Business & management:
• The Harvard Business School has a working paper entitled: “The economic impacts of immigration: a survey”. While the paper looks at North European countries, there is a section on the impact of immigration on the public sector of host countries.
• A US study recently published suggests that men who hold the view that women should stay at home and look after children, will consistently out-earn more "modern-thinking" men.
• In a recent survey of US employees from some of the largest companies, 40% of workers cited "lack of recognition" as a key reason for leaving a job, and part of the problem is that workers don’t hear “thank you” often enough from customers.
• “A pair of recent studies each suggest that e-mail is the most deceptive form of communication in the workplace–even more so than more traditional kinds of written communication, like pen-and-paper.”
• “A global company that is built to last should consider its contributions to society and not just to its shareholders”, is one of the themes arising out of a World Economic Forum meeting last week.
• New research shows only 7 out of every 100 firms in NZ have measured their carbon emissions.
• 2 surveys show that consumers think that businesses should bear the heaviest load of the burden to address climate change.
• A new UNEP/ILO report says that the emerging green economy could create millions of new “green jobs”, but also warns that many of these new jobs can be "dirty, dangerous and difficult".
Education
• People are familiar with searching the Internet nowadays, but many forget that search engines like Google cannot search inside many of the resources now available – that’s the “deep web” or the “invisible web”. A US online college blog called “Our Library” has provided a list of “99 resources to research & mine the invisible web”.
• “Studentification” is a term applied in the UK to neighbourhoods in university towns where houses are left empty over the summer months, because too many properties are rented out to groups of students. An initial report has been published: Evidence gathering- Housing in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) and possible planning responses.
Environment & sustainability:
• The European Union’s EuP Directive (Energy Using Products) was mentioned in the September issue of LG NZ Local Government. The link here is to a consolidated version (ie incorporating amendments) at March 21st 2008. The European Commission’s webpage on the directive provides more information
• A new design guide, “Resource Recovery Park Design Guide” will help with setting up resource recycling around the country, further reducing the amount of material sent to landfills.
• Cities should not be blamed so much for carbon emissions – an author writing in the latest issue of Environment & Urbanization believes that the amount of emissions cities contribute is over-estimated, and that the potential for cities to help address climate change is being overlooked because of this error. (This article is not available via the Digital Library, but a copy can be obtained via interlibrary loan. Contact the LOGIS Librarian if you would like to read a copy.)
• 2 UN agencies trying to change the throw away trend have produced the 2nd edition of a training kit for youth called “youthXchange” that includes a new chapter on how to balance the aspirations of dressing fashionably while being aware of the impact of consumption on global warming.
• The Guardian online has a section called “Future of Cities”. The section has its own RSS feed, so that you can focus on just this topic and avoid receiving the 100s of other alerts from the website.
• Should access to clean water be a human right? Some campaigners want this to become the 31st article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Elsewhere in the world, water profiteering means that the poor are forced to buy clean water, or to steal it from public mains.
• Off-shore wind farms offer several benefits over their land-based counterparts, and countries like South Korea are seriously investigating them due to fierce opposition to on-shore wind farms.
• Recent research shows that plants are unlikely to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air as the planet warms up. Plants may be likely to produce more CO2 in warmer conditions, rather than less.
• Just as kea were discovered to “worry” sheep in NZ, re-introduced Scottish sea eagles are being blamed for the loss of 200 lambs in the Northwest Highlands. At the same time, the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards is opposing a trial introduction of the European beaver to Scotland.
• The mayor of San Francisco wants the city’s biggest companies to install enough solar power arrays to generate 5 megawatts of electricity, double the city's current capacity for solar energy.
Health & wellbeing:
• The NZ Food Safety Authority has published a revised version of its most popular booklet, “Food safety in pregnancy”.
• Low levels of the stress hormone cortisol are being linked to antisocial behaviour in adolescent boys.
• A large UK and US study is to examine near-death experiences in cardiac arrest patients, to see if people with no heartbeat or brain activity can have "out of body" experiences.
• Researchers believe that exposure to smells might help make our dreams more pleasant. Smell is the only sense that doesn't 'sleep'.
Law & Government:
• Local governments in the US want to build an inclusive green economy, and have issued the “Local Government Green Jobs Pledge”.
•”Keeping culture free: The choices law and technology force us to make about the future of the Internet and the progress of cultures” will be the topic of a public lecture at the University of Auckland, by Professor Lawrence Lessig, a world-leading cyber law expert and advocate of freer copyright laws.
• The UK Improvement & Development Agency has released a series of information pages on how social enterprises can contribute to local government (a 2006 Local Government White Paper established a vision of partnership for local areas.) They also provide a section on CCTV in the UK as a means of making streets safer, reducing the fear of crime and detecting serious offences.
• A number of local councils in the UK were given permission last week to use capitalization (either by borrowing against or selling assets) to raise £455m to meet equal pay liabilities.
• Scientists say that our political views may be an integral part of our psychological makeup but although they may be able to explain why it’s so hard to change someone’s political point of view, they don’t believe their search has any political relevance.
People, culture & diversity:
• A blog on a local US newspaper’s website is helping to raise awareness and provide advocacy for a poor, rundown and dangerous part of the city.
• Is it possible to reverse the view that society today is suffering from “a decline in values”? This is one report in an ongoing discussion in the UK on turning British society around from being seen as “unkind, risk averse and untrusting”
Science, technology & transport:
• The founding editor or Wired has been reflecting on his predictions back in 1993 for the future of the Internet and the impact it would have on society.
• “Information overload” has been discussed for decades, but with the Internet “digital pollution” has become an issue that everyone has to learn how to handle.
• There will be 4 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide this year - mobile penetration stood at only 12% in 2000, growing to reach over 60% by the end of 2008.
• Mitsubishi may be introducing their electric car to NZ next year, but Hyundai will be delivering its first electric Getz in November this year.
• InternetNZ’s report “Broadband strategy options for New Zealand: Stage one – research and analysis” is available.
• Ireland’s government is announcing its new electric grid system to enable Irish drivers to move to electric cars. The Better Place software system has been assessed for adoption in Ireland. A US company has just built a solar parking array over its parking lot – which could provide re-charging for the electric cars parked in the shade below the panels.
• The first commercial wave power farm has finally been officially launched off the coast of Portugal after a delay of a year.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)