Author archives

Crucial Antarctic ice shelf could fail within five years

Washington Post: “Scientists have discovered a series of worrying weaknesses in the ice shelf holding back one of Antarctica’s most dangerous glaciers, suggesting that this important buttress against sea level rise could shatter within the next three to five years. Until recently, the ice shelf was seen as the most stable part of Thwaites Glacier, …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

Law as Code: 
Introducing AustLII’s DataLex AI

Mowbray, Andrew and Greenleaf, Graham and Chung, Philip, Law as Code: 
Introducing AustLII’s DataLex AI (November 16, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3971919 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3971919 “AustLII, as a provider of free access to legal information, has a distinctive approach to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) which is called ‘DataLex’. This article introduces that approach, and …

Subjects: AI, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

The 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century

GQ: “For the past couple decades, we’ve felt that the best books being published—the most riveting, the most richly rendered, the most likely to last—are the works of literary journalism. You know the books we mean: books built on robust reporting and impossible-to-invent characters; books featuring sweeping plots and cinematic scenes (but true); books drawn …

Subjects: Libraries

Lessons from COVID-19 on Executing Communications and Engagement at the Community Level During a Health Crisis

National Academies: “On May 20, 2021, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a virtual convening of public health and communications practitioners to examine the challenges, opportunities, and lessons they saw while executing effective communications and community engagement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic….Participants in the convening discussed how communicating about COVID-19 to …

Subjects: E-Government, Government Documents, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Medicine

Arctic Report Card: Climate change transforming Arctic into ‘dramatically different state’

“NOAA’s 2021 Arctic Report Card documents the numerous ways that climate change continues to fundamentally alter this once reliably-frozen region, as increasing heat and the loss of ice drive its transformation into a warmer, less frozen and more uncertain future.  This year’s Arctic Report Card is the 16th annual volume of original, peer-reviewed environmental observations …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Health Care

Future of Work: Requiring workers to return to the office is a ‘doomed approach’

Washington Post: “Slack’s CEO Stewart Butterfield says the future of work is being dictated by workers who want more flexibility and better tech tools. The chief executive and co-founder of Slack — one of the fastest growing work communication tools that was bought by Salesforce earlier this year for $27.7 billion — believes the pandemic …

Subjects: Economy, Knowledge Management

Computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change

Coan, T.G., Boussalis, C., Cook, J. et al. Computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change. Sci Rep 11, 22320 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01714-4 “A growing body of scholarship investigates the role of misinformation in shaping the debate on climate change. Our research builds on and extends this literature by (1) developing and validating a comprehensive taxonomy …

Subjects: Climate Change, Education, Environmental Law, Knowledge Management, Social Media

Stop Google tracking for good by changing these settings

CNET – “If you are using any Google app, it’s likely you’re being tracked. Even if you turned off location history on your Google account, you’re not completely in the clear yet. While disabling that setting sounds like a one-and-done solution, some Google apps are still storing your location data. Just opening the Google Maps …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Internet, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media