From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 28/02):

Business & management:
• 93% of cruise ship visitors surveyed are “very satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with their experience of cruising in NZ.

Education
• Internet technology is transforming education, especially for universities needing to cut back on their budgets. Second Life is transforming the way academics teach the new generation of university students.

Environment & sustainability:
• Waitakere City has noticed a big increase in the number of cathode ray tube television sets being dumped, now that technology has moved on to flat screen TVs.
• People who would like to find out more about how to live in a sustainable way can attend a Sustainable Living course of evening study and be part of regional training events and a national network.
• One Plan for Auckland is the new initiative that will use greater collaboration amongst national, regional and local government. The aim is to set a clear direction for sustainable development, and it will build on the current strategic objectives that are set out in the Auckland Sustainability Framework.
• Climate change is going to have an impact on ¾ of the world’s key fishing grounds, which could affect up to 2.6 billion people in developing countries around the world who rely on seafood for their daily protein.
• A new Centre for Sustainable Cities was launched this week at the University of Otago after a seminar that brought together local and overseas experts.
• The government wants to get better information about water resources to improve sustainable management, by bringing in a standard that will measure the amount of water taken from rivers, lakes and aquifers.

Health & wellbeing:
• Techno addiction (to cell phones, PDAs, etc) is a growing phenomenon, and while in the early stages or addiction, a worker may seem to become more efficient, later on the addiction can seriously interfere with work.
• The Families Commission report “Elder abuse and neglect: exploration of risk and protective factors” is now available (2008 research report).
• NZ & overseas experts will be gathering to discuss how leaky buildings affect health at 2 workshops (in Wellington and Auckland). Discussions will concern older buildings as well as those involved in the current group of leaky building cases.
• A review of progress on the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing has prompted the UN to ask governments for more effort.
• A new WHO survey has found that drug resistant TB is at its highest rates ever – although NZ has a rate of less than 1%, rates in parts of China are just over 7%.

Law & Government:
• The UK consumer group Which? says that people are leaving themselves open to the risk of identity theft when using social networking sites.
• In spite of people’s perceptions, research shows that there has in fact been a drop in the incidence of crime over the last decade.
• The official UN estimates and projections of the urban, rural and city populations, the World Urbanization Prospects database has just had its 2007 revision released with a prediction that half the global population will be living in cities by the end of this year.

People, culture & diversity:
• Language diversity and the learning of languages has a strong foundation in NZ according to a recent Human Rights Commission report (and learning Maori is in the digital environment at institutions like AUT), but the International Year of Languages has just been launched by the UN with a warning that more than half of the world’s 6700 languages face extinction.

Science, technology & transport:
• The UK government has ordered a review of the future of broadband internet at a time when the industry there says the current telecoms infrastructure can’t cope with the increase in demand for services such as downloads of films, videos and music.
• The US Dept of Energy provides free access to the High Performance Buildings Database, which collects data about high performance green building projects. The database includes various factors that affect a building's performance, such as energy, materials, and land use & covers buildings mostly in the US, but also around the world. A recent Celsias blog posting highlights some of these.
• The Household Sustainability Benchmark Survey published this month by the Ministry for the Environment shows in the section on transport, that lack of convenience is one of the main reason NZers don’t make greater use of public transport