From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 21/08):

Business & management:
• If you’re getting more involved in adding content to Citynet pages (or in the case of Libraries, the website) you may want to read about the “sandwich” approach to content writing (known in journalism as the “inverted triangle”).
• Business Week’s current issue includes a special report “Trouble at work” which uses the feedback from the journal’s readers to help put together the content. Issues in covered in both articles and videos are work-life balance, toxic bosses, an interview with the author of Good to great, being entrepreneurs, leadership, time management and managing Gen X and Gen Y.
• An earlier Business Week article answers the question “Are social networking sites useful for business?”
• Traditional workplaces are not meeting the needs of the 21st century knowledge economy, and many companies that require creative thought and collaborative work are using or working towards a more mobile and flexible approach to designing their workplaces. (A NZ office furniture company has invested a lot in research that discovered how people like to work, and designing an award-winning concept.)
• A recent survey of over 6 000 employees around the world provides a profile of how employees currently learn at work and how their learning preferences are changing.
• A groundbreaking study into the adoption of social media within the Inc. 500, an elite group of the fastest-growing companies in the US, shows in just a year, the number of companies in this group that think social media is “very important” has almost doubled to 46%.
• In a future business world of distributed decision-making and global project teams working in digital rather than face-to-face environments, effective future leaders may be the people who have gained their leadership skills in online multiplayer gaming worlds.

Education:
• A few years ago, there was a backlash against a sharp rise in printed journal subscription prices, which helped to increase numbers of open source journals freely available on the Internet. Now that the price trend for academic-level textbooks has also shot up, professors are turning to open source textbooks as an alternative to expensive print editions.
• Latest figures estimate that three-quarters of British higher education institutions are involved in Second Life in some way, and that “the virtual world is becoming crowded”.
• A recent article proposing that Google is “making us stupid” has raised a lot of discussion, but has also raised another question: “Is Google making our e-learning stupid?”

Environment & sustainability:
• “Garden grabbing” is the name given to developments that take over garden spaces in suburbs in the UK. While some dismiss opposition as “nimby” behaviour, growing numbers of people are concerned at the loss of garden space in towns and cities.
• Researchers have found that coal burning in Western Europe and North America has been a prime source of heavy metal pollution in the Arctic.
• As more countries implement biofuels policies and laws, pressure increases on the suppliers to be able to prove that the source and sustainability of their "renewable fuels" doesn’t cause more environmental damage.
• World Water Week has been under way in Stockholm this week, with discussions on overuse of water, sanitation and health, and the water crisis behind the food crisis.
• Geothermal power is experiencing steady but largely unnoticed growth in America and is used in all 50 states. Even Google is investing millions in geothermal energy.

Health & wellbeing:
• The more quickly bird flu is identified in a suspected case, the more likely the person suffering will be to survive. British scientists are developing a portable testing machine that will detect the bird flu in 2 hours, rather than the week it would usually take.

Law & Government:
• The government has announced the New Zealand Disability Strategy implementation review report. The report reviews progress by central government agencies between 2001 and 2007.
• The design for the Royal Canal Linear Park in Dublin has been released after 3 years of planning. The park will cover 6 hectares of the Docklands, and include a floating garden.

People, culture & diversity:
• The UN has launched the new public access database Global databank on world trade in creative products. The database currently shows data for global trade flows for 1996-2006 of creative products,such as music, audiovisuals, newspapers and electronic publishing.

Science, technology & transport:
• While some of us are just starting to get our heads around what “Web 3.0” will mean for us in the future, “Web 2.0” is a term that has become increasingly familiar – Library 2.0 is familiar to librarians, but then there’s Enterprise 2.0 and Government 2.0.
• The National Library facilitates a website called NZresearch, intended to “connect research users from around the world to research documents produced in New Zealand institutions”, i.e. the full text of the documents. RSS feeds of recently added documents are available from the site and can throw up some interesting results – for example, a piece of research analysing the effectiveness of future trends scenarios, using a case study of transportation fuel supply in NZ.
• IEEE Spectrum has published an article on smart parking, that describes one city using sensors embedded in each parking space, and another using a digital imaging system that takes photographs of parked cars instead of needing to chalk tyres. More information on smart parking can be found in the Transit Connections section of the Innovative Mobility Research website from the Transportation Sustainability Research Centre (TSRC) at the University of California, Berkeley
• The process of scientific discovery evolved from a secretive pursuit before science journals existed, to the “publish or perish” approach where a discovery is not truly complete until published, and the discoverer has gained the prestige and standing sought by publishing. The system has changed little in 300 years, but could change most rapidly in the next 20 years as scientific discovery moves towards more open collaboration.
• US car manufacturers are investing in research on “smart intersections” as another way of saving some of the three billion gallons of gas are wasted every year due to congestion
• A new study in the US has concluded that road tolls may be a fairer way of paying for road improvements than sales taxes and that the reasoning by some that says “congestion tolls” are inequitable is flawed.
• The IBM Institute for Business Value has discovered that the automotive industry believes that all vehicles in 2020 will have some level of hybridization.