Author archives

Are you being sarcastic in your Tweets – new algorithm can discern your intent

“We use millions of texts on Twitter containing emojis for training a deep learning model that understands many nuances of how language is used to express emotions. For instance, it does well at capturing sarcasm and slang. We beat state-of-the-art algorithms across many benchmarks datasets. See our paper, blog post or FAQ for more details. …

Subjects: AI, Knowledge Management, Social Media

USGS – Protected Areas Data Portal

“The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) was recently highlighted on the U.S. Geological Survey website. Mapping Public Lands in the United States describes this growing database containing more than three billion public land and marine acres managed by nearly 15,100 agencies and nongovernmental organizations,  and covering 200,000 separate parks and protected areas. PAD-US is a product …

Subjects: E-Government, Environmental Law

GAO Report on increasing deployment of DOD biometrics and forensics

DOD Biometrics and Forensics: Progress Made in Establishing Long-term Deployable Capabilities, but Further Actions Are Needed, GAO-17-580: Published: Aug 7, 2017. Publicly Released: Aug 7, 2017. “The Department of Defense (DOD) has validated its requirements for long-term deployable biometric capabilities (such as fingerprint collection devices) and forensic capabilities (such as expeditionary laboratories). Biometric capabilities are …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Defense, Government Documents, Legal Research, Privacy

Residents in Three Out of Four Counties in U.S. Now Before Immigration Court

“The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has just released a brand new web mapping application that allows the public to examine for the very first time the number of individuals residing in each state, county, and local community within a county, who have pending cases before the Immigration Court. The level of …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Axios – Visualizing the Flow of Goods Across America

“This map shows the flow of all domestic freight between states in 2015 using data from the Freight Analysis Framework, which is a comprehensive accounting of all commercial freight movement between states by all modes of transportation. This includes freight moved by trucks, trains, planes and pipelines, but excludes foreign imports and exports and freights …

Subjects: Economy, Food and Nutrition, Transportation

Alliance for Securing Democracy – Hamilton 68: A New Tool to Track Russian Disinformation on Twitter

“The Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions. The Alliance will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir …

Subjects: Blogs, Defense, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Social Media

Federal Inspectors General Beta Website offers searchable database of reports

“Oversight.gov is a publicly accessible, searchable website containing the latest public reports from contributing Federal Inspectors General who are members of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE). The site is operated and maintained by CIGIE. The reports and information are uploaded to this site by the IGs… Oversight.gov was created …

Subjects: E-Government, Legal Research

Supreme Court’s new electronic filing system will begin operation on November 13, 2017

“The Supreme Court’s new electronic filing system will begin operation on November 13, 2017. A quick link on the Court’s website homepage will provide access to the new system, developed in-house to provide prompt and easy access to case documents. Once the system is in place, virtually all new filings will be accessible without cost …

Subjects: Courts, E-Records, Government Documents, Legal Research

Paper – Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

Okin GS (2017) Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats. PLoS ONE 12(8): e0181301. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181301 “In the US, there are more than 163 million dogs and cats that consume, as a significant portion of their diet, animal products and therefore potentially constitute a considerable dietary footprint. Here, the energy and animal-derived product consumption …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law, Food and Nutrition

Myth of one internet has morphed into reality of the ‘splinternet’

August 4, 2017, Terry Flew: “Both The Economist and WIRED are worried about the “splinternet”. The UK research organisation NESTA thinks it could “break up” the world wide web as we know it. What is this awkwardly named idea? It’s the concept that someone’s experience of the internet in Turkey, for example, is increasingly different …

Subjects: Censorship, E-Commerce, Economy, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research