From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 11/09):

Business & management:
• The Human Rights Commission guide “Valuing Experience: a practical guide to recruiting and retaining older workers” is now available.
• The World Bank’s Doing Business 2009 Report is the 5th since 2004, with the top 3 countries being Singapore, NZ and the US.
• A new guide is available, produced by the Accident Compensation Council, the Alcohol Advisory Council of NZ and the NZ Drug Foundation: “Alcohol and other drugs in the workplace - employer guide”.
• Web 2.0 is challenging the old management model of command and control – while businesses are not democracies, but the social aspects of Web 2.0 technologies can support the making of better, more informed decisions.
• The global networking company Cisco has launched Cisco Virtual Office, a tool that encourages remote working, thus saving on the business and environmental costs of office space.

Education
• An assistant professor in educational communication and technology in the US, has written a paper showing how online gaming may be fostering the “scientific habit of mind” in teenagers, i.e. their ability to reason scientifically when faced with a problem.
• The report “Education at a glance 2008: OECD indicators” shows that while OECD countries overall are investing more in education, “in several countries increases in spending have been insufficient to match rapidly rising student numbers”. An interesting figure for NZ is “an 8‐fold increase in foreign student numbers”.

Environment & sustainability:
• The chief of the UN’s meteorological agency has called for weather forecasters to play a greater role in planning for economic development and poverty reduction because of the impact climate change has on water resources.
• The UNEP has joined with Google Earth to provide people with a way to visit environmental hot spots, and see “before and after” images of the changing environment.
• A Japanese property development company is going to sell houses with outdoor parking spaces equipped with power outlets for charging electric vehicles.

Health & wellbeing:
• The UN Secretary-General has called for urgent action to promote literacy around the world, noting the implications of not being able to read on human health and efforts to access vital prevention, treatment and support services.
• Particulate air pollution is already known to increase the risk of heart attack, but researchers have discovered that the air pollution from traffic may also affect the electrical signals in the heart.

Law & Government:
• A new points-based immigration system in the UK will cut the number of non-EU migrants who will be able to be recruited for work in the UK. Shearers and ballet dancers will have a better chance of getting in under the new system, than doctors and most types of nurses.
• People sending anonymous text messages may think that they can’t be identified, but a recent case in the UK shows that forensic linguists can prove that text messaging is individual to each author, and can use this to solve crimes.

People, culture & diversity:
• Well meant plans to develop and regenerate ailing communities can go disastrously wrong. A new UK report calls for a change to the way social fragmentation and the isolation of poorer communities is tackled. (“Sustainable paths to community development” is being ordered by LOGIS.)
• The Wellbeing Project in the UK has published another report via the Young Foundation (note a previous report in the 12th June LOGIS updates posting) on methods to measure wellbeing at a local level: “Local wellbeing: can we measure it?”
• UNESCO is putting pressure on the UK to provide better protection for 7 world heritage sites that it considers are in danger from building developments.
• A researcher commissioned to look at the impact of technology on how connected people are (to one another) says that the conventional notion of 6 degrees of separation is out of date, and that the average person nowadays is connected by just 3 degrees.
• UNESCO has announced that it will be supporting Egypt in its intention to build a partially underwater museum in the Bay of Alexandria in the area of Cleopatra’s palace.

Science, technology & transport:
• The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s largest broadband market, but the UN’s Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Indicators Report for the region shows that poor countries continue to have limited and predominantly low speed access to the Internet.
• Concern has been raised by the Fire Protection Association at the Fire NZ conference, about the effectiveness of passive fire protection in buildings in NZ, especially multi-storey buildings.
• E-ink didn’t take off as fast as people thought it might, but the October issue of Esquire magazine has just published a flexible animated cover using E-ink technology.
• A speaker at a UK conference sees “geo-tagging” as a way to move the web away from being tied to our computers and taking it out to GPS-enabled phones or other mobile devices. The challenge is still to get all the geographically specific information gathered and then shared or relayed.
• California researchers are testing a self-steering bus that follows magnetic strips embedded in the road, hoping to increase efficiency and cut the cost of rapid transit systems.
• India has gone into production with the world’s first commercially produced compressed air powered vehicle – but what’s greener: air cars, electric cars or hybrids?
• From this week, anyone in the UK sitting their driving test will be assessed on their ability to drive or ride in a way that shows eco-safe driving techniques.