Social Transmission and Viral Culture, by Jonah Berger, assistant professor of Marketing and Katherine L. Milkman, assistant professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

"Science Fair season is rapidly approaching, and Cool Science can help! A good science fair project begins with an understanding of the scientific method and ends with sure-fire ways to communicate science research. At Cool Science, you can find a resource developed by the University of Washington to teach the scientific method to elementary and middle school students. Or you can let Swarthmore College help you teach students how to design clear and concise scientific posters. Or you can browse through Ask a Scientist's links to pages with science fair ideas...At Cool Science, we entertain questions of all kinds (Ask a Scientist). We encourage young scientists to get their hands dirty-virtually (Curious Kids). We offer high school and college students new approaches to cutting-edge science topics (BioInteractive). We provide educators with a host of innovative resources they can use in their classrooms (For Educators). We reveal what it takes to become a scientist (Becoming a Scientist). And we showcase an undergraduate science discovery project that may one day change the way science is taught (SEA)."

"The Conservation Almanac covers land area conservation activity across the United States. The project grew out of the many requests The Trust for Public Land has received for data to understand the "context" for land conservation and the growing conservation finance movement. {It] is a work in progress with data updated monthly. All states contain data from 1998 to 2005. As of Jan 2010, data for the following states have been updated through 2008: Montana, Oregon, Massachusetts, Florida, and Missouri. Those states also allow users to display data and conservation activity on the interactive map. Users can visualize where conservation investments are being made, how a state's conservation activity compares with other states, and where new policy developments are taking place. For the first time, users can view county-level conservation spending."

List of 100 Best Companies to Work For

"Every year, 20 million hectares of rainforest — an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined — are cut down, releasing millions of tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Without action now, most of the world’s tropical forests will be lost by this century’s end, as will important species, natural resources, local livelihoods and the opportunity to slow climate change. The Nature Conservancy is taking action. We’re incorporating innovative, market-oriented incentives for forest conservation and working with governments and industry to demonstrate the value of avoiding deforestation and its global consequences."

News release: "Microsoft Corp. and the National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced an agreement that will offer individual researchers and research groups selected through NSF's merit review process free access to advanced cloud computing resources. By extending the capabilities of powerful, easy-to-use PC applications via Microsoft cloud services, the program is designed to help broaden research capabilities, foster collaborative research communities, and accelerate scientific discovery. Projects will be awarded and managed by NSF. More details about funding opportunities are available here."

"Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained? In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, FRONTLINE presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. Continuing a line of investigation she began with the 2008 FRONTLINE report Growing Up Online, award-winning producer Rachel Dretzin embarks on a journey to understand the implications of living in a world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations. "I'm amazed at the things my kids are able to do online, but I'm also a little bit panicked when I realize that no one seems to know where all this technology is taking us, or its long-term effects," says Dretzin."

Hunger in America 2010 National Report, Mathematica Policy Research Inc., February 2010.

Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine, by Damon Horowitz and Sepandar D. Kamvar [via Abi Morgan]

Privacy Impact Assessment for the Office of Operations Coordination and Planning Haiti Social Media Disaster Monitoring Initiative, January 21, 2010: "The Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS), National Operations Center (NOC), has launched a Haiti Social Media Disaster Monitoring Initiative (Initiative) to assist the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and its components involved in the response, recovery, and rebuilding effort resulting from the recent earthquake and after-effects in Haiti. The NOC is using this vehicle to fulfill its statutory responsibility to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture for the federal Government, and for those state, local, and tribal governments, as appropriate, assisting with the response, recovery, and rebuilding effort in Haiti. OPS may also share information with international partners and the private sector where necessary and appropriate for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The NOC is only monitoring publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites, and message boards to collect information used in providing situational awareness and to establish a common operating picture....[a partial list] of the types of sites that the NOC is reviewing in order to improve its situational awareness and common operating picture related to Haiti earthquake [is available on last page of document].

Endangered Species - News librarians are a dying breed [Preface - I certainly hope not, having been one and respecting the profession immensely]: "According to data collected by Michelle Quigley, a researcher at the Palm Beach Post, over 250 news librarians (sometimes called news researchers) lost their jobs in the U.S. since 2007. Membership in the Special Libraries Association News Division, an organization for news librarians, has fallen to below 400 from over 1,000 in the 1990s. Entire news libraries have been shuttered and replaced by consultants or outside vendors."

Commissioner Copps' Remarks at the State of the Net Preconference of the Congressional Internet Caucus, January 26, 2010:

"The indicators included in Science and Engineering Indicators
2010 derive from a variety of national, international, public, and private sources and may not be strictly comparable in a statistical sense. As noted in the text, some data are weak, and the metrics and models relating them to each other and to economic and social outcomes invite further development. Thus, the emphasis is on broad trends; individual data points and findings should be interpreted with care. The overview focuses on the trend in the United States and many other parts of the world toward the development of more knowledge-intensive economies, in which research, its commercial exploitation, and other intellectual work play a growing role. Industry and government play key roles in
these changes. The overview examines how these U.S. science and
technology (S&T) patterns and trends affect the position of the United States, using broadly comparable data wherever possible for the United States, the European Union (EU), Japan, China, and selected other Asian economies (the Asia-9: India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam)."

Kaiser Family Foundation resource links: "With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth, according to a study released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours. The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today.

Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage: "The institution of marriage has undergone significant changes in recent decades as women have outpaced men in education and earnings growth. These unequal gains have been accompanied by gender role reversals in both the spousal characteristics and the economic benefits of marriage. A larger share of men in 2007, compared with their 1970 counterparts, are married to women whose education and income exceed their own, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of demographic and economic trend data. A larger share of women are married to men with less education and income."

"Through entrepreneurship education, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), helps young people from low-income communities build skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity. Since 1987, NFTE has reached more than 280,000 young people, and currently has programs in 21 states and 12 countries. NFTE has more than 1,500 active Certified Entrepreneurship Teachers, and is continually improving its innovative entrepreneurship curriculum."

Earth Policy Institute: "The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004."

AARP - Connecting and Giving: A Report on How Mid-life and Older Americans Spend Their Time, Make Connections and Build Communities, January 2010.

World Resources Institute: "On January 20th, sixty corporations begin measuring the greenhouse gas emissions of their products and supply chains by road testing a new global framework that is part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative. Developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the two new GHG Protocol standards – the Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard – provide methods to account for emissions associated with individual products across their life-cycles and of corporations across their value chains."

UN Permanent Forum Origin and Development Report: State of the World's Indigenous Peoples, January 2010.

News release: "This report was written as a companion report to "A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process," a report commissioned by OCLC Research and produced by Key Perspectives Ltd, a UK library and scholarly publishing consultancy. Published in December 2009, the Key Perspectives report was written after studying the role of research libraries in higher education research assessment regimes in five countries: the Republic of Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia. This companion report provides a summary of the key findings of the Key Perspectives study, with some context for the recent increase in library involvement in research assessment, as well as recommendations for research libraries.

• Research Assessment and the Role of the Library
  
• A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process
  
• Survey of Current Practice in Research Assessment Activity

TechCrunch - Research firm Outsell has published its third annual News Users’ report [fee only], which is based on a survey about the online and offline news preferences of 2,787 US news consumers. The Outsell report unsurprisingly predicts ongoing, steep drops in US newspapers’ print circulation as consumers continue to head online for news consumption and sharing, forecasting 3.5 percent annual declines in both daily and Sunday circulation by 2012. Interestingly enough, the research also talks of what is referred to as the “dramatic effect” aggregators like Google and Yahoo have had on print and online readership...“Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it’s also taking a significant share away. A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers’ individual sites.”

Report: Social Networking in Government: Opportunities & Challenges, Human Capital Institute, January 2010

The discovery of Large-billed Reed Warblers Acrocephalus orinus in north-eastern Afghanistan, BirdingASIA 12 (2009): 42–45

WSJ: "In a texting donation, a person types a so-called short-code such as 90999 and then types in "HAITI" to donate a preset amount of $10. The cellphone user then gets a text back asking that they confirm the donation. After a confirmation, the person receives a text saying, "Thanks! $10 charged to your phone bill for Red Cross Int'l Relief." But no money moves until a person pays their cellphone bill to cover the pledge. The money then is routed through a carrier that aggregates the donations before dispatching them to one of the foundations. Those then move the money to agencies such as the Red Cross. Meantime, officials warned that hundreds of charities that may not be equipped to help often try to raise money and others are simply fraudulent scams. The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Americans to ignore unsolicited emails and to be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims."

Person Finder: Haiti Earthquake, embeddable application:
What is your situation? / I'm looking for someone / I have information about someone.
See also:

• Open Street Map Project's Haiti Earthquake Map
  
• Free access to Haiti Earthquake imagery through DigitalGlobe's Crisis Event Service
  
• Haiti 2010 Sahana Disaster Response Portal [all via Brady Forrest]
  
• and Haiti Earthquake Recovery / The New York Times on Facebook

A Perfect Storm Brewing: Budget Cuts Threaten Library Services at Time of Increased Demand, January 2010.

A Year After Obama’s Election Blacks Upbeat about Black Progress, Prospects, January 12, 2010

"According to a new report prepared by the American Library Association (ALA), libraries of all types are feeling the pinch of the economic downturn while managing sky-high use. Compiled from a broad range of available sources, The Condition of Libraries: 1999-2009 presents U.S. economic trends (2009), and summarizes trends in public, school and academic libraries across several library measures, including expenditures, staffing and services. The report also highlights trends in services provided to libraries by library cooperatives and consortia."

Project for Excellence in Journalism - How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City, January 11, 2010.

New Deal Denialism, Eric Rauchway, Dissent Winter 2010

"CareerCast.com's 2010 Jobs Rated report offers a comprehensive analysis of 200 different jobs – from Accountant to Zoologist – giving each a unique ranking based on factual analysis and hard data, not guesswork. If you're entering (or re-entering) the job market and want to avoid selecting the wrong career, our rankings can help you make a stronger, more informed decision, both for today and the long-term." Note: Librarian ranks 46th and attorney 80th. See also the 2010 Jobs Rated Methodology.

The New York Review of Books - Who's in Big Brother's Database? By James Bamford - The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the, National Security Agency, by Matthew M. Aid, Bloomsbury.

New York Times: "On Jan. 7, 2010, President Obama addressed the findings of a review into the intelligence and screening failures prior to a Nigerian man’s attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day. The White House released a declassified account of the review, as well as a list of actions the president ordered various government agencies to adopt to better secure the safety of the American people...The White House released the report – detailing what the government knew about the terrorist incident and what should have been done to prevent it – as an attempt to illustrate that the administration is conducting its business with transparency and airing mistakes in an effort to show the American people that they will be corrected."

• Declassified Account of the Terror Plot Review
  
• Actions Ordered to Agencies to Strengthen National Security

News release: "Shareholders of Nike, Gatorade and other Tiger Woods sponsors lost a collective $5 to $12 billion in the wake of the scandal involving his extramarital affairs, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis."

Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is closing a grant program that financed a series of high-profile university software projects, leaving some worried about a vacuum of support for open-source ventures. Mellon’s decade-old Research in Information Technology program, or RIT, helped bankroll a catalog of freely available software that includes Sakai, a course-management system used by Stanford University and the University of Michigan; Kuali, a financial-management program recently rolled out at Colorado State University; and Zotero, a program for managing research sources used by millions."

2009 Annual Survey Results - Student Engagement in Law School: Enhancing Student Learning

"Download the new report The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don’t have to cost the Earth, first published in July 2009. The report presents the results of the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index, based on improved data for 143 countries around the world – representing 99 per cent of the world’s population. The results shows that globally we are still far from achieving good lives within the Earth’s finite resource limits. But although the evidence shows that we are heading in the wrong direction, the achievements of some countries around the world provide reasons to believe that we can achieve true sustainable well-being."

An Economic Evaluation of the War on Cancer, by Eric C. Sun et al.: "For decades, the US public and private sectors have committed substantial resources towards cancer research, but the societal payoff has not been well-understood. We quantify the value of recent gains in cancer survival, and analyze the distribution of value among various stakeholders. Between 1988 and 2000, life expectancy for cancer patients increased by roughly four years, and the average willingness-to-pay for these survival gains was roughly $322,000. Improvements in cancer survival during this period created 23 million additional life-years and roughly $1.9 trillion of additional social value, implying that the average life-year was worth approximately $82,000 to its recipient. Health care providers and pharmaceutical companies appropriated 5-19% of this total, with the rest accruing to patients. The share of value flowing to patients has been rising over time. These calculations suggest that from the patient's point of view, the rate of return to R&D investments against cancer has been substantial."

WSJ.com: "An Arctic blast swept across a large swath of the U.S. on Monday, sending temperatures plunging from Minnesota to Florida and bringing a bone-chilling start to the first workweek of the year...Temperatures fell below zero from the Great Plains to the Northeast, following a weekend of heavy snow. The reading of minus-16 degrees in St. Joseph, Mo., Monday marked the city's coldest Jan. 4 since 1947, while minus-37 in International Falls, Minn., Sunday was the coldest there since 1911, said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. Dallas, Jacksonville, Fla., and Little Rock, Ark., fell nearly 20 degrees below their average temperatures for this time of year on Monday, he said. The cold snap is one of the nation's most widespread since January 1985, according to meteorologists at Accuweather.com. While the cold is expected to ease slightly starting Thursday, this winter is on track to be one of the coldest in the past decade or two, said Ken Reeves, director of forecasting operations at Accuweather.com"

The Secret Language of Elephants: "For two decades, a group of wild African elephants has been watched over, studied and protected by their own guardian angel: an extraordinary American scientist named Andrea Turkalo. Turkalo's own story is pretty amazing, but not nearly as compelling as the insights into elephant behavior her research has revealed, especially when it comes to "the secret language of elephants."

Security in the Ether - Information technology's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud--and prove we can trust it. By David Talbot, Technology Review, January/February 2010 [Dan Mitchel]

Google Scholar: A New Way to Search for Cases and Related Legal Publications - Courtney Minick and David Tsai provide an overview of the new features Google Scholar provides for the legal research market.

Harnessing Free-Flowing Competitive Intelligence Through Social Media Sites: "For competitive intelligence research purposes, traditional Web sites (read Web 1.0) have offered a range of valuable information for those seeking to get a leg up on the competition. But that information has had its limits—enter a new breed of Web resources that break out of the traditional information boundaries." Greg Lambert is Library & Records Manager at King & Spalding in Houston, TX.

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is Europe's largest HR development professional body: "This factsheet gives introductory guidance. It: summarises the literature on emotional intelligence; looks at its potential value in the workplace; considers whether it can be learned; asks whether it is just another way of describing long-established competencies; includes the CIPD viewpoint."

"Mercer’s H1N1 pages are meant to provide you with access to current "information and resources to help manage the risks. Now, you can see the results of our survey - Influenza A (H1N1): How is your organization coping? - that gathered information from nearly 1000 companies to see what they are doing to plan, communicate and minimize their risk in the case of this spreading pandemic."

"The mission of the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP), a nonprofit charity watchdog and information service, is to maximize the effectiveness of every dollar contributed to charity by providing donors with the information they need to make more informed giving decisions. Goals: To research and evaluate the efficiency, accountability and governance of nonprofit organizations; to educate the public about the importance of wise giving; to inform the public of wasteful or unethical practices of nonprofits and provide recognition to highly effective and ethical charities; to advise AIP members and conduct special investigations and evaluations of nonprofits; to expand and re-define our programs periodically to meet the continuing challenge of keeping the contributor informed."

Aquacalypse Now - The End of Fish, by Daniel Pauly

Green Protectionism in the European Union: How Europe’s Biofuels Policy and the Renewable Energy Directive Violate WTO Commitments, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)

Emerging Pathogens Institute: "University of Florida researchers at work on a malaria elimination study in Africa have become the first to predict the spread of the disease using cell phone records. The scientists analyzed more than 21 million calls to determine how often residents of Zanzibar travel and where they go. A semi-autonomous region composed of two islands off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa, Zanzibar has drastically reduced malaria in recent years. Its government commissioned the study as part of deliberations on whether to launch a total elimination campaign."

New York Times: "83 children, ages 7, 9 and 11...participated in a study on children and keyword searching. Sponsored by Google and developed by the University of Maryland and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the research was aimed at discerning the differences between how children and adults search and identify the barriers children face when trying to retrieve information...When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools."

News release: "Nearly 60,000 books prized by historians, writers and genealogists, many too old and fragile to be safely handled, have been digitally scanned as part of the first-ever mass book-digitization project [which is called Digitizing American Imprints] of the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC), the world’s largest library. Anyone who wants to learn about the early history of the United States, or track the history of their own families, can read and download these books for free...digitized books can be accessed through the Library’s catalog Web site and the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free online digital library."

The Customer Is Always Right - Since founding Amazon in 1994, he has revolutionized retailing. Now he's out to transform how we read. By Daniel Lyons | NEWSWEEK.

TIME - 50 Best Websites 2009: "50 offerings that are indispensable to navigating, enjoying yourself, shopping or just killing time on the Web."

Forbes: "If people can read this story a millennium from now, they may have Tadahiro Kuroda to thank. Kuroda, an electrical engineering professor at Keio University in Japan, has invented what he calls a "Digital Rosetta Stone," a wireless memory chip sealed in silicon that he says can store data for 1,000 years. As technology changes, storage goes stale. Can your computer read your old 51/4-inch floppies? Data typically has to be put on new storage systems every 20 years or less for it to be accessible. The digital migration costs time and money. Storing and maintaining a digital master of a very high-resolution movie, for example, costs $12,500 a year; archiving a standard film costs $1,000 a year."

Forbes: Eyeglasses are as old as the Renaissance, but even now we still need trained professionals to fit them. That's no problem for the Western world, which has around one optometrist for roughly every 10,000 people. But it's a nightmare for developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, there's only one optometrist for around 1 million people. The solution, according to retired Oxford University physicist Josh Silver, is a neat pair of self-adjustable specs that obviates the need for white-coated experts--and he wants to bring them to 1 billion people by 2020."

Wired Science: "When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meets in 2014, tipping points — or tipping elements, in academic vernacular — will get much more attention. Scientists still disagree about which planetary systems are extra-sensitive to climate shifts, but the possibility can’t be ignored. “The problem with tipping elements is that if any of them tips, it will be a real catastrophe. None of them are small,” said Anders Levermann, a climate physicist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Levermann’s article on potential disruptions of South Asia’s monsoon cycles was featured in a series of tipping element research reviews, published December 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

LLRX.com: Understanding the Limitations - and Maximizing the Value- of eBooks: The holiday season is here, and many signs suggest that thousands of people are finding themselves new owners of electronic book ("eBook") readers. Whether it's an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, a Sony Reader, or any of the less heavily advertised devices currently on the market, electronic book readers are being trumpeted as a product that has finally hit the mainstream after years on the bleeding-edge. eBook readers, in fact, do have the potential to radically reshape how books are read. Equally important, according to Conrad J. Jacoby, they are already reshaping how books are bought and owned.

Project Management - A Law Librarian Survival Skill: Carol A. Watson discusses how effective project management requires considerable thought and preparation before actually initiating the work of the project. Although many of us are eager to jump into the tasks related to a project, it is important to remember that careful planning will provide the groundwork for a successful project outcome. Carol reminds us, "Remember, it takes time to save time," and she will be writing on this overall topic in forthcoming issues of LLRX.com

News release: "The combination of near-record Arctic sea-ice loss and continued development of oil and gas in proposed polar bear critical habitat spells double trouble for Alaska’s polar bears, according to a new report issued by the National Wildlife Federation and the Northern Alaska Environmental Center. Mapping out recently proposed polar bear critical habitat relative to approved offshore oil development and recent trends in sea-ice decline, Double Trouble: Melting Arctic Sea Ice and Offshore Oil Development highlights the multiple threats facing polar bears in Alaska."

Robin Wauters: "Italian writer, blogger and photographer Vincenzo Cosenza has for the second time put together a visualization that shows the most popular social networks around the world on a map, based on the most recent traffic data (December 2009) as measured by Alexa & Google Trends for Websites."

Follow up to Google Scholar Now Includes Free Case Law Database and Bridging the DiGital Divide: A New Vendor in Town? Google Scholar Now Includes Case Law, this related article - Google Scholar: A New Way to Search for Cases and Related Legal Publications.

Eastern, New Age Beliefs Widespread - Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, December 2009

A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement - On Friday, November 13, 2009, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed an Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) in the copyright infringement litigation concerning the Google Library Project. The amendments proposed by the parties are designed to address objections made by the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to the original proposed settlement agreement. This paper by Jonathan Band describes the ASA's major changes, with emphasis on those changes relevant to libraries.

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Search settlement,
this letter to DOJ Antitrust Division: "The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries (the Library Associations) write to express our views concerning how the United States should respond to the Amended Settlement Agreement filed by the parties on November 13, 2009. In brief, we believe that active supervision of the settlement by the court and the United States will protect the public interest far more than any additional restructuring of the settlement."

Jose Antonio Vargas, Technology and Innovations editor, Huffington Post: "This is the transcript of a wide-ranging, two-part, three-hour interview with Al Gore, touching on the impact of technology and the Internet in politics, both in the U.S. and abroad; the state of the mainstream media and the left and right blogosphere; the role of the Web in spreading the facts about global warming, among others topics. The interviews were held in early and late October, first in the San Francisco offices of Current TV, then in his geothermal system-powered home in Nashville, which is certified as Gold LEED, one of the highest ratings for green design. An excerpt of the Q&A appeared in the Dec. 10, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone."

Deep Web Research 2010: Marcus P. Zillman is a an internet search expert whose extensive knowledge of how to leverage the "invisible" or "deep" web is exemplified in this guide. The Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats. Current search engines are able to locate around 200 billion pages. Marcus identifies sources to mitigate the odds on behalf of serious searchers.

Melting snow and ice: a call for action, A report commissioned by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore and Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre, Centre for Ice, Climate and Ecosystems, Norwegian Polar Institute, Polar Environmental Centre, NO–9296 Tromsø, Norway.

How to Learn Your Credit Score, by Andrea Coobes, WSJ

Pew Hispanic Center Report - Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America, December 2009 (156 pages, PDF)

National Alliance for Caregiving in Collaboration with AARP: "Caregiving is still mostly a woman's job and many women are putting their career and financial futures on hold as they juggle part-time caregiving and full-time job requirements. This is the reality reported in Caregiving in the U.S. 2009, the most comprehensive examination to date of caregiving in America. The first national profile of caregivers, Family Caregiving in the U.S. was published in 1997, and an updated version of the study, Caregiving in the U.S., was reported in 2004. The sweeping 2009 study of the legions of people caring for younger adults, older adults, and children with special needs reveals that 29 percent of the U.S. adult population, or 65.7 million people, are caregivers, including 31 percent of all households. These caregivers provide an average of 20 hours of care per week. The 2009 reports also begin to trend the findings from all three waves of the study."

"Here we go again … our latest list of the 100 best websites sees short attention spans, the rise of Twitter, more browser wars and celebrity gossip sites setting the news agenda."

Shawn Moynihan: "Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication. An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co., was made Thursday morning as staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down...Editor & Publisher was launched in 1901 but traces its history to 1884 -- it merged with the magazine The Journalist, which had started on that earlier date."

News release: "Companies are still lagging in appointing women to board seats and very few women hold Executive Officer positions, according to the 2009 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2009 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners. “The time is up for ‘give it time.’ Women are approximately 50 percent of the labor pool and influence over 70 percent of household spending in the United States. It’s just smart business to include women in the decision-making process, and companies should implement strategies that set targets and timetables to do so,” said Ilene H. Lang, President & Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst."

New York Times: "Google on Tuesday introduced a new approach to presenting news online by topic, developed with The New York Times and The Washington Post, and said that if the experiment succeeded, it would be made available to all publishers. The announcement of the “living stories” project shows Google collaborating with newspapers at a time when some major publishers have characterized the company as a threat. Google has also taken steps recently to project an image of itself as a friend to the industry."

• "The Living Stories project is an experiment in presenting news, one designed specifically for the online environment. The project was developed by Google in collaboration with two of the country's leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post. [Note: See Living Stories FAQ]
  
• All in one place: "Complete coverage of an on-going story is gathered together and prioritized on one URL. You can now quickly navigate between news articles, opinion pieces and features without long waits for pages to load."
  
• Easy to explore: "Each story has an evolving summary of current developments as a well as an interactive timeline of critical events. Stories can be explored by themes, significant participants or multimedia."
  
• Smarter reading: "Updates to the story are highlighted each time you come back, and older news is summarized."
Permanent Link

Annual report to the nation on the status of cancer, 1975-2006, featuring colorectal cancer trends and impact of interventions (risk factors, screening, and treatment) to reduce future rates (p NA)
Brenda K. Edwards, Elizabeth Ward, Betsy A. Kohler, Christie Eheman, Ann G. Zauber, Robert N. Anderson, Ahmedin Jemal, Maria J. Schymura, Iris Lansdorp-Vogelaar, Laura C. Seeff, Marjolein van Ballegooijen, S. Luuk Goede, Lynn A. G. Ries. Published Online: Dec 7 2009 5:01PM
DOI: 10.1002/cncr.24760

WSJ Law Blog: What Makes a Good Law School Exam Answer? Law Profs Weigh In, by Ashby Jones.

Brenner, Robert. (2009). What is Good for Goldman Sachs is Good for America The Origins of the Present Crisis. UC Los Angeles: Center for Social Theory and Comparative History. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0sg0782h

"The Federal Trade Commission will hold two days of workshops on December 1 and 2, 2009, to explore how the Internet has affected journalism. The workshop will assemble representatives from print, online, broadcast and cable news organizations, academics, consumer advocates, bloggers, and other new media representatives."

• Opening Remarks of Chairman Jon Leibowitz "Creative Destruction” or Just “Destruction”, How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?
  
• Federal Register Notice
  
• Agenda
  
• Panelist Bios
  
• Public Comments

A Just and Sustainable Recovery: Bread for the World Institute’s 2010 Hunger Report "is now available online. This year’s report focuses on green jobs and domestic economy, but still includes international statistics on food security, poverty, and development. The 2010 report includes new data on economic mobility, housing, health and climate change." [Christine Matthews, Librarian - Bread for the World Institute]

Access to Social Websites in The Legal Environment - Fall 2009 - Part 1: Survey of Law Librarians in Selected Firms, County/State Law Libraries and Law Schools.

"Zeer is a food information resource that makes it easy to find safe food. It helps people save time, stay safe, learn particular diets and live better lives. Finding the right foods for a special diet can be difficult. Zeer can help. Zeer is unlike any food information resource out there. Built upon a database of over 30,000 food items, Zeer is not a stagnant list of safe foods, but a resource that is continually updated so people can discover new food and stay safe. We make it easy to search or browse over 30,000 food products, each with its own dedicated page complete with ingredient and nutrition facts."

Guardian UK - From young Mozart to black holes, 350 years of the Royal Society go online: "Britain's academy of the sciences marks anniversary with online archive including letters from Newton and Captain Cook."

The 24th Annual Survey of Toy Safety, U.S. PIRG Education Fund, November 2009: "Toys should bring kids joy, but sometimes they bring injury, serious harm, or even death. This holiday season, as we have for the past 23 years, U.S. PIRG is working to reduce the number of injuries and tragedies caused by dangerous toys. The 24th annual Trouble in Toyland survey focuses on three categories of toy hazards:

• toys that may pose choking hazards,
  
• toys that are excessively loud, and
  
• toys that contain the toxic chemicals lead and phthalates.

The 3/50 Project: "Think about which three independently owned businesses you'd miss most of they were gone. Stop in and say hello. Pick up a little something that will make someone smile. Your contribution is what keeps those businesses around."

"This e-learning site focuses on a critical, but often neglected skill for business, communication, and engineering students, namely visual literacy, or the ability to evaluate, apply, or create conceptual visual representations. After this tutorial, students should be able to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of visual representations, to improve their shortcomings, to use them to create and communicate knowledge, or to devise new ways of representing insights. The didactic approach consists of rooting visualization in its application contexts, i.e. giving students the necessary critical attitude, principles, tools and feedback to develop their own high-quality visualization formats for specific problems (problem-based learning). The students thus learn about the commonalities of good visualization in diverse areas, but also explore the specificities of visualization in their field of specialization (through real-life case studies). They will not only learn by doing, but in doing so contribute new training material for their peers to evaluate (peer learning)."

Harvard Business, Peter Bregman: "The speed with which information hurtles towards us is unavoidable (and it's getting worse). But trying to catch it all is counterproductive. The faster the waves come, the more deliberately we need to navigate. Otherwise we'll get tossed around like so many particles of sand, scattered to oblivion. Never before has it been so important to be grounded and intentional and to know what's important."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search (GBS), Google and the New Digital Future, Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard

News release: "Gartner, Inc. analysts highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2010...Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption."

Federal Communications Commission, Notice of inquiry, November 23, 2009: "This document seeks comment on how to empower parents to help their children take advantage of the opportunities offered by evolving electronic media technologies while at the same time protecting children from the risks inherent in use of these technologies. It asks for comment about the extent to which children are using electronic media today, the benefits and risks this presents, and the ways in which parents, teachers, and children can help reap the benefits while minimizing the risks of using these technologies. It also asks about the effectiveness of media literacy efforts and about how the Commission can assist with efforts being made by other federal agencies that are addressing similar issues."

The Deep Sea World Beyond Sunlight - From the Edge of Darkness to the Black Abyss: Marine Scientists Census 17,500+ Species and Counting: "Census of Marine Life scientists have inventoried an astonishing abundance, diversity and distribution of deep sea species that have never known sunlight – creatures that somehow manage a living in a frigid black world down to 5,000 meters (~3 miles) below the ocean waves. Revealed via deep-towed cameras, sonar and other vanguard technologies, animals known to thrive in an eternal watery darkness now number 17,650, a diverse collection of species ranging from crabs to shrimp to worms. Most have adapted to diets based on meager droppings from the sunlit layer above, others to diets of bacteria that break down oil, sulfur and methane, the sunken bones of dead whales and other implausible foods."

State Variation and Health Reform: A Chartbook - "Health reform initiatives will have differential effects on states. In general, states with more extensive poverty, higher budget shortfalls, lower eligibility levels for public programs, higher rates of uninsured, and more primary care shortages, will be more heavily impacted. This chartbook pulls together data related to state variation in key areas such as major industry types, poverty and unemployment rates and fiscal conditions; health coverage and the uninsured; Medicaid and CHIP eligibility and enrollment; Medicaid spending and financing; access to Health Care; health care costs; and insurance markets."

Free Tools and Applications For More Efficient Online Interaction: Many lawyers understand the importance of networking, but running a law practice takes time and no one ever seems to have enough of it. This factor is one of the main reasons lawyers offer as an excuse to avoid online networking, but Nicole Black proposes how choosing even a few efficient applications from the range of free tools available can streamline and accelerate this marketing process.

Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity - Christopher T. Cross, Taniesha A. Woods, and Heidi Schweingruber, Editors; Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics; National Research Council

Use Google Scholar Advanced Scholar Search to find articles, subject specific articles and patents, legal opinions and journals [Search all legal opinions and journals; Search only US federal court opinions; Search only court opinions from individual states].

• Department Of Veterans Affairs: Improvements Needed in Corrective Action Plans to Remediate Financial Reporting Material Weaknesses, GAO-10-65, November 16, 2009
• Financial Audit: Federal Housing Finance Agency's Fiscal Year 2009 Financial Statements, GAO-10-218, November 16, 2009
• Financial Audit: Securities and Exchange Commission's Financial Statements for Fiscal Years 2009 and 2008, GAO-10-250, November 16, 2009
• Recovery Act: Agencies Are Addressing Broadband Program Challenges, but Actions Are Needed to Improve Implementation, GAO-10-80, November 16, 2009
• Student Achievement: Schools Use Multiple Strategies to Help Students Meet Academic Standards, Especially Schools with Higher Proportions of Low-Income and Minority Students, GAO-10-18, November 16, 2009
• Critical Infrastructure Protection: OMB Leadership Needed to Strengthen Agency Planning Efforts to Protect Federal Cyber Assets, GAO-10-148, October 15, 2009
• Integrity Committee's Process to Address Allegations of Wrongdoing by Inspectors General, GAO-10-63R, October 15, 2009
• Workplace Safety and Health: Enhancing OSHA's Records Audit Process Could Improve the Accuracy of Worker Injury and Illness Data, GAO-10-10, October 15, 2009

News release: "World Wide Web Foundation (Web Foundation), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the Web to empower people, announced the launch of global operations including the existence of its first projects. Speaking at the 2009 Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a Web Foundation board member, unveiled the organization’s new partnerships with VU University Amsterdam (VU) in the Netherlands and CDI (Center for Digital Inclusion) based in Brazil. Web Foundation is delighted to announce a partnership with the VU to expedite “re-greening” initiatives throughout the African continent. This new program, Web Alliance for Re-greening in Africa (W4RA), will train and assist local developers to implement and deploy mobile Web- and voice-based platforms to improve communication between agricultural specialists and farmers in Burkina Faso, Mali and other countries."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, news from the Authors Guild that 14 minutes before before midnight on November 13, 2009, "the parties filed with the Court an Amended Settlement Agreement and a motion for preliminary approval of the amended settlement. The parties' motion also seeks Court approval of a Supplemental Notice which, if approved, will be sent out in early December 2009." Here is a short FAQ.

Cognitive control in media multitaskers - Eyal Ophira, Clifford Nassb, and Anthony D. Wagnerc, Symbolic Systems Program and Department of Communication, and Department of Psychology and Neurosciences Program, Stanford University

How Lawyers Can Address the Challenge of Too Much Information, by Sheldon I. Banoff

TEEB – The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for national and international Policy Makers 2009.

Overdraft Explosion: Bank fees for overdrafts increase 35% in two years, by Leslie Parrish, Center for Responsible Lending, October 6, 2009. Summary Findings:

• "Finding 1: Over 50 million Americans overdrew their checking account at least once over a 12-month period, with 27 million accountholders incurring five or more overdraft or non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees.
  
• Finding 2: Banks and credit unions collected nearly $24 billion in overdraft fees in 2008.
  
• Finding 3: Overdraft fee income for banks and credit unions rose 35 percent from 2006 to 2008."

The Application Usage and Risk Report - An Analysis of End User Application Trends in the Enterprise, Fall Edition 2009, Palo Alto Networks: "Social networking, blogging/microblogging, cloud-based productivity and collaborative applications are just a few of the applications that are making the cross over from personal to corporate use as a means of improving productivity. This report shows that the use of these applications is commonplace across a worldwide sample of
more than 200 organizations in a wide range of industries.
Some specific findings from the research include:

• Twitter session use grew more than 250 percent from the Spring 2009 edition of the Application Usage and Risk Report, published in April.
  
• Facebook use increased 192 percent while Facebook Chat (released in April 2008) was the fourth most commonly detected chat application, ahead of Yahoo! IM and AIM.
  
• SharePoint collaboration is ubiquitous – bandwidth consumed by SharePoint, specifically the documents component, increased 17-fold from the previous report in April.
  
• Blogging and wiki editing increased by a factor of 39, while total bandwidth consumed increased by a factor of 48."

2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study "was designed to assess current trends in the use of social media in North American businesses. Based on 2,948 valid responses to our online Business Social Media Benchmarking Survey during August and early September, 2009, the results provide a very useful benchmark for where businesses, and business people, are finding value in social media across different activities and sites. The study was focused on social media utilization – how people and companies are using social media in a work context today – and not on adoption. All study participants currently used social media in their day-to-day jobs as a resource for business-relevant information and/or worked for a company currently managing, developing or planning social media initiatives."

Protectionism Online: Internet Censorship and International Trade Law, ECIPE [European Centre for International Political Economy] Working Paper No. 12/2009, By Brian Hindley, Hosuk Lee-Makiyama

"Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods tested contain measurable levels of Bisphenol A (BPA). The new findings show that BPA can be found in a diverse assortment of canned foods including those labeled “organic,” and even in some foods packaged in “BPA-free” cans. Consumer Reports’ tests of a few comparable products in alternative types of packaging showed lower levels of BPA in most, but not all cases. The results are reported in the December 2009 issue and are also available free online here" [note: article is divided into sections with links in left hand column].

Want a Stronger Democracy? Invest in Education, by Edward L. Glaeser: "Why is there a connection between human capital and freedom? Giacomo Ponzetto, Andrei Shleifer and I have argued that the connection reflects the ability of educated people to organize and fight collaboratively. Dictators provide strong incentives for the ruling clique; democracies provide more modest benefits for everyone else. For democracy to beat dictatorship, the dispersed population needs to have the skills and motivation to work collaboratively to defeat dictatorial coups and executive aggrandizement."

Migration and the Global Recession - A Report Commissioned by the BBC World Service, by Michael Fix, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Jeanne Batalova, Aaron Terrazas, Serena Yi-Ying Lin, and Michelle Mittelstadt, Migration Policy Institute, September 2009

Know Thine Enemy - Why the Taliban Cannot Be Flipped, by Barbara Elias, Director of the Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Taliban Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

"The country will never be able to contain rates of chronic diseases and health care costs until we find ways to keep Americans healthier. But right now, Americans are not as healthy as they could be or should be. Two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese. The childhood obesity epidemic is putting today’s youth on course to potentially be the first generation to live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents. This report, the sixth annual edition of F as in Fat: How Obesity Rates Are Failing in America 2009, finds that in the past year, adult obesity rates grew in 23 states and did not decrease in a single state. The number of obese adults now exceeds 25 percent in nearly two-thirds of states. In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. In 1980, the national average of obese adults was 15 percent."

As the book changes form, the library must champion its own power base—readers, By Tom Peters: "The future of reading is very much in doubt. In this century, reading could soar to new heights or crash and burn. Some educators and librarians fear that sustained reading for learning, for work, and for pleasure may be slowly dying out as a widespread social practice."

Personal Finances: The Final Frontier for Social Media Results of a National Survey of Young Adults, conducted for AARP October 2009

Still Waiting: ‘Unfair or Deceptive’ Credit Card Practices Continue as Americans Wait for New Reforms to Take Effect, October 2009 [Tom Melo]

Washington Post: "U.S. newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers from April through September, compared with a year earlier."

Guidelines for Secure Use of Social Media by Federal Departments and Agencies, v1.0 Issued By: ISIMC [Information Security and Identity Management Committee] - Effective Date: 09.17.2009

The Shriver Report - A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything, By Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, edited by Heather Boushey and Ann O'Leary | October 16, 2009

"Nuclear power could play a role in reducing global warming emissions because reactors emit almost no carbon while they operate and can have low life-cycle emissions. Partly for that reason, advocates are calling for a nationwide investment in at least 100 new nuclear reactors, backed by greatly expanded federal loan guarantees. However, the industry must resolve major economic, safety, security, and waste disposal challenges before new nuclear reactors could make a significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions. The economics of nuclear power alone could be the most difficult hurdle to surmount. A new UCS analysis, Climate 2030: A National Blueprint for a Clean Energy Economy, finds that the United States does not need to significantly expand its reliance on nuclear power to make dramatic cuts in power plant carbon emissions through 2030—and indeed that new nuclear reactors would largely be uneconomical."

Forty Strongest U.S. Metro Economies: "Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke might think the country is out of the recession, but unemployment is rising from Connecticut to California and banks are taking possession of a growing share of American homes. But some metros across the nation have managed to stay out of the recession's path and could now be poised for recovery. Using data and analysis from the Brookings Institution's new MetroMonitor study, BusinessWeek.com ranked the nation's top 40 economies based on job growth, employment, economic growth, and home prices. And Texas seems to be the clear winner with San Antonio at the top of the list and five metros in the top 10..."

Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009, by Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith - Oct 21, 2009

Energy Trends - Highlights on consumer energy usage, October 2009

The Reconstruction of American Journalism, A report by Leonard Downie, Jr., and Michael Schudson, October 20, 2009: "Reporting is becoming more participatory and collaborative. The ranks of news gatherers now include not only newsroom staffers, but freelancers, university faculty members, students, and citizens. Financial support for reporting now comes not only from advertisers and subscribers, but also from foundations, individual philanthropists, academic and government budgets, special interests, and voluntary contributions from readers and viewers. There is increased competition among the different kinds of news gatherers, but there also is more cooperation, a willingness to share resources and reporting with former competitors. That increases the value and impact of the news they produce, and creates new identities for reporting while keeping old, familiar ones alive."

Internet Archive BookServer: "The widespread success of digital reading devices has proven that the world is ready to read books on screens. As the audience for digital books grows, we can evolve from an environment of single devices connected to single sources into a distributed system where readers can find books from sources across the Web to read on whatever device they have. Publishers are creating digital versions of their popular books, and the library community is creating digital archives of their printed collections. BookServer is an open system to find, buy, or borrow these books, just like we use an open system to find Web sites. The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices. BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books."

Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Updated and Revised October 2009: Sabrina I. Pacifici's completely revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. This guide is a "best of list" of web, database and email alert products, services and tools, as well as links to content specific sources produced by government, academic, NGOs, the media and various publishers.

Fossil Fuel Production Up Despite Recession, by James Russell. October 15, 2009

"Archive-It, a subscription service from the Internet Archive, allows institutions to build and preserve collections of born digital content. Through our user-friendly web application, Archive-It partners can harvest, catalog, manage, and browse their archived collections. Collections are hosted at the Internet Archive data center and are accessible to the public with full-text search...As of October 16, 2009: Archive-It has collected 1,178,670,876 URLs for 909 public collections."

"Whether this season’s swine flu turns out to be deadly or mild, most experts agree that it’s only a matter of time before we’re hit by a truly devastating flu pandemic—one that might kill more people worldwide than have died of the plague and aids combined. In the U.S., the main lines of defense are pharmaceutical—vaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread of flu and prevent people from dying from it. Yet now some flu experts are challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none. So where does that leave us if a bad pandemic strikes?" Full text article by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer

Who's in Big Brother's Database? By James Bamford - A review of The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid.

News release: "New data, released by the Catlin Arctic Survey and WWF, provides further evidence of thinning Arctic Ocean sea ice, supporting the emerging thinking that the Ocean will be largely ice-free in summer within a decade. The Catlin Arctic Survey, completed earlier this year, provides the latest ice thickness record, drawn from the only survey capturing surface measurements in the last winter and spring.

"The Catlin Arctic Survey data supports the new consensus view, based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition, that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years, and that much of the decrease will be happening within 10 years. That means you’ll be able to treat the Arctic as if it were essentially an open sea in the summer and have transport across the Arctic Ocean.”

Law.Gov: America's Operating System, Open Source - by Carl Malamud

AP: The Wall Street Journal surpasses USA Today as top-selling US daily

Senior Research Specialist Amanda Lenhart's slideshow presentation, The Democratization of Online Social Networks: A look at the change in demographics of social network users over time, given at AoIR 10.0 in Milwaukee, WI on October 8, 2009.

Bridge Employment and Retirees' Health: A Longitudinal Investigation, Yujie Zhan, MS, Mo Wang, PhD, and Songqi Liu, MS, University of Maryland; Kenneth S. Shultz, PhD, California State University, San Bernardino; Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 4.

News release: "Elinor Ostrom [Indiana University, Bloomington, IN - the first woman awarded this prize]] has demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by user associations. Oliver Williamson [University of California, Berkeley, CA] has developed a theory where business firms serve as structures for conflict resolution. Over the last three decades these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this insightful commentary from The American Lawyer - Scanning the Future, by Ben Hallman: "Lawyers familiar with the talks say the book publishing industry had watched in horror as the music business waged a scorched-earth campaign against file-sharing sites like Napster, only to see their profits plunge and antipathy to their tactics grow. They didn't want to follow the same path. In the spring of 2006, executives and lawyers began e-mailing various proposals about how a comprehensive settlement might work, say lawyers familiar with the negotiations. The authors were most interested in getting paid for their out-of-print works. The publishers, meanwhile, wanted to ensure nothing could be done with in-print books without their permission. Google wanted a deal that would incorporate the most troublesome class of books: in-copyright, out-of-print books, for which the rights holders cannot be determined."

News release: "Focused on identifying opportunities to improve, The Commonwealth Fund's State Scorecard on Health System Performance assesses states’ performance on health care relative to achievable benchmarks for 38 indicators of access, quality, costs, and health outcomes. The 2009 State Scorecard paints a picture of health care systems under stress, with deteriorating health insurance coverage for adults and rising health care costs. On a positive note, there were gains in children's coverage as a result of national reforms, and improvement in some measures of hospital and nursing home care following federal efforts to publicly report quality data. The scorecard highlights persistent wide variation in performance across states and continued evidence of poor care coordination. Increasing cost pressures and deterioration in access across the U.S., together with geographic disparities in performance, underscore the urgent need for comprehensive national reforms to ensure access, change the trajectory of costs, and enhance value.

• "This interactive U.S. map draws from The Commonwealth Fund State Scorecard, 2009. Use the map to view state-specific rankings and results compared to benchmarks, and to view the number of lives and dollars each state could save by achieving benchmark levels of performance.
  
• Executive Summary
  
• Fund Report
  
• PDF Chartpack
  
• PPT Chartpack
  
• Data Tables
  
• Related postings on health care

"A newly issued study provides a comprehensive source of data and analysis on space activities and their cumulative impact on the security of outer space. Space Security 2009 has been jointly released by Project Ploughshares and Secure World Foundation on behalf of the Space Security Index, an international research consortium. This is the sixth annual report on trends and developments in space, covering the period January to December 2008."

• Press Release
  
• Executive Summary
  
• Download Full Book

Make Our Food Safe: "Every year, 76 million Americans are sickened from consuming contaminated food – and 5,000 of these people die. That’s more than the number of individuals who lose their lives as a result of fire or unintentional drowning in the U.S. each year. Continued outbreaks of foodborne illness over the last several years – from spinach to peppers to peanuts – have demonstrated that these outbreaks are not random, unpreventable occurrences, but are due to widespread problems with our food safety system. Our current food system is broken and has been in need of reform for decades. And this year, Congress has the opportunity to change course and help protect children, families, senior citizens and all others from foodborne illness."

This video is nothing short of delightful, and as someone who has taken Metro to/from work for 30 years, I sure would appreciate the option of this musical staircase.

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Settlement, this New York Times Op-Ed today: A Library to Last Forever, by Sergey Brin/Google: "Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting. The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal — to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders. As a result, we were able to work together to devise a settlement that accomplishes our shared vision. While this settlement is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, the real winners are the readers who will now have access to a greatly expanded world of books.

News release: "Recent moves by major food manufacturers to remove High Fructose Corn Syrup from products – despite FDA recommendations and a costly campaign by the corn lobby – are indicative of increased consumer awareness and the powerful influence of online social networking sites and tools focused on what we eat. One new entry to the online scene, FoodEssentials.com, provides complete transparency to US food data, and - for the first time ever - enables consumers to search, compare and contrast thousands of manufactured foods by specific ingredients, allergens and additives. This gives the consumer a more informed and stronger voice than ever before."

Latinos and Education: Explaining the Attainment Gap, Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director, Pew Hispanic Center, October 2009.

The Changing Pathways of Hispanic Youths Into Adulthood, by Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate, Pew Hispanic Center

International Union for Conservation of Nature: Species Extinction – The Facts

The Status and Distribution of Dragonflies of the Mediterranean Basin, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources: One fifth of Mediterranean dragonflies and damselflies are threatened with extinction at the regional level as a result of increasing freshwater scarcity, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Climate change and habitat degradation, due to the way land is managed, are also affecting the insects, says the report...Their sensitivity to the quality of habitat...(e.g. forest cover, water chemistry, rivers and bank structure), their amphibious habits, and the relative ease of their identification make dragonflies well suited for use in evaluating environmental changes in the long term (biogeography, climatology) and in the short term (biology conservation, water pollution, structural alteration of running and standing waters)."

Mixed-use Incubator Handbook: A Start-up Guide for Incubator Developers - August, 2009 by Mark Davies, BusyInternet

White House Proclamation: "Every American deserves an opportunity to study, understand, and contribute to the arts and humanities. This must begin in our schools, where children may have their first and most important exposure to these disciplines. Working on their own masterpieces and finding inspiration in the work of others, young people are opened to new means of expression that sharpen their creative faculties. An education in music, dance, drama, design, and fine art reinforces skills in fields like math and science, and it can help students reach their full potential. In an ever-changing world, we must prepare our students with the knowledge, creative skills, and an ability to innovate so they can compete and succeed on a global stage."

New Yorker (no fee): Rational Irrationality - The real reason that capitalism is so crash-prone. by John Cassidy

World's Best Companies 2009: "Companies are little different. So as the economic outlook brightens, those that have worked hard to survive the tough times of the past year are best prepared to seize new opportunities. It is these enterprises that have risen to the top of the World's Best Companies/Global Top 40 list, compiled for BusinessWeek by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney."

Corporate Governance Report 2009: Boards in turbulent times

News release: "The National Archives and Records Administration and Footnote.com announced the release of the internet’s largest Interactive Holocaust Collection. For the first time ever, over one million Holocaust-related records – including millions of names and 26,000 photos from the National Archives – will be available online. The collection can be viewed at: http://www.footnote.com/holocaust...The collection also includes nearly 600 interactive personal accounts of those who survived or perished in the Holocaust provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The project incorporates social networking tools that enable visitors to search for names and add photos, comments and stories, share their insights, and create pages to highlight their discoveries. There will be no charge to access and contribute to these personal pages."

Pew Financial Reform Project Briefing Paper# 7 - Quantifying the cost on lending of increased capital requirements, Douglas J. Elliott.

Deloitte: Cloud computing - A collection of working papers, released September 17, 2009 and published on July 31, 2009.

News release: "In a trend that is likely to continue, nearly half of U.S. companies are automatically enrolling workers into 401(k) plans to encourage them to save for retirement, according to a survey by Watson Wyatt, a leading global consulting firm. The survey also found that the number of companies that use target-date or lifecycle funds as their default investment option has increased sharply in the last few years...Plan sponsors that auto-enroll their employees use a median initial contribution rate of 3 percent, with a range from 1 percent to 7 percent. Slightly more than half (51 percent) of the plan sponsors that auto-enroll also automatically increase the contribution rate by a certain amount each year for their participants. The final contribution rate is between 3 percent and 20 percent, with a median rate of 6 percent."

"Over the next 15 years, battery electric vehicles will barely reach a market share of three percent in the worldwide automotive sector. Substantial extra costs, which presently reach as much as Euro 20,000 for a car in the same category as the Volkswagen Golf, and limited driving ranges stand in the way of broad distribution of these vehicles. According to the recent Oliver Wyman study E-Mobility 2025, the current hype about battery electric vehicles should die down, but there’s no way of getting around electric-drive systems in the long run – after all, battery electric vehicles are vital to the automotive industry’s long-term chances of survival. Until then, the industry will be faced with unprecedented investment requirements combined with an extremely limited earnings potential. Particularly during the automotive crisis, the government needs to make massive investments in the German automotive industry in order to safeguard its future viability. Otherwise, emerging markets such as China will be cutting past the Germans."

TIME: "Michael Snow, the foundation's chairman, says he's got a "fair amount of confidence" that Wikipedia will go on. It remains a precious resource — a completely free journal available to anyone and the model for a mode of online collaboration once hailed as revolutionary. Still, Wikipedia's troubles suggest the limits of Web 2.0 — that when an idealized community gets too big, it starts becoming dysfunctional. Just like every other human organization."

Peek: Mobile E-Mail On A Budget - Conrad J. Jacoby discusses his experiences using the Peek mobile e-mail device (Time Magazine's 2008 Gadget of the Year), which he believes is genuinely useful and an excellent value for its cost.

ILTA 2009: Smaller, Cheaper... Better? - Attorney and legal IT expert Conrad J. Jacoby believes participants in this year's conference were hungry for the knowledge available there, for the ability to see in-depth presentations of products, and to attend personal briefings with high-level vendor-side programmers and product directors.

"Federal Computer Week has compiled lists of the top 10 federal agencies using Facebook and Twitter."

News release: "A new report released by Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies, finds that annual per employee health care costs will triple to nearly $29,000 over the next decade without significant marketplace reforms that reduce costs, expand coverage and improve delivery. These runaway costs, combined with a $56 billion cost shift to payors from uncompensated care, are threatening the employer-based system that currently provides coverage for the majority of Americans and their families."

• Report Fact Sheet - Health Care Reform: The Perils of Inaction and the Promise of Effective Action
  
• Full Report - Health Care Reform: The Perils of Inaction and the Promise of Effective Action, A Report to Business Roundtable by Hewitt Associates LLC September 2009
  
• Related postings on health care reform

An Open Technology Initiative Policy Brief - 100 Megabits or Bust! An Overview of Successful National Broadband Goals from Around the Globe, By Chiehyu Li and James Losey, New American Foundation, September 17, 2009

"Fotopedia is breathing new life into photos by building a photo encyclopedia that lets photographers and photo enthusiasts collaborate and enrich images to be useful for the whole world wide web."

"The Grant Thornton Business Optimism Index is a confidence measure of U.S. business leaders. The Index is a composite score for three questions:

• U.S. economy: Do you feel the U.S. economy will improve/remain the same/get worse in the next six months?
  
• Business growth: How optimistic are you about the growth of your own business over the next six months – very/somewhat
• Employment: Do you expect the number of people you employ will increase/remain the same/decrease in the next six months?"
  
• Related postings on financial system

The Conference Board Task Force on Executive Compensation, September 2009

News release: "Counting down the hours until payday? You’re not alone. As the economic downturn trudges on, many workers are struggling with household budgets. Six-in-ten (61 percent) workers report they always or usually live paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet, up from 49 percent last year and 43 percent in 2007. This is according to a new nationwide survey of more than 4,400 workers by CareerBuilder. Three-in-ten (30 percent) workers with salaries of $100,000 or more report that they too live paycheck to paycheck, up from 21 percent in 2008. Some workers are making ends meet by dipping into their long-term savings. More than one-in-five (21 percent) workers say they have reduced their 401(k) contributions or personal savings in the last six months to get by. Looking at workers earning six figures or more, a nearly equal number (23 percent) report that they have also reduced their 401(k) or savings."

News release: "With national unemployment topping 9 percent and many Americans seeking online information and new technology skills that can help keep them and their families afloat in hard times, U.S. public libraries are first responders in a time of economic uncertainty. Libraries Connect Communities 3: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2008-2009, a new report released by the American Library Association (ALA), says libraries are serving as crucial technology hubs for people in need of free Web access, computer training, and assistance finding and using E-Government and job resources. The study finds that more than 71 percent of all libraries (and 79 percent of rural libraries) report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Sixty-six percent of public libraries rank job-seeking services, including resume writing and Internet job searches, among the most crucial online services they offer – up from 44 percent two years ago. In a separate survey, 80 percent of New York libraries indicated they helped someone search for a job in late 2008."

Megaregions and America’s economic recovery - A look at opportunities for megaregional planning across the U.S. [This article appears in the September 2009 issue of the Urbanist]

EU Project INDECT - "The main objectives of the INDECT project are: to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence, to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects, to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks, to develop a set of techniques supporting surveillance of internet resources, analysis of the acquired information, and detection of criminal activities and threats."

2009 Networks for Counsel Study - A Global Study of the Legal Industry’s Adoption of Online Professional Networking, Preferences, Usage and Future Predictions - Sample Composition: "The survey was administered to 1,474 counsel – 764 private practice lawyers and 710 corporate counsel –in May and June of 2009; 33 countries were represented. Financial Services, Manufacturing and Healthcare were the top three industries represented."

IBM Patent Application: Platform for Capturing Knowledge, September 10, 2009: "A platform used for capturing knowledge. More specifically, a framework configured to capture expert knowledge (e.g., of trained and/or skilled workers) for future instructional purposes (e.g., training of a younger, or less experienced, workforce). The platform comprises a knowledge recorder, instructional design tool, standardized XML, and gaming engine. The knowledge recorder is configured to capture knowledge of a user, which is transferable using a standardized XML format. The instructional design tool is configured to visually model a gaming scenario in order to expose and define logical situations based on the captured knowledge."

Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low: "The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade."

Follow up to previous posting on Google book search, this news release today: Justice Department Submits Views on Proposed Google Book Search Settlement: "The Department of Justice today advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that while it should not accept the class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. as proposed due to concerns of the United States regarding class action, copyright and antitrust law, the parties should be encouraged to continue their productive discussions to address those concerns. In its statement of interest filed with the court, the Department stated: "Given the parties’ express commitment to ongoing discussions to address concerns already raised and the possibility that such discussions could lead to a settlement agreement that could legally be approved by the Court, the public interest would best be served by direction from the Court encouraging the continuation of those discussions between the parties and, if the Court so chooses, by some direction as to those aspects of the Proposed Settlement that need to be improved. Because a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits, the United States does not want the opportunity or momentum to be lost."

eWeek.com: "Google agrees to provide 2 million non-copyrighted book titles for On Demand Books printing and cutting using its high-speed Espresso Book Machine. Google Books titles offered via the Espresso Machine will have a recommended sales price of $8 per copy, though the price is subject to change by retailers. On Demand may have access to sell more works if Google's Book Search deal with authors and publishers passes muster with the New York District Court in October." Wired also has the story.

"reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows...A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs."

"In arriving at Time Out’s greatest cities, we were not looking for great holiday destinations but living, working cities. This meant looking at all aspects of urban life, not just those one encounters on a weekend break, and what everyday life is like for people who actually live there. Resident writers were asked to rate their cities in terms of key criteria that make up a successful city: architecture/cityscape; arts & culture; buzz; food & drink; quality of life; and world status."

"Executives at Britain's top companies saw their basic salaries leap 10% last year, despite the onset of the worst global recession in decades, in which their companies lost almost a third of their value amid a record decline in the FTSE. The Guardian's annual survey of boardroom pay reveals that the full- and part-time directors of the FTSE 100, the premier league of British business, shared between them more than £1bn."

• DATA: download the full data as a spreadsheet
  
• See also It was FTSE's worst year ever – but not for executive pay
  
• Related postings on financial system

Legal Implications of Cloud Computing - Part One (the Basics and Framing the Issues) - Attorney David Navetta contends that there there will be significant financial pressure on organizations to take advantage of the pricing and efficiency of cloud computing, and if attorneys fail to understand the issues ahead of time there is a serious risk of getting "bulldozed" into cloud computing arrangements without time or resources to address some serious legal issues that are implicated.

Are Law Firms Ready for Transparency? Attorney and KM expert V. Mary Abraham provides details on how one law firm has found a way to create real transparency in its dealings with clients via an extranet, and whether this process may start a trend.

New York Times: Wall Street’s Math Wizards Forgot a Few Variables: "But the real failure, according to finance experts and economists, was in the quants’ mathematical models of risk that suggested the arcane stuff was safe. The risk models proved myopic, they say, because they were too simple-minded. They focused mainly on figures like the expected returns and the default risk of financial instruments. What they didn’t sufficiently take into account was human behavior, specifically the potential for widespread panic. When lots of investors got too scared to buy or sell, markets seized up and the models failed. That failure suggests new frontiers for financial engineering and risk management, including trying to model the mechanics of panic and the patterns of human behavior...In the aftermath of the economic crisis, financial engineers, experts say, will probably shift more to risk management and econometric analysis and concentrate less on devising exotic new instruments."

The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information, by Vivienne Waller. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 9 - 7 September 2009

• WSJ: Sept. 11 Attacks Remembered
• New York Times: Showcase: The World, as of 9/10/01
• New York Times: Obama Extols the ‘True Spirit’ of Sept. 11
• New York Times: Remembering the Horror of a Bright Blue Morning
• LLRX Newstand - 9-11-2001 Related News, Legislation and Resources

Via Out of the Jungle, insightful commentary and content from a fee based Chronicle of Higher Education article, Choosing Up Sides to Hate or Love the Google Books Deal: "...And—this is what intrigues me the most—how will Judge Chin decide what role the federal courts can and should play in the creation and oversight of what almost everyone agrees will be a digital library the likes of which we have never seen before? Will he agree with Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register of Copyrights, who told a late-to-the-game House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday that the settlement "inappropriately creates something similar to a compulsory license for works, unfairly alters the property interests of millions of rights holders of out-of-print works without any Congressional oversight, and has the capacity to create diplomatic stress for the United States" because of other countries' objections? (I wonder what the judge will make of the suggestion that Congress has a role to play here.)"

The Apps for America Winners [via Abi Morgan]:

• DataMasher: "DataMasher helps citizens have a little fun with those data by creating mashups to visualize them in different ways and see how states compare on important issues. Users can combine different data sets in interesting ways and create their own custom rankings of the states."
  
• GovPulse: "govpulse was built to open the doors of government to the people they work for. By making such documents as the Federal Register searchable, more accessible and easier to digest, govepulse seeks to encourage every citizen to become more involved in the workings of their government and make their voice heard on the things that matter to them, from the smallest to the largest issues."
  
• ThisWeKnow: "Our long-term vision for ThisWeKnow is to model the entire data.gov catalog and make it available to the public using Semantic Web standards as a large-scale online database. ThisWeKnow will provide citizens with a single destination where they can search and browse all the information the government collects. It will also provide other application developers with a powerful standards-based API for accessing the data."

Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp195: "There is no generally accepted picture of where, when, and how the domestic dog originated...We therefore analysed entire mitochondrial genomes for 169 dogs to obtain maximal phylogenetic resolution, and the CR for 1,543 dogs across the Old World for a comprehensive picture of geographical diversity. Hereby, a detailed picture of the origins of the dog can for the first time be suggested. We obtained evidence that the dog has a single origin in time and space, and an estimation of the time of origin, number of founders and approximate region, which also gives potential clues about the human culture involved. The analyses showed that dogs universally share a common homogenous gene pool containing 10 major haplogroups...These results indicate that the domestic dog originated in southern China less than 16,300 years ago, from several hundred wolves. The place and time coincide approximately with the origin of rice agriculture, suggesting that the dogs may have originated among sedentary hunter-gatherers or early farmers, and the numerous founders indicate that wolf taming was an important culture trait."

"CDT filed a "friend of the court" brief in the Southern District of New York [September 4, 2009] requesting that key privacy requirements be included in the Court's approval of the class-action settlement that would dramatically expand Google Book Search. CDT previously released a report in July analyzing the privacy implications of this settlement and is urging the judge to guarantee strong privacy safeguards for the exciting new services Google will be able to offer. The brief asks that the court approve the proposed settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit between Google and authors and publishers, but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan."

• CDT's Amicus Brief in Google Books settlement
  
• CDT's Report on Google Book Service
  
• Related postings on Google Book Search
  
• New York Times: Google Book Project Coolly Received in Europe
  
• WSJ: Google Curtails Europe Book Plan

"Banned Books Week (BBW): Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where the freedom to express oneself and the freedom to choose what opinions and viewpoints to consume are both met. As the Intellectual Freedom Manual (ALA, 7th edition) states:

Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.

"The American work force is graying -- and not just because the American population itself is graying. Older adults are staying in the labor force longer, and younger adults are staying out of it longer. Both trends took shape about two decades ago. Both have intensified during the current recession. And both are expected to continue after the economy recovers. According to one government estimate, 93% of the growth in the U.S. labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers ages 55 and older. Demographic and economic factors explain some -- but not all -- of these changes. Attitudes about work also play an important role -- in particular, the growing desire of an aging but healthy population to stay active well into the later years of life. A new nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project finds that a majority (54%) of workers ages 65 and older say the main reason they work is that they want to. Just 17% say the main reason is that they need the paycheck. An additional 27% say they're motivated by a mix of desire and need."

Official Gmail Blog: "Gmail's web interface had a widespread outage [September 1, 2009], lasting about 100 minutes. We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there's a problem with the service. Thus, right up front, I'd like to apologize to all of you — today's outage was a Big Deal, and we're treating it as such. We've already thoroughly investigated what happened, and we're currently compiling a list of things we intend to fix or improve as a result of the investigation."

News release: "Two global corporate issuers defaulted this week, bringing the 2009 year-to-date tally to 211 issuers--nearly 4x the 55 defaults at this time in 2008, said an article published by Standard & Poor's. Both of this week's defaults were based in the U.S., bringing the default tallies by region to 151 issuers in the U.S., 13 in Europe, 34 in the emerging markets, and 13 in the other developed region (Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand)..."

Law Librarians Survey: No More Sacred Cows - Librarians trim budgets, head count, and much-loved research tools.
The Full Survey:

• The Librarian's Expanding Role
  
• Electronic Resources
  
• Staffing
  
• Finances

"PLoS [Public Library of Science] Currents: Influenza is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable."

Google Apps Status Dashboard: "This page offers performance information for Google Apps services. Unless otherwise noted, this status information applies to consumer services as well as services for organizations using Google Apps."

"The NABE Economic Policy Survey presents the consensus of a panel of 266 members of the National Association for Business Economics. Conducted semiannually, this survey was taken Aug. 3-18, 2009."

Re-Hashing the Hash Tag - Crowd Competition and Community Standards at the #AALL2009 Conference: Roger V. Skalbeck and Meg Kribble describe how the majority of social media activity during the 2009 AALL conference took place on Twitter, and how this technology impacts the profession and the free exchange of information, moving forward.

SEAPLEX website: "A thousand miles off California, the North Pacific Ocean Gyre contains one of the oldest and largest ecosystems on Earth--but it may be in danger from a deluge of accumulated plastic trash. Dubbed the "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch," the debris at the center of the North Pacific Ocean has the potential to damage marine life and alter the biological environment. Though this issue has recently received popular media attention, there is little scientific information on the composition, extent, and effects of the debris. The small pieces of plastic that make up most of the material are not detectable by satellites or airplanes. Researchers requiring detailed scientific sampling must use ships capable of traveling to this remote region."

News release: "The American Bar Association, in partnership with the Alliance for Community Trees (ACT) and the Parks & People Foundation, will kick off the ABA’s One Million Trees Project in a public ceremony Sept. 23 at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School in West Baltimore. The event is being held in conjunction with the 17th Annual ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Fall Meeting. The ABA’s One Million Trees Project is a five-year national effort to plant one million trees across the United States. Overseen by the local ACT affiliate Parks & People Foundation, the Franklin Square project will bring together volunteer ABA members along with students, teachers and community members to plant trees in the schoolyard and around the building as part of the campaign to beautify Baltimore’s neighborhoods. Participants will plant 10 to 15 trees at the Franklin Square schoolyard, surrounding streets and nearby park, as well as weed, mulch and install flowering beds. The tree planting event will also serve as the launching point for NeighborWoods Month, a community service campaign to heighten awareness for trees in cities all around the nation. NeighborWoods Month is sponsored through a generous grant from The Home Depot Foundation, which is also the sponsor of the kick-off event. ABA members are encouraged to contribute to the One Million Trees project by participating in hands-on tree planting activities in their community, engaging in publicity and educational outreach efforts throughout the year, and purchasing a tree through any of the program partners. Through public outreach and partnering efforts, this project aims to raise the nation's awareness of the multiple benefits of trees and their role in helping to fight climate change."

Putting Work to Bed: Stressful Experiences on the Job and Sleep Quality. Burgard, Sarah, and Jennifer Ailshire. 2008. PSC Research Report No. 08-652. July 2008.

Perceived Job Insecurity and Worker Health in the United States. Burgard, Sarah, Jennie Brand, and James S. House. 2008. PSC Research Report No. 08-650. July 2008.

Four crucial resources that may run out in your lifetime, by Loz Blain: "We're living in lucky times. Living standards - in the Western world, at least - are the highest in history. It's an era of relative peace and plenty that would amaze our ancestors. But it's not going to continue forever; we're already stretching many of our natural resources to their limits, and the world's population will jump from 6.5 billion to around 9 billion over the next 50 years. Get ready for a painful correction - here are four interconnected resources that are headed for a catastrophic squeeze within our lifetime."

News release: "The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index ®, which had retreated in July, rebounded in August. The Index now stands at 54.1 (1985=100), up from 47.4 in July. The Present Situation Index increased slightly to 24.9 from 23.3 last month. The Expectations Index improved to 73.5 from 63.4 in July."

Global Warming Bringing More Extreme Heat Waves - More Extremely Hot Days Projected – 30 Large Cities Especially Vulnerable, Published August 25, 2009: "More extremely hot summer days are projected for every part of the country, detailed in a new report from the National Wildlife Federation and Physicians for Social Responsibility. To explain the bigger picture and provide recommendations for how to cope with projected changes and how to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, Report - More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming's Wake Up Call, August 2009 details how:

• Global warming will bring more extreme heat waves
  
• Urban air pollution could be exacerbated by more extreme heat
  
• Heat waves disproportionately impact people who are poor, elderly, children, or have asthma or heart disease, or live in big cities
  
• Natural habitats and agriculture are also vulnerable to heat waves
  
• We can reduce the severity of heat waves and their impacts on vulnerable people."
  
• Related postings on climate change
Permanent Link

New York Times Special Issue: How changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything

New York Times "Sunday Business analyzed new data from the American Time Use Survey to compare the 2008 weekday activities of the employed and unemployed. The comparison may seem obvious, but differences in time spent by these two groups can be striking."

American Medical News staff. Posted Aug. 17, 2009: "The latest health plan ratings by Consumer Reports shows PPO members less satisfied than those who belong to HMOs, primarily because of poor scores for PPOs' customer service and billing practices. Overall, 64% of the 37,481 readers surveyed said they were "very" or "completely" satisfied with their health plans. That "lukewarm" score puts health insurers ahead of cable TV providers but behind pharmacies and real estate agents, according to the report. HMOs collectively were not rated against PPOs. However, HMOs scored higher than PPOs in individual factors such as out-of-pocket costs and customer service. The highest overall HMO score of 85 out of a possible 100 went to Group Health. The best-scoring PPO, WellPoint-owned Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut, earned an overall score of 82."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book settlement, BBB News reports - Tech giants unite against Google - "Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works."

U.S. Solar Energy Demand Dynamics - Financing Structures, Government Incentives, and Market Drivers for Solar Photovoltaics Projects: 2009-2015

The Third Branch: "The Judicial Conference has issued a series of “suggested practices” to assist courts in the use of Internet materials in opinions. The recommendations follow a pilot project conducted by circuit librarians who captured and preserved webpages cited in opinions over a six-month period...The guidelines suggest that, if a webpage is cited, chambers staff preserve the citation by downloading a copy of the site’s page and filing it as an attachment to the judicial opinion in the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files System. The attachment, like the opinion, would be retrievable on a non-fee basis through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system."

Quality people management for quality outcomes: The Future of HR review of evidence on people management. Prepared by Wilson Wong, Alexandra Albert, Marianne Huggett and Jane Sullivan, August 2009

News release: "Taxpayers are getting a first hint of potential returns on their investment in the American automobile industry: Detroit is doing a much better job satisfying their customers, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). After having trailed competition for a long time, domestic automakers post a large gain in ACSI. Rising contentment with the automobile industry leads the way for an increase in the overall Index, particularly among the American brands, which now equal Asian vehicles for the first time in a decade. After having slumped prior to the recession, the overall ACSI registers a gain for a third consecutive quarter. The Index stands at 76.1 on a 100-point scale, up 0.1% over last quarter and an improvement of 1.3% compared to a year ago."

News release: "The re-launched www.nationalgallery.org.uk is the first major gallery website to offer a full-screen zoom facility for its entire collection. Users can now examine every National Gallery masterpiece in outstanding detail, effortlessly sweep across digital canvases and zoom into minute details of their choosing. Also for the first time, users can now check the up-to-date locations of their favorite works of art prior to visiting. Using the Gallery’s own collection database, the new website updates the layout of the collection twice daily. Users can explore the paintings room-by-room using an interactive floorplan, allowing them to follow the narrative of the hang, as well as access new research material for specific works of art...For the best visual experience, the site has been designed to take advantage of the new generation of larger computer screens. Visitors can now access over 12,000 images, 18 hours of audio and at least 200 videos. The site has also been optimised to enable visitors to find specific content with greater ease through search engines like Google, including every painting in the collection."

Rebuilding America - A National Policy Framework for Investment in Energy Efficiency Retrofits - Bracken Hendricks and Benjamin Goldstein, Center for American Progress - Reid Detchon and Kurt Shickman, Energy Future Coalition, August 2009.

"TransUnion.com released today the results of its analysis of trends in the mortgage industry for the second quarter of 2009 and the associated impact on the U.S. consumer. The report is part of an ongoing series of quarterly consumer lending sector analyses focusing on credit card, auto loan and mortgage data...Information for this analysis is culled quarterly from approximately 27 million anonymous, randomly sampled, individual credit files, representing approximately 10 percent of credit-active U.S. consumers and providing a real-life perspective on how they are managing their credit health."

Effect of the Economic Crisis on HR Programs - Update: August 2009

Employee Benefit Research Institute Databook on Employee Benefits, updated August 2009: "The EBRI Databook on Employee Benefits includes data from dozens of sources to provide a comprehensive analysis of how the employee benefits system works, who and what its various functions affect, and its relationship with the U.S. economy...The book is organized into four sections -- overview, retirement programs, health programs, and other employee benefits, with an extensive appendix offering general economic and demographic statistics, a glossary of terms used in the book, a legislative history of employee benefit programs, reference guide listing sources for further research, and an index."

GreenerComputing Staff: "A new article in the journal Environmental Science & Technology looks at the market for reuse of exported computers and other electronics and finds that there is plenty of life in those old machines -- although e-waste exports still pose a significant environmental problem. The study [fee based], Product or Waste? Importation and End-of-Life Processing of Computers in Peru, was conducted by Ramzy Kahhat and Eric Williams of the Arizona State University and looks at reuse of imported, used electronics in Peru [which] maintains an in-depth database that tracks how many new and used computers are imported...What the researchers found suggests that, at least in one country, imported electronics are not immediately destined for meltdown or other polluting and poisonous dismantling practices, as has been shown in China and other countries.."

Via Slate: Seeking How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous, by Emily Yoffe. "...Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting...If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly."

Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, July 2009 release: "Consumer confidence slipped in July as consumers anticipated that their personal finances would improve more slowly than they had anticipated several months ago...Financial reversals were reported with equal frequency across all income subgroups, as was the
expectation that joblessness would continue to increase..Although consumer spending will improve during the balance of 2009, total personal consumption expenditures will post an lackluster
increase of 1.5% during 2010."

The Value of Provider Networks And the Role of Out-of-Network Charges In Rising Health Care Costs: A Survey of Charges Billed By Out-of-Network Physicians

Health Insurance Coverage of Individuals Ages 55–64, 1994–2007 and The Basics of Social Security, Updated With the 2009 Board of Trustees Report, August 2009, Vol. 30, No. 8, Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2009

BBC: "Women who are optimistic have a lower risk of heart disease and death, an American study shows. The latest study by US investigators mirrors the findings of earlier work by a Dutch team showing optimism reduces heart risk in men. The research on nearly 100,000 women, published in the journal Circulation, found pessimists had higher blood pressure and cholesterol. Even taking these risk factors into account, attitude alone altered risks. Optimistic women had a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up."

Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, The Council the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions - Europe’s Digital Competitiveness Report - Main achievements of the i2010 strategy 2005-2009

What Does Consistent Participation in 401(k) Plans Generate? July 2009, EBRI Issue Brief #332-SR, Paperback, Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2009

Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School: "Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data. The system is still in early development, but we invite you to explore our current data and suggest research ideas. This is an open-source project, and we will be releasing all of the code soon...Eventually users will be able to compare the top 10 news events covered by Fox News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the BBC, for example, or chart the terms that appear most frequently in The New York Times, compared with leading blogs, or create a world map showing which countries receive the most media attention, or follow the path of a particular report to see if it dominates the news or dies out."

Fuchs, Christian. 2009. Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society. A Critical Case Study of the Usage of studiVZ, Facebook, and MySpace by Students in Salzburg in the Context of Electronic Surveillance. Salzburg/Vienna: Research Group UTI. ISBN 978-3-200-01428-2.

Deutsche Bank Research - Diabetes – the price of increasing prosperity, August 5, 2009

Law Practice Technology Information Sources and Tools - Ken Strutin identifies core sources to learn about new technologies that apply to legal research and law practice. In addition, he has identified specific tools that will contribute to managing research, communication and information-based tasks.

OMB - Science and Technology Priorities for the FY 2011 Budget, August 4, 2009

News release: "Though Congress leaves for its August recess this week, one of the items sure to be on the agenda when it returns is how to deal with the continuing collapse of the nation’s housing market. A new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) examining housing costs shows that market rents are far below ownership costs in many parts of the nation. The paper, The Gains from Right to Rent, Dean Baker and Hye Jin Rho - July 2009, analyzes the costs of renting versus owning a house in several major cities and finds that the Fair Market Rents in these metropolitan areas is often much lower than the cost of ownership."

"Herdict is a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Herdict is a portmanteau of 'herd' and 'verdict' and seeks to show the verdict of the users (the herd). Herdict Web seeks to gain insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility; or in other words, determine the herdict. The brainchild of Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Herdict Web is a natural progression from the OpenNet Initiative. Whereas OpenNet views Internet filtering through an academic lens, Herdict uses crowdsourcing to learn about and present a real time view of the experiences of users around the globe."

Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age, Committee on Ensuring the Utility and Integrity of Research Data in a Digital Age; National Academy of Sciences

News release: "Customer demand for Ford’s fuel-efficient vehicles coupled with the U.S. government’s Car Allowance Rebate System (“Cash for Clunkers”) enabled Ford to post the first sales increase of any major manufacturer in 2009. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers reported 118,197 retail sales in July, up 9 percent versus a year ago. Total sales (including fleet customer deliveries) were 158,838, up 2 percent versus last year."

News release: "In support of its goals to reinvent the company as a leaner, more cost-competitive company, General Motors Company today announced that more than 6,000 U.S. hourly workers participated in the company's Special Attrition Program. This represents the total number of employees most of whom departed the company August 1, 2009. Of the 6,000 employees who opted to take the separation, approximately 40 percent of participants were skilled trade employees, while 35 percent of participants were buy-outs."

WSJ: As Art Ages, So Do the Skills to Preserve It - Hard-Won Expertise Is Easily Lost to Time, Posing a Challenge to Conservators Who Maintain the World's Masterworks

Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy, July 2009

• S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Factsheet
• S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices Methodology
• S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price FAQ
• May 26, 2009: S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Values
• July 28, 2009: Historical Values
• Supplemental Data
• Related postings on financial system

News release: "Several large-scale, naturalistic driving studies (using sophisticated cameras and instrumentation in participants’ personal vehicles) conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), provide a clear picture of driver distraction and cell phone use under real‐world driving conditions. Combined, these studies continuously observed drivers for more than 6 million miles of driving. A snapshot of risk estimates from these studies is shown in the table below...In VTTI’s studies that included light vehicle drivers and truck drivers, manual manipulation of phones such as dialing and texting of the cell phone lead to a substantial increase in the risk of being involved in a safety‐critical event (e.g., crash or near crash). However, talking or listening increased risk much less for light vehicles and not at all for trucks. Text messaging on a cell phone was associated with the highest risk of all cell phone related tasks."

The U.S. Newspaper Industry in Transition, July 8, 2009

American City Business Journal: "Delinquencies on commercial mortgage backed securities soared $10 billion in June, hitting a 12-month high of almost $29 billion, according to Realpoint Research. California led the nation with the highest amount of delinquent loans, closely followed by Texas and Florida. The jump in late loans across the country is up an “astounding” 585 percent from a year ago when just $4 billion were delinquent, reported the Horsham, Penn.-based research firm. The low point for delinquency was March 2007 when $2 billion was delinquent. Realpoint reported that the total unpaid balance for all commercial backed mortgage securities pools under review by the firm was $817 billion in June, down slightly from $825 billion in May as a result of a delay in reporting some deals. The three states with the most delinquent loans accounted for more than a quarter of the unpaid balances. Realpoint said California with almost $3 billion in delinquent loans, or 10 percent of the exposure, and Texas with $2.5 billion, or 9 percent of all delinquencies, "remain a major concern." In California, the delinquent properties are spread across the state, compared to Texas where the problems are located mainly in Dallas-Fort Worth."

News release: "A report released today by the Pew Environment Group reveals significant potential financial benefits of rebuilding four fish species in the Mid-Atlantic: summer flounder, black sea bass, butterfish and bluefish. The report, Investing in Our Future: The Economic Case for Rebuilding Mid-Atlantic Fish Populations, provides a new analysis and estimates direct financial benefits by comparing status quo management of four particular fish species with what would have happened, if those populations had been rebuilt by 2007. The report finds that rebuilding summer flounder, black sea bass, butterfish and bluefish populations by 2007 would have generated an additional $570 million per year in direct economic benefits in perpetuity. In five years, that number would amount to approximately $2.85 billion."

Twitter 101 for Business: "Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter."

News release: "Leaders of global financial services firms called today for far-reaching regulatory reforms to reinforce industry efforts to strengthen the global financial system. “Our main challenge now is to restore confidence in and stability of the financial system – this is essential for sound financial markets that can finance growth for the future,” said Dr. Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Institute of International Finance’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Management Board and Group Executive Committee of Deutsche Bank AG. The IIF, which is the global association of financial services firms with over 370 members across the world, today published a new report Restoring Confidence, Creating Resilience: An Industry Perspective on the Future of International Financial Regulation and the Search for Stability."

Pew Global Attitudes Project from 2002 to 2009: "This interactive database allows users to explore public opinion trends in 55 countries on topics ranging from attitudes toward the U.S. to people's assessments of their own lives to views about globalization, democratization, extremism and other important issues. Data can be searched by question, by topic or by country - and results can be displayed in map, table or chart formats. The findings are from eight surveys conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project from 2002-2009 among a total of more than 200,000 respondents."

News release: "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today launched the DHS YouTube Channel and announced the redesign of DHS.gov — steps to enhance the Department’s web presence, increase transparency and provide accurate, up-to-date information to the public. “Social media plays an increasingly large role in our engagement with the public, especially in the event of an incident or disaster,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. “These new tools will facilitate an open dialogue about the Department’s security efforts across the nation and around the world.” The YouTube Channel will allow DHS to use video to highlight events, speeches, public service announcements and other related content. DHS’s emphasis on web 2.0 tools such as YouTube allows the Department to provide greater transparency and access to the public and our state, local, territorial, tribal, private sector, and international partners."

"Greater meat consumption and demand for fossil fuels worldwide are expected to cause increasingly more harmful algal blooms and dead zones in coastal and freshwater areas. “Nutrient pollution in aquatic ecosystems, or eutrophication, is a rapidly growing environmental crisis,” said Mindy Selman, the lead author of a new report released today by the World Resources Institute (WRI). “Nearly 500 coastal areas already suffer from hypoxia. Our research indicates that number is expected to rise in the foreseeable future.” Eutrophication: Sources and Drivers of Nutrient Pollution, the second report of a three-part series, finds that developing countries will see more nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in coastal and freshwater areas in the coming decades as a result of population and economic growth."

New York Times graphic: Jobs Lost and Gained During the Recession - Percent employment change, December 2007 - June 2009. Data is from Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the anchor article is here.

Green Files: Green Resources and Sites on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman provides a comprehensive, wide ranging listing of web based green resources and sites, inclusive of home and business related information.

AARP Bulletin Survey on Consumer Debt and Loans: Executive Summary, July 2009

Ira Flatow, NPR: "Replacing dark roofing and pavement with lighter, more reflective materials could reduce temperatures in cities and offset significant quantities of carbon dioxide emissions. In an article published in the journal Climatic Change [Global cooling: increasing world-wide urban albedos to offset CO2 - Hashem Akbari, Surabi Menon and Arthur Rosenfeld
Climatic Change, Volume 94, Numbers 3-4 / June, 2009 - fee only], researchers estimate that replacing 100 square feet of dark colored roof with a white roof could offset about a metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions, in addition to reducing local temperatures and improving local air quality."

Guardian UK: "The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that "almost all" news organisations will be charging for online content within a year. Barber said building online platforms that could charge readers on an article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges facing news organisations."

"During the second quarter of 2008, The American Society for Training and Development, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed 217 employers to examine corporate practices on training newly hired graduates at three educational levels: high school, two year college, and four-year college. The findings indicate that employers are struggling to correct for an ill-prepared workforce. While almost half of the companies surveyed provide readiness or remedial training programs for new hires, the majority report less than strong results. The low scores may be linked to the fact that the programs offered often do not match employers’ greatest needs. Employers are also unable to report how much they are spending on these programs, which makes it impossible to assess their impact on the bottom line." [Stuart Basefsky]

"Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) today released a Policy Post discussing privacy implications for the federal data clearinghouse known as data.gov and de-identification considerations for the Open Government Directive. While this initiative signifies a step in the right direction towards a more open and transparent federal government, it must be done in concert with protecting the privacy of individuals. The Policy Post recommends specialized review procedures for each data set on data.gov. In addition, it says that different levels of data protections should be implemented in different contexts and that de-identification guidelines should be adaptable over time. This is essential in addressing consumer privacy risks associated with handling large data sets, as is the case with data.gov."

"Does your sunscreen work? Surprisingly, 3 of 5 brand-name sunscreens either don’t protect skin from sun damage or contain hazardous chemicals — or both. An Environmental Working Group investigation of 1,606 sunscreens rates the season’s best — and worst. Some companies have responded to EWG’s 3-year campaign for safer, more effective sunscreens. 70% of sunscreen products now contain strong UVA filters, compared to 29% last year. The bad news: much UVA protection is still too thin to save your skin. Don't waste your money or risk your skin on sunscreens that don’t deliver. Use our 2009 Sunscreen Guide to find better products."

“Car Innovation 2015 analyzes the complete framework of automotive innovations: societal and governmental influences, technology trends, the voice of the customer, innovation economics, and innovation management and strategies. For more than nine months, over 30 experts at Oliver Wyman have contributed to “Car Innovation 2015.” The study comprises an in-depth expert poll, a consumer panel, a strategic choice analysis, a thorough analysis of more than 300 innovations, a car dealer field study and intensive database research."

PBS.org FRONTLINE - Ghana, Digital Dumping Ground: "When containers of old computers first began arriving in West Africa a few years ago, Ghanaians welcomed what they thought were donations to help bridge the digital divide. But soon exporters learned to exploit the loopholes by labeling junk computers "donations"...[What is on the hard drives from this junk PCs'?] There is private financial data...credit card numbers, account information, records of online transactions the original owners may not have realized were even there. Ghana is listed by the U.S. State Department as one of the top sources of cyber crime in the world. And it's not just individuals who are exposed. One of the drives the team has purchased contains a $22 million government contract. It turns out the drive came from Northrop Grumman, one of America's largest military contractors. And it contains details about sensitive, multi-million dollar U.S. government contracts. They also find contracts with the defense intelligence agency, NASA, even Homeland Security."

Optimizing Web Traffic via the Media Scheduling Problem. Lars Backstrom, Jon Kleinbergy, Ravi Kumar, 15th ACM SIGKDD Intl. Conf. on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2009: "Website traffic varies through time in consistent and predictable ways, with highest traffic in the middle of the day. When providing media content to visitors, it is important to present repeat visitors with new content so that they keep coming back. In this paper we present an algorithm to balance the need to keep a website fresh with new content with the desire to present the best content to the most visitors at times of peak traffic. We formulate this as the media scheduling problem, where we attempt to maximize total clicks, given the overall traffic pattern and the time varying clickthrough rates of available media content. We present an efficient algorithm to perform this scheduling under certain conditions and apply this algorithm to real data obtained from server logs, showing evidence of significant improvements in traffic from our algorithmic schedules. Finally, we analyze the click data, presenting models for why and how the clickthrough rate for new content declines as it ages."

The Economist: "TEN years ago DVDs rejuvenated the film business, encouraging people to own films rather than simply watch them. But sales, which began declining gradually in 2006, are now falling more steeply. Around a third of the drop in the first quarter was counteracted by rising sales of high-definition Blu-ray discs, which are more profitable. Meanwhile, rentals are booming. Redbox, which rents films cheaply from self-service kiosks, has been adding machines at the rate of more than 500 per month. For the studios it is much more profitable to stream a film digitally or sell it through a cable operator as a video-on-demand (VOD)."

Pew Research Center: Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media - Scientific Achievements Less Prominent Than a Decade Ago

From Visual Economics, this graphical image: Where Does the Money Go? - U.S. Consumer Unit Expenditures - average annual expenditures and percentage of total, using data from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

News release: "An Environmental Working Group (EWG) investigation of almost 200 popular bottled water brands found less than 2 percent disclose the water’s source, how the water has been purified and what chemical pollutants each bottle of water may contain. Just 2 of the 188 individual brands EWG analyzed disclosed those three basic facts about their water."

CSFI - Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation: "The resilience of the global microfinance industry will be put to the test by the economic crisis, according to a new survey of the risks to the business, Microfinance Banana Skins 2009, by David Lascelles and Sam Mendelson. Far from being insulated from the economic mainstream as traditionally thought, microfinance could face a fall in growth and funding because of the global recession and declining investor confidence. This will present the industry with its first major stress test since it emerged in recent decades as a fast-growing provider of small-scale financial services to the world's poor...The survey, published by the CSFI and sponsored by Citi Foundation and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and supported by the Council of Microfinance Equity Funds (CMEF), was designed to identify and rank the main risks, or "Banana Skins" facing the industry at a time of economic crisis and change. It reflects the views of more than 400 practitioners, investors, regulators and analysts in 82 countries."

Why The Economist is thriving while Time and Newsweek fade, by Michael Hirschorn, The Atlantic, July/August 2009

"Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's outstanding manuscripts. Together with Codex Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest extant Bibles, containing the oldest complete New Testament. This treasured codex is indispensable for understanding the earliest text of the Greek Bible, the transmission of its text, the establishment of the Christian canon, and the history of the book. Over 400 leaves survive and are held across four institutions: the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monastery and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg. To celebrate the virtual re-unification of all extant leaves of Codex Sinaiticus, on 6-7 July 2009, the British Library is hosting an academic conference on topics relating to Codex Sinaiticus. A number of leading experts have been approached to give presentations on the history, text, conservation, paleography and codicology, among other topics, of Codex Sinaiticus. Selected conference papers will be edited and published as a collection of articles."

Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools for the Next Generation of Public Service - Driving high performance through more engaging, accountable and citizen-focused service

USAspending.gov: Where Americans Can See Where Their Money Goes - Have you ever wanted to find more information on government spending? Have you ever wondered where Federal contracting dollars and grant awards go? Or perhaps you would just like to know, as a citizen, what the Government is really doing with your money."

"The IT Dashboard provides the public with an online window into the details of Federal information technology investments and provides users with the ability to track the progress of investments over time. The IT Dashboard displays data received from agency reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including general information on over 7,000 Federal IT investments and detailed data for nearly 800 of those investments that agencies classify as "major." The performance data used to track the 800 major IT investments is based on milestone information displayed in agency reports to OMB called "Exhibit 300s." Agency CIOs are responsible for evaluating and updating select data on a monthly basis, which is accomplished through interfaces provided on the website."

Science Daily: "On July 2 the detectors of Planck's High Frequency Instrument reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273°C, making them the coldest known objects in space. The spacecraft has also just entered its final orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2. Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230°C by radiating heat into space. Three active coolers take over from there, and bring the temperature down further to an amazing low of -273.05°C, only 0.1°C above absolute zero - the coldest temperature theoretically possible in our Universe."

Best Practices for Government Libraries - 2009 - Change: Managing It, Surviving It, and Thriving On It - "The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more." Compiled by Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis.

Brookings: Governance Matters 2009: Learning From Over a Decade of the Worldwide Governance Indicators, Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi, June 29, 2009.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project: "The six aggregate indicators and the underlying data sources can be viewed interactively on the Governance Indicators webpage of this site. To download the full dataset for all countries and indicators in Excel format, click here. Documentation of the latest update of the WGI can be found in Governance Matters VIII: Governance Indicators for 1996–2008. Further documentation and research using the WGI is available on the Resources page of this website or at www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance."

Arctic Climate Change and Security Policy Conference: Final Report and Findings, Kenneth Yalowitz, James Collins, Ross Virginia Report, June 2009

Editor & Publisher, Special Report: When There's No Print Edition, Do Readers Flock to the Web? By Jennifer Saba

News release: "The most authoritative report providing a blueprint for how communities can tackle global warming was released by the California League of Conservation Voters Education Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report is a guide to California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, or SB 375, the nation’s first legislation to link transportation and land use planning with global warming. The report Communities Tackle Global Warming: A Guide to California’s SB 375, highlights that locating homes closer to jobs and transportation choices creates walkable communities and can improve quality of life, reduce commute times and cut millions of tons of global warming pollution. It also features a photo simulation of how communities could come alive after mixed-use development and improved street design bring pedestrian activity into the area."

Marketing Yourself with Webinars - Attorney Wells H. Anderson recommends presenting periodic webinars as an effective, direct and efficient technique to attract new clients and professionals who refer business to you.

Secrecy News: "The rise of “the wall” between intelligence and law enforcement personnel that impeded the sharing of information within the U.S. government prior to September 11, 2001 was critically examined in a detailed monograph (pdf) that was prepared in 2004 for the 9/11 Commission. It is the only one of four staff monographs that had not previously been released. It was finally declassified and disclosed earlier this month. In April 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified (pdf) that the failure to properly share threat information in the summer of 2001 could be attributed to Justice Department policy memoranda that were issued in 1995 by the Clinton Administration. That is an erroneous oversimplification, the staff monograph contends: “A review of the facts… demonstrates that the Attorney General’s testimony did not fairly and accurately reflect” the meaning or relevance of those 1995 policy documents. For one thing, those policies did not even apply to CIA and NSA information, which could have been shared with law enforcement without any procedural obstacles."

The End of Institutional Repositories & the Beginning of Social Academic Research Service: An Enhanced Role For Libraries - Stuart Basefsky advocates broadening the concept of institutional repositories (IRs) to serve as full-fledged electronic libraries and documents how they can then serve the greater purpose of collecting, disseminating, analyzing and exchanging useful digital information for academic purposes.

Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent - By Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey - Internet & Democracy Case Study Series, June 2009. Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2009-06

"On 16 June the Government published The Digital Britain Report, its strategic vision for ensuring that the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy. The report provides actions and recommendations to promote and protect talent and innovation in our creative industries, to modernise TV and radio frameworks and support local news, and introduces policies to maximise the social and economic benefits from digital technologies."

Official Google Blog: "...Citizentube, a special YouTube blog devoted to chronicling the way that people are using video to change the world. If you've followed news and politics on YouTube, you might have noticed that we started Citizentube as a video channel on the site a few years back, but we soon realized that keeping track of all the phenomenal uses of YouTube by posting our own videos just wasn't fast enough — so now we're blogging, too. We generally focus on two types of posts: the compelling political and social uses of YouTube that we see the community bubble up every day, and our own programming initiatives and partnerships in the political, news, and nonprofit arenas."

New on LLRX.com: Bridging the DiGital Divide: Custom Search Engines Put You in Control - Law librarian, legal research expert and blogger John J. DiGilio's new column focuses on technology trends that leverage the web to achieve more efficient and effective results. Here John recommends using customized search engines to manage the sites you search.

2009 Trust, Security & Passwords Survey Research Brief: "This global "snooping" survey is the third in a series of benchmark studies focused on identifying security and privacy trends among IT workers. Results are intended to raise awareness about the risks associated with powerful, and often unmanaged, privileged users and passwords. While seemingly innocuous, these accounts provide workers with "keys to the kingdom," allowing them to access critically sensitive information, no matter where it resides."

"This Pew Internet/California HealthCare Foundation survey finds that technology is not an end, but a means to accelerate the pace of discovery, widen social networks, and sharpen the questions someone might ask when they do get to talk to a health professional. Technology can help to enable the human connection in health care and the internet is turning up the information network’s volume."

Putting Women's Health Care Disparities On The Map: Examining Racial and Ethnic Disparities at the State Level, June 10, 2009: "This Kaiser Family Foundation report documents the persistence of disparities between white women and women of color across the country. It provides a rare and comprehensive state-level look at disparities among women of different races and ethnicities on a broad range of indicators of health and well-being, including rates of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, AIDS and cancer, and access to health insurance and health screenings."

Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government: "...this initial public engagement process on open government policy will take place in three phases (brainstorming, discussion, drafting). Following this initial process, we will distill the input received here, from submissions of proposals in From the Inbox, and from government experts and develop a set of draft recommendations for both public and inter-governmental review. These recommendations will, in turn, help to guide the development of government-wide policy on transparency, participation, and collaboration."

"The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. As a priority Open Government Initiative for President Obama's administration, Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs will continue to grow as datasets are added. Federal, Executive Branch data are included in the first version of Data.gov."

ADP National Employment Report: "Nonfarm private employment decreased 532,000 from April to May 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from March to April was revised by 54,000, from a decline of 491,000 to a decline of 545,000. Monthly employment losses in April and May averaged 539,000. This is a notable improvement over the first three months of the year, when monthly losses averaged 691,000. Nevertheless, despite some recent indications that economic activity is stabilizing, employment, which usually trails overall economic activity, is likely to decline for at least several more months, although perhaps not as rapidly as during the last six months. May’s ADP Report estimates nonfarm private employment in the service-providing sector fell by 265,000. Employment in the goods-producing sector declined 267,000, with employment in the manufacturing sector dropping 149,000, its thirty-ninth consecutive monthly decline."

"As the ongoing recession places new constraints on family and government budgets, the long-standing gap between Americans’ need for long-term care services and the public and private funding available to pay for them grows ever wider. Policymakers may be interested in exploring whether private long-term care insurance – which now covers only about 6 million individuals – could play a larger role in financing the country’s long-term care needs. A new policy brief, Closing the Long-Term Care Funding Gap: The Challenge of Private Long-Term Care Insurance, from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured examines the fundamentals of private long-term care insurance...Also available is related testimony, Filling In the Long-Term Care Gaps, from Diane Rowland, Executive Vice President of the Foundation and the Executive Director of KCMU, who testified June 3 at a U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing on the role of private insurance in long-term care."

URL shorteners, such as TinyURL, bit.ly and notlong.com allow users to share and post links in a quicker manner with less likelihood of misdirection. They also add an intermediary between the reader and the site of origin, and the risk of countless dead links if and when the business model of the respective services ceases to sustain a viable return.

"NIST announces that its working definition of cloud computing is available. Researchers worked in collaboration with industry and government to draft the definition that serves as a foundation for its research and future publication on the topic. Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Researchers are studying cloud architectures, economics, security and deployment strategies for the federal government."

Navigating the Enterprise 2.0 Highway: Heather Colman provides an overview of Hicks Morley's implementation of ThoughtFarmer, an Enterprise 2.0/wiki style intranet platform, one year ago. Despite a few growing pains, she describes how the application was successful at meeting the primary objectives to decentralize content updates and increase knowledge sharing and collaboration within the firm.

With Translation Technology On Their Side, Humans Can Finally Lick the Language Barrier: "...a universal translator...is being tested in Iraq by DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- the legendary research and development works in Arlington [Virginia]. The machine interprets the spoken word. You talk in English. It repeats whatever you said in spoken Iraqi Arabic. It then awaits a spoken response from the Iraqi, and talks back to you in English... Independently, Google is deploying its strikingly successful Translate project. It instantly translates text among 41 languages from Bulgarian to Hindi with surprising felicity. The big question is how soon Google will release a voice version, making the world's cellphones multilingual."

Online King Records Access (OKRA) Database: "A Joint Project of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, and the Robert W.Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. his searchable database gives you access to thousands of King documents through the year 1958."

Follow up to previous articles on Google Book Search: "The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals. The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public's access to books, is possible because of Google's pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google."

News release: "Students and families may not be getting as much help as they think from commercial admission test preparation, according to a report commissioned by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). Existing academic research suggests average gains as a result of commercial test preparation are in the neighborhood of 30 points on the SAT and less than one point on the ACT, substantially lower than gains marketed by test preparation companies. However, the research report also indicates that some colleges and universities may make inappropriate distinctions among applications based on small differences in admission test scores, making even minimal test score gains potentially important in those decisions. The report suggests more comprehensive research is needed to further understand the impact of specific types of test preparation, as distinct from other factors that may improve test scores."

"The Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development (IIC) is an autonomous non-profit institution established by Guyana and the Commonwealth. Through the dedication of 371,000 hectares (about one million acres) of intact tropical rainforest by the Government and People of Guyana to the International Community, the IIC aims to show how tropical forests can be conserved and sustainably used for ecological, social and economic benefits to local, national and international communities."

Follow up to previous postings on swine flu and A/H1N1: from the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) - "The information in this site is intended to support internationally oriented higher education administrators, study abroad representatives, faculty and students by helping inform their decisions and actions affecting international academic activities stemming from concerns over the H1N1 strain of influenza...We are regularly updating basic statistics about the virus outbreak in the North American region. The information is provided by the appropriate government agencies of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada."

Harvard Business School Working Paper: An Ounce of Prevention: The Power of Public Risk Management in Stabilizing the Financial System, May 4, 2009

Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap, Scott E. Carrelly, UC Davis and NBER; Marianne E. Pagez, UC Davis and NBER; James E. Westx, USAF Academy, May 7, 2009

Follow up to previous postings, Spain Announces Superspeed Trains and Vision of High-Speed Rail in America, see Stop This Train! by Tom Vanderbilt: "There is at least one technology in America, however, that is worse now than it was in the early 20th century: the train."

The Global Food Crisis, The End of Plenty - by Joel K. Bourne Jr.

WSJ: "The best 3-year-old in the land just happens to be a filly named Rachel Alexandra. Jockey Calvin Borel all but guaranteed victory in the Preakness Stakes and, boy, did she deliver, becoming the first filly in 85 years to win the second leg of the Triple Crown."

Screencast demonstrates new engine's capabilities: Wolfram|Alpha Screencast

Progressive Librarians Guild Calls for Elsevier to End Corrupt Publishing Practices and for Library Associations to Take Advocacy Role on Behalf of Scientific Integrity

"Virtual Student Foreign Service (VSFS) Internships, announced by Secretary Clinton at the 2009 New York University commencement speech, are part of a growing effort by the State Department to harness technology and a commitment to global service among young people to facilitate new forms of diplomatic engagement. The VSFS Internships will be developed over the next year and will seek to harness the energy of a rising generation of citizen diplomats."

TheLancet.com: "The emergence in Mexico in April of a new strain of influenza A H1N1 (swine flu) capable of causing human disease and of person-to-person transmission has put health authorities around the world on alert for an influenza pandemic, and caused a storm of coverage in the mass media. Outside Mexico, the disease caused by H1N1 appears no more severe than seasonal influenza; however, the possibility that the virus might cause more severe disease as it spreads cannot be discounted. Cases of infection have now been confirmed in 33 countries on four continents. WHO is considering raising the pandemic alert level to six, which would signify the first influenza pandemic since 1968." [Gerry McKiernan]

Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry - As Roger V. Skalbeck documents, one of the underlying obstacles to reproducing older books is a central place to look for information about what is protected by copyright and what may have passed into the public domain is lacking. Responding to this need, OCLC recently introduced a beta service, the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER). It could be a very valuable resource for recording and sharing copyright status information."

News release: "The National Small Business Association (NSBA) today released data showing that reliance on credit cards is growing among small businesses. Unfortunately, so, too, is the number of small-business respondents who reported worsening credit-card terms. The NSBA 2009 Small Business Credit Card Survey provides a detailed view of how small businesses are utilizing their credit cards, how their credit-card companies are treating them, and the impacts of deteriorating credit-card terms on their business."

Follow up to April 26, 2009 posting - WSJ Interactive Map - Adverse events at top 100 newspapers, 2006-2009, this New York Times op-ed by Frank Rich - The American Press on Suicide Watch: "Newspaper circulations and revenues are in free fall. Legendary brands from The Los Angeles Times to The Philadelphia Inquirer are teetering. The New York Times Company threatened to close The Boston Globe if its employees didn’t make substantial sacrifices in salaries and benefits. Other papers have died. The reporting ranks on network and local news alike are shriveling. You know it’s bad when the Senate is moved, as it was last week, to weigh in with hearings on The Future of Journalism."

Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper - Working the Graveyard Shift, Why raising the Social Security retirement age is not the answer, by Monique Morrissey and Emily Garr: "The life expectancy of older Americans has increased by three and a half years over the past half century. In 2005, Americans who survived to age 65 could expect to live another 18.6 years, up from 15.1 years in 1955. By 2050, the Social Security Administration estimates that the average 65-year-old will live 21 years in retirement. As our golden years grow longer, we will need to work longer, work harder, or increase the share of earnings devoted to funding retirement in order to ensure a comfortable old age. The choice depends on whether we prefer to enjoy the fruits of economic growth in the form of increased leisure or increased consumption."

On May 6, 2009 the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held the following Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet hearing: The Future of Journalism. Witness statements:

• Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience, Google Inc.
  
• Alberto Ibargüen, President and Chief Executive Officer, John S. And James L. Knight Foundation
  
• David Simon, Author, TV Producer and Former Newspaperman
  
• Steve Coll, Former Managing Editor, The Washington Post
  
• James Moroney, Publisher/CEO, The Dallas Morning News
  
• Arianna Huffington, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post

Press Releases by Academic Medical Centers: Not So Academic?, Steven Woloshin, MD, MS; Lisa M. Schwartz, MD, MS; Samuel L. Casella, MPH; Abigail T. Kennedy, BA; and Robin J. Larson, MD, MPH. Annals of Internal Medicine 5 May 2009 | Volume 150 Issue 9 | Pages 613-618 [full text available at no charge]

News release: "U.S. home values continued to slide for the ninth consecutive quarter, declining 14.2 percent from a year ago, and falling 21.8 percent since the market peak in 2006. Additionally, one-fifth (21.9%) of all homeowners in the United States is in negative equity, and one in five homes sold in the past 12 months was a foreclosure. Zillow Q1 Real Estate Market Reports track 161 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) throughout the U.S., identifying market trends including, but not limited to: five and 10-year annualized change, negative equity, short sales and foreclosure transactions [includes excel, graphs and maps]."

Time: "At the new President's urging and by his example, the entire Federal Government [well, not really] has bounded into the world of social-networking. Twenty-five agencies now have YouTube channels. The Library of Congress has begun posting thousands of free historical photos on Flickr. In the past week alone, about 30 agencies, including the White House, have joined Facebook."

News release: "Recommind...search-powered information risk management (IRM) software....released the results of its recent research into the information access and search habits of UK organisations. With businesses capable of searching just 50 percent of the information that their employees need for their daily tasks, the findings indicate that legacy, one-size-fits-all ‘Enterprise Search 1.0’ systems are no longer suitable for modern enterprises that require instant, automated and highly relevant access to all kinds of information – from documents and email to fellow colleagues’ expertise and knowledge to project-specific information. The impact on businesses from this technology failure includes staff spending many hours searching fruitlessly for the information they need to do their daily jobs – with approximately a quarter of those surveyed admitting that employees typically spend more than half a day a week on this task. For a company with 1,000 employees, this equates to upwards of £50,000 worth of lost time a week or £2,600,000 a year."

May 3, 2009 - Swine Flu: First, Sow No Panic, By Elisabeth Rosenthal: "Wash your hands. I know this sounds silly, but it is far more effective at preventing flu than having a dose-pack of Tamiflu in the medicine chest. Take it from a doctor, mother and reporter who covered SARS as well as bird flu where they were most virulent."

Follow up to related postings on swine flu, news that CABI has "announced free access to its specialist Global Health database, the definitive database for public health information, to assist in the battle against swine flu."

Obama Is Nudging Views on Race, a Survey Finds: "Barack Obama’s presidency seems to be altering the public perception of race relations in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good, and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July, according to the latest New York Times/ CBS News poll."

Managing Arab Sovereign Wealth in Turbulent Times—and Beyond, Sven Behrendt, Bassma Kodmani Carnegie Paper, April 2009

Follow up to previous postings on swine flu resources, the following news release: "Due to the recent global outbreak of Swine Influenza, EBSCO Publishing and the DynaMed Editors have made DynaMed’s information about Swine Influenza free to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. The DynaMed topic on Swine Influenza consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis. Please click on this link for information regarding Swine Influenza."

Via Pia Christensen, Managing Editor/Online Services, Association of Health Care Journalists: "the Association has constantly updated resources about covering flu, pandemics and public health preparedness. We have detailed tip sheets, speaker presentations about pandemics, animal-borne diseases, emergency preparedness and public health, inks to press briefings, hearings and news conferences..."

"Air pollution continues to threaten the lives and health of millions of people in the United States despite great progress since the modern Clean Air Act was first passed in 1970. Even as the nation explores the complex challenges of global warming and energy, air pollution remains widespread and dangerous. This year marks the tenth annual American Lung Association State of the Air report and provides an excellent opportunity to look back over the changes in the past ten years. This 2009 report looks at ozone and particle pollution year round (annual average) and over short-term levels (24-hour) of particle pollution (PM2.5) found in monitoring sites across the United States in 2005, 2006, and 2007."

Follow up to Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Authors Guild: "The court overseeing Authors Guild v. Google extended the time for authors and publishers to opt out of the settlement by four months, to September 4th (Judge Chin's order). The fairness hearing will be on October 7th."

The Nation's Report Card: Long-Term Trend 2008

"U.S. News analyzed more than 12,000 graduate programs to bring you this year's rankings." The following are included:

• Business School Rankings
  
• Education School Rankings
  
• Engineering School Rankings
  
• Law School Rankings
  
• Medical School Rankings
  
• Library and Information Studies

Pressure on the Presses: "A precipitous drop in ad spending has cut profits at U.S. newspapers sharply. Some dailies are in bankruptcies, some are printing fewer papers and some have closed altogether. Thousands of reporters, editors and others have left the industry. Track events and readership at the top 50 newspapers by circulation...and in the top 100."

Environmental Defense Fund: "The urgency of the current economic and environmental crises requires solutions that have been proven to work effectively. Our report, Reinventing Transit, American communities finding smarter, cleaner, faster transportation solutions, showcases the new generation of innovative public transit already at work in communities across America, helping to create jobs while ensuring cleaner air and healthier communities. Through the report's 11 case studies, we show that cutting-edge transit can be cost effective, flexible and implemented quickly. They are concrete examples of how modern transit can be tailored to any community, providing greater mobility and access to jobs while making travel cheaper and more energy efficient."

"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 report, Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want, presents findings from these research efforts in order to understand:

• 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
  
• 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.

News release: "The likelihood of customers switching banks increases by up to three times after their bank merges with or is acquired by another financial institution, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Bank Mergers and Acquisitions Report...The report examines the drivers of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with their new banks following mergers that took place during the past three years. Using customer satisfaction scores from the J.D. Power and Associates studies on retail banking for 2007 and 2008 as benchmarks, the Bank Mergers and Acquisitions Report compares pre-merger customer satisfaction with current satisfaction levels and identifies opportunities for improvement in the merger process. The report also provides a snapshot of perceptions and attitudes of customers of Chase/WaMu; Wells Fargo/Wachovia; PNC/National City; and Capital One/Chevy Chase—which are currently undergoing mergers."

Follow up April 21, 2009 posting, Gallup Poll: Americans Increasingly Concerned About Retirement Income, this new survey, Consumer Trends in the
Current Market Environment, April 2009: "AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company...released results of a February 2009 consumer study that shows most Americans over the past year have grown increasingly worried about making ends meet. And while protecting themselves from outliving their retirement savings remains their top concern, they are slow to do anything about it. The study revisits the same financial concerns addressed in the first AXA Equitable survey conducted in April 2008, and repeated last October. In the latest survey, 65 percent of those polled said they were concerned about meeting everyday expenses, including the ability to pay their mortgage, should they lose their job – up from 54 percent a year ago."

When Did Your County's Jobs Disappear? An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country, by Chris Wilson

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority - Job Dislocation - Making Smart Financial Choices after a Job Loss: "You may not be able to control if or when your company closes a plant or lays off workers—but you can take steps to manage the financial impact of those events. This brochure contains tips on how to:

• keep your finances on the right track in the event of unemployment;
  
• protect yourself when getting financial advice during a period of job
  dislocation; and
  
• ask the right questions about your company’s benefit plans at any time."
  
• Related postings on financial system

News release: "According to a study initiated by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, there are nearly 1 in 50 people living with paralysis -- approximately 6 million people. That's the same number of people as the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. And that number is nearly 40 percent higher than previous estimates showed."

Follow up to April 19, 2009 posting - 2009 Retirement Confidence Survey: Economy Drives Confidence to Record Lows, see this Gallup Poll, Americans Increasingly Concerned About Retirement Income - Expected reliance on 401(k) plans shows major drop from last year, by Frank Newport.

Gallup: "With Earth Day approaching, Americans still on balance believe the quality of the environment in the U.S. is getting worse rather than better; however, their outlook is significantly brighter now than a year ago...Americans show increased optimism about the future quality of the environment, but it will take more than just the election of an environmentally friendly president for the public to begin to perceive that the current condition of the environment is actually improving. The government is likely to take significant steps toward protecting the environment in the coming months, and in future years, Americans will judge whether those efforts have had their intended effect on environmental quality."

Corporate Misgovernance at the World Bank, Working Paper 09-108, April 20, 2009, by Ashwin Kaja and Eric Werker.

The 2009 Retirement Confidence Survey: Economy Drives Confidence to Record Lows; Many Looking to Work Longer, Employee Benefit Research Institute, April 2009

"The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book search, "The [Internet] Archive is one of many Internet content providers that have an interest in opposing the proposed [Google Book]Settlement Agreement because it effectively limits the liability for the identified uses of orphan works of one party alone, Google Inc., and provides for a Books Rights Registry, the interests of which are represented solely by identified rightsholders, to negotiate their exploitation. All other persons, including Internet content providers such as the Archive, would not be able to use orphan works broadly without being exposed to claims to infringement."

News release: "A national survey of American white collar workers found that while technology is widely embraced among working professionals, significant gaps exist among generations regarding its use and application in the workplace. The newly released Technology Gap Survey found generational differences in the effect of technology on workplace etiquette, the blurring boundaries between personal and professional tasks, and the impact of technology overload. The survey – commissioned by LexisNexis, a leading provider of content-enabled workflow solutions – examined the impact of technology in the workplace. It compared technology and software usage among generations of working professionals, including Boomer (ages 44-60), Generation X (ages 29-43) and Generation Y (ages 28 and younger)."

News release: "Despite the emphasis on homeownership and the marginalization of renters, renter households still make up fully one-third of the households in the United States — more than 36 million households. Out of Reach 2009, Persistent Problems, News Challenges for Renters, is a side-by-side comparison of wages and rents in every county, Metropolitan Area (MSAs/HMFAs), combined nonmetropolitan 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 at 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."

"Some 74% of internet users--representing 55% of the entire adult population--went online in 2008 to get involved in the political process or to get news and information about the election. This marks the first time that a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey has found that more than half of the voting-age population used the internet to get involved in the political process during an election year. Several online activities rose to prominence in 2008. In particular, Americans were eager to share their views on the race with others and to take part in the online debate on social media sites such as blogs and social networking sites."

2009 National ADAP Monitoring Project Annual Report: "The National ADAP Monitoring Project Annual Report provides the latest data on state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs). ADAPs, part of the Ryan White Program, provide HIV medications to low-income people with HIV/AIDS who have limited or no prescription drug coverage. ADAPs operate in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories and associated jurisdictions. The 2009 report is the 13th in a series jointly authored by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors."

• Report
  
• Icon Fact Sheet
  
• ADAP Formularies by State

News release: "The value of libraries in communities across the country continued to grow in 2008—and accelerated dramatically as the national economy sank and people looked for cost effective resources in a time of crisis, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual State of America’s Libraries report, released today as part of National Library Week, April 12-18, 2009. U.S. libraries experienced a dramatic increase in library card registration as the public continues to turn to their local library for free services. More than 68 percent of Americans have a library card. This is the greatest number of Americans with library cards since the American Library Association (ALA) started to measure library card usage in 1990, according to a 2008 Web poll conducted by Harris Interactive. The report also says library usage soared as Americans visited their libraries nearly 1.4 billion times and checked out more than 2 billion items in the past year, an increase of more than 10 percent in both checked out items and library visits, compared to data from the last economic downturn in 2001."

News release: "Three front-to-front crash tests, each involving a microcar or minicar into a midsize model from the same manufacturer, show how extra vehicle size and weight enhance occupant protection in collisions. These Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tests are about the physics of car crashes, which dictate that very small cars generally can't protect people in crashes as well as bigger, heavier models."

Turnoff Weeks 2009: April 20th - 26th and September 20th - 26th, 2009: "Why Turn Off?: Screen Time cuts into family time and is a leading cause of obesity in both adults and children. Excessive use of screens for recreational purposes leads to a more sedentary and solitary lifestyle and that is unhealthy for all of us, both mentally and physically. In the US and other industrialized nations around the world, screen time use continue to increase every year. The average daily usage for all screens, in some countries, has reached 9 hours per day. This is for recreational use of screens and does not include work time. On average, people watch 4 hours of television and then spend another 4 plus hours with computers, games, video, iPods and cell phones. According to Nielsen, the average World of Warcraft gamer plays for 892 minutes per week! The company that owns Second Life (a virtual world) claims that its users spent over 1 million hours on line. These statistics hold true for children directed sites as well, including Webkinz and others." [via Tom Melo]

From Mass Transit to New Manufacturing - With the right policies in place, an expansion of public transportation could help reindustrialize the United States. Jonathan Michael Feldman | March 23, 2009

"The Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute have been collaborating since 1996 to develop the most comprehensive database on 401(k) plan participants yet assembled. Participant data include demographic, contribution, asset allocation, and loan and withdrawal activity information. The December 2008 EBRI Issue Brief presents analysis of data collected for 2007 on more than 56,000 plans with 21.8 million participants and $1.425 trillion in assets."

News release: "Economic activity in the manufacturing sector failed to grow in March for the 14th consecutive month, and the overall economy contracted for the sixth consecutive month, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®...None of the 18 manufacturing industries reported growth in March. The industries reporting contraction in March — listed in order — are: Fabricated Metal Products; Textile Mills; Machinery; Chemical Products; Primary Metals; Printing & Related Support Activities; Transportation Equipment; Plastics & Rubber Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Wood Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Furniture & Related Products; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Paper Products; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Computer & Electronic Products; and Apparel, Leather & Allied Products."

Proactive Leadership & The Role of Information: Identifying Strategic Networks of Information - Networking is supposed to be essential to successful leaders. But what is the importance of networking conceptually? People are only one form of this vital leadership resource. Stuart Basefksy explains how would one go about developing expanded networks of information and sources.

Center for Retirement Research at Boston College: Long-Term Care Costs and the National Retirement Risk Index, by Alicia H. Munnell, Anthony Webb, Francesca Golub-Sass, and Dan Muldoon April 2009

"The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) is a non-profit, public service organization dedicated to rechargeable battery recycling. Founded by the rechargeable battery industry in 1994, RBRC’s mission is to promote the recycling of used rechargeable batteries found in many cordless electronic consumer products such as, cellular and cordless phones, laptop computers, cordless power tools, camcorders, and two-way radios. In pursuit of its mission, RBRC also collects old cell phones. RBRC's public education campaign and rechargeable battery and cell phone recycling program – Call2Recycle® – is the result of the industry's determination to conserve natural resources and prevent rechargeable batteries from entering the solid waste stream."

"Established in 1970, [the International Nuclear Information System] INIS represents the world's largest database of scientific and technical literature on a wide range of subjects from nuclear engineering, safeguards and non-proliferation to applications in agriculture, health and industry....We are pleased to announce that access to INIS database has been now opened to all Internet users around the world. Free, open and unrestricted access is available from the INIS Homepage, or directly from the following link: http://inisdb2.iaea.org . This initiative provides easy access to reliable nuclear information on the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology, including nonconventional literature, and makes nuclear knowledge readily available worldwide. Currently, the INIS Database contains over 3 million bibliographic records and almost 200,000 full-text nonconventional documents, consisting of scientific and technical reports and other non copyrighted information."

"The Leadership and Knowledge Management system focuses on identifying and addressing agency leadership competencies so that continuity of leadership is ensured, knowledge is shared across the organization, and an environment of continuous learning is present."

• Definition
  
• Standard
  
• Critical Success Factors
  
• Applicable Merit System Principles

Science: Financial Crisis Reshaping the Life Sciences Industry, By Clifford S. Mintz, April 10, 2009

"American Journalism Review’s latest survey of the nation’s state capitols finds a dramatic decrease in the number of newspaper reporters covering state government full time. A handful of digital news outlets are springing up to fill the breach. When will these efforts be enough to compensate for the loss of the newspaper watchdogs? [Peggy Garvin]

Boston.com: "Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90-minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company, and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business office employees."

The Quiet Coup: "The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time" - by Simon Johnson, May 2009 Atlantic.

Tax Department Resource Shortages: Performing Under Pressure: "In today’s economic climate, a proactive, strategic view of your tax department’s capabilities is crucial to closing the gaps between current and expected performance. Yet, finance and tax department leaders are under significant pressure to add value, with limited time to identify and implement changes within their organizations. In a new report, Deloitte discusses approaches for maintaining a high-performing team and ways of focusing and managing the tax department’s resources to address both internal and external challenges."

News release: "In this difficult economy, lawyers can get help with their careers, their practices and their well-being with just a mouse click. The American Bar Association’s new Economic Recovery Resources Web Portal offers a wide range of assistance for coping with tough times including information on job searching, personal development and career transition, law practice management tips, handling stress, and more. The resources Web site at http://new.abanet.org/economicrecovery consists of six topic areas: job search and networking, career transition, practice management, professional development, stress management and savings."

Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide: Sabrina I. Pacifici's completely revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. This guide is a "best of list" of web, database and email alert products, services and tools, as well links to content specific sources produced by governments, academia, NGOs, the media and various publishers.

For readers who access the online version of the International Herald Tribune via this link, be advised that it was merged within the scope of the greater New York Times site, and is now titled and linked as follows: International Herald Tribune The Global Edition of The New York Times.

YouTube Blog: "Earlier this week, we announced the launch of YouTube EDU, a hub for videos from over 100 of our leading university and college partners. Think campus tours, news about cutting-edge research, and lectures by professors and world-renowned thought leaders. There are also 200 full (and free!) courses, in a range of subjects, from some of the world's most prestigious universities, including IIT/IISc, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale. There are over 20,000 videos on YouTube EDU and growing."

"For the 50 most admired companies overall, FORTUNE's survey asked businesspeople to vote for the companies that they admired most, from any industry."

World's Most Admired Companies

• Full List
  
• By Location
  
• Best & Worst in Innovation
  
• No. 1s
  
• Industries

Encouraging Women into Senior Management Positions - How Coaching Can Help [Summary], Broughton A, Miller L, Research Report 462, Institute for Employment Studies, March 2009, a study on behalf of The Foundation of Coaching [via Stuart Basefsky]

"Despite long-standing anti-discrimination legislation in the US, UK and across Europe, women still remain under-represented in many occupations, most noticeably in high-level posts. This phenomenon is seen at its most extreme when the composition of company boards is considered. In the USA, women constitute on average 14.7 per cent of board members on Fortune 500 companies; in the UK, women hold 11 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships, according to the 2008 Sex and Power report published by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Encouraging women who hold senior management positions to move into board-level positions is viewed as a crucial part of the global drive to improve equality between men and women. There is likely to be a range of reasons why women in senior jobs fail to progress up to board level and issues connected with discrimination and the ‘glass ceiling’ have been well characterised. However, in some cases there may be an element of choice: some women may simply decide not to progress to board level despite being coached for and offered such positions."

Through the Labyrinth: Real Answers on How Women Become Leaders - With considerable detail and insight, Diana Philip reviews a recent book that explores whether the concept of whether the “glass ceiling” still accurately describes the challenges women face to realize leadership aspirations. The book's authors examine leadership theories developed by multiple disciplines to explain what is holding women back from becoming leaders. They provide data from various studies on employment trends as well as insight gathered from interviews with women leaders to assess how true or false these theories apply to contemporary female workers.

Health Care Costs: A Primer - "The Kaiser Family Foundation released an updated primer that examines recent trends in health care costs in the United States and the factors that contribute to their rapid rise. Prepared by Foundation staff, the primer also describes the types and sources of health care spending, the demographic factors associated with higher or lower levels of spending, and the impact of higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs on families and employers. It also discusses factors that influence health care spending growth, including the use of new medical technology, population changes, and changes in disease prevalence, and highlights some of the challenges policymakers face in efforts to slow the rise in health care costs."

New on LLRX.com - New Economy Analytics, Resources and Alerts: This guide by Marcus P. Zillman is designed to bring together the latest resources and sources on the Internet covering new economy analytics, resources and alerts.

News release: "Starting today, The eBook Store from Sony will provide access to more than a half-million public domain books from Google optimized for current models of the Reader. At Sony’s eBook store (ebookstore.sony.com), a button on the front page leads to the books from Google, which people can transfer to their PRS-505 or PRS-700 Reader at no cost. The process is seamless for Reader owners who have an account at the store. Those new to the store will need to set up an account and download Sony’s free eBook Library software. To start, people can access more than a half-million public domain books from Google, boosting the available titles from the eBook Store to more than 600,000."

MARI®Mortgage Asset Research Institute Eleventh Periodic Mortgage Fraud Case Report To: Mortgage Bankers Association, by Denise James, Jennifer Butts Michelle Donahue, March 2009