"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."

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."

"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."

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.

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

"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."

"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."

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

Via arXiv.orgL: Are Elite Journals Declining?

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

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."

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

"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."

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."

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.

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."

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.

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

"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."

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

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."

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."

"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."

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

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."

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."

"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 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..."

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..."

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

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

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

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

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."

"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."

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

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.

"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.

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

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."

"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)..."

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

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."

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

2013 Financial Services Industry Compliance Benchmark Study

"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."

"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"

"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. James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, April 18, 2013

"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."

"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"

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, Dr. Riyazuddin Qureshi, Yahya Mohammad AlManna & Dr Anwar Pasha Deshmukh.

"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."

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

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

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.

• Four innovative ways Asian banks can create actionable insights from customer data details how banks are leveraging data to fine tune product portfolios and service levels.
  
• Ratings revisited: Textual analysis for better risk management shows how sentiment analysis of blogs, analyst reports, and other textual information can enhance the accuracy of credit-rating models with fresh, forward-looking data.
  
• New credit-risk models for the unbanked highlights the strategies of six innovators who offer low-touch, low-risk loans using nontraditional data.
  
• For an overview, Making data analytics work: Three key challenges covers the technology, strategy, and organizational issues inherent in any analytics initiative."

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.

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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

"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."

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."

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."

"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 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]

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

"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."

"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 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."

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

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

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.

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."

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

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."

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."

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

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]

"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."

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

"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."

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

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.

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

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

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

"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, An OCLC Research Report.

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

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

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."

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

"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..."

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."

"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."

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

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

"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, 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."

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

"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."

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

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."

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!"

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

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."

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."

"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 by Paula Gantz, Association of American Publishers - Scholarly Publishing Division, Volume 11, No. 3, Summer/Fall 2012

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."

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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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.

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

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?"

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."

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. December 17, 2012 Sopheap Linda C. Sou, Darcie DeAngelo, Masada Jones, and Monica Veth

"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."

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

"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."

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.

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

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

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."

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."

"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."

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 66.5
  6.2 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.

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."

"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."

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.

"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"

"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."

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."

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

"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."

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."

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.

Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women

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."

"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."

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

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

"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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.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."

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. 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)

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."

"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."

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

"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, Christianne Corbett, M.A. and Catherine Hill, Ph.D., October 2012

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."

"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."

"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."

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."

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

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

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

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."

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

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."

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."

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]."

"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..."

“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%)."

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.

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."

"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."

• Regardless of the Cost, College Still Matters - Full Employment Analysis
  
• Regardless of the Cost, College Still Matters - Technical Appendix
  
• See also: The Parent Loan Trap, by Marian Wang (ProPublica), Beckie Supiano, and Andrea Fuller: "As the cost of college spirals upward, the PLUS loan program has become indispensable for desperate parents. But the loans can often hurt the families they're intended to help." And - Explore the Data - What's the Average Loan at Your Institution?

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."

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

"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."

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

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

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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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, 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."

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."

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."

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."

"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."

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."

"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."

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

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."

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

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!

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."

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."

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

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

"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

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."

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."

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."

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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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."

"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."

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."

"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."

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

"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.)"

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

"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."

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."

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, 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

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

"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

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

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

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

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."

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."

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

"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."

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

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

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."

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."

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

"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."

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."

"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."

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

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."

Women and HIV/AIDS in the United States, July 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."

"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."

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

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

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.

"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."

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

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."

"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."

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."

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

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

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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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!"

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."

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.

"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

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."

"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."

"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."

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

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."
  
• Related postings on financial system

New Technology Emerges to Archive Web Pages by John Adams

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

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. 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

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 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."

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

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."

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

National Science Board Science and Engineering Indicators 2012

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

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."

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."

"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."

"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."

• 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

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."

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."

• 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

"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."

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 - 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."

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.

"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..."

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."

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)

"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."

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."

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."

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

"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."

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."

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."

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."

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.

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 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."

"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."

"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."

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."

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."

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.

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."

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."

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).

"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."

"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."

"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 - Naomi Korn, Strategic Content Alliance IPR Consultant, March 2011

"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."

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."

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

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

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)

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

"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."

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

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 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."

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."

"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."

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

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

The Wealth Report 2012, Knight Frank, April 2012

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."

2012 Faculty Salary Survey - Interactive Database - How much 1,251 colleges paid their faculty members

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."

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."

"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.

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

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

"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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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.

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

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

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."

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."

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.

"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 - 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

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."

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."

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"

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."

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

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."

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.

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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."

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."

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

Amid Winter Blooms, Wondering What That Means for Spring

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.

"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."

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."

"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."

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

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)."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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."

"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."

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

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."

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

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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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.

2011 Global Go To Think Tank Index, January 2012

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."

"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."

• Interactive Cybersecurity Workforce Framework
  
• Summary of Cybersecurity Framework
  
• Cybersecurity Framework Comments Template

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.

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.

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."

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."

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."

Programmable Web Services Directory of over 100 government [local, state and federal] APIs released in 2011.

• Over 2,000 APIs Added in 2011: Social, Telephony, Open Government
  
• See also How the Internet of Things Is Turning Cities Into Living Organisms - "When city services can autonomously go online and digest information from the cloud, they can reach a level of performance never before seen." December 6, 2011

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)."

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."

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."

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."

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."

What the Great Recession Wrought: The State of the U.S. in 3 Years of Polls

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."

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.

"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."

"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."

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."

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.

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."

Enhancing Personnel Reliability among Individuals with Access to Select Agents, Report of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), December 2011

"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."

It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed, December 21, 2011

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)."

"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."

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.

"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)."

• See also Brookings - Hamilton Project: What is Happening to America's Less-Skilled Workers? The Importance of Education and training in Today's Economy, December 2011
  
• Related postings on financial system

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]

State of the Federal Web Report, December 16, 2011. Produced by the .gov Reform Task Force

Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, December 15, 2011. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

"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."

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

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

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."

"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."

"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."

• Overview of Newton Papers held at Cambridge University Library (from Manuscripts Department website)
  
• History of Isaac Newton's Papers (from Newton Project website)

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."

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."

Twitter and the Campaign - How the Discussion on Twitter Varies from Blogs and News Coverage And Ron Paul’s Twitter Triumph, December 8, 2011

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, Institute for Energy Research (IER)

A mandate to preserve - Assessing the inaugural Newspaper Archive Summit, by Victoria McCargar

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."

"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:

• NIST Special Publication 500-293, US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0 (Draft), Volume I High-Priority Requirements to Further USG Agency Cloud Computing Adoption
  
• NIST Special Publication 500-293, US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0 (Draft), Volume II Useful Information for Cloud Adopters

"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 is the definitive list of wealth in America, profiling and ranking the country's richest citizens by their estimated net worths."

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!

"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."

"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."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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."

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."

"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

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."

• Army Professional Reading Program
  
• Marine Corps Professional Reading List
  
• Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Library
  
• Navy Professional Reading Program
  
• Air Force Professional Reading Program
  
• Joint Forces Staff College Commandant's Professional Reading List
  
• U.S. Pacific Command Reading List

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."

"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."

"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."

• Shale Gas: Policy Context - Resources for the Future’s, Center for Energy Economics and Policy (CEEP), Dr. Alan Krupnick, CEEP Director
  
• Managing the Risks of Shale Gas: Identifying a Pathway toward Responsible Development, Sheila M. Olmstead, Fellow, Resources for the Future
  
• Fracing: Basics and Concerns Towards a Responsible Policy for the Development of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources, Prof. Mukul M. Sharma
  Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
  
• Identifying the Sources of Fugitive Methane Associated with Shale Gas Development - Karlis Muehlenbachs, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada
  
• Water Quality Issues Associated with Shale-Gas Development, Jim Saiers, Professor of Hydrology and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

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."

The New, Convoluted Life Cycle Of A Newspaper Story, by Lauren Rabaino

First Joint Session of Working Groups I and II IPCC SREX Summary for Policymakers, November 18, 2011

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."

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."

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."

Strength through Global Leadership and Engagement: U.S. Higher Education in the 21st Century November 2011

"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..."

How Mainstream Media Outlets Use Twitter Content Analysis Shows an Evolving Relationship - November 14, 2011

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."

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."

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."

"Northwest Government Information Network Handouts: Fall 2011, updated November 3, 2011. Fall 2011 featured Linda Clark, Seattle Regional Office, U.S. Census Bureau as our main speaker. She came to provide us with some training on how to use the newly revamped American Factfinder 2. Below are the handouts she used for her presentation.

• 2010 Census Products at a Glance
  
• 2010 Standard Data Products -- Descriptions
  
• American Community Survey Data Release Timetable
  
• American Community Survey Topics Table Codes
  
• American Factfinder 2: Search and Navigation Tips
  
• Are You in a Survey or Census?
  
• Census Geography Hierarchy (with 2010 Statistical Area Criteria)
  
• Comparison: Census Bureau Demographic Programs
  
• I Didn't Know the Census Bureau Did That! Mining for Data Linked to the Census Bureau's Home Page
  
• The New American Factfinder (AFF2)
  
• U.S. Census Bureau: Three Demographic Programs

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.

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.
Permanent Link

The Rising Age Gap in Economic Well-Being, The Old Prosper Relative to the Young, November 7, 2011

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."

'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

"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."

Brookings/Hamilton Project - Unemployment and Earnings Losses: The Long-Term Impacts of The Great Recession, November 2011

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].

Charles M. Vest, National Academy of Engineering: The Next Generation Do we need more engineers?

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."

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

Nothing Ventured: The Crisis in Clean Tech Investment, by Joshua Freed and Mae Stevens, November 2011

The Atlantic - World War II in Photos - Alan Taylor

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 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.

A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age (October 31, 2011)

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

"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."

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."

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

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.

"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."

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

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."

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:

• AWEA Quarterly Market Reports
  
• AWEA U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Reports
  
• AWEA U.S. State Fact Sheets
  
• AWEA Wind Energy Fact Sheets

"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."

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.

• Multifamily Applicant Risk Index (MAR Index) - Third Quarter 2011
  
• Multifamily Applicant Risk Index (MAR Index) - Second Quarter 2011
  
• Multifamily Applicant Risk Index (MAR Index) - First Quarter 2011
  
• Related postings on financial system

"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."

Technology and the Innovation Economy, Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies. October 19, 2011.

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."

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."

These documents via governmentattic.org:

• National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) internal agency records which discuss the merits of iPads and/or similar pad/tablet computer devices for agency employee use, 2011
  
• Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) internal agency records which discuss the merits of iPads and/or similar pad/tablet computer devices for agency employee use, 2011
  
• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) internal agency records which discuss the merits of iPads and/or similar pad/tablet computer devices for agency employee use, 2011
  
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) internal agency records which discuss the merits of iPads and/or similar pad/tablet computer devices for agency employee use, 2011
  
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) internal agency records which discuss the merits of iPads and/or similar pad/tablet computer devices for agency employee use, 2011

Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits, comScore, October 2011.

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

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, EdwardJones, October 2011

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."

Kuttner, Ran, Conflict-Specialists-As-Leaders: Revisiting the Role of the Conflict Specialist from a Leadership Perspective (September 9, 2011). Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2011.

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."

Use of Dashboards in Government, by Sukumar Ganapati, Florida International University, IBM Center for the Business of Government

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.

Afghanistan 10 years on: Slow progress and failed promises, Amnesty International

Conflict in Organizations, by Olivier Serrat, Asian Development Bank (ADB) Knowledge Solutions

Six Provocations for Big Data, Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford

Urban Informatics Research and Insights for Libraries, Cultural Industries and Innovation Systems, by Marcus Foth, September 2011

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

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?"

Fighting Poverty in a Bad Economy, Americans Move in with Relatives, By Rakesh Kochhar and D’Vera Cohn. October 3, 2011

Rhett Butler, A Revolutionary Technology is Unlocking Secrets of the Forest

Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution. Request for Proposal (Event-6994)

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."

"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, 51st Edition. A Review of Trends and Activity in the Investment Company Industry.

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."

Coast Guard Has Taken Steps To Strengthen Information Technology Management, but Challenges Remain, OIG-11-108, September 2011.

"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."

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."

Taking Stock and Making Hay: Archival Collections Assessment, by Martha O'Hara Conway, University of Michigan, and Merrilee Proffitt, OCLC Research

"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."

Food Hardship in America 2010 Households with and without Children, August 2011

"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."

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."

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.

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.

Microsoft Becomes First Corporate User of Standard XML-Based Bank Statements

The Skills, Tools, and Perspectives Behind Great Data Science Groups, DJ Patil, 2011 O’Reilly Media

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

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."

The Global Biomedical Industry: Preserving U.S. Leadership
Executive Summary & Research Findings - Ross C. DeVol, Armen Bedroussian, and Benjamin Yeo, September 2011

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

Bayesian Dynamic Factor Analysis of a Simple Monetary DSGE Model, Maxym Kryshko, September 01, 2011

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

Growth Spillover Dynamics from Crisis to Recovery, Hélène Poirson and Sebastian Weber, September 2011

CRS: Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations, Bruce R. Lindsay, Analyst in American National Goverment, September 6, 2011

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."

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]

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."

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."

"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."

"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

• The FTC staff report that calls on industry to create a Do Not Track mechanism
  
• FTC guidelines for behavioral targeting
  
• IAB Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
  
• Neelie Kroes, EU Commission, Online privacy - reinforcing trust and confidence
  
• Do Not Track Cookbook: approaches to data collection in DNT-friendly ways
  
• IETF proposal for Do Not Track
  
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) discussion of Do Not Track
  
• The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) DNT proposal
  
• Mozilla Do Not Track Field Guide
  
• Microsoft Web Tracking Protection, member submission to W3C

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

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."

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."

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."

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."

"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."

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."

Citation by Citation, New Maps Chart Hot Research and Scholarship's Hidden Terrain, by Jennifer Howard

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.

The New York Times - 9/11: The Reckoning, America and the World A Decade After 9/11

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."

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

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."

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."

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."

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."

"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.

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."

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."

"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."

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

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."

"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."

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."

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)."

The Impact of Economics Blogs, David McKenzie and Berk Özler, August 2011

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

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."

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."

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

24% Growth from 2009 to 2010 - Hispanic College Enrollment Spikes, Narrowing Gaps with Other Groups, by Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate, Pew Hispanic Center

"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.

"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."

Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance by Maria Popova.

International Bloggers and Internet Control, Hal Roberts, Ethan Zuckerman, Jillian York, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, August 2011

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."

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.”

"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."

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"

Pronunciation Book - spoken pronunciation of words, via YouTube (worth visiting)

The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers, by Jack Shafer