate Dean for Student Affairs,, College of Liberal Arts, Professor of Sociology, November 2011: "As a university of the first class, UT Austin boasts rankings that put it among the best public research universities in the nation and among the best universities in the world. Generations of people in Texas have spent decades of tireless work to create this institution, and it has served the state with distinction by conferring hundreds of thousands of degrees, generating billions in research funding, training generations of Texas leaders, and, in general, being one of the major intellectual incubators in the state.
    Unsurprisingly, because of the stature of the university, it has faced many questions about its quality and productivity over the course of its history. Such questions are important for the university as they force administrators, faculty, staff and students to think critically about the school and how it fulfills its important mission to the State of Texas.
    Those conversations on quality and productivity persist even today. But, unlike the discussions that occurred in previous generations, today the university can bring to bear large amounts of data to examine both productivity and quality. This past spring, the University of Texas System helped in that endeavor by releasing a large data set meant to measure faculty productivity at UT Austin and other system universities. These data fed into the conversation of productivity at the university, but, to date, no thorough analysis has been conducted to determine what they really tell us about the current state of faculty productivity at the university. This report is an effort to conduct such an examination of the data. It finds, in general, that the 1,988 tenured and tenure track professors at the University of Texas at Austin work very hard for their students and provide an incredible return on investment for the state. Specifically, the findings show:

    • Professors taught over 2.5 million weighted semester credit hours in 2009-2010 with an average of over 1,300 per professor;
    • The weighted semester credit hours produced by professors translates into approximately $161 million in revenue to the university from the state;
    • About 860 professors (43 percent) generated external research funding for a total of almost $400 million, or about $460,000 for each professor generating funds;
    • Combining teaching and external sources, professors produced about $558 million in revenue;
    • Professors were paid about $257 million in state funds;
    • Based on these numbers, UT Austin professors generated over twice their compensation from those revenue sources.

    November 12, 2011
    * PBS Newhour - What's the Fallout for Dogs Near Fukushima?

    What's the Fallout for Dogs Near Fukushima? by Jenny Marder

    • "The dogs and cats spotted in Katsurao were were among thousands of pets abandoned after residents were forced to quickly evacuate areas around the Fukushima plant, after the tsunami damaged the facility, causing equipment failures and a release of radioactive materials...Upon visiting the area after the earthquake, [the International Fund for Animal Welfare] found that many local Japanese groups were eager to help with animal rescue efforts, but there was confusion as to whether the animals in the radiation hot spots were safe to handle and how they should be tested for contamination. (As one of our readers pointed out, the Hachiko Coalition is an organization that has done a great deal of animal rescue work in the Fukushima radiation zone.)
    • Report - Nuclear Accidents and the Impact on Animals: "A committee of Subject Matter Experts (Appendix A) from Japan and the United States was convened May 2-3, 2011 to discuss animal issues resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident.
    November 08, 2011
    * Pew - The Rising Age Gap in Economic Well-Being

    The Rising Age Gap in Economic Well-Being, The Old Prosper Relative to the Young, November 7, 2011

  • "Older adults have made dramatic gains relative to younger adults in their economic well being during the past quarter century, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from two key U.S. Census sources. Trends in household wealth reveal the pattern most vividly. In 2009, the median net worth (all assets minus all debts) of households headed by an adult ages 65 or older was 42% more than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984. By contrast, the net worth of a typical household headed by an adult under the age of 35 in 2009 was 68% less than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984."
  • November 07, 2011
    * ACE's Blue Ribbon Panel on Global Engagement Report Informs Next Steps for American Higher Education

    News release: "U.S. colleges and universities have historically set the benchmark for excellence in higher education, but these institutions will have to adapt and collaborate with their peers abroad in the coming years to remain competitive. Assisting institutions in addressing these challenges is the centerpiece of a report issued today by the American Council on Education (ACE) which charts a new agenda for global engagement in higher education. Strength through Global Leadership and Engagement: U.S. Higher Education in the 21st Century is the result of the year-long work of ACE's Blue Ribbon Panel on Global Engagement, chaired by New York University President John Sexton and involving leaders of institutions from around the world."

    November 06, 2011
    * 'Thinking' in a Deweyan Perspective: The Law School Exam as a Case Study for Thinking in Lawyering

    'Thinking' in a Deweyan Perspective: The Law School Exam as a Case Study for Thinking in Lawyering, Donald J. Kochan, Chapman University School of Law, November 4, 2011, Nevada Law Journal, Forthcoming

  • "As creatures of thought, we are thinking all the time, but that does not necessarily mean that we are thinking well. Answering the law school exam, like solving any problem, requires that the student exercise thinking in an effective and productive manner. This Article provides some guidance in that pursuit. Using John Dewey’s suspended conclusion concept for effective thinking as an organizing theme, this Article presents one basic set of lessons for thinking through issues that arise regarding the approach to a law school exam. This means that the lessons contained here help exercise thought while taking the exam—to think through the exam approach. The second, more subtle, purpose is to demonstrate that the law school exam can serve as a case study in the effectiveness of certain thinking tools that have much broader application. For that reason, this Article is not your typical “how-to” guide, but instead provides guidance critically and generally applicable to the thinking enterprise itself."
  • * UNESCO Global Open Access Portal launched

    "The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) presents a snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world. For countries that have been more successful in implementing Open Access, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of Open Access development, the portal identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities. The portal has country reports from over 148 countries with weblinks to over 2000 initiatives/projects in Member States. The portal is supported by an existing Community of Practice (CoP) on Open Access on the WSIS Knowledge Communities Platform that has over 1400 members."

    * Unemployment and Earnings Losses: The Long-Term Impacts of The Great Recession

    Brookings/Hamilton Project - Unemployment and Earnings Losses: The Long-Term Impacts of The Great Recession, November 2011

  • "The labor market has shown another month of growth, according to [November 4, 2011] employment report. Payroll employment increased by 80,000 jobs in October; private sector employment was up by 104,000, while governments continued to shed jobs. Additionally, the employment gains in August and September were revised upward by a total of 102,000. On net, the unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 9.0 percent. Over the past year, payroll employment has increased by an average of 125,000 per month, just enough to accommodate new entrants to the labor force. While these emerging signs of growth are promising, the United States remains a long way from full employment. One out of every eleven American workers is still unemployed. Further, many of those who have found new jobs have been reemployed at lower wages and history suggests that their reduced wages are likely to persist for years to come."
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  • November 05, 2011
    * IEEE - A blow-by-blow account of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl

    24 Hours at Fukushima - A blow-by-blow account of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, By Eliza Strickland / November 2011 [Editor's Note: This is part of the IEEE Spectrum special report: Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Power].

  • "The world's three major nuclear accidents had very different causes, but they have one important thing in common: In each case, the company or government agency in charge withheld critical information from the public. And in the absence of information, the panicked public began to associate all nuclear power with horror and radiation nightmares. The owner of the Fukushima plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), has only made the situation worse by presenting the Japanese and global public with obfuscations instead of a clear-eyed accounting. Citing a government investigation, TEPCO has steadfastly refused to make workers available for interviews and is barely answering questions about the accident. By piecing together as best we can the story of what happened during the first 24 hours, when reactor 1 was spiraling toward catastrophe, we hope to facilitate the process of learning-by-disaster."
  • * Engineers: The Next Generation - Do we need more? Who will they be? What will they do?

    Charles M. Vest, National Academy of Engineering: The Next Generation Do we need more engineers?

  • "The distinguished National Academy volunteers who wrote the influential report Rising Above the Gathering Storm believed that we need to increase the number of engineers graduating in this country. Not everyone agrees with this assessment and I am frequently asked, “Do we really need more engineers?” I think the answer is “Yes,” for at least four reasons:
    • U.S. industry, including the national security industry, is facing a wave of retirements in the coming years;
    • It is not crystal clear that we will forever be able to fill the engineering gap with the best and brightest from other countries;
    • Many high-tech companies report that they cannot find qualified U.S. citizens to fill critically important engineering and technology jobs, including in manufacturing; but most important of all,
    • We need a new generation of brilliant engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs to create a vibrant future, just as preceding generations did.
    • So, yes, I think we need more engineers and better engineers."
  • November 03, 2011
    * Student Debt and the Class of 2010

    News release: "Two-thirds of college seniors graduated with loans in 2010, and they carried an average of $25,250 in debt. They also faced the highest unemployment rate for young college graduates in recent history at 9.1%. Our new report, Student Debt and the Class of 2010, includes average debt levels for the 50 states and District of Columbia and for more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities."

    * Paper - Credit Ratings across Asset Classes: A ≡ A?

    Credit Ratings across Asset Classes: A ≡ A?. Jess Cornaggia, Indiana University Bloomington - Kelley School of Business, Kimberly Rodgers Cornaggia, American University - Kogod School of Business, John Hund, Rice University - Jesse H. Jones School of Management. October 30, 2011

  • "Contrary to assertions by the Big 3 credit raters, we demonstrate that credit ratings are not comparable across asset classes. Default frequencies, ratings transition matrices, hazard rate models, and ratings adjustment regressions all indicate that differences exist across asset classes both in the levels of credit ratings and the distributions of their changes. Relative to traditional corporate bond ratings, municipal and sovereign bonds have been rated more harshly and structured products have been rated more generously. These findings exist to varying degrees throughout our entire 30-year sample period. Consistent with a conflict of interest in an issuer-pays compensation structure, ratings standards are inversely correlated with revenue generation among the asset classes. Our results are less consistent with the more benign explanation that ratings inflation is a result of issuer opacity. These results contribute to the debate surrounding regulatory reliance on credit ratings and the current SEC proposal to standardize credit ratings across asset class."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • November 02, 2011
    * Report - Nothing Ventured: The Crisis in Clean Tech Investment

    Nothing Ventured: The Crisis in Clean Tech Investment, by Joshua Freed and Mae Stevens, November 2011

  • "If a sector that helps drive American economic growth loses 26% of its value—$22 billion—and sees a 26% decline in new companies in just three years, would it be a crisis? It should be. Unfortunately, this decline is happening today to U.S. venture capital, the sector that financed the creation of such iconic American companies as Intel, FedEx, Apple and Google. The collapse has hit the emerging clean energy sector particularly hard, with investments spiraling down 44% in the last year alone. And it’s happening at a time when the U.S. is locked in an intense competition with China and Europe to win the $2.3 trillion global clean energy market. Yet almost no one in the nation’s capital is ringing alarm bells about venture’s demise. In this report, we make the case that the crisis in clean tech investment is starving promising new technologies and risks the U.S. missing out on a huge engine for economic growth in the 21st century."
  • * World War II in Photos - 900 photos and over 20 essays

    The Atlantic - World War II in Photos - Alan Taylor

  • "World War II is the story of the 20th Century. The war officially lasted from 1939 until 1945, but the causes of the conflict and its horrible aftermath reverberated for decades in either direction. While feats of bravery and technological breakthroughs still inspire awe today, the majority of the war was dominated by unimaginable misery and destruction. In the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the nations of the Axis Powers and the Allies resulted in some 80 million deaths -- killing off about 4 percent of the whole world. This series of entries was originally posted weekly to TheAtlantic.com from June 19 through October 30, 2011, running every Sunday morning for 20 weeks. In this collection of 900 photos over 20 essays, I tried to explore the events of the war, the people involved at the front and back home, and the effects the war had on everyday lives. These images still give us glimpses into the real-life experiences of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents, moments that shaped the world as it is today. There were thousands of events affecting millions of lives, and I hope that I was able to do justice to this important story in this large-photo narrative format and thank you for joining along the way."
  • November 01, 2011
    * Pew - Half of adult cell phone owners have apps on their phones

    Half of adult cell phone owners have apps on their phones - The percent who download apps nearly doubles in two years, but just 46% of downloaders have paid for an app...The growth in apps downloading is a reflection of the broader trend toward mobile devices the Pew Internet Project has identified over the past decade. Americans have embraced mobile connectivity in the form of laptops, smartphones, tablet computers, and e-readers, while desktop computers have become less popular over time." Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Pew Internet Project, November 2, 2011

    * Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success - Research Report

    Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success, Research Report Version 1.0. James L. Mullins, Catherine Murray-Rust, Joyce Ogburn, Raym Crow, October Ivins, Allyson Mower, Mark P. Newton, Daureen Nesdill, Julie Speer, and Charles Watkinson. Libraries Research Publications. Paper 136.

  • "Over the past five years, libraries have begun to expand their role in the scholarly publishing value chain by offering a greater range of pre-publication and editorial support services. Given the rapid evolution of these services, there is a clear community need for practical guidance concerning the challenges and opportunities facing library-based publishing programs. Recognizing that library publishing services represent one part of a complex ecology of scholarly communication, Purdue University Libraries, in collaboration with the Libraries of Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Utah, secured an IMLS National Leadership Grant under the title Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success. The project, conducted between October 2010 and September 2011, seeks to advance the professionalism of library-based publishing by identifying successful library publishing strategies and services, highlighting best practices, and recommending priorities for building capacity."
  • October 31, 2011
    * Library of Congress: A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age

    A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age (October 31, 2011)

  • "Library of Congress Bibliographic Framework Initiative General Plan: A central activity to the Bibliographic Framework Initiative is the development of a new means for capturing and sharing bibliographic data. Included in this activity is pursuing a replacement of the MARC format as the common exchange currency for bibliographic data. This was one recommendation of the 2008 report from the Library of Congress' Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, On the Record, and has been discussed in the community for a number of years. Although the format is deeply embedded in the infrastructure, changing technologies and changing resource description practices mandate a transition to a more current and forward looking data creation and interchange environment. The semantic web and related linked data model hold interesting possibilities for libraries and cultural heritage institutions. (Please see the Appendix for a brief history MARC, the issues arising from its incredible success, and LC experimentation with alternate record formats, all of which inform the following Requirements.)"
  • * The Role of Colleges and Universities in Building Local Human Capital

    The Role of Colleges and Universities in Building Local Human Capital, Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, October 2011

  • "Colleges and universities can contribute to the economic success of a region by deepening the skills and knowledge or human capital of its residents. Producing graduates who join the region's educated workforce is one way these institutions increase human capital levels. In addition, the knowledge and technologies created through research activities at area universities may not only attract new firms to a region but also help existing businesses expand and innovate. These "spillover effects" can in turn raise the region's demand for high-skilled workers."
  • October 30, 2011
    * Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study

    "The most important indicator of global warming, by far, is the land and sea surface temperature record. This has been criticized in several ways, including the choice of stations and the methods for correcting systematic errors. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study sets out to to do a new analysis of the surface temperature record in a rigorous manner that addresses this criticism. We are using over 39,000 unique stations, which is more than five times the 7,280 stations found in the Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly data set (GHCN-M) that has served as the focus of many climate studies. Our aim is to resolve current criticism of the former temperature analyses, and to prepare an open record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions. Our results include not only our best estimate for the global temperature change, but estimates of the uncertainties in the record."

  • "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study has created a preliminary merged data set by combining 1.6 billion temperature reports from 15 preexisting data archives...The Berkeley Earth team has completed the analysis of the full data set, and summary charts are posted here. The Berkeley Earth team has already started to benefit from feedback from our peers, so these figures are more up-to-date than the figures in our papers submitted for peer review. In particular, the data from NASA GISS has been updated to be more directly comparable to the land-average constructed by Berkeley Earth and NOAA."
  • The Economist: A new analysis of the temperature record leaves little room for the doubters. The world is warming
  • * Links in the chain: Global carbon emissions and consumption

    News release: "It is difficult to measure accurately each nation’s contribution of carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon is extracted out of the ground as coal, gas, and oil, and these fuels are often exported to other countries where they are burned to generate the energy that is used to make products. In turn, these products may be traded to still other countries where they are consumed. A team led by Carnegie’s Steven Davis, and including Ken Caldeira, tracked and quantified this supply chain of global carbon dioxide emissions... Traditionally, the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels is attributed to the country where the fuels were burned. But until now, there has not yet been a full accounting of emissions taking into consideration the entire supply chain, from where fuels originate all the way to where products made using the fuels are ultimately consumed...They found that regulating the fossil fuels extracted in China, the US, the Middle East, Russia, Canada, Australia, India, and Norway would cover 67% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The incentive to participate would be the threat of missing out on revenues from carbon-linked tariffs imposed further down the supply chain. Incorporating gross domestic product into these analyses highlights which countries’ economies are most reliant on domestic resources of fossil energy and which economies are most dependent on traded fuels. To look at the data, visit here."

    October 28, 2011
    * Study - Neighborhoods, Obesity and Diabetes - A Randomized Social Experiment

    Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes — A Randomized Social Experiment - Jens Ludwig, Ph.D., Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D., Lisa Gennetian, Ph.D., Emma Adam, Ph.D., Greg J. Duncan, Ph.D., Lawrence F. Katz, Ph.D., Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D., Jeffrey R. Kling, Ph.D., Stacy Tessler Lindau, M.D., Robert C. Whitaker, M.D., M.P.H., and Thomas W. McDade, Ph.D.. N Engl J Med 2011; 365:1509-1519. October 20, 2011

  • "The results of this study, together with those of previous studies documenting the large social costs of obesity and diabetes, raise the possibility that clinical or public health interventions that ameliorate the effects of neighborhood environment on obesity and diabetes could generate substantial social benefits. The mechanisms accounting for these associations remain unclear, but further investigation is warranted to provide guidance in designing neighborhood-level interventions to improve health."
  • See also Moving on out: Study shows link between neighborhood poverty and obesity, diabetes
  • October 27, 2011
    * Research Study - All Your Clouds are Be­long to us – Se­cu­ri­ty Ana­ly­sis of Cloud Ma­nage­ment In­ter­faces

    All Your Clouds are Be­long to us – Se­cu­ri­ty Ana­ly­sis of Cloud Ma­nage­ment In­ter­faces - Juraj So­mo­rovs­ky, Mario Hei­de­rich, Meiko Jen­sen, Jörg Schwenk, Nils Grusch­ka, Luigi Lo Ia­co­no. In Pro­cee­dings of the ACM Cloud Com­pu­ting Se­cu­ri­ty Work­shop (CCSW), 2011.

  • "Cloud Com­pu­ting re­sour­ces are hand­led through con­trol in­ter­faces. It is through these in­ter­faces that the new ma­chi­ne ima­ges can be added, exis­ting ones can be mo­di­fied, and in­stan­ces can be star­ted or cea­sed. Ef­fec­tive­ly, a suc­cess­ful at­tack on a Cloud con­trol in­ter­face grants the at­ta­cker a com­ple­te power over the victim’s ac­count, with all the stored data in­clu­ded. In this paper, we pro­vi­de a se­cu­ri­ty ana­ly­sis per­tai­ning to the con­trol in­ter­faces of a large Pu­blic Cloud (Ama­zon) and a wi­de­ly used Pri­va­te Cloud soft­ware (Eu­ca­lyp­tus). Our re­se­arch re­sults are alar­ming: in re­gards to the Ama­zon EC2 and S3 ser­vices, the con­trol in­ter­faces could be com­pro­mi­sed via the novel si­gna­tu­re wrap­ping and ad­van­ced XSS tech­ni­ques. Si­mi­lar­ly, the Eu­ca­lyp­tus con­trol in­ter­faces were vul­nerable to clas­si­cal si­gna­tu­re wrap­ping at­tacks, and had ne­ar­ly no pro­tec­tion against XSS. As a fol­low up to those dis­co­ve­ries, we ad­di­tio­nal­ly de­scri­be the coun­ter­me­a­su­res against these at­tacks, as well as in­tro­du­ce a novel ”black box” ana­ly­sis me­tho­do­lo­gy for pu­blic Cloud in­ter­faces."
  • * UK is a world-leader in science and research according to new report from BIS

    "The International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base 2011 report was compiled by Elsevier and published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It shows that UK research attracts more citations per pound spent in overall research and development than any other country. It has also found that the UK research base is highly mobile, internationally competitive and diverse...The UK also has more articles per researcher, more citations per researcher, and more usage per article authored than researchers in US, China, Japan and Germany."

    October 26, 2011
    * 112th Congress Gold Mouse Awards Released

    News release: "Congressional websites are getting better, according to an analysis by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF). The nonprofit organization graded 618 congressional websites and found the most common grade moved from an F in the 111th Congress to a B in the 112th Congress. CMF has been grading congressional websites since 2001 and issues biannual Congressional Gold Mouse Awards for the best websites on Capitol Hill for each Congress. CMF conducted its analysis from June to September 2011...see the latest report - 112th Congress Gold Mouse Awards: Best Practices in Online Communications on Capitol Hill, [which] identified recent trends related to online communications in Congress, including:

    • A significant number of House and Senate Member websites lacked basic educational and transparency features including: links to bills sponsored and cosponsored, voting records, and basic information on how a bill becomes a law.
    • House Members taking office in January 2011 had significantly better websites than Senators taking office in January 2011, with 61% of new House Members receiving an A or B grade, compared to 31% of new Senators receiving a similar grade. Nearly half (46%) of new Senators received a grade of D or F, compared to 17% of new House Members.
    • While there was general parity overall in quality of websites between Democrats and Republican Member websites, the best websites tended to be Democratic Members.
    • View the full list of the 112th Congress Gold Mouse Award Winners

    October 25, 2011
    * ForeSee Study Highlights Social Media Best Practices for the Federal Government

    News release: "Customer experience analytics firm ForeSee today released its report on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Quarterly E-Government Satisfaction Index, including an analysis of the state of social media in the federal government. ForeSee’s audit of social media activity in the federal government identified clear themes and best practices, showing that the public sector is learning to communicate with citizens in ways that are not usually associated with government services. ForeSee conducted an expert usability review of the 15 executive department websites in order to gauge how many participate in social media and how they do it. All are participating in the three most popular social platforms—Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—and many are using other new media and communications tools, from Flickr and podcasts to email newsletters and RSS feeds."

    * AWEA U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report Year Ending 2010

    News release: "The third quarter of 2011 saw over 1,200 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity installed, bringing installations through the first three quarters of the year to 3,360 MW. The U.S. wind industry now totals 43,461 MW of cumulative wind capacity through the end of September 2011. The U.S. wind industry has added over 35% of all new generating capacity over the past 4 years, second only to natural gas, and more than nuclear and coal combined. Today, U.S. wind power capacity represents more than 20% of the world's installed wind power. Today, the U.S. wind industry represents not only a large market for wind power capacity installations, but also a growing market for American manufacturing. Over 400 manufacturing facilities across the U.S. make components for wind turbines, and dedicated wind facilities that manufacture major components such as towers, blades and assembled nacelles can be found in every region. The most recent U.S. wind industry statistics can be found below and are available through the:

    October 22, 2011
    * Measures of Effective Teaching - Gates Foundation

    "The goal of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project is to help educators and policymakers identify and support good teaching by improving the quality of information available about teacher practice. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, independent education researchers, in partnership with school districts, principals, teachers, and unions, will work to develop fair and reliable measures of effective teaching."

  • WSJ: Schools have a lot to learn from business about how to improve performance, say Bill and Melinda Gates
  • October 21, 2011
    * CoreLogic Multifamily Applicant Risk Index Reports

    News release: "CoreLogic...announced that CoreLogic SafeRent®, provider of the nation's leading suite of screening and risk management services designed for the multifamily housing industry, released its third quarter 2011 multifamily applicant risk statistics. Despite anemic job growth in the weak economy, credit quality among rental applicants improved slightly in the third quarter 2011 over third quarter 2010.

    October 20, 2011
    * Pew: As learning goes mobile - slides

    "Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, spoke about As learning goes mobile at the Educause 2011 annual conference. He described the Project’s latest findings about how people (especially young adults) use mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet computers. He discussed how the mobile revolution has combined with the social networking revolution to produce new kinds of learning and knowledge-sharing environments and described the challenges and opportunities this presents to colleges and teachers. Technology has enabled students to become different kinds of learners and Lee will explore what that means."

    October 19, 2011
    * Brookings: Technology and the Innovation Economy

    Technology and the Innovation Economy, Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies. October 19, 2011.

  • "Innovation and entrepreneurship are crucial for long-term economic development. Over the years, America’s well-being has been furthered by science and technology. Fears set off by the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of its Sputnik satellite initiated a wave of U.S. investment in science, engineering, aerospace, and technology. Both public and private sector investment created jobs, built industries, fueled innovation, and propelled the U.S. to leadership in a number of different fields. In this paper, I focus on ways technology enables innovation and creates economic prosperity. I review the range of new advances in education, health care, and communications, and make policy recommendations designed to encourage an innovation economy. By adopting policies such as a permanent research and development tax credit, more effective university knowledge commercialization, improving STEM worker training, reasonable immigration reform, and regional economic clusters, we can build an innovation economy and sustain our long-term prosperity."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • October 18, 2011
    * Pew Center report identifies “Seven Keys to Success” for low-carbon innovation

    News release: "Even in the face of uncertainty about climate and energy policies, forward-thinking companies are developing innovative technologies and solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide growth opportunities. A new report, The Business of Innovating: Bringing Low-Carbon Solutions to Market, released today by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change finds that leading companies are strategically pursuing low-carbon innovations to hedge risks, capture new business, and stay competitive with emerging markets and technologies...Written by Andrew Hargadon, Professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Davis, the report provides a set of practical lessons for companies pursuing low-carbon innovations...The report is organized in four main sections that examine the motives and opportunities for pursuing low-carbon innovation; the unique characteristics distinguishing low-carbon innovation from other types of business innovation; seven keys to success in pursuing low-carbon innovation; and case studies of eight low-carbon solutions by four leading companies: Alstom SA, Daimler AG, HP and Johnson Controls, Inc."

    October 17, 2011
    * Unhealthy U.S. Workers' Absenteeism Costs $153 Billion

    News release: "Full-time workers in the U.S. who are overweight or obese and have other chronic health conditions miss an estimated 450 million additional days of work each year compared with healthy workers -- resulting in an estimated cost of more than $153 billion in lost productivity annually. These findings are based on Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data collected between Jan. 2 and Oct. 2, 2011. Gallup surveyed 109,875 full-time employees -- those who work at least 30 hours per week -- during this time period."

    October 16, 2011
    * How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits

    Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits, comScore, October 2011.

  • "Today’s digital media environment is rapidly evolving, driven by the proliferation of devices people use to consume content both at home, at work and on the go. Not too long ago, consumers depended solely on
    their desktop computer or laptop to connect online. Now, a growing number of consumers are likely to access a wide variety of digital content across a multitude of devices on a daily basis. With smartphones, tablets and other connected devices, consumers have become digital omnivores – not just because of the media they consume, but also in how they consume it. Cross-platform consumption has created a vastly different digital landscape, and it is one that requires insight into both the individual usage of devices as well as the nature of their complementary use. As consumers move toward an increasingly fragmented device diet, stakeholders across the industry are confronted with a growing number of questions, challenges and opportunities. What is the extent to which these devices have penetrated and are changing consumers’ media consumption habits? How does one efficiently and effectively reach these digital omnivores in a meaningful way? As this report analyzes the impact of devices that connect consumers beyond the computer, it aims to shed light on the direction of the ever-evolving digital media landscape."
  • October 15, 2011
    * Growing Impact of Social Media on Banking

    Banking on the Social Network: "Despite compliance issues and the difficulty of measuring returns, a panel of bankers says social media has emerged as a must-have marketing tool." by Karen Epper Hoffman

    * Why Women’s Retirement Planning Needs to Go Beyond a Longer Life Expectancy

    CPA Insider: "The special retirement planning needs of women involve more than extended life expectancy over men. They include issues such as divorce, family, work history, care giving responsibility and healthcare costs." October 11, 2011 by James Sullivan, CPA, PFS

    * Investment Perspective - Preparing for Turbulence

    Investment Perspective - Preparing for Turbulence, EdwardJones, October 2011

  • "Often, the biggest investor mistakes are made as investors jump into and out of the market, trying to make short-term timing decisions. but timing the market requires two correct decisions – when to get out, and when to get back in."
  • October 13, 2011
    * OECD launches new report on measuring well-being

    News release: "Do you like your job? How’s your health? Are you spending enough time each day with your children? When you need them, are your friends there for you? Can you trust your neighbours? And how satisfied are you, overall, with your life? A new OECD publication, How’s Life?, looks at these questions and others, offering a comprehensive picture of what makes up people’s lives in 40 countries worldwide. The report assesses 11 specific aspects of life – ranging from income, jobs and housing to health, education and the environment – as part of the OECD’s ongoing effort to devise new measures for assessing well-being that go beyond Gross Domestic Product. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría launched How’s Life? during an international conference at the OECD commemorating the two-year anniversary of the landmark Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. The landmark report sought to address concerns that standard macroeconomic statistics like GDP failed to give a true account of people’s current and future well-being. The OECD has been addressing the issue of measuring progress since 2000, with its latest work forming the basis of this publication."

    * Conflict-Specialists-As-Leaders: Revisiting the Role of the Conflict Specialist from a Leadership Perspective

    Kuttner, Ran, Conflict-Specialists-As-Leaders: Revisiting the Role of the Conflict Specialist from a Leadership Perspective (September 9, 2011). Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2011.

  • "The aim of this article is to explore the cross fertilization between the emerging fields of ADR and Leadership. The first section will explore similarities in themes and characteristics of both disciplines that are influenced by the zeitgeist. The second section will argue that the parallels between the disciplines challenge and call for further exploration of the conflict specialist’s role. The third section will offer a reading into skills emphasized in leadership scholarship not commonly stressed in ADR trainings, examining how conflict specialists can ameliorate their practice by incorporating a leadership mindset and additional relevant skills into their work."
  • October 12, 2011
    * More U.S. Companies Having Difficulty Attracting Critical-Skill Employees, Towers Watson Survey Finds

    News release: "With the U.S. economy still unsteady, most U.S. companies are finding it relatively easy to attract or retain workers, with one major exception-critical-skill employees. A new survey from global professional services company Towers Watson and WorldatWork, an international association of human resource professionals, shows that for the second consecutive year, the number of U.S. companies having difficulty finding and keeping critical-skill workers has increased. The Towers Watson Talent Management and Rewards Survey, a study of 316 North American companies, including 218 from the United States, also found that nearly two-thirds of respondents expect their employees to work more hours now than they did prior to the recession and see this trend continuing for some time. Additionally, respondents are concerned about the impact that organizational changes they made in response to the recession are having in areas such as employees’ work/life balance, productivity and willingness to take risks. Most companies have already made or are planning to make additional changes to their reward and talent management, and other organizational, programs."

    October 11, 2011
    * Report - Use of Dashboards in Government

    Use of Dashboards in Government, by Sukumar Ganapati, Florida International University, IBM Center for the Business of Government

  • "Stephen Few defines a dashboard as a “visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance”. Dashboards summarize key performance metrics of organizations. They typically integrate data from different sources and display performance measures through informative graphics. The visualization allows readers to understand complex data in less time than it would take to read similar material located in the text of a full report. At the same time, the dashboards should be self-contained. Dashboards can be static (providing metrics at a particular time, e.g., PDF files) or dynamic (providing metrics in real time, e.g., interactive web dashboards).
  • * Publisher Names in Bibliographic Data: An Experimental Authority File and a Prototype Application

    Publisher Names in Bibliographic Data: An Experimental Authority File and a Prototype Application - This is a pre-print version of a paper published in Library Resources and Technical Services, 55,4.

  • "The cataloging community has long acknowledged the value of investing in authority control; as bibliographic systems become more global, the need for authority control becomes even more pressing. The publisher description area of the catalog record is notoriously difficult to control, yet often necessary for collection analysis and development. The research presented in this paper details a project to build a database of authorized names for major publishers worldwide. ISBN prefix data were used to cluster bibliographic records based on publishing entities; the resulting database contains thousands of variant forms of each publisher's name, and data about their overall publishing output. Profiles of four large publishers were compared: each publisher's languages of publication, formats, and subjects demonstrated their distinctive publishing output, and validated the record clusters. Finally, the results of the research were made freely available on the Web via a prototype set of web pages displaying the publishing profiles of more than eighteen hundred major publishers."
  • October 10, 2011
    * Afghanistan 10 years on: Slow progress and failed promises

    Afghanistan 10 years on: Slow progress and failed promises, Amnesty International

  • "Ten years after a US-led military invasion removed the Taleban from Afghanistan, the Afghan government and its international supporters have failed to keep many of the promises they made to the Afghan people, Amnesty International said...An Amnesty International scorecard on the state of human rights in Afghanistan has found some progress in enacting human rights laws, reduction of discrimination against women and access to education and health care...However, progress on justice and policing, human security and displacement had stagnated or even regressed, Amnesty International found. Afghans living in areas heavily affected by the insurgency have seen a serious deterioration in their conditions."

  • * Conflict in Organizations

    Conflict in Organizations, by Olivier Serrat, Asian Development Bank (ADB) Knowledge Solutions

  • "Complex adaptive systems are the source of much intra-organizational conflict that will not be managed, let alone resolved. To foster learning, adaptation, and evolution in the workplace, organizations should capitalize on its functions and dysfunctions with mindfulness, improvisation, and reconfiguration." (No. 108 | October 2011)
  • October 07, 2011
    * Six Provocations for Big Data

    Six Provocations for Big Data, Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford

  • "The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and many others are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing information from Twitter, Google, Verizon, 23andMe, Facebook, Wikipedia, and every space where large groups of people leave digital traces and deposit data. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale analysis of DNA help cure diseases? Or will it usher in a new wave of medical inequality? Will data analytics help make people’s access to information more efficient and effective? Or will it be used to track protesters in the streets of major cities? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means? Some or all of the above? This essay offers six provocations that we hope can spark conversations about the issues of Big Data. Given the rise of Big Data as both a phenomenon and a methodological persuasion, we believe that it is time to start critically interrogating this phenomenon, its assumptions, and its biases. (This paper was presented at Oxford Internet Institute’s A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society on September 21, 2011.)"
  • * Urban Informatics Research and Insights for Libraries, Cultural Industries and Innovation Systems

    Urban Informatics Research and Insights for Libraries, Cultural Industries and Innovation Systems, by Marcus Foth, September 2011

  • "Over less than a decade, we have witnessed a seismic shift in the way knowledge is produced and exchanged. This is opening up new opportunities for civic and community engagement, entrepreneurial behaviour, sustainability initiatives and creative practices. It also has the potential to create fresh challenges in areas of privacy, cyber-security and misuse of data and personal information. The field of urban informatics focuses on the use and impacts of digital media technology in urban environments. Urban informatics is a dynamic and cross-disciplinary area of inquiry that encapsulates social media, ubiquitous computing, mobile applications and location-based services. Its insights suggest the emergence of a new economic force with the potential for driving innovation, wealth and prosperity through technological advances, digital media and online networks that affect patterns of both social and economic development. Urban informatics explores the intersections between people, place and technology, and their implications for creativity, innovation and engagement. This paper examines how the key learnings from this field can be used to position creative and cultural institutions such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) to take advantage of the opportunities presented by these changing social and technological developments. This paper introduces the underlying principles, concepts and research areas of urban informatics, against the backdrop of modern knowledge economies. Both theoretical ideas and empirical examples are covered in this paper."
  • October 04, 2011
    * Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users

    Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users, Erica Newland, Caroline Nolan, Cynthia Wong, and Jillian York. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society and. The Center for Democracy & Technology, September 2011

  • "This report explores these dilemmas, and recommends principles, strategies, and tools that both user-generated content (UGC) platforms and users can adopt to mitigate the negative effects of account deactivation and content removal. We use select examples to highlight good company practices, including efforts to balance complex and often competing considerations—the enforcement of site guidelines, responses to government pressure, the free expression and privacy rights of users, and the potential risks faced by activists—in consistent, transparent, and accountable ways. Importantly, this report does not put forth a one-size-fits-all solution for the complex set of challenges raised by Terms of Use (ToU) enforcement. Platforms vary in terms of history, mission, content hosted, size, and user base, and no single set of practices will be an appropriate fit in every case. Moreover, while the examples in this report focus on platforms that host social media, the recommendations are broadly applicable to companies that host different types of user-generated content."
  • * London Review of Books: It [Google] Knows

    Daniel Soar: "This spring, the billionaire Eric Schmidt announced that there were only four really significant technology companies: Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, the company he had until recently been running. People believed him. What distinguished his new ‘gang of four’ from the generation it had superseded – companies like Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Cisco, which mostly exist to sell gizmos and gadgets and innumerable hours of expensive support services to corporate clients – was that the newcomers sold their products and services to ordinary people. Since there are more ordinary people in the world than there are businesses, and since there’s nothing that ordinary people don’t want or need, or can’t be persuaded they want or need when it flashes up alluringly on their screens, the money to be made from them is virtually limitless. Together, Schmidt’s four companies are worth more than half a trillion dollars. The technology sector isn’t as big as, say, oil, but it’s growing, as more and more traditional industries – advertising, travel, real estate, used cars, new cars, porn, television, film, music, publishing, news – are subsumed into the digital economy. Schmidt, who as the ex-CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation had learned to take the long view, warned that not all four of his disruptive gang could survive. So – as they all converge from their various beginnings to compete in the same area, the place usually referred to as ‘the cloud’, a place where everything that matters is online – the question is: who will be the first to blink?"

    * Pew: Fighting Poverty in a Bad Economy, Americans Move in with Relatives

    Fighting Poverty in a Bad Economy, Americans Move in with Relatives, By Rakesh Kochhar and D’Vera Cohn. October 3, 2011

  • "Without public debate or fanfare, large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives. This helped fuel the largest increase in the number of Americans living in multi-generational households in modern history. From 2007 to 2009, the total spiked from 46.5 million to 51.4 million."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • October 03, 2011
    * A Revolutionary Technology is Unlocking Secrets of the Forest

    Rhett Butler, A Revolutionary Technology is Unlocking Secrets of the Forest

  • Conceived by Greg Asner, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, the new system — known as AToMS, or the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System — has the potential to transform how tropical forest research is conducted. By combining several breakthrough technologies, Asner and his colleagues can capture detailed images of individual trees at a rate of 500,000 or more per minute, enabling them to create a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the physical structure of the forest, as well as its chemical and optical properties. In Peru, the scientists hoped to not only determine what tree species lay below, but also to gauge how the ecosystem was responding to last year’s drought — the worst ever recorded in the Amazon — as well as help Peru develop a better mechanism for monitoring deforestation and degradation. Asner’s new system, a significant advance on the so-called Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) that he originally developed in 2006, could also play a vital role in global forestry in the decades ahead. The technology could help alleviate uncertainty about carbon emissions from deforestation and different forms of forest management, both of which are critical to the emerging policy of REDD (Reducing Emissions form Deforestation and Forest Degradation), a UN program that aims to compensate tropical countries for preserving their forests."
  • October 02, 2011
    * Federal Reserve Bank of NY RFP: Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution

    Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution. Request for Proposal (Event-6994)

  • "Social media platforms are changing the way organizations are communicating to the public. Conversations are happening all the time and everywhere. There is need for the Communications Group to be timely and proactively aware of the reactions and opinions expressed by the general public as it relates to the Federal Reserve and its actions on a variety of subjects...Mandatory Minimum Solution Requirements: The solution must support content coming from different countries and geographical regions. It should also support multiple languages...The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc...The solution must provide real-time monitoring of relevant conversations. It should provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics. It must be able to provide summaries or high level overviews of a specific set of topics. It should have a configurable dashboard that can easily be accessed by internal analysts or management. The dashboard must support customization by user or group access. The solution should provide an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based a predefined trigger... The solution must be able to integrate with existing FRBNY echnologies such as: Google Search appliance, Lotus notes suite and web trends. It must have support for single sign on or windows integrated authentication."
  • October 01, 2011
    * WSJ: Foreclosures can result in deficiency judgments for homeowners in 41 states

    House Is Gone but Debt Lives On: "Forty-one states and the District of Columbia permit lenders to sue borrowers for mortgage debt still left after a foreclosure sale. The economics of today's battered housing market mean that lenders are doing so more and more. Foreclosed homes seldom fetch enough to cover the outstanding loan amount, both because buyers financed so much of the purchase price—up to 100% of it during the housing boom—and because today's foreclosures take place following a four-year decline in values...100,000 was roughly the average amount by which foreclosure sales fell short of loan balances in hundreds of foreclosures in seven states reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. And 64% of the 4.5 million foreclosures since the start of 2007 have taken place in states that allow deficiency judgments. Lenders still sue for loan shortfalls in only a small minority of cases where they legally could. Public relations is a limiting factor, some debt-buyers believe. Banks are reluctant to discuss their strategies, but some lenders say they are more likely to seek a deficiency judgment if they perceive the borrower to be a "strategic defaulter" who chose to stop paying because the property lost so much value."

    September 29, 2011
    * S&P - A Guide to the Loan Market

    "Standard & Poor's Ratings Services is pleased to bring you the 2011-2012 edition of our Guide To The Loan Market - September 2011, which provides a detailed primer on the syndicated loan market along with articles that describe the bank loan and recovery rating process as well as our analytical approach to evaluating loss and recovery in the event of default."

    * 2011 Investment Company Fact Book

    2011 Investment Company Fact Book, 51st Edition. A Review of Trends and Activity in the Investment Company Industry.

  • "U.S.-registered investment companies play a significant role in the U.S. economy and world financial markets. These funds managed over $13 trillion in assets at the end of 2010 for over 91 million U.S. investors. Funds supplied investment capital in securities markets around the world and were among the largest groups of investors in the U.S. stock, commercial paper, and municipal securities markets."
  • >Related postings on financial system
  • * Bankrate’s 2011 Checking Account Survey

    Bankrate’s 2011 Checking Account Survey: "Free checking is on the way out in 2011, while the banking industry ushered in increases in checking account fees, ATM charges and penalties for account overdrafts. This is the banking landscape revealed by Bankrate's 2011 Checking Account Survey. Just 45 percent of noninterest checking accounts are now free, down from the peak of 76 percent just two years ago. However, banks still will offer free checking for meeting conditions such as signing up for direct deposit. New records were set in two categories in this year's study. Fees for nonsufficient funds, or overdrafts, hit a new high for the 13th consecutive year, while ATM fees rose to their highest level for the seventh consecutive year. To find out what to do about them, check out Bankrate's Checking Account Survey. Bankrate's data come from surveying the five largest banks and five largest thrifts in 25 of the nation's biggest markets from Aug. 1-12, 2011. The survey asked those institutions about the terms on one generic noninterest account and one interest-bearing account for the general consumer."

    September 28, 2011
    * DHS IG Reports on Challenges for Coast Guard Information Technology Management

    Coast Guard Has Taken Steps To Strengthen Information Technology Management, but Challenges Remain, OIG-11-108, September 2011.

  • "...the Coast Guard could improve information technology management in a number of areas. Specifically, Coast Guard systems and infrastructure do not fully meet mission needs. For example, Coast Guard field personnel do not have sufficient network availability, and the aging financial system is unreliable. In addition, command center and partner agency systems are not sufficiently integrated. These limitations have various causes, including technical and cost barriers, aging infrastructure that is difficult to support, and stovepiped system development. As a result, field personnel rely on inefficient work-arounds to accomplish their mission."
  • * The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

    "The Israel Museum welcomes you to the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Project, allowing users to examine and explore these most ancient manuscripts from Second Temple times at a level of detail never before possible. Developed in partnership with Google, the new website gives users access to searchable, fast-loading, high-resolution images of the scrolls, as well as short explanatory videos and background information on the texts and their history. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence, offer critical insight into Jewish society in the Land of Israel during the Second Temple Period, the time of the birth of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Five complete scrolls from the Israel Museum have been digitized for the project at this stage and are now accessible online."

    * Pew: How people learn about their local community

    How people learn about their local community: "Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that asks about local information in a new way. Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information. Overall, the picture revealed by the data is that of a richer and more nuanced ecosystem of community news and information than researchers have previously identified...local TV draws a mass audience largely around a few popular subjects; local newspapers attract a smaller cohort of citizens but for a wider range of civically oriented subjects."

    September 27, 2011
    * New Report: Taking Stock and Making Hay: Archival Collections Assessment

    Taking Stock and Making Hay: Archival Collections Assessment, by Martha O'Hara Conway, University of Michigan, and Merrilee Proffitt, OCLC Research

  • "This report identifies projects and methodologies to make it easier for institutions of all types to undertake collections assessment and to encourage a community of practice. An accurate census of archival collections enables an institution to act strategically in meeting user needs, allocating available resources and securing additional funding. The systematic gathering of quantitative and qualitative data about collections (including processed, under-processed and unprocessed collections) makes possible the provision of basic and consistent collection-level descriptions; affords a better understanding of unmet preservation needs; and informs important decisions regarding collection management, processing priorities, selection, and other activities associated with digitization and exhibit preparation. Although a number of institutions have undertaken collections assessments, a single, commonly-understood approach does not exist. This report identifies projects and methodologies and suggests areas that need work. The goal of the report is to make it easier for institutions of all types to undertake collections assessments and to encourage a community of practice."
  • * Healthy Eating Plate created by Harvard Health Publications

    "Harvard Health Publications, in conjunction with nutrition experts at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), has unveiled the Healthy Eating Plate, a visual guide that provides a blueprint for eating a healthy meal. Like the U.S. government’s MyPlate, the Healthy Eating Plate is simple and easy to understand — and it addresses important deficiencies in the MyPlate icon. The Healthy Eating Plate is based on the latest and best scientific evidence, which shows that a plant-based diet rich in vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and healthy proteins lowers the risk of weight gain and chronic disease. Helping Americans get the best possible nutrition advice is of critical importance, as the U.S. and the world face a burgeoning obesity epidemic. Currently, two in three adults and one in three children are overweight or obese in the U.S."

    September 26, 2011
    * Pew - Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream

    "The Economic Mobility Project's report, Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream, examines potential factors that cause some Americans who grow up in the middle class to fall down the economic ladder as adults. Authored by Gregory Acs during his tenure at the Urban Institute, the report finds that a middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime. Marital status, education, test scores and drug use have a strong influence on whether a middle-class child loses economic ground as an adult. Race and gender also are factors in who falls out of the middle class. The racial gap in downward mobility is driven by a disparity between white and black men, and the gender gap in downward mobility is driven by a disparity between white men and white women."

    September 25, 2011
    * Gallup - In Greece, "Suffering" Up Sharply to 24%

    Gallup Poll: "The percentage of Greeks who rate their lives so poorly that they are considered "suffering" has more than tripled to 24% in 2011, from 7% in 2007. Greeks are more likely to be suffering than "thriving," a reality uncommon in the developed world...Greeks' current life evaluation -- with 14% thriving, 62% struggling, and 24% suffering -- is also low compared with ratings in other European countries surveyed so far in 2011. More Greeks are now classified as suffering than those living in several other European nations, including those in other countries hard hit by the financial and economic crisis such as Ireland and Italy. Suffering is higher only in Hungary (29%), Romania (30%), and Bulgaria (42%), and thriving is significantly lower only in Bulgaria."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • * Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting large-scale human behavior using global news media tone in time and space

    Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting large-scale human behavior using global news media tone in time and space, by Kalev H. Leetaru. First Monday, Volume 16, Number 9 - 5 September 2011.

  • "News is increasingly being produced and consumed online, supplanting print and broadcast to represent nearly half of the news monitored across the world today by Western intelligence agencies. Recent literature has suggested that computational analysis of large text archives can yield novel insights to the functioning of society, including predicting future economic events. Applying tone and geographic analysis to a 30–year worldwide news archive, global news tone is found to have forecasted the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, including the removal of Egyptian President Mubarak, predicted the stability of Saudi Arabia (at least through May 2011), estimated Osama Bin Laden’s likely hiding place as a 200–kilometer radius in Northern Pakistan that includes Abbotabad, and offered a new look at the world’s cultural affiliations. Along the way, common assertions about the news, such as “news is becoming more negative” and “American news portrays a U.S.–centric view of the world” are found to have merit."
  • * New Book by Harvard Professor of Psychology Documents the Decline of War

    Via WSJ: Steven Pinker is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. This essay is adapted from his new book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," published by Viking.

  • "Believe it or not, the world of the past was much worse. Violence has been in decline for thousands of years, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in the existence of our species. The decline, to be sure, has not been smooth. It has not brought violence down to zero, and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children. This claim, I know, invites skepticism, incredulity, and sometimes anger. We tend to estimate the probability of an event from the ease with which we can recall examples, and scenes of carnage are more likely to be beamed into our homes and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age. There will always be enough violent deaths to fill the evening news, so people's impressions of violence will be disconnected from its actual likelihood."
  • * BTN: Microsoft Becomes First Corporate User of Standard XML-Based Bank Statements

    Microsoft Becomes First Corporate User of Standard XML-Based Bank Statements

  • 'Microsoft collaborated with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi and SWIFT to develop a unified format that lets it receive electronic bank statements from all its banking providers in the same format. Extensible Markup Language is a way of formatting, parsing and tagging data such that computer programs can read and act on the information. (For instance, a customer name might be tagged). The ISO 20022 standard [ppt] provides a common schema for such messages, so that everyone uses the same tags and formats. It was developed mainly by European banks to handle new payment structures for Single European Payments Area payments sent between banks. But the standard has taken time to mature and crystallize. "Even within 20022, there are still lots of different variants, based on what country you're working in and banks' data processing requirements once the payment or cash reporting gets to the back end," says Colin Kerr, Microsoft industry solutions manager. "That places a huge burden on the corporate treasury that has to work with multiple banks." Microsoft works with eight major banks around the world and another 90 banks locally."
  • September 24, 2011
    * Building Data Science Teams

    The Skills, Tools, and Perspectives Behind Great Data Science Groups, DJ Patil, 2011 O’Reilly Media

  • "Everyone wants to build a data-driven organization. It’s a popular phrase and there are plenty of books, journals, and technical blogs on the topic. But what does it really mean to be “data driven”? My definition is: A data-driven organization acquires, processes, and leverages data in a timely fashion to create efficiencies, iterate on and develop new products, and navigate the competitive landscape. There are many ways to assess whether an organization is data driven. Some like to talk about how much data they generate. Others like to talk about the sophistication of data they use, or the process of internalizing data. I prefer to start by highlighting organizations that use data effectively."
  • September 23, 2011
    * Pew Report: The Digital Revolution and Higher Education

    The Digital Revolution and Higher Education College Presidents, Public Differ on Value of Online Learning, By Kim Parker, Amanda Lenhart and Kathleen Moore. August 28, 2011

  • "As online college courses have become increasingly prevalent, the general public and college presidents offer different assessments of their educational value, according to a new Pew Research Center report. Just three-in-ten American adults (29%) say a course taken online provides an equal educational value to one taken in a classroom. By contrast, about half of college presidents (51%) say online courses provide the same value. More than three-quarters of college presidents (77%) report that their institutions now offer online courses, and college presidents predict substantial growth in online learning: 15% say most of their current undergraduate students have taken a class online, 50% predict that ten years from now most of their students will take classes online. The report is based on findings from two Pew Research Center surveys: a national poll of the general public, and a survey of college presidents done in association with The Chronicle of Higher Education. It analyzes the perceptions of the public and college presidents about the value of online learning, the prevalence and future of online courses, use of digital textbooks, the internet and plagiarism, and technology use in the classroom, as well as college presidents’ own use of technology."
  • September 22, 2011
    * Symantec Survey Finds Emails Are No Longer the Most Commonly Specified Documents in eDiscovery Requests

    News release: "Symantec Corp. announced the findings of its 2011 Information Retention and eDiscovery Survey which examined how enterprises manage their ever-growing volumes of electronically stored information and prepare for the eventuality of an eDiscovery request. The survey of legal and IT personnel at 2,000 enterprises worldwide found email is not the primary source of records companies must produce, and more importantly, respondents who employ best practices for records and information management are significantly less at risk of court sanctions or fines."

    September 21, 2011
    * Report - Global Biomedical Industry: Preserving U.S. Leadership

    The Global Biomedical Industry: Preserving U.S. Leadership
    Executive Summary & Research Findings
    - Ross C. DeVol, Armen Bedroussian, and Benjamin Yeo, September 2011

  • "Biomedical innovation is an intricate process that begins in the lab and spans years of effort to transform scientific discoveries into vaccines, diagnostics, devices, and therapies that improve patients’ lives. Overthe past few decades, the United States has created and refined a remarkably productive framework for developing new biomedical innovations and bringing them tothe marketplace—in fact, it’s one of the most dramatic success stories written by any American industry in the past century. Whether measured by international or domestic market share, revenue, jobs, number of regulatory approvals, patents, R&D expenditures, or publications in the biomedical field, the U.S. holds a commanding position...But U.S. industry leadership, so carefully cultivated over the past 30 years, is eroding. Europe and Japan areworking to close the gap, while China, India, and Singapore have made impressive strides. In addition toimproving the quantity and quality of their scientific research, competing nations are developing mechanismsto support entrepreneurs and strengthen commercialization. They are also instituting regulatory reforms and a range of public policies to improve incentives for innovation. These efforts are part of larger economicdevelopment plans that increasingly focus on cultivating biomedical innovation for its economic contributions and high-wage jobs."
  • September 20, 2011
    * Poverty and income trends continue to paint a bleak picture for working families

    Economic Policy Institute: A lost decade - Poverty and income trends continue to paint a bleak picture for working families, By Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz | September 14, 2011

  • "Between 2009 and 2010, an additional ­­­­­­2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line, as the poverty rate increased from 14.3 percent to 15.1 percent. The rate represents 46.2 million people living in poverty in the United States. The last time the poverty rate was higher was in 1983, when it was 15.2 percent. The poverty rate for children in 2010 was 22.0 percent, higher than the overall rate and up more (1.3 percentage-points) than the overall poverty rate, which increased 0.8 percentage points from 2009 to 2010. The 2010 “children’s poverty rate” represents 16.4 million kids living in poverty. In 2010, more than a third—35.5 percent— of all people living in poverty were children. Nearly all of the decline in poverty achieved during the business cycle of the 1990s has now been reversed. From 1989 to 2000, overall poverty declined by 1.5 percentage points, and child poverty dropped by 3.4 percentage points. From 2000 to 2010, however, poverty increased overall by 3.8 percentage points, and by 5.8 percentage points among children. The large increase in poverty suggests that as anti-poverty policies have come to depend more on paid work as the main pathway out of poverty, the safety net has become less effective in reducing economic hardship when the economy and job market are under performing."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • September 19, 2011
    * Bayesian Dynamic Factor Analysis of a Simple Monetary DSGE Model

    Bayesian Dynamic Factor Analysis of a Simple Monetary DSGE Model, Maxym Kryshko, September 01, 2011

  • "Summary: When estimating DSGE models, the number of observable economic variables is usually kept small, and it is conveniently assumed that DSGE model variables are perfectly measured by asingle data series. Building upon Boivin and Giannoni (2006), we relax these two assumption sand estimate a fairly simple monetary DSGE model on a richer data set. Using post-1983 U.S.data on real output, inflation, nominal interest rates, measures of inverse money velocity, and a large panel of informational series, we compare the data-rich DSGE model with the regular - few observables, perfect measurement - DSGE model in terms of deep parameter estimates,propagation of monetary policy and technology shocks and sources of business cycle fluctuations. We document that the data-rich DSGE model generates a higher implied duration of Calvo price contracts and a lower slope of the New Keynesian Phillips curve. To reduce the computational costs of the likelihood-based estimation, we employed a novel speedup as in Jungbacker and Koopman (2008) and achieved the time savings of 60 percent."
  • * Future of the First Amendment 2011 Survey of High School Students and Teachers

    Future of the First Amendment 2011 Survey of High School Students and Teachers, Commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation - September 2011

  • "There is a clear, positive relationship between student use of social media – such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr – to get news and information and greater support for free expression rights. Though this study establishes the link between social media use and First Amendment support, its cause is open to debate. Does consuming news frequently on social media increase one’s appreciation for the First Amendment? Or is it the reverse: The more someone agrees with the First Amendment, the more likely they are to use social media for their news and information? Either way, there is a relationship between the two factors. As the graph below shows, fully 91 percent of students who use social networking daily to get news and information agree that “people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.” But only 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news agree that unpopular opinions should be allowed."
  • * Growth Spillover Dynamics from Crisis to Recovery

    Growth Spillover Dynamics from Crisis to Recovery, Hélène Poirson and Sebastian Weber, September 2011

  • "Summary: Can positive growth shocks from the faster-growing countries in Europe spill over to the slower growing countries, providing useful tailwinds to their recovery process? This study investigates the potential relevance of growth spillovers in the context of the crisis and the recovery process. Based on a VAR framework, our analysis suggests that the U.S. and Japan remain the key source of growth spillovers in this recovery, with France also playing an important role for the European crisis countries. Notwithstanding the current export-led cyclical upswing, Germany generates relatively small outward spillovers compared to other systemic countries, but likely plays a key role in transmitting and amplifying external growth shocks to the rest of Europe given its more direct exposure to foreign shocks compared to other European countries. Positive spillovers from Spain were important prior to the 2008 - 09 crisis, however Spain is generating negative spillovers in this recovery due to a depressed domestic demand. Negative spillovers from the European crisis countries appear limited, consistent with their modest size."
  • September 18, 2011
    * Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations

    CRS: Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations, Bruce R. Lindsay, Analyst in American National Goverment, September 6, 2011

  • "In the last five years social media have played an increasing role in emergencies and disasters. Social media sites rank as the fourth most popular source to access emergency information. They have been used by individuals and communities to warn others of unsafe areas or situations, inform friends and family that someone is safe, and raise funds for disaster relief. Facebook supports numerous emergency-related organizations, including Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM), The Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Project, as well as numerous universities with disaster-related programs. The use of social media for emergencies and disasters may be conceptualized as two broad categories. First, social media can be used somewhat passively to disseminate information and receive user feedback via incoming messages, wall posts, and polls. To date, this is how most emergency management organizations, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), use social media. A second approach involves the systematic use of social media as an emergency management tool. Systematic usage might include using the medium to conduct emergency communications
    and issue warnings; using social media to receive victim requests for assistance; monitoring user activities to establish situational awareness; and using uploaded images to create damage estimates, among others. Many of these applications remain speculative, while other uses are still in their infancy. Consequently, most emergency management organizations have confined their use of social media to the dissemination of information."

  • * UNC LifeTime Library - Now Offering Library Science Students Perpetual Online Access

    Alex Campbell: "Incoming students at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science this year are getting a new kind of welcome-to-campus perk: Free data storage, for keeps. The service, called LifeTime Library, works on students’ personal computers, allowing them to automatically archive files and folders. The data are preserved on the Web, where students can search for files by name or by date saved. Students can continue to use the online storage locker after they graduate, and the plan is for the program to remain free, said Gary Marchionini, the school’s dean. About 60 incoming students out of a total of 160 have signed up for the first year of the program, he said. The idea is to “help students learn to manage their digital lives,” Mr. Marchionini said. Dealing with large amounts of online data is a big part of what students learn at the School of Information and Library Science, and the LifeTime Library can serve as a teaching tool for students to figure out the best ways to organize reams of their own digital information."

    * An Econometric Study of Occupational Wage Inequality and Productivity

    Kampelmann, Stephan and Rycx, Francois, Are Occupations Paid What They are Worth? An Econometric Study of Occupational Wage Inequality and Productivity. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5951. Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit, Institute for the Study of Labor [download via SSRN]

  • "Labour economists typically assume that pay differences between occupations can be explained with variations in productivity. The empirical evidence on the validity of this assumption is surprisingly thin and subject to various potential biases. The authors use matched employer-employee panel data from Belgium for the years 1999-2006 to examine occupational productivity-wage gaps. They find that occupations play distinct roles for remuneration and productivity: while the estimations indicate a significant upward-sloping occupational wage-profile, the hypothesis of a flat productivity-profile cannot be rejected. The corresponding pattern of over- and underpayment stands up to a series of robustness tests."
  • September 17, 2011
    * UK Guardian - The death of books has been greatly exaggerated

    Radical change is certainly producing some alarming symptoms: "According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I'll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years...For one thing, people are buying more and more books in Amazonia, and more and more of them are on Amazon's ebook platform the Kindle. In May this year, Amazon announced that, for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing."

  • See also: "Nielsen BookScan collects the retail sales information from point of sale systems in more than 31,500 bookshops around the world, BookScan is able to present sales information in a variety of ways, including by the market size and share of different book categories, and by individual publishers, specific imprints, authors and price points. In most countries, statistics are also available by actual sales price and consumer discount levels. And because every single title making a sale is reported, the information covers specialised categories and small imprints as well as data relating to the major players."
  • * HathiTrust Statement on Authors Guild, Inc. et al. v. HathiTrust et al.

    Press release: "On September 12, 2011 the Authors' Guild and a number of other entities filed suit against HathiTrust and a number of its university partners. The issues in the suit are the orphan works project as well as the digitization effort that we have been engaged in for almost two decades. Digitization is a reflection of library prudence, rather than the reckless activity as characterized by the Authors' Guild complaint and accompanying statement. From its inception, the primary motive driving our digitization effort has been, and remains, preservation. Preserving the scholarly and cultural record is at the core of the Library's mission. Digitization offers a means of preserving the intellectual content of books whose lives as objects are subject to the vagaries of storage conditions and their own composition; for example, the vast majority of the volumes in our collection are printed on acid paper. Many of these volumes are protected by copyright, but if we wait until they enter the public domain they will be too brittle to circulate or digitize, and of no use to anyone. The Orphan Works Project is an example of library prudence in other ways. Digitized collections offer other obvious benefits. They can be more readily shared with our community, who increasingly expect their research materials to be available in digital form, and they can also provide a trove of data, both humanistic and scientific, that will help scholars and researchers discover and create new knowledge. And in many cases, they can also be made available to anyone in the world with a connection to the Internet. The way in which the HathiTrust partners share this particular collection is guided by a deep and abiding respect for intellectual property and US copyright law, particularly Sections 107 and 108, which help define how libraries may lawfully share their collections. While the law does not specifically address orphan works, we are certain that our scholarly purpose, along with our careful methodology in determining whether these works have a market or an extant copyright holder who can be contacted, make this sharing legal. Sharing, by the way, which is limited to online reading by our faculty and students in the United States, and one-page-at-a-time downloads; not, as the Guild complaint states, worldwide availability and full PDF downloads."

    September 16, 2011
    * Announcing the World Wide Web Index

    "The World Wide Web Foundation is very pleased to announce an exciting new initiative: the World Wide Web Index. We thank Google for a generous grant of US $1 million to the Foundation, which we are using to seed the creation of the Index...What is the Web Index? The Web Index will be the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries. It will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators, as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure."

    September 15, 2011
    * Worldwide Web Consortium Launches Tracking Protection Working Group

    "The Tracking Protection Working Group is chartered to improve user privacy and user control by defining mechanisms for expressing user preferences around Web tracking and for blocking or allowing Web tracking elements. The group seeks to standardize the technology and meaning of Do Not Track, and of Tracking Selection Lists." See in Input Documents as follows

    September 14, 2011
    * University of Victoria Law Student Technology Survey 2011

    Via Rich McCue: UVic Law Student Technology Survey 2011 - "In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some extra questions about the mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by 139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate. Executive Summary:

    • 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
    • 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
    • 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
    • 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
    • The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
    • The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
    • 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
    • 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
    • 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%). 30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
    • 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
    • 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar

    * Cornell University Ergonomics Web

    Ergonomics - Human Centered Design: "CUErgo presents information from research studies and class work by students and faculty in the Cornell Human Factors and Ergonomics Research Group (CHFERG), directed by Professor Alan Hedge, in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University. CHFERG focuses on ways to enhance usability by improving the ergonomic design of hardware, software, and workplaces, to enhance people's comfort, performance and health in an approach we call Ergotecture. We recognize that this is also as an important component of the Department's Ecotecture sustainable design approach."

    September 13, 2011
    * EU: Education trends report highlights need for effective funding for schools and universities

    Brussels, 13 September 2011 - "The European Commission today welcomed the launch of Education at a Glance 2011, a new report which gathers statistical data on investment in education, student-teacher ratios, teaching hours, graduate numbers and results. 21 EU countries are covered by the report, which is compiled annually by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), drawing on data jointly collected with Eurostat and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, said: "The report provides invaluable evidence and data for policy-makers. Its findings underline the importance of our Europe 2020 targets to reduce early school leaving and boost university education, both in terms of increasing graduate numbers and quality. 35% of jobs in the EU will require high-level qualifications by 2020, so it's vital that we continue to invest properly in schools and universities. Education must remain a top priority for the EU, even in a tough economic climate."

    September 12, 2011
    * European Southern Observatory: Fifty New Exoplanets Discovered by HARPS

    Richest haul of planets so far includes 16 new super-Earths: "Astronomers using ESO’s world-leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced a rich haul of more than 50 new exoplanets, including 16 super-Earths, one of which orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star. By studying the properties of all the HARPS planets found so far, the team has found that about 40% of stars similar to the Sun have at least one planet lighter than Saturn. The HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile is the world’s most successful planet finder [1]. The HARPS team, led by Michel Mayor (University of Geneva, Switzerland), today announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including sixteen super-Earths [2]. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time [3]. The new findings are being presented at a conference on Extreme Solar Systems where 350 exoplanet experts are meeting in Wyoming, USA."

  • See also The Atlantic: The $15 Million Budget Battle That May End Outer Solar System Exploration
  • * USGS - Examining Our Past: Historical Map Collection Now Online

    News release: "Nearly 90,000 high resolution scans of the more than 200,000 historical USGS topographic maps, some dating as far back as 1884, are now available online. The Historical Topographic Map Collection includes published U.S. maps of all scales and editions, and are offered as a georeferenced digital download or as a scanned print from the USGS Store...Historical maps are an important national resource as they provide the long-term record and documentation of the natural, physical and cultural landscape. The history documented by this collection and the analysis of distribution and spatial patterns is invaluable throughout the sciences and non-science disciplines. Genealogists, historians, anthropologists, archeologists and others use this collection for research as well as for a framework on which a myriad of information can be presented in relation to the landscape. For more than 130 years, the USGS topographic mapping program has accurately portrayed the complex geography of our nation through maps using the lithographic printing process. The historical collection contains high resolution scanned images from the USGS legacy series and other sources."

  • See also: Unfolding - a Processing Java/Library to Create interactive thematic maps and geovisualizations
  • * New website - Business without Borders

    "Business without Borders [sponsored by HSBC] is a unique resource in the United States — an online platform for businesses expanding beyond the U.S. borders. Targeted content from Business without Borders, and content partners The Wall Street Journal, Economist Intelligence Unit, and video content from Bloomberg Master Class, address the issues and needs of growing U.S. companies, from business tools, global trends and market analysis, to case studies and sector profiles. More than just content, Business without Borders is also a meeting place where members can develop relationships and share their experiences in being part of the global economy. Business without Borders also hosts regular, timely, events that key in on the issues affecting global trade. These events are held throughout the United States and are open to members. Best of all, Business without Borders offers all this and more … for free."

    * LexisNexis® Launches Open Alliance Program for HPCC Systems, Enterprise-Proven, Open Source Alternative to Hadoop

    News release: "LexisNexis® Risk Solutions today unveiled the HPCC Systems Alliance Program, which is a collaboration of partners to stimulate innovation and accelerate market adoption of the newly open sourced HPCC Systems, an enterprise-proven, open source solution to help large organizations process “Big Data”. Built on a high performing computer cluster technology, HPCC Systems is an alternative to Hadoop. Interest in processing and managing Big Data is growing rapidly among enterprise and service provider customers. LexisNexis collaboration with innovative leaders will help customers navigate options for addressing large data sets, reduce overall infrastructure costs, and improve business agility and data insight. Products and solutions from these partners will help deliver fully integrated, turnkey solutions."

    September 11, 2011
    * A Google Maps Project Focused on Scholarly Publishing

    Citation by Citation, New Maps Chart Hot Research and Scholarship's Hidden Terrain, by Jennifer Howard

  • Imagine a Google Maps of scholarship, a set of tools sophisticated enough to help researchers locate hot research, spot hidden connections to other fields, and even identify new disciplines as they emerge in the sprawling terrain of scholarly communication. Creating new ways to identify and analyze patterns in millions of journal citations, a team led by two biologists, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West, and a physicist, Martin Rosvall, has set out to build just such a guidance system. Trapped in disciplinary valleys, surrounded by dense forests of information, researchers have a hard time seeing a lot of scholarship that might be relevant to their work, especially if it's not published in the places they already know to look. The work of Mr. Bergstrom and his colleagues is a response, they say, to the problem of how to work with an overwhelming and ever-growing amount of information."
  • September 10, 2011
    * BookStats Publishing Formats Highlights

    The Association of American Publishers - BookStats Publishing Formats Highlights: "e-books and other non-physical formats - "The consistent, growing popularity of e-books and apps are a major success story in content formats, even in advance of data for 2011, which is currently tracking high e-format sales. Highlights:

    • e-books have grown from 0.6% of the total Trade market share in 2008 to 6.4% in 2010. While that represents a small amount in the total market for formats, it translates to 1274.1% in publisher net sales revenue year-over-year with total net revenue for 2010 at $878 Million.
    • Net unit sales growth for e-books was equally impressive, increasing 1039.6% for the same three-year period. In 2010, e-book net units were 114M.
    • Beyond the top-level format figures, the explosive growth of e-books is even more visible when considering certain categories. In Adult Fiction, e-books are now 13.6% of the net revenue market share.

    September 08, 2011
    * NYT - 9/11: The Reckoning, America and the World A Decade After 9/11

    The New York Times - 9/11: The Reckoning, America and the World A Decade After 9/11

  • "That Day - What is amazing is that in that moment, there was a moment before that we saw that plane, that second plane, and there was a moment after, and it’s like two different worlds, those two moments. I mean, literally, I can feel like I can remember the exact second when the whole world changed and my life changed forever. — AUDREY J. MARCUS
  • USA.gov resource on the 9/11 Tenth Anniversary
  • * Opensource software framework project makes big business inroads

    Bloomberg BusinessWeek: "...Hadoop...helps businesses quickly and cheaply sift through terabytes or even petabytes of Twitter posts, Facebook updates, and other so-called unstructured data. Hadoop, which is customizable and available free online, was created to analyze raw information better than traditional databases like those from Oracle."

    * National Bureau of Economic Research Digest, September 2011

    NBER Digest OnLine, September 2011: • Job Loss in the Great Recession • Bank Performance in 1998 Explains Performance during the Recent Crisis • The Impact of Ozone Pollution on Worker Productivity • Limited Attention in the Car Market • How Finance, Trade, and Growth
    are Connected • The Consequences of Risk Adjustment in the Medicare Advantage Program

    September 07, 2011
    * The Economist: How long do countries have until their populations disappear?

    End of history and the last woman: "As The Economist reports this past week, many women in the richer parts of Asia have gone on “marriage strike”, preferring the single life to the marital yoke. That is one reason why their fertility rates have fallen. And they are not alone. In 83 countries and territories around the world, according to the United Nations, women will not have enough daughters to replace themselves, unless fertility rates rise. In Hong Kong, for example, a cohort of 1,000 women would be expected to give birth to just 547 daughters, at today’s fertility rates. (That gives Hong Kong a “net reproduction rate” of just 0.547, in the language of demographers.) If nothing changed, those 547 daughters would be succeeded by just 299 daughters of their own, and so on. At that rate, according to some back-of-the-envelope calculations by The Economist, it would take about 25 generations for Hong Kong’s female population to shrink from 3.75m to just one. Given that Hong Kong’s average age of childbearing is 31.4 years, it could expect to give birth to its last woman in the year 2798. (That is some time after its neighbour, Macau, which has a higher reproduction rate, but a much smaller population.) By the same unflinching logic, Japan, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain will not see out the next millennium. Even China, which has a recorded history stretching back at least 3,700 years, has only about 1,500 years left—if present trends continued unbroken."

    September 06, 2011
    * New York Magazine - The Encyclopedia of 9/11

    The Encyclopedia of 9/11: "Here in New York City, we heard it first, the drone of the plane down the West Side, surprisingly loud. Then, if we were outside, our heads pointed in the right direction, we could see it: the dull-red gash in the North Tower, smoking ominously. Just as we’d begun to absorb this strange sight, wondering what pilot could have been so dim as to steer his plane into one of those towers on what seemed the clearest, bluest September day anyone could remember, came a second plane, then a terrible blossom of flame, then the billowing smoke enshrouding downtown. There would be more, of course, two planes aimed at Washington, one that would dive into the Pentagon, the other downed in a field in Pennsylvania. But for New Yorkers, it was the most intimate of tragedies. Within weeks, the day had become a number, a kind of shorthand for a whole universe, one that hadn’t existed on 9/10."

  • 9/11 anniversary: how the UK Guardian reported the attacks - Ewen MacAskill, the Guardian's diplomatic editor in September 2001, describes how the paper covered the 9/11 attacks
  • * UK Telegraph: Internet and supermarkets kill off 2,000 bookshops

    James Hall, Consumer Affairs Editor - "Heavy discounting by supermarkets, the rise of internet retailers and the growing popularity of e-readers such as the Kindle have forced nearly 2,000 bookshops to close since 2005. There were 2,178 high street bookshops left in Britain in July, according to research carried out by Experian, the data company, compared with 4,000 in 2005. A total of 580 towns do not have a single bookshop. Campaigners warned yesterday that the loss of bookshops, coupled with threats to close thousands of libraries as part of council cuts, will lead to "book deserts" across large areas of the country."

    * Glassfoor.com: Top 25 Companies for Career Opportunities

    Top Companies for Career Opportunities (2011) - "Employees have reported how their companies rate when it comes to opportunities for professional growth and career advancement – find out which 25 companies rate the highest."

  • See also Best Places to Work – Employees' Choice Awards - "Glassdoor.com is excited to announce our third annual Employees' Choice Awards for Best Places to Work. Our Top 50 winners were selected by the people who know these companies best — their employees."
  • * Nursing and physician attire as possible source of nosocomial infections

    "Uniforms worn by medical and nursing staff are not usually considered important in the transmission of microorganisms. We investigated the rate of potentially pathogenic bacteria present on uniforms worn by hospital staff, as well as the bacterial load of these microorganisms...Up to 60% of hospital staff’s uniforms are colonized with potentially pathogenic bacteria, including drug-resistant organisms. It remains to be determined whether these bacteria can be transferred to patients and cause clinically relevant infection." AJIC: American Journal of Infection Control
    Volume 39, Issue 7, Pages 555-559, September 2011
    .

    September 05, 2011
    * Gallup: More U.S. Workers Unhappy With Health Benefits, Promotions

    Gallup, September 5, 2011 - Workers least satisfied with on-the-job stress, tangible rewards for their work, by Lymari Morales:
    "U.S. workers are more dissatisfied today with their health insurance benefits and their chances for promotion than they were before the global economic collapse. These are the biggest movers since August 2008 on a list of 13 specific job aspects Gallup tracks."

    September 04, 2011
    * Technology Spending by Schools Yields Few Calculable Advance

    In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores: "...In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning. This conundrum calls into question one of the most significant contemporary educational movements. Advocates for giving schools a major technological upgrade — which include powerful educators, Silicon Valley titans and White House appointees — say digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets...Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills — like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools — at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later."

    September 01, 2011
    * Lancet - World Trade Center survivors and their long-term mental and physical health

    "This issue of The Lancet [subscription with abstracts] allows reflections on the events of 9/11, and particularly explores some of the research, review, and opinion pieces on the short-term and long-term physical, mental, and public health consequences of the terrorist attacks. The research papers report not only US domestic health effects but also some of the international consequences. Respiratory illnesses and post-traumatic stress disorder are known to be increased in those who survived the World Trade Center disaster, but data reported in this issue show that 9 years after the attacks, rescue and recovery workers continue to have substantial physical and mental health problems. No excess overall mortality is shown, although high levels of exposure to injury or to the dust cloud are linked to increased risk of all-cause and heart-disease-related mortality. An excess of cancer cases is reported in firefighters who survived the disaster which may have implications for policy on eligibility for compensation."

  • National Journal: "New York City firefighters who worked to rescue victims of the 9/11 attacks and who later helped recover remains are more likely to have cancer, as well as a range of other health problems from asthma to mental illness, a series of studies published in The Lancet medical journal finds."
  • August 31, 2011
    * AARP Report - Food Insecurity of Older Americans

    Food Insecurity Among Older Adults - A report submitted to AARP Foundation, August 2011 - James P. Ziliak, Ph.D., University of Kentucky; Craig Gundersen, Ph.D., University of Illinois

  • "Reducing hunger risk among older Americans requires a concerted policy effort that is informed by rigorous research on the extent, causes, and consequences of food insecurity. In this report we provide a comprehensive portrait of the causes and consequences of food insecurity among adults age 50-59 in comparison to those in their 40s and those 60 and older. We emphasize the 50-59 age cohort in part because they do not have access to an age-specific safety net like older Americans (or some younger ones), take-up rates in food assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) are low, and the scaring effects of job loss can be more severe. We complement our age-specific analyses by examining the full samples of adults age 40 and older, those adults age 50 and older, and the subsamples with family incomes below 200% and below 300% of the poverty line."
  • * Nationally, Home Prices Went Up in the Second Quarter of 2011 According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices

    News release: Data through June 2011, released [August 30, 2011] by S&P Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the U.S. National Home Price Index increased by 3.6% in the second quarter of 2011, after having fallen 4.1% in the first quarter of 2011. With the second quarter’s data, the National Index recovered from its first quarter low, but still posted an annual decline of 5.9% versus the second quarter of 2010. Nationally, home prices are back to their early 2003 levels. As of June 2011, 19 of the 20 MSAs covered by S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and both monthly composites were up versus May – Portland was flat. However, they were all down compared to June 2010. Twelve of the 20 MSAs and both Composites have now increased for three consecutive months, a sign of the seasonal strength in the housing market. None of the markets posted new lows with June’s report. Minneapolis posted a double-digit 10.8% annual decline; Portland is not far behind at -9.6%. Thirteen of the cities and both composites saw improvements in their annual rates; however; they all are in negative territory and have been so for three consecutive months."

    August 30, 2011
    * Bizjournals: New York City is still the nation's biggest metro area

    "The database here [scroll down the page] contains the latest population estimates for 942 metropolitan and micropolitan areas, along with their official figures from April 2010. Use the tab to winnow the list to a single state, or simply hit the Search button to view the rankings in their entirety. On Numbers has developed a computer program that projects the current populations of metros, micros and states, based on an analysis of demographic trends since 2000. New estimates are released periodically."

    * Boston Consulting Group - Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing Will Return to the U.S.

    Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing Will Return to the U.S., August 25, 2011 - "The new report analyzes those cost shifts in greater detail and explains why the U.S. will gain manufacturing even if Chinese productivity accelerates. Although Chinese productivity will continue to grow at an impressive 8.5 percent annually for the next five years, factory wages will rise twice as fast. Even if Chinese factories install the same highly automated assembly lines used in U.S. factories, that would not be enough to preserve China’s fast-eroding manufacturing cost advantage for many products."

    August 29, 2011
    * New beta of standalone version of Zotero, Open Source Reference Manager

    Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media: "Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi)."

    * World Bank Policy Research Working Paper - The Impact of Economics Blogs

    The Impact of Economics Blogs, David McKenzie and Berk Özler, August 2011

  • "There is a proliferation of economics blogs, with increasing numbers of economists attracting large numbers of readers, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using a variety of experimental and non-experimental techniques, this study quantifies some of their effects. First, links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of economics papers. Second, blogging raises the profile of the blogger (and his or her institution) and boosts their reputation above economists with similar publication records. Finally, a blog can transform attitudes about some of the topics it covers."
  • August 28, 2011
    * Bloomberg Agrees to Buy Bureau of National Affairs for About $990 Million

  • via Bloomberg: "Bloomberg LP, the closely held news and financial information provider, agreed to buy The Bureau of National Affairs Inc. for about $990 million to add legal, tax and regulatory research and analysis. BNA shareholders, who are current and former employees, will get $39.50 a share in cash in a transaction that is projected to be completed this year, New York-based Bloomberg said in a statement. The deal is part of Bloomberg’s expansion into new businesses to add products to the company’s terminal, a data hub used by traders and executives, and add to new titles for its news group. In 2009, Bloomberg acquired Businessweek magazine and New Energy Finance, which provides analysis on clean energy sources. BNA, which publishes the Daily Labor Report and U.S. Law Week, will “significantly grow Bloomberg’s presence in Washington” and its research will contribute to coverage and analysis of employment, health care, labor, accounting, intellectual property and telecommunications, Bloomberg said."
  • via BNA: Bloomberg Enters Agreement to Acquire BNA - "The acquisition would significantly grow Bloomberg’s presence in the Washington, DC area through its multiple operating units, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg Law and BNA -- which would work together to provide unparalleled coverage and analysis of U.S. policy and regulatory issues for customers."
  • Questions and Answers Related to Bloomberg's Acquisition of BNA
  • * International Trade and Firm Performance: A Survey of Empirical Studies Since 2006

    International Trade and Firm Performance: A Survey of Empirical Studies Since 2006. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5916. Joachim Wagner, University of Lueneburg - Institute of Economics. Posted August 28, 2011

  • "The literature on international trade and firm performance grows exponentially. This paper attempts to summarize what we learn from this literature to guide both future empirical and theoretical work in this area, and public debates and policy makers, in an evidence-based way. The focus is on the empirical part of the literature that consists of recently published papers using data for firms from manufacturing or services industries to study the links between international trade (exports and imports) and dimensions of firm performance (productivity, wages, profitability and survival). It discusses recent add-ons to the box of tools for empirical investigation in this field and suggests topics for future research."
  • * Inside Higher Ed Reports on What Students Don't Know About Using the Web and Research

    Inside Higher Ed: "The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project -- a series of studies conducted at Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul University, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois’s Chicago and Springfield campuses -- was a meta-exercise for the librarians in practicing the sort of deep research they champion. Instead of relying on surveys, the libraries enlisted two anthropologists, along with their own staff members, to collect data using open-ended interviews and direct observation, among other methods. The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions. The resulting papers are scheduled to be published by the American Library Association this fall, under the title: “Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know.” One thing the librarians now know is that their students' research habits are worse than they thought."

  • Note: "The prevalence of Google in student research is well-documented, but the Illinois researchers found something they did not expect: students were not very good at using Google. They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources."
  • August 27, 2011
    * Major newspapers shift focus from unemployment to the deficit, National Journal analysis shows.

    Clifford Marks, National Journal: "Major U.S. newspapers have increasingly shifted their attention away from coverage of unemployment in recent months while greatly intensifying their focus on the deficit, a National Journal analysis shows. The analysis -- based on a measure of how often the words "unemployment" and "deficit" appear in major publications -- portrays a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media's consciousness. National Journal compiled counts of articles that mention one of the words in their headline or first sentences in the five largest newspapers in the country by print circulation -- a group that consists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. The data was taken over a period of roughly two years from April 15, 2009, to May 15, 2011, using LexisNexis, a news information service. The numbers exclude mentions that also used the words Europe(an) and Greece or Greek in an effort to focus solely on the domestic debate, though even with those included, the trend was not materially different."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • August 26, 2011
    * Paper - Extracting, Transforming and Archiving Scientific Data

    Extracting, Transforming and Archiving Scientific Data - Daniel Lemire1 and Andre Vellino, National Research Council of Canada, August 23, 2011. Fourth Workshop on Very Large Digital Libraries, 2011

  • "It is becoming common to archive research datasets that
    are not only large but also numerous. In addition, their corresponding metadata and the software required to analyse or display them need to be archived. Yet the manual curation of research data can be difficult and expensive, particularly in very large digital repositories, hence the importance of models and tools for automating digital curation tasks. The automation of these tasks faces three major challenges: (1) research data and data sources are highly heterogeneous, (2) future research needs
    are difficult to anticipate, (3) data is hard to index. To address these problems, we propose the Extract, Transform and Archive (ETA) model for managing and mechanizing the curation of research data. Specifically, we propose a scalable strategy for addressing the research-data problem, ranging from the extraction of legacy data to its long-term storage. We review some existing solutions and propose novel avenues of research."
  • August 25, 2011
    * Pew - Hispanic College Enrollment Spikes, Narrowing Gaps with Other Groups

    24% Growth from 2009 to 2010 - Hispanic College Enrollment Spikes, Narrowing Gaps with Other Groups, by Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate, Pew Hispanic Center

  • "Driven by a single-year surge of 24% in Hispanic enrollment, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high of 12.2 million in October 2010, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of newly available Census Bureau data. From 2009 to 2010, the number of Hispanic young adults enrolled in college grew by 349,000, compared with an increase of 88,000 young blacks and 43,000 young Asian Americans and a decrease of 320,000 young non-Hispanic whites."
  • * ACLU Guide to New Facebook Privacy Controls

    "August 25, 2011 - Facebook is rolling out a series of changes to its privacy controls. We reviewed the changes in detail on Tuesday; now here’s how you can take advantage of these changes.

  • "Turn On “Profile Review” - One of the biggest changes to Facebook’s privacy controls is the option to review any content you’re tagged in (including photos, Places, and more) before that content is fed into your news feed. You can also review any tags that are added to photos or other content that you post yourself...."
  • August 24, 2011
    * Understanding 9/11 - A Television News Archive

    "The events of September 11th, 2001 affected the entire world. The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis. Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media. Explore 3,000 hours of international TV News from 20 channels over 7 days, and select analysis by scholars."

    * Commentary: Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance

    Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance by Maria Popova.

  • "Over the past few years, the fledgling field of the digital humanities has made significant strides with a number of ambitious digitization projects bringing online rare cultural artifacts — manuscripts, canvases, celluloid, marginalia — that used to rot away in institutional archives. But while these efforts, both government-subsidized and privately initiated, may have made a wealth of information accessible, it’s an entirely different story to ask how many people these materials have reached — how many people have actually gained access to them — and it’s one that harks back to the shifting relationship between scarcity and value...Historically, the two main types of obstacles to information discovery have been barriers of awareness, which encompass all the information we can’t access because we simply don’t know about its existence in the first place, and barriers of accessibility, which refer to the information we do know is out there but remains outside of our practical, infrastructural or legal reach. What the digital convergence has done is solve the latter, by bringing much previously inaccessible information into the public domain, made the former worse in the process, by increasing the net amount of information available to us and thus creating a wealth of information we can’t humanly be aware of due to our cognitive and temporal limitations, and added a third barrier — a barrier of motivation."

  • August 23, 2011
    * International Bloggers and Internet Control

    International Bloggers and Internet Control, Hal Roberts, Ethan Zuckerman, Jillian York, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, August 2011

  • "The Internet is an increasingly contested space, particularly in countries with repressive governments. Infringements on Internet freedom, particularly through Internet filtering and surveillance, have inspired activists and technologists to develop technological counter-measures, most notably circumvention tools to defeat Internet filters and anonymity tools to help protect user privacy and avoid online surveillance efforts. The widely heralded role of online activism in the Arab spring and the increasing incidence of Internet filtering around the world have spurred greater interest in supporting the development and dissemination of these tools as a means to foster greater freedom of expression online and strengthen the hand of activists demanding political reform. However, despite the perceived importance of this field, relatively little is known about the demand for and usage patterns of these tools. In December 2010, we surveyed a sample of international bloggers to better understand how, where, why, and by whom these tools are being used."
  • August 22, 2011
    * "Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers" Will Change How Law Students Are Trained

    News release: "The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) at the University of Denver today launches a unique, national initiative to change the way law schools educate students. Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers provides a platform to encourage law schools in the U.S. to showcase innovative teaching to produce more practice-ready lawyers who can better meet the needs of an evolving profession."

    * Report - $4.5 Billion in Earnings, Taxes Lost Last Year Due to the High U.S. College Dropout Rate

    News release: "As students across the country prepare to start their freshman year of college, more than 40 percent of them will not graduate within six years – costing billions of dollars in lost earnings for the students and millions of dollars in lost tax revenue, according to a new analysis by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). AIR conducted a study that examined the more than 1.1 million full-time students who entered college in 2002 seeking bachelor degrees. Of that total, almost 500,000 did not graduate within six years – costing a combined $4.5 billion in lost income and lost federal and state income taxes. The AIR analysis found that the 493,000 students who started college in 2002 but did not earn a degree within six years lost a total of approximately $3.8 billion in income in 2010 alone. The lost income would have generated $566 million in federal income tax revenue, while states would have collected more than $164 million in state income taxes. “These findings represent just one year and one graduating class. Therefore, the overall costs of low graduation rates are much higher since these losses accumulate year after year,” explained Mark Schneider, a vice president at AIR who co-authored the report, The High Cost of Low Graduation Rates: How Much Does Dropping Out of College Really Cost?, with Lu (Michelle) Yin. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. While this report focuses on only one cohort of students, losses of this magnitude are incurred annually by each and every graduating class.”

    August 21, 2011
    * Antarctic Ice Movement Is Fully Mapped for the First Time

    "Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, have for the first time fully mapped the movement of Antarctica’s vast ice sheets and glaciers, which comprise 90 percent of the ice on Earth. Using data gathered by satellites from the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Japan, the researchers have assembled a color animation depicting how the glaciers flow from the vast polar plateau to the Southern Ocean, with some ice sheets moving up to 800 feet a year. Lead researcher Eric Rignot said that the study showed conclusively that the rivers of ice move by slipping along their beds. “This is like seeing a map of all the ocean’s currents for the first time,” said Rignot. He and other scientists said that the glacial mapping project will be vital to understanding how Antarctica’s ice sheets and glaciers will react to warming temperatures, which will help scientists forecast future sea level rise. If glaciers and ice sheets melt more rapidly along Antarctica’s coasts because of rising ocean and air temperatures, that loss is likely to accelerate the flow of ice from Antarctica’s interior to the sea along the routes mapped by Rignot and his colleagues."

    * Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference

    Update, November 30, 2011: Seeking Synchronicity Webinar Recording Now Available
    OCLC - "A new membership report from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Seeking Synchronicity distills more than five years of virtual reference (VR) research into a readable summary that features memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multi-phase research project that included focus group interviews, surveys, transcript analysis, and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users, and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the "R" in "VR" needs to emphasize virtual "Relationships" as well as "Reference". Among the topics addressed are:

    • The exaggerated death of ready reference
    • The importance of query clarification in VR
    • Ways to boost accuracy and build better interpersonal relationships in VR
    • What can be learned from VR transcripts
    • How convenience is the "hook" that draws users into VR services
    • Generational differences in how people perceive reference interactions and determine success
    • The need for more and better marketing"

    August 20, 2011
    * Pronunciation Book channel on YouTube

    Pronunciation Book - spoken pronunciation of words, via YouTube (worth visiting)

    August 19, 2011
    * Commentary - Print vs. Online -The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers

    The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers, by Jack Shafer

  • "My anecdotal findings about print's superiority were seconded earlier this month by an academic study presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The paper, Medium Matters: Newsreaders' Recall and Engagement With Online and Print Newspapers, by Arthur D. Santana, Randall Livingstone, and Yoon Cho of the University of Oregon, pit a group of readers of the print edition of the New York Times against Web-Times readers. Each group was given 20 minutes reading time and asked to complete a short survey. The researchers found that the print folks "remember significantly more news stories than online news readers"; that print readers "remembered significantly more topics than online newsreaders"; and that print readers remembered "more main points of news stories." When it came to recalling headlines, print and online readers finished in a draw."
  • August 18, 2011
    * A Guide to Facebook Security For Young Adults, Parents, and Educators

    A Guide to Facebook Security For Young Adults, Parents, and Educators, Linda McCarthy, Keith Watson, and Denise Weldon-Siviy, August 2011. "This online guide explains how you can:

    • Protect your Facebook account
    • Avoid the scammers
    • Use advanced security settings
    • Recover a hacked Facebook account
    • Stop imposters

    August 17, 2011
    * Navy Publishes Slideshare on How to Use Google+

    Federal Computer Week: "Although Google+ has attracted more than 10 million users since its recent debut, many people in government are wondering what it is and how it ought to be used. Thanks to the Navy, now there is an overview of the new site. The Navy recently published a 13-page online guide titled What’s the deal with Google+? on the SlideShare website, providing a basic introduction to the new social networking site and how it could be used by individuals. The Navy’s presentation had been viewed by 606 people as of Aug. 16."

    * Findings from 2011 Council of Grad Schools Admissions Survey

    "Since 2004, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has conducted a multi-year empirical examination of international graduate application, admission, and enrollment trends. This analysis responds to member institutions’ concerns about continuing changes in the enrollment of students from abroad seeking master’s and doctoral degrees from U.S. colleges and universities. International students currently comprise about 15.5% of all graduate students in the United States. The core of this examination is a three-phase survey of CGS member institutions. The CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey collects an initial snapshot of applications to U.S. graduate schools from prospective international students, final applications and an initial picture of admissions offers to prospective international students, and final offers of admission and first-time and total international graduate student enrollment. Data from this year’s Phase II survey reveal that applications from prospective international students to U.S. graduate schools increased 11% in 2011, marking the sixth consecutive year of growth and the largest increase since 2006. The Phase II survey also found that initial offers of admission to prospective international graduate students increased 11% in 2011 following a 3% gain in 2010 and a 1% decline in 2009. This year’s increase in international offers of admission is also the largest since 2006."

    * Women See Value and Benefits of College; Men Lag on Both Fronts, Survey Finds

    Women See Value and Benefits of College; Men Lag on Both Fronts, Survey Finds, By Wendy Wang, and Kim Parker, August 17, 2011

  • "At a time when women surpass men by record numbers in college enrollment and completion, they also have a more positive view than men about the value higher education provides, according to a nationwide Pew Research Center survey. Half of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the U.S. higher education system excellent or good marks for the value it provides given the money spent by students and their families; only 37% of male graduates agree. In addition, women who have graduated from college are more likely than men to say their education helped them to grow both personally and intellectually."
  • * VA Issues Guidance on use of Web-based collaboration technologies

    "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) endorses the secure use of Web-based collaboration and social media tools to enhance communication, stakeholder outreach collaboration, and information exchange; streamline processes; and foster productivity improvements. Use of these tools supports VA and VA’s goal of achieving an interoperable, net-centric environment by improving employee effectiveness through seamless access to information. Web-based collaboration tools enable widely dispersed facilities and VA personnel to more effectively collaborate and share information—which can result in better productivity, higher efficiency, and foster innovation. This Directive establishes policy on the proper use of these tools, consistent with applicable laws, regulations, and policies."

    August 16, 2011
    * The State of America’s Children® 2011 Finds Children in Jeopardy

    News release: "America’s children have fallen further behind in the last year in a range of leading indicators according to The State of America’s Children 2011, a new report from the Children’s Defense Fund. With unemployment, housing foreclosures, and hunger at historically high levels, children’s well-being is in jeopardy. In the United States one in five children is poor and children are our poorest age group. In 2009, millions of children fell into poverty due to the economic downturn, an increase of almost 10 percent, the largest single year rise since 1960. Today, 15.5 million children are adrift in a sea of poverty and every 32 seconds another child is born poor. Two-thirds of poor children live in families in which at least one family member works. The gap between rich and poor families has continued to grow. Income gains for the bottom 90 percent were completely wiped out by the recession, leaving the average income for the bottom 90 percent at its lowest level in more than a decade."

    August 15, 2011
    * Half of Young Children in the U.S. are Read to at Least Once a Day

    News release: "Many young children are getting a head start on acquiring the skills needed to read, as family members take time out of their day on a regular basis to read aloud with them, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. In 2009, half of children age 1 to 5 were read to seven or more times a week by a family member. A series of tables, Selected Indicators of Child Well-Being (A Child's Day): 2009, uses statistics from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to provide a glimpse into how children younger than 18 spend their day, touching on subjects such as the degree of interaction with parents and extracurricular activities. These statistics are compared with those from earlier years. While reading interactions are more frequent among families above poverty, reading interactions among low-income families have increased over the last 10 years. In 2009, 56 percent of 1- and 2-year-olds above poverty were read to seven or more times a week, compared with 45 percent below the poverty level. However, while parental reading involvement for children above poverty was not different from rates in 1998, it rose from 37 percent for those below poverty."

    August 14, 2011
    * The health risks and benefits of cycling in urban environments compared with car use: health impact assessment study

    The health risks and benefits of cycling in urban environments compared with car use: health impact assessment study. BMJ 2011; 343:d4521 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d4521 (Published 4 August 2011)

  • "Bicycle sharing schemes have become increasingly popular in countries throughout Europe, Asia, and America to encourage cycling as an alternative means of transport in urban areas. Large low cost rental systems (between 1000 and 50 000 bicycles) aimed at encouraging cycling for short urban trips and multimodality (cycling along with another mode of transit) for longer trips have been implemented by cities such as Lyon (2005), Stockholm (2006), Barcelona (2007), Seville (2007), Paris (2007), Toulouse (2007), Hangzhou (2008), Milan (2008), Brussels (2009), Montreal (2009), Mexico City (2010), London (2010), and Guangzhou (2010). In the United States, such large scale initiatives are being considered for Los Angeles and New York. The general impetus for these policies is more often the reduction of traffic congestion than the promotion of health."
  • * New Getty Search Gateway Allows Access to More Information More Quickly

    News release: "The Getty recently unveiled a newly expanded search function on its website that will allow scholars, researchers, and the interested public to better access the Getty's vast resources of information about the visual arts. The Getty Search Gateway, which is now available online, provides streamlined searches through the Museum's collections and the Getty Research Institute's library catalog, digital collections, and collection inventories and finding aids...In addition to streamlining the search process, the Getty Search Gateway is able to make available information about many more objects from the Museum's collection. Now information about most of the Museum's collection is available online, along with an expanded set of images."

    * Realty Trac: National Real Estate Trends

    Search the database from National Real Estate Trends - 1,612,778 Foreclosure Homes | $183,377 Average Foreclosure Sales Price. Find foreclosures, MLS listings and home values; Search ANY address in the U.S.

  • Top Foreclosure Cities: 1. Las Vegas, NV; 2. Phoenix, AZ; 3. Chicago, IL; 4. Los Angeles, CA; 5. Miami, FL
  • See also SFGate.com - BofA turns bulldozer on glut of abandoned homes
  • * Gallup: Emotional Health Higher Among Older Americans

    Poll - Even among people in their 80s and 90s, emotional health remains high: "Americans aged 60 and older demonstrate significantly better emotional health than those younger than 60 years. In fact, a septuagenarian is far more likely than someone in their 30s to have high emotional health. These results hold true even after statistically controlling for gender, race, education, marital status, employment, income, and regional location...This analysis, based on more than 500,000 interviews conducted between January 2010 and June 2011 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, measures Americans' Emotional Health Index (EHI) scores, based on self-reports of positive and negative daily emotions as well as clinical diagnosis of depression. Specifically, Americans are asked whether they felt "a lot of" each of the following emotions the day before the survey: smiling/laughing, learning/doing something interesting, being treated with respect, enjoyment, happiness, worry, sadness, anger, and stress. Emotionally well-off Americans are defined as those whose EHI scores are over 90, out of a maximum of 100. Rather than focusing on just happiness or enjoyment, this large set of questions, including respondents' medical diagnoses of depression, provides a more comprehensive view of emotional health."

    * Pew Findings: Search and email remain the top online activities

    Search and email still top the list of most popular online activities - Two activities nearly universal among adult internet users, by Kristen Purcell

  • "A May 2011 Pew Internet survey finds that 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web, including 59% who do so on a typical day. This places search at the top of the list of most popular online activities among U.S. adults. But it is not alone at the top. Among online adults, 92% use email, with 61% using it on an average day. Since the Pew Internet Project began measuring adults’ online activities in the last decade, these two behaviors have consistently ranked as the most popular. Even as early as 2002, more than eight in ten online adults were using search engines, and more than nine in ten online adults were emailing."
  • August 10, 2011
    * Civility in America: A Nationwide Survey 2011

    "One year ago, Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate, in partnership with KRC Research, released its first annual Civility in America: A Nationwide Survey. Due to the increased attention paid to civility over the past year, we wanted to re-assess Americans’ attitudes towards the subject. Coverage in the media, community attention to the issue and creation of new non-profit organizations such as The National Institute for Civil Discourse have continued to attract attention to the topic. In an online search, over 12 million mentions of “civility” surfaced. This is a 460% increase from the same time one year ago. How, if at all, has this increased attention impacted civility or perceptions about it? Without a doubt, the past 12 months have been tumultuous when it comes to how civility has played. The 2011 results from Civility in America fall into several key areas in this report — civility in politics, education, the workplace, the Internet and the marketplace. Attitudes about the state of civility in America remain as high as they were one year ago — two-thirds (65%) still believe that we have a major civility problem. The more disturbing news, however, is that Americans expect civility to erode even further over the next few years. Whereas more than one-third (39%) expected things to turn less civil when surveyed in 2010, now more than one out of two Americans — 55% — expect a lack of civility to become the norm. Only nine percent in this year’s survey expect civility to get better compared to 26% who expected some relief last year. Incivility seems to be here to stay."

    * Report: Leading Innovation in Government

    Snapshot|What Drives Innovation in the Federal Government: "How innovative is the federal government? What drives innovation in federal agencies? And, what can leaders do, if anything, to promote innovation within their agencies and teams? Given the importance of improving government effectiveness and delivering better results for the American people within today’s budgetary constraints, these are the questions the Partnership for Public Service and the Hay Group set out to explore. Our analysis underscored that innovation depends on the total environment leaders create for employees...According to 2010 Employee Viewpoint Survey results, the top large agency on innovation was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with a score of 75.9, followed closely by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NASA and NRC are also among the five highest ranking agencies on the Best Places to Work list. Rounding out the top five was: General Services Administration; Department of State; and the Department of the Army."

  • Leading Innovation in Government, HayGroup, August 2011
  • * Work-Based Predictors of Mortality: A 20-Year Follow-Up of Healthy Employees

    Work-based predictors of mortality: A 20-year follow-up of healthy employees. Shirom, A., Toker, S., Alkaly, Y., Jacobson, O. & Balicer, R. (in press). Health Psychology.

  • "Objectives. This study investigated the effects of the Job-Demand- Control-Support (JDC-S) model's components, workload, control, peer and supervisor social support, on the risk of all-cause mortality. Also examined was the expectation that the above work-based components interact in predicting all-cause mortality. The study's hypotheses were tested after controlling for physiological variables and health behaviors known to be risk factors for mortality."
  • August 09, 2011
    * Sierra Club Report: Giant Fish Blenders: How Power Plants Kill Fish & Damage Our Waterways

    Giant Fish Blenders: How Power Plants Kill Fish & Damage Our Waterways, Sierra Club, August 2011

  • "A power plant with once-through cooling draws hundreds of millions, in some cases billions, of gallons of water each day from the closest lake, river or ocean and indiscriminately sucks in whatever aquatic life is near the intake pipe. In this process, fish and other aquatic life are smashed and mutilated against crude screens (known as “impingement”) or are sucked into the cooling system itself (known as “entrainment”). It is estimated that billions of fish and other aquatic organisms at all stages of life are killed each year by power plants’ water-intake systems."
  • * IndustryWeek U.S. 500

    "IndustryWeek U.S. 500 is IndustryWeek's report on the 500 largest publicly held U.S. manufacturing companies companies based on revenue

  • Search features: to order by revenue, click on the revenue title. To order by revenue growth, click on the revenue growth title. To order alphabetically, click on the company name title. To order by rank, click on the rank title."
  • August 07, 2011
    * Commentary - When Data Disappears

    Dr. Kari Kraus, University of Maryland, via NYT: "..if we’re going to save even a fraction of the trillions of bits of data churned out every year, we can’t think of digital preservation in the same way we do paper preservation. We have to stop thinking about how to save data only after it’s no longer needed, as when an author donates her papers to an archive. Instead, we must look for ways to continuously maintain and improve it. In other words, we must stop preserving digital material and start curating it."

    August 06, 2011
    * The Institute for the Future of the Book

    "The Institute for the Future of the Book seeks to chronicle this shift, and impact its development in a positive direction. The Institute is a project of the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California, and is based in Brooklyn, New York. We're a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens. There are independent branches of Institute in New York, London and Brisbane. The New York branch is affiliated with the Libraries of New York University."

    August 05, 2011
    * DOC2DOCK- Save Supplies - Save Lives

    "U.S. hospitals waste thousands of tons of medical supplies every day. This includes unused, sterile medical supplies discarded for regulatory reasons and fully functional equipment. DOC2DOCK collects and redistributes these supplies to match the specific needs of hospitals in the developing world. To achieve this goal, we have built a strong network of medical professionals and volunteers in the U.S. and developing countries to collect, sort, ship and redistribute usable medical supplies and equipment. DOC2DOCK started in 2005 as a commitment to global human health during the inaugural Clinton Global Initiative, which is chaired by President Clinton. So far, our shipments have helped bring hope and care to more than 2 million people in the developing world. And, in the process, reduced waste in the U.S."

    August 04, 2011
    * Asians in America Report: Asian-Americans Still Feel Like Outsiders in Corporate America

    News release: "Despite graduating from top universities at rates that far exceed their peers and forming an important part of the talent pipeline for many professions, Asian-Americans remain largely underrepresented in leadership ranks, according to Asians in America: Unleashing the Potential of the ‘Model Minority,’ a new study from the Center for Work-Life Policy. Although Asians are a mere 5 percent of the US population, they are one of the fastest growing minority groups and a vital part of the nation’s talent pipeline. Consider, for instance, the representation of Asians at top schools: they account for 15 to 25 percent of Ivy League enrollment, 24 percent at Stanford and a stunning 46 percent at UC Berkeley. At the same time, Asians are fewer than two percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and corporate officers. How can we understand this disparity? According to the study, what keeps Asians from making it to the top are subtle workplace biases that are masked by the general perception of Asians as a highly qualified, successful “model minority”."

    August 03, 2011
    * Brookings: Immigration and Poverty in America's Suburbs

    Immigration and Poverty in America's Suburbs - Opportunity and Well-being, Immigration, U.S. Poverty, Race, Ethnicity, Roberto Suro, Jill H. Wilson, Audrey Singer - The Brookings Institution, August 2011: "An analysis of poverty levels among U.S.-born and foreign-born residents in the nation’s 95 largest metropolitan areas in 2000 and 2009 shows that:

  • Foreign-born residents of America’s suburbs experienced markedly higher poverty rates (14.1 percent) than the U.S. born (9.8 percent) in 2009. The 2.7 million foreign-born poor in the suburbs represented one of every five suburban residents living in poverty.
  • Immigrants accounted for almost a third (30 percent) of overall population growth in the suburbs from 2000 to 2009, but less than a fifth (17 percent) of the increase in the poor population. The suburbanization of poverty accelerated most among the U.S. born
    who accounted for 83 percent of the growth in suburban poverty.
  • Between 2000 and 2009 immigrants contributed more to the growth of the suburban poor population in the South than in other regions. In Washington, D.C., 40 percent of the growth in the suburban poor was due to immigrants, while they contributed just 11 percent in Detroit. In 2009, immigrants made up the highest share of suburban poor in the West (27 percent) and the lowest in the Midwest (10 percent). In Miami, Los Angeles, McAllen, and Fresno, immigrants made up more than one third of the poor population living in
    suburbs."
  • * Hot Wheels 2011 - top three stolen vehicles in the nation continue to be older Honda and Toyota models

    "The National Insurance Crime Bureau today Hot Wheels — its list of the 10 most stolen vehicles in the United States. The report examines vehicle theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and determines the vehicle make, model, and model year most reported stolen in 2010."

    * Dow Jones Indexes Adds Shari’ah-Compliant Index To Dow Jones RBP Index Family

    News release: "Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced the launch of the Dow Jones Islamic Market RBP U.S. 50 Index, a unique gauge designed to measure the largest 50 U.S. stocks ranked by RBP® probabilities supplied by Transparent Value, LLC that have first passed the screens for Shari’ah compliance. RBP®, which stands for Required Business Performance, is calculated by Transparent Value by taking a reverse discounted cash flow approach to determine the future business performance required by a company to support its current stock price. RBP® probabilities measure the likelihood that a company can deliver the required business performance identified by applying the methodology over specified time periods. The Dow Jones Islamic Market RBP U.S. 50 Index is the latest addition to the Dow Jones RBP series of quantitative strategy indexes offered by Dow Jones Indexes and Transparent Value LLC, a New York-based asset management and financial information services company. The Dow Jones RBP Indexes are built upon patent-pending proprietary rules-based analytics supplied by Transparent Value."

    August 02, 2011
    * Forum Guide to Ensuring Equal Access to Education Websites— Introduction to Electronic Information Accessibility Standards

    Forum Guide to Ensuring Equal Access to Education Websites - Introduction to Electronic Information Accessibility Standards, July 2011

  • "This guide is designed for use by information technology administrators, data specialists, and program staff responsible for the “content” in data reports, as well as education leaders (e.g., administrators who prioritize tasks for technical and data staff), and other stakeholders who have an interest in seeing that our schools, school districts, and state education agencies operate in an effective and equitable manner for all constituents, regardless of disability status. It is intended to raise awareness in nontechnical audiences and suggest best practices for complying with Section 508 goals at an operational level in schools, school districts, and state education agencies. It is not intended to recreate technical resources that already exist to facilitate Section 508 compliance."
  • * The Nation's Report Card: Geography 2010

    National Center for Education Statistics: "Fewer than one-third of the nation’s students achieve at or above the Proficient level in geography, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP.) Although fourth graders made gains in achievement since 2001, The Nation’s Report Card: Geography 2010 shows that performance by eighth graders remained flat, and achievement by twelfth graders declined from 1994."

    August 01, 2011
    * The First Command Financial Behaviors Index

    "The First Command Financial Behaviors Index assesses trends among the American public’s financial behaviors, intentions and attitudes through a monthly survey of approximately 1,000 U.S. consumers, ages 25–70, with annual household incomes of at least $50,000. Survey results, which are reported quarterly, were first compiled in February 2008 and assigned a baseline of 100 points. In subsequent months, consumers’ responses to questions about their financial behaviors, attitudes and intentions may drive the index above or below the baseline. “Positive” or “productive” behaviors, intentions and attitudes — such as increasing savings/investments and reducing personal debt — influence the index upward. “Negative” or “unproductive” behaviors, attitudes and intentions — such as decreasing savings/investments and assuming greater personal debt — influence the index downward."

  • Read the 2nd Quarter 2011 Report
  • * New York Review of Books Considers 4: How Google Dominates Us

    How Google Dominates Us, James Gleick, Auguat 18, 2011

  • "The business of finding facts has been an important gear in the workings of human knowledge, and the technology has just been upgraded from rubber band to nuclear reactor. No wonder there’s some confusion about Google’s exact role in that—along with increasing fear about its power and its intentions."
  • July 31, 2011
    * KPMG: Power Sector Development in Europe - Lenders' Perspectives 2011

    "The report, Power Sector Development in Europe - Lenders' Perspectives 2011, notes that the European electricity industry will need an estimated EUR 1,900bn investment over the next twenty-five years if it is to meet both increasing electricity demand and ever-tightening environmental standards. Based on interviews with a selection of top European banks, the report concludes that the financial sector is confident that the capital will be available for the numerous, complex projects that need to be undertaken in the coming decades, but only if the project developers address and minimize risks appropriately."

    July 28, 2011
    * mapFAST: A FAST Geographic Authorities Mashup with Google Maps

    Bennett,Rick, Edward T. O'Neill, Kerre Kammerer, and JD Shipengrover. 2011. mapFAST: A FAST Geographic Authorities Mashup with Google Maps. Code4Lib Journal, 14, 2011-07-25

  • "mapFAST is a mashup that uses Google Maps to present a different way to look at subject access to bibliographic records. When looking for information about a particular place, it is often useful to check surrounding locations as well. This can be difficult using traditional controlled vocabularies. The FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) schema reworks Library of Congress Subject Headings rules to produce a more machine-friendly schema that can handle a large volume of materials more cheaply and efficiently. FAST geographic subjects provide clean access points to geography-related material. A Google Maps mashup allows users to see surrounding locations that are also FAST subjects. The map interface allows for simple selection of a location, with links to enter it directly as a search into either WorldCat.org or Google Books. Like the mapFAST prototype, the Web Service to the underlying data is also open and available for use. With it, developers can use the service to develop their own applications. This article provides a brief background about mapFAST and FAST geographic data, as well as an overview of the mapFAST interface, its mechanics, and the mapFAST Web Service."
  • July 27, 2011
    * Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey

    News release: "Mortgage applications decreased 5.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 22, 2011. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 5.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 4.9 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 5.5 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3.8 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 3.4 percent compared with the previous week and was 2.2 percent higher than the same week one year ago."

    July 26, 2011
    * NARA Guidance on Managing Mixed-Media Files

    NARA Bulletin 2011-04, July 18, 2011. TO: Heads of Federal Agencies; SUBJECT: Guidance on Managing Mixed-Media Files; EXPIRATION DATE: July 31, 2014

  • "What is the purpose of this Bulletin? Agencies frequently manage files with records created or received in more than one type of medium. This Bulletin provides agencies with guidance about the records management implications when records in various types of media are intermixed in one file. This Bulletin also reminds agencies of lifecycle management requirements for electronic records as described in 36 CFR 1236.20 and for audiovisual, cartographic, and related records per 36 CFR 1237. This Bulletin is not intended to address scheduling of these records."
  • July 24, 2011
    * OCLC Report: Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference

    News release: "A ground-breaking membership report from OCLC Research suggests that by transforming virtual reference (VR) service encounters into relationship-building opportunities, librarians can better leverage the positive feelings people have for libraries. This is critically important in a crowded online space where the biggest players often don’t have the unique experience and specific strengths offered by librarians. The report — Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference — demonstrates that today’s students, scholars and citizens are not just looking to libraries for answers to specific questions—they want partners and guides in a lifelong information-seeking journey. Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the “R” in “VR” needs to emphasize virtual “Relationships” as well as “Reference.”

    * NMLS Consumer Access - Free Service to Verify a Mortgage Company or Individual

    "As outlined in the federal agencies’ Final Rule implementing the SAFE Act’s federal registration requirement, certain pieces of federal registrant information will be made publicly available through Consumer Access. Federal registrant information is currently scheduled to be made publicly available through Consumer Access on August 1, 2011, shortly following the end of the federal registration initial transition period. Federal registration information will be displayed in Consumer Access using a format similar to that currently used for state licensing information. Below are examples of how information will be displayed in Consumer Access for both institutions and individual mortgage loan originators, as well as explanations regarding how Consumer Access will derive specific pieces of information.

  • "Welcome to NMLS Consumer Access, a free service for consumers to confirm that the mortgage company or mortgage professional with whom they wish to conduct business is licensed in their state."
  • Search function: Enter a Name, Company, City, State, Zip Code, NLMS ID, and/or License Number
  • July 23, 2011
    * Pew: GOP Makes Big Gains among White Voters Especially among the Young and Poor

    Pew Research Center: GOP Makes Big Gains among White Voters
    Especially among the Young and Poor
    , July 22, 2011

  • "As the country enters into the 2012 presidential election cycle, the electorate's partisan affiliations have shifted significantly since Obama won office nearly three years ago. In particular, the Democrats hold a much narrower edge than they did in 2008, particularly when the partisan leanings of independents are taken into account. Notably, the GOP gains have occurred only among white voters; a two-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 (46% to 44%) has widened to a 13-point lead today (52% to 39%). In sharp contrast, the partisan attachments of black and Hispanic voters have remained consistently Democratic. While Republican gains in leaned party identification span nearly all subgroups of whites, they are particularly pronounced among the young and poor. A seven-point Democratic advantage among whites younger than age 30 three years ago has turned into an 11-point GOP advantage today. And a 15-point Democratic advantage among whites earning less than $30,000 annually has swung to a slim four-point Republican edge today."
  • July 21, 2011
    * Flying Blind: How Working Americans View Healthcare Costs in Retirement

    Flying Blind: How Working Americans View Healthcare Costs in Retirement A Sun Life Financial Unretirement Survey - May 4, 2011

  • "92% of American workers either have no idea what their healthcare costs will be in retirement, or vastly underestimate those costs. 40% of Americans have “no idea” how much they will spend on healthcare costs during their retirement years, and only 8 percent estimate costs of $200,000 or more (which is considered a realistic estimate, according to industry experts). 43% of Americans feel not at all confident about meeting healthcare costs in retirement, and a scant 9% feel very confident. Half of workers in their fifties feel “not at all confident” about meeting retirement healthcare costs."
  • * A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas

    "Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to meeting many of humanity's most pressing challenges, both present and future. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the disciplinary core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: cross-cutting concepts that unify the study of science and engineering through their common application across these fields; scientific and engineering practices; and core ideas in four disciplinary areas: physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues; be careful consumers of scientific and technological information; and have the skills to enter the careers of their choice."

    * ASCI Survey: Low Customer Satisfaction for Facebook Opens Door for Google+

    News release: "The social media market is primed for a new player that allows users to connect with friends, according to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results. Despite a small improvement this year, Facebook (+3% to 66) is the lowest-scoring site, not only in the social media category, but of all measured companies in this report. The survey was conducted last month, before the widespread introduction of Facebook’s biggest competitor, Google+, but Facebook’s low score indicates that Google+ could easily pounce and gain market share if they can provide a superior customer experience."

  • ForeSee Results Annual E-Business Report for the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), July 19, 2011
  • Lackluster Response to Social Media - "Users are underwhelmed when it comes to social media websites, as last-place Facebook watches first-place Google win the e-business satisfaction race" - July 2011 and Historical ACSI Scores
  • July 20, 2011
    * Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips

    Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips - Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745, Published Online 14 July 2011. See also Google's Effects on Memory, PBS NewsHour via YouTube.

  • "The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves."
  • July 19, 2011
    * Pew Study - College students and technology

    College students and technology by Aaron Smith, Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr - July 19, 2011

  • When it comes to general internet access, young adults of all stripes are much more likely than the general population to go online. Fully 92% of 18-24 year olds who do not attend college are internet users, comparable to the rate for community college students and just slightly lower than the rate for undergraduate and graduate students (nearly 100% of whom access the internet). Undergraduate and graduate students differentiate themselves more clearly when it comes to home broadband access, as more than nine in ten undergraduate (95%) and graduate students (93%) are home broadband users—well well above the national adult average of 66%."
  • July 18, 2011
    * Health Infographic: Life on Less Than $2 a Day

    Poor Economics: rethinking poverty and the ways to end it: "In many countries, a significant percentage of the population survives on just a few dollars a day. Here's a look at the distribution of consumption in several developing nations."

    July 17, 2011
    * ACLU: Lessons from the UK "Phone Hacking" Scandal

    Commentary: "Britain is now enmeshed in a gigantic scandal around privacy invasions by the press and police. It began with revelations about reporters for Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid newspaper News of the World hacking into the voicemail of a murdered young girl, and has expanded as other privacy invasions have come to light."

  • WSJ.com: Scandal Grows at News Corp. - "Former News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks was arrested and the head of Scotland Yard stepped down, as a convulsive phone-hacking scandal raced into the loftiest ranks of Britain's business and law-enforcement worlds."
  • * Departing Federal CIO's Lessons in IT Management

    Via FCW - Federal CIO Vivek Kundra:

    • "Build end-to-end digital systems to reduce errors and protect the integrity of the data across the federal enterprise.
    • Build once, use often.
    • Tap into the "golden sources" of data. Don’t rely on derivative databases or data derived from other data sources. Go directly to the transactional systems that do the business on a day-to-day basis.
    • Release data in a machine-readable format and encourage third-party applications.
    • Employ common data standards. Think about what would have happened if railroads across the country had used different standards in terms of railroad track gauges.
    • Use simple, upfront data validations.
    • Release data as close to real time as possible.
    • Engineer systems to reduce burdens.
    • Protect privacy and security. This is critical, especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter. You can create a mosaic effect without really thinking about it. It’s one thing to release data when it comes to health care on a state level, and other thing to release it on a zip-code level.
    • Provide equal access to data and incorporate user feedback on an ongoing basis.

    * .gov Reform Effort: Improving Federal Websites

    "The .gov reform effort is part of President Obama's Campaign to Cut Waste, identifying unnecessary websites that can be consolidated into other websites to reduce costs and improve the quality of service to the American public. The President signed Executive Order 13571, "Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service," April 27, 2011, which requires federal agencies to take specific steps to strengthen customer service, including how they deliver services and information on federal ".gov" websites."

  • Federal Executive Branch Internet Domains: Listing of all 1759 Federal Agency Internet Domains
  • * The Economist: More sisters, daughters and wives of powerful leaders are taking the top political jobs

    Women in political dynasties: "Ms Yingluck’s victory in Thailand’s general election on July 3rd is the latest example of an intriguing and, it seems, growing trend: for the sisters, daughters and widows of former leaders to take over the family political business on the death, retirement or—in Mr Thaksin’s case—exile of the founder. There are now more than 20 female relatives of former leaders active in national politics around the world. They include three presidents or prime ministers and at least half a dozen leaders of the opposition or presidential candidates (see table included with article). There are no historical numbers for proper comparison, but it is hard to think of another period—certainly no recent one—when so much dynastic authority has been flowing down the female line."

    July 16, 2011
    * Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips

    Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Betsy Sparrow1, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745

  • "The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves."
  • July 14, 2011
    * New GAO Reports: Children's Television Act, Defense Logistics, DOD Civilian Personnel, Dodd-Frank Act, EPA Health Risk Assessments
    • Children's Television Act: FCC Could Improve Efforts to Oversee Enforcement and Provide Public Information, GAO-11-659, July 14, 2011
    • Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands - Status of Transition to Federal Immigration Law, GAO-11-805T, July 14, 2011
    • Defense Logistics: Oversight and a Coordinated Strategy Needed to Implement the Army Workload and Performance System, GAO-11-566R, July 14, 2011
    • DOD Civilian Personnel: Competency Gap Analyses and Other Actions Needed to Enhance DOD's Strategic Workforce Plans, GAO-11-827T, July 14, 2011
    • Dodd-Frank Act: Eleven Agencies' Estimates of Resources for Implementing Regulatory Reform, GAO-11-808T, July 14, 2011
    • EPA Health Risk Assessments: Sustained Management and Oversight Key to Overcoming Challenges, GAO-11-824T, July 14, 2011
    • Information Technology: Continued Attention Needed to Accurately Report Federal Spending and Improve Management, GAO-11-831T, July 14, 2011
    • Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Contracts Awarded and Consultants Retained by Federal Departments and Agencies to Assist in Implementing the Act, GAO-11-797R, July 14, 2011.
    • DHS Science and Technology: Additional Steps Needed to Ensure Test and Evaluation Requirements Are Met, GAO-11-596, July 14, 2011
    July 13, 2011
    * Report - Achieving Effective Supervision: An Industry Perspective

    Achieving Effective Supervision: An Industry Perspective, "prepared by the Effective Supervision Advisory Group under Mrs Kerstin af Jochnick, Managing Director of the Swedish Bankers’ Association - addresses the issue of how to make supervision more effective both nationally and globally in the light of the financial crisis. It argues that such supervision has a central role in reinforcing and sustaining sound industry practices and in buttressing strengthened regulation and resolution arrangements. It makes it clear that the industry would welcome more intensive, challenging and action-focused supervision and that the industry is prepared to meet the costs of this. It also stresses the major responsibility of the industry to support effective supervision and includes twelve core recommendations to firms aimed at improving the level and nature of engagement with supervisors."

    * Report - Macroprudential Oversight: An Industry Perspective

    The report Macroprudential Oversight: An Industry Perspective stresses that the Institute of International Finance strongly supports the development of macroprudential oversight and tools but encourages regulators to balance the need for rapid progress with a degree of caution and a willingness to learn and adapt in the light of experience. The report mainly takes the form of a number of guiding principles that the industry believes should be followed in going forward. In particular, it calls for macroprudential authorities in each jurisdiction and effective international coordination; monitoring of the shadow banking system; and the avoidance of over-reliance on a single macroprudential tool such as capital."

    * Report: U.S. Salary Increase Budgets for 2012

    "Based on a sample of 415 companies, the latest edition of The Conference Board survey of U.S. salary increase budgets reveals that these budgets will have a median increase of 3.00 percent in 2011, which is modestly higher than the increases of the past two years. The respondents also project that their salary budget increases for 2012 will be 3.00 percent—an indication that the economic recovery has not yet picked up enough strength to substantially raise salary budgets. In addition to examining overall trends, U.S. Salary Increase Budgets for 2012 reports results for 11 different industry categories."

    July 10, 2011
    * NRDC: Finding a clean beach

    News release: "NRDC's annual survey of water quality and public notification at U.S. beaches finds that the number of beach closings and advisories in 2010 reached 24,091 — the second-highest level since NRDC began tracking these events 21 years ago, confirming that our nation's beaches continue to suffer from bacterial pollution that puts swimmers at risk. Testing the Waters - A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches, Twenty First Annual Report focuses primarily on bacteria-related beach water quality concerns. This year and last year, the report also highlighted closures, advisories, and notices issued at beaches impacted by last summer's BP oil disaster. From the beginning of the spill until June 15, 2011 there have been a total of 9,474 days of oil-related beach notices, advisories and closures at Gulf Coast beaches due to the spill."

    July 08, 2011
    * F as in Fat - How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011

    News release: "Adult obesity rates increased in 16 states in the past year and did not decline in any state, according to F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011, a report from the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Twelve states now have obesity rates above 30 percent. Four years ago, only one state was above 30 percent. The obesity epidemic continues to be most dramatic in the South, which includes nine of the 10 states with the highest adult obesity rates. States in the Northeast and West tend to have lower rates. Mississippi maintained the highest adult obesity rate for the seventh year in a row, and Colorado has the lowest obesity rate and is the only state with a rate under 20 percent. This year, for the first time, the report examined how the obesity epidemic has grown over the past two decades. Twenty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15 percent. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have obesity rates over 25 percent, and just one has a rate lower than 20 percent. Since 1995, when data was available for every state, obesity rates have doubled in seven states and increased by at least 90 percent in 10 others. Obesity rates have grown fastest in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee, and slowest in Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Connecticut."

    July 06, 2011
    * 401(k) Balances and Changes Due to Market Volatility – Data to July 01, 2011

    401(k) Balances and Changes Due to Market Volatility – Data to July 01, 2011

  • "The Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute have been collaborating since 1996 to develop the most comprehensive database on 401(k) plan participants yet assembled. Participant data include demographic, contribution, asset allocation, and loan and withdrawal activity information. The November 2010 Issue Brief presents analysis of data collected for 2009 on more than 51,852 plans with 20.7 million participants and $1.21 trillion in assets. For a comprehensive listing of EBRI research utilizing this database, please see the Defined Contribution and Participant Behavior Research Program Web site.
  • July 05, 2011
    * Move underway to replace commercial and charter airline flight manuals with iPads

    New York Times: "The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized a handful of commercial and charter carriers to use the tablet computer as a so-called electronic flight bag. Private pilots, too, are now carrying iPads, which support hundreds of general aviation apps that simplify preflight planning and assist with in-flight operations...Alaska Airlines received F.A.A. approval in May to permit its pilots to consult digital flight, systems and performance manuals on the iPad — cutting about 25 pounds of paper from each flight bag. The e-manuals include hyperlinks and color graphics to help pilots find information quickly and easily. And pilots do not have to go through the tedium of updating the manuals by swapping out old pages with new ones because updates are downloaded automatically."

    * Commentary - Information Literacy On Campus

    Benjamin Rossi - analyst at Basex: "For students, doing research is the bread and butter of their academic life. Conducting research doesn’t just mean searching for information effectively; it means being able to judge the reliability of sources, place information within various contexts, and synthesize different information sources while developing one’s thesis. Encompassing a wide variety of competencies, research is one of the most important skills that students learn in preparation for participation in the knowledge economy. Increasingly, however, students find that the overwhelming abundance of easily accessible but undifferentiated information on the Web hinders their ability to do the kind of deep, exploratory research that broadens their education and hones critical thinking."

    July 04, 2011
    * Commentary - Info Overload, Data Fog and Pressures of Increasing Workloads

    The Economist: "...information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence."

    * NYT Reports Median Pay of Top Execs Topped $10 Million in 2010

    New York Times: "A preliminary examination of executive pay in 2010, based on data available as of April 1, found that the paychecks for top American executives were growing again, after shrinking during the 2008-9 recession. But that study, conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm based in Redwood City, Calif., was just an early snapshot, and there were even more riches to come. Some big companies had not yet disclosed their executive compensation. So Sunday Business asked Equilar to run the numbers again. Brace yourself. The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent."

  • See also: "Median CEO compensation rose by 28 percent in 2010, according to a preliminary CEO pay report from Governance Metrics International (GMI), the independent leader in global corporate governance and ESG. The report provides an early alert of CEO pay trends in North America and was based on a sample of more than 740 companies."
  • July 03, 2011
    * Commentary - final launch of space shuttle brings to an end the dreams of Apollo era

    The Economist: "If the weather holds and there are no unforeseen complications, then early in the morning on July 8th a woman and three men will ascend the launch tower at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, strap themselves into Atlantis, the last operational space shuttle, and, as the engines ignite, wait for the countdown to reach zero. Burning thousands of litres of rocket fuel every second and blasting superheated gas into the water-filled trench beneath the pad, the engines will kick up the vast gouts of steam and smoke that characterise a rocket launch."

  • The Final Space Shuttle Mission: STS-135
  • * Food Packaging and Bisphenol A and Bis(2-Ethyhexyl) Phthalate Exposure: Findings from a Dietary Intervention

    Rudel RA, Gray JM, Engel CL, Rawsthorne TW, Dodson RE, Ackerman JM, et al. 2011. Food Packaging and Bisphenol A and Bis(2-Ethyhexyl) Phthalate Exposure: Findings from a Dietary Intervention. Environ Health Perspect 119:914-920. doi:10.1289/ehp.1003170

  • "Background: Bisphenol A (BPA) and bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) are high-production-volume chemicals used in plastics and resins for food packaging. They have been associated with endocrine disruption in animals and in some human studies. Human exposure sources have been estimated, but the relative contribution of dietary exposure to total intake has not been studied empirically.
    Objectives: To evaluate the contribution of food packaging to exposure, we measured urinary BPA and phthalate metabolites before, during, and after a “fresh foods” dietary intervention.
    Conclusions: BPA and DEHP exposures were substantially reduced when participants’ diets were restricted to food with limited packaging."
  • * New Research - Mobile Phones, Brain Tumours and the Interphone Study: Where Are We Now?

    Follow up to previous postings on cell phones and radiation levels, a new study - Mobile Phones, Brain Tumours and the Interphone Study: Where Are We Now?

  • "Conclusions: Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumours in adults."
  • July 02, 2011
    * NYT: World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data

    NYT: "Long regarded as a windowless ivory tower, the World Bank is opening its vast vault of information. True, the bank still lends roughly $170 billion annually. But it is increasingly competing for influence and power with Wall Street, national governments and smaller regional development banks, who have as much or more money to offer. It is no longer the only game in town...For more than a year, the bank has been releasing its prized data sets, currently giving public access to more than 7,000 that were previously available only to some 140,000 subscribers — mostly governments and researchers, who pay to gain access to it. Those data sets contain all sorts of information about the developing world, whether workaday economic statistics — gross domestic product, consumer price inflation and the like — or arcana like how many women are breast-feeding their children in rural Peru. It is a trove unlike anything else in the world, and, it turns out, highly valuable. For whatever its accuracy or biases, this data essentially defines the economic reality of billions of people and is used in making policies and decisions that have an enormous impact on their lives."

    July 01, 2011
    * UNESCO expands World Heritage List by adding more sites of universal value

    News release: "The United Nations has added cultural sites in Ukraine, Mongolia, France and Nicaragua to the World Heritage List, closing out this year’s selection with a total of 25 sites, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported today. UNESCO named the newly protected sites as the residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans in Ukraine, the petroglyphs of the Mongolian Altai, the Causses and the Cévennes, Mediterranean agro-pastoral landscape in France and León Cathedral in Nicaragua. A total of 35 nominated sites were reviewed by the World Heritage Committee, which has been holding its 35th session at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris since last week."

    June 30, 2011
    * CoreLogic Home Price Index Shows Second Consecutive Month-Over-Month Increase

    News release: "CoreLogic, a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, today released its May Home Price Index (HPI) which shows that home prices in the U.S. increased on a month-over-month basis. According to the CoreLogic HPI, national home prices, including distressed sales, increased by 0.8 percent in May 2011 compared to April 2011, the second consecutive month-over-month increase. On a year-over-year basis, home prices declined by 7.4 percent in May 2011 compared to May 2010 after declining by 6.7 percent* in April 2011 compared to April 2010. Excluding distressed sales, year-over-year prices declined by 0.4 percent in May 2011 compared to May 2010 and by 0.8* percent in April 2011 compared to April 2010. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • June 29, 2011
    * D&B Global Business Failure Report

    Global Business Failure Report, June 2011:

    • "Business failures have dropped globally, but remain elevated compared with pre-crisis levels.
    • Failures decreased particularly strongly in Q4 2010 in emerging economies such as South Africa, Brazil, Poland and Singapore.
    • The Nordic Region was the only region to record an increase in insolvencies in Q4.
    • There is a rising risk that the global economic slowdown will lead to a reversal of the recent
      downward trend in insolvency levels towards the end of 2011.
    • Rising insolvency levels: Austria, Australia, Hungary, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK.
    • Falling insolvency levels: Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, South Africa, US"

    * D&B: Bankruptcies and Business Failures are lower this year

    Bankruptcies and Business Failures are lower this year: "Business bankruptcies and failures continued to decline this year; however, the pace was slower than in Q4 2011. Overall, business bankruptcies and failures are lower this year in the U.S. and around the world. This is a confidence booster for many businesses and the growth in the small business segment - firms with fewer than 500 employees - is another driver of confidence for the U.S. economy. Both business bankruptcies and business failures continued to decline in Q1 2011, with business failures declining at a slower pace. Business bankruptcies, as reported by the U.S. courts, fell by 8.4%, whereas business failures fell by only 2.2% during the 12 months ending March 2011. Business failures better reflect the state of the economy as formal bankruptcies tend to understate the overall failure rate by not capturing hidden failures."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • * eFinancialCareers Issues Job Survey for Financial Firms

    eFinancialCareers: "With on-the job training and incredible access, the prototypical Wall Street summer associate has one goal in mind - return to campus with an offer. Capturing that prize may be elusive, about half (49%) of Wall Street firms expect to extend offers to 10 percent or less of their summer associates. That's according to the nearly 160 firms who've shared their expectations on the 2011 class with eFinancialCareers – many of whom increased their class size this year as compared to last summer."

    June 28, 2011
    * Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web

    Official Google Blog: "Among the most basic of human needs is the need to connect with others. With a smile, a laugh, a whisper or a cheer, we connect with others every single day. Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it. We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project..."

    June 26, 2011
    * BBC Plant Finder

    BBC Plant finder - "Right plant, right place - Look up detailed information about thousands of plants using our searchable database. You will find descriptions of the plants and tips about growing them."

    June 25, 2011
    * US commercial real estate prices drop 3.7% in April

    News release: "Moody's Investors Service says that US commercial real estate prices, as measured by Moody's/REAL National -- All Property Price Index (CPPI), declined in April, by 3.7%, bringing the index down to its lowest level since its inception. However, the price recovery that began a year ago among so-called "trophy properties" in the largest markets continued unabated. The CPPI saw its fifth consecutive decline, with distressed prices helping negate the price recovery seen in larger, higher quality assets, resulting in a continued decline in the overall market."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • June 24, 2011
    * Moody's - Credit Card Revival Supports U.S. Consumer Spending

    Scott Hoyt: "U.S. consumers cut spending dramatically during the recession. Even as growth has returned, the level of spending remains low and there is much pent-up demand. One constraint has been the lack of borrowing. Consumer liabilities continue to decline dramatically. A large portion of this decline is due to lenders writing off debt as uncollectible, but even adjusting for write-offs, consumers have been cutting debt, in sharp contrast with the prerecession years when debt increased to finance consumption. One requirement for the reacceleration in spending growth later this year and strong growth in the next few years is the gradual return of borrowing, and this is happening. A 2½-year decline in credit card balances is gradually ending. The Federal Reserve’s seasonally adjusted revolving credit data, primarily credit cards, showed small gains in balances in December and March."

    June 23, 2011
    * Plugging In: A Consumer's Guide to the Electric Vehicle

    Electric Power Research Institute: "Late in 2010 the first mass-produced electric vehicles hit dealer showrooms, bringing car buyers a new, electric option. Electric cars offer performance, safety and versatility and can be charged from the electric grid, providing convenient, low- cost, at-home charging. At the U.S. national average price of 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, buying electricity is approximately equivalent to buying gasoline at $1 per gallon. Displacing gasoline with electricity also lowers emissions and decreases petroleum use. On a typical day half of all drivers log 25 miles or less, so electric vehicles—if widely adopted—could reduce petroleum fuel consumption by 70 to 90%. One challenge for consumers is to understand their driving needs and how each vehicle option can meet their specific requirements. This brochure reviews three options and some essential points for buyers to know about each."

  • Plugging In: A Consumer's Guide to the Electric Vehicle
  • June 22, 2011
    * KPMG CFO Insights: A global survey of Consumer Markets Executives

    CFO Insights: "At the onset of 2011, KPMG International and CFO Research Services commenced a two-phase survey to examine the outlook and perspectives of senior finance executives in the retail, food, drink, and consumer goods sectors, on the key issues affecting their industry. Highlights from the study include:

    • Most companies report resilience to the impact of the MENA and Japan crises.
    • Consumer demand is expected to rise and company performance will improve in 2011.
    • Rising merchandise and input costs—coupled with pricing pressure from competitors—place profit margins at risk.
    • Finance executives see their firms in a h