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Daily Archives: January 23, 2018

Hot Spots With Highest Growth in Immigration Court Backlog Inbox

“The county in the country with the fastest growing number of residents with pending cases before the Immigration Court was Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) in North Carolina. Pending cases there shot up by 34 percent between May and December 2017. Coming in second with a growth rate of 30 percent over this same period was Loudoun… Continue Reading

CRS – Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile

Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile February 10, 2017 – January 17, 2018 R44762 “This report presents a profile of the membership of the 115th Congress (2017-2018) as of January 3, 2018. Statistical information is included on selected characteristics of Members, including data on party affiliation, average age, occupation, education, length of congressional service,… Continue Reading

US News – Is America Great Again? Data Say No

Three years of Best Countries survey results show an unmistakable trend that should alarm Americans. “Among the many things that helped define the 2016 U.S. presidential election, one slogan still rings strong: “Make America Great Again.” The Donald Trump campaign set out to regain the status that the United States had supposedly lost because of… Continue Reading

Are We There Yet? Some predictions for the future of libraries – from 1901

Barbara Fister – Inside Higher Ed: “As I was idly poking into library history, I came across something that surprised me. In a 1901 conference proceeding, Melvil Dewey predicted this would happen by 1926: Books, except a few rarities, will be regarded less as fetiches [sic] to-be protected with a kind of sacred awe, and more for use.… Continue Reading

BRASS reveals Outstanding Business Reference Sources list

‘Each year, the Business Reference Sources Committee of BRASS selects the outstanding business reference sources published since May of the previous year. This year, the committee reviewed nine entries; of these, two were designated as “Outstanding,” six as “Notable,” and one as a “Notable New Edition.” To qualify for these designations, each title must meet… Continue Reading

Cougars Officially Declared Extinct in Eastern U.S., Removed from Endangered Species List

Reuters: “Eastern cougars that once prowled North America from Michigan to South Carolina were officially declared extinct and removed from the U.S. endangered species list on Monday, eight decades after the last confirmed sighting of the wild feline predator.The large cats, also known as mountain lions, pumas or panthers, historically roamed every state east of… Continue Reading

BBC – The (almost) complete history of ‘fake news’

BBC Trending: “…Misinformation, spin, lies and deceit have of course been around forever. But what Buzzfeed’s media editor, Craig] Silverman and others uncovered was a unique marriage between social media algorithms, advertising systems, people prepared to make stuff up to earn some easy cash and an election that gripped a nation and much of the… Continue Reading

How Microsoft Academic uses knowledge to address the problem of conflation/disambiguation

Microsoft Academic post: “Entity linking is a cognitive capability essential to human communication. It contains two challenging components: first, entity conflation, where we recognize that even though an entity is referred to by different names, it is still one item; and second, entity disambiguation, where we differentiate between entities with the same name and distinguish… Continue Reading

CDC reports on impact of 2017-2018 Influenza Season

“Synopsis: – During week 2 (January 7-13, 2018), influenza activity increased in the United States. Viral Surveillance: The most frequently identified influenza virus subtype reported by public health laboratories during week 2 was influenza A(H3). The percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza in clinical laboratories increased. Pneumonia and Influenza Mortality: The proportion of… Continue Reading

Facebook’s News Survey – is it real or fake news – we want to know!

BuzzFeed: “Last week, Facebook said its News Feed would prioritize links from publications its users found “trustworthy.” The company is overhauling News Feed amid ongoing criticism of its platform, which has come under fire for enabling foreign manipulation of US elections, giving rise fake news, and making people feel bad. Facebook plans to determine whether… Continue Reading