Business & management:
• The WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards are now open to entries, promoted by the Write Group Limited. The awards promote the use of plain English in communication by businesses and government.
• NZ’s biggest annual tourism event, TRENZ (Tourism Rendezvous New Zealand) will be held in Auckland in June 2009
• Just as employers are now routinely checking Facebook profiles for prospective employees, computer game-playing skills are now increasingly recognised as more valuable than just as an entry in the “Hobbies” section of a person’s CV. Gaming can hone organisational, managerial and inter-personal skills and can reveal important personality characteristics.
• Businesses in the San Francisco Bay area will be required to pay fees according to the amount of carbon that they emit, the first fees of their kind in the US. Power plants and oil refineries in the region will be paying the biggest fees.
Environment & sustainability:
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature says another 11 species of sharks are threatened, including the shortfin mako and thresher sharks.
• The 2 NZ climate change reports released this week are “Climate Change Effects & Impacts Assessment Manual: A Guide for Local Government” and “The EcoClimate Report: Climate change and agricultural production”.
• If you have serious concerns about energy this winter, a new website has been created: “Winterpower Watch”. The site allows anyone to check for accurate and up-to-date information about the electricity supply situation.
• The Marine Energy Deployment Fund has provided its first grant, to a company that is waiting on resource consent to install 3 tidal turbines in the Kaipara Harbour.
• National Geographic has started an annual survey on how environmentally friendly consumers are in countries around the world, called “Greendex”. Only 14 countries are listed in the first report – US consumers rank as worst, while Indian & Brazilian consumers rank as most environmentally friendly.
• The US NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has released a report on what climate change might cost the US economy: “The cost of climate change: what we’ll pay if global warming continues unchecked”.
• NASA has released the results of the first study to show a definitive link between human activity and climate change. The article is published in the Nature issue of 2008 May 15, but the article and supporting material can also be seen via NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies: “Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change.”
• Sir John Sorrell of the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment has spoken recently about three tests that can indicate the sustainability of our cities.
Health & wellbeing:
• A speech-language therapy conference in Auckland last week heard that testing of young offenders in the UK shows that poor communication skills have an impact on childhood offending.
• The technical standard for national tsunami signage was announced this week, meaning that there will now be standardised signage around the country warning about tsunami zones, safe evacuation routes and safe locations.
• The UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has produced a guide for employers and professionals: “Promoting physical activity in the workplace”, because “people of working age are not active enough to benefit their health.”
• Rates of heavy drinking in the UK have doubled since 1995, raising concerns about the burden on the health system, and as a result, the president of the Royal College of Physicians has called for an end to cheap supermarket drink.
Law & Government:
• A UK report “Designing citizen-centred governance” was released this month. Research was drawn from a variety of areas including health, education, and a variety of community-based organisations and services.
People, culture & diversity:
• Most NZers don’t rate wealth as highly as they rate living a morally good life, and having enough time to do the things they want. The statistics come from research on the importance of values by UMR Research.
• A BBC-sponsored study of its virtual world for children “Adventure Rock” shows that virtual worlds are rehearsal spaces for the things children can try out, without fear of the consequences that would exist in the real world.
Science, technology & transport:
• Transport planners in Washington DC are concerned that a massive move of commuters out of cars and into the local Metro service is putting the “ailing” system under pressure, and that measures like flexitime might be needed to ease the rush of new riders. Projected increases in riders were based on population and job growth, but didn’t factor in the impact of the high petrol costs.
• Internet usability expert Jakob Nielsen (one of his reports on intranets is now available on Citynet) says in his latest report on web habits, that people are now less patient online, they ignore efforts to make them linger at sites and they are suspicious of promotions designed to get their attention.
• European researchers are using sensors, cameras and GPS on buses to analyse traffic conditions (ice, smog, bad weather, congestion) and provide additional information to the other means they use, to reduce traffic and improve road conditions.
• Dupont and BP are partnering to produce biobutanol for use as a biofuel, which can be manufactured from the same sources as ethanol. Previously, higher production costs prevented its use in transport, but because it is closer to a petrol substitute than ethanol, cars could use a biobutanol blend of 16% without the need for engine conversion.
Thursday, 29 May 2008
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