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Daily Archives: August 12, 2014

Only 1.3 Billion Worldwide Employed Full Time for Employer – Gallup

Northern America, former Soviet Union lead in Payroll to Population: “About one in four adults worldwide — or roughly 1.3 billion people — worked full time for an employer in 2013. Gallup’s Payroll to Population (P2P) rate, which reports the percentage of the total adult population that works at least 30 hours per week for an employer, has not grown since 2012.  Gallup’s latest global P2P measurements are based on more than 136,000 interviews across 136 countries in 2013, in which adults were asked a battery of employment questions modeled on the International Labour Organization’s standards. Gallup does not count adults who are self-employed, working part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce as payroll-employed in the P2P metric, and it is not seasonally adjusted. The countries with the highest P2P rates tend to be some of the wealthiest — or those with the highest GDP per capita — such as the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. Additionally, a number of countries on the list, such as Sweden, Bahrain, and Russia, rank toward the top because each has many people working directly for the government or government-owned entities.”

Managerial Performance Incentives and Firm Risk During Economic Expansions and Recessions

Raviv, Alon and Savaser, Tanseli and Sisli Ciamarra, Elif, Managerial Performance Incentives and Firm Risk During Economic Expansions and Recessions (August 6, 2014). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2476964 “In this paper, we argue that the relationship between managerial pay-for-performance incentives and risk taking is procyclical. We study the relationship between incentives provided by stock-based compensation… Continue Reading

The Regulatory Price-Tag: Cost Implications of Post-Crisis Regulatory Reform

The Regulatory Price-Tag: Cost Implications of Post-Crisis Regulatory Reform. Federal Financial Analytics, Inc. July 30, 2014. “The total cost of all of the rules that can be reliably and comparably correlated across the six U.S. global systemically-important banks (G-SIBs) assessed in this study is $70.2 billion. The increase in the cost of regulation under these rules for… Continue Reading

NSA’s Internet Metadata Program Was Sharply Criticized By FISA Judges – EPIC

“Documents Obtained by EPIC Lawsuit Show NSA’s Internet Metadata Program Was Sharply Criticized By FISA Judges While Congressional Oversight Lagged for Year: In a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice, EPIC has obtained many documents about the NSA’s Internet Metadata program. These include the Government’s original FISA application seeking authorization to collect data from millions of e-mails, as well… Continue Reading

Big Data in Materials Research and Development

“Big Data in Materials Research and Development is the summary of a workshop convened by the National Research Council Standing Committee on Defense Materials Manufacturing and Infrastructure in February 2014 to discuss the impact of big data on materials and manufacturing. The materials science community would benefit from appropriate access to data and metadata for materials… Continue Reading

A Global Consortium to Build New Trans-Pacific Cable System “FASTER”

News release: “A consortium of six global companies announced that they have signed commercial agreements to build and operate a new Trans-Pacific cable system to be called “FASTER” with NEC Corporation as the system supplier. The FASTER cable network will connect the United States to two landing locations in Japan. The total amount of investment… Continue Reading

Security Vulnerabilities in Automobiles Subject of Investigation

Andy Greenberg – Forbes: “…This fact, that a car is not a simple machine of glass and steel but a hackable network of computers, is what Miller and Valasek have spent the last year trying to demonstrate. Miller, a 40-year-old security engineer at Twitter, and Valasek, the 31-year-old director of security intelligence at the Seattle… Continue Reading

More Than 30,000 Elephants Are Killed Every Year – HufPo

“More than 30,000 elephants are killed per year for their ivory. The number would probably be higher, if it weren’t for the diligent work of conservation organizations in Africa that are dedicated to protecting and preserving the endangered and threatened species. Just last week, a newborn elephant who had followed a herd of cows became separated from his family and… Continue Reading

Oversight Needed to Address Underreporting and Inconsistencies on Federal Award Website

DATA TRANSPARENCY: Oversight Needed to Address Underreporting and Inconsistencies on Federal Award Website, GAO-14-476: Published: Jun 30, 2014. Publicly Released: Aug 1, 2014 “Although agencies generally reported required contract information, they did not properly report information on assistance awards (e.g., grants or loans), totaling approximately $619 billion in fiscal year 2012. Specifically, 33 of 37 agencies with a… Continue Reading