Business & management:
• The UN is predicting that due to the global financial crisis, there could be a food price surge in the coming year, in spite of record cereal production around the world and a recent drop in food prices.
• New graduates from the formal education system may think they’ve escaped bullying, but as some UK graduates have discovered, they may well face workplace bullies in their first job.
Education
• Paramedic students at a UK hospital are using Second Life to learn procedures they’ll need in their work, practising the skills in a safe environment before they face the real thing.
• The UK government is looking at ways to increase flexibility for students at university, increasing the possibility of part-time or interrupted study, getting employers to fund degrees and requiring universities to show what benefit they give to students. A new report suggests pick and mix degrees.
• Will the global recession force academics to attend expensive conferences in virtual worlds like Second Life?
Environment & sustainability:
• Bristol has been voted the UK’s most sustainable city by experts who looked at indicators such as environmental performance, quality of life and readiness for challenges ahead.
• A team of international scientists has demonstrated for the first time that rising temperatures in both the Arctic and the Antarctic are caused by human activity.
Health & wellbeing:
• Life expectancy figures for NZers have increased, and over the last 30 years, life expectancy for men has increased more than for women, although women are still expected to live about 4 years longer.
• 96% of NZ smokers support a ban on smoking in cars carrying pre-school children, according to research from the University of Otago in Wellington.
• The UK National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence provides “intervention guidance” documents for employers and professionals in small, medium and large organisations who have a direct or indirect role in, and responsibility for, improving health in the workplace.
• US researchers have found that obese children have the arteries of 45-year-olds and other heart defects.
• The EU drugs agency estimates that 17.5 million young Europeans between 15 and 34 used cannabis in the last year but there are "stronger signals" that its popularity is beginning to wane, especially among British school students.
• The number of under-age drinkers getting treatment for alcohol-related problems overall jumped 40% in just one year in the UK, from 2006 to 2007.
• A review on a book about the 1918 flu in the UK compares actions then with planning now. Planners today are privately admitting that if an avian flu’ epidemic broke out again, the armed forces might need to be called on to provide support.
• Researchers in Scotland have found that even small parks in the heart of our cities may protect us from strokes and heart disease, perhaps by cutting stress or boosting exercise.
Law & Government:
• The worlds top thought leaders at the Summit on the Global Agenda in Dubai, say that the world needs to examine the basic operating systems that drive its economies, markets and societies and aim for a “fundamental reboot” to establish a fresh platform based on renewed confidence and trust, and on sustainability, responsibility and ethical principles.
• The UN has had difficulties in previous years getting Member States to pay their financial dues in full in a timely manner. Ban Ki Moon has paid tribute to the 31 Member States that have paid their 2008 dues in full for all sectors of the UN budgets (of which NZ is one), warning of possible cash shortfalls.
• The UK government has sponsored a competition called Show Us A Better Way, to find ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The finalists and winner were announced this week.
People, culture & diversity:
• The 15th of November is Courage Day in NZ, the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. The day is named jointly after James Courage, whose novel A way of love was banned because he dared to express homosexuality in his writing, and his grandmother Sarah Courage whose book describing colonial life in NZ was burned by neighbours who resented comments she made about them.
• A British Rotary Club has been running the World Poohsticks Championships for years. Held on the Thames, the event attracts huge interest but the club’s members (average age almost 70) can no longer cope with running the event.
Science, technology & transport:
• A company that provides pre-purchase vehicle checks is warning that close to half the used cars offered for sale in New Zealand now have money owing or other serious issues which could potentially rebound on the new owner.
• Ernest Rutherford’s great-granddaughter Professor C Mary Fowler is a geophysicist. She is on a celebratory lecture tour of New Zealand to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the award to Rutherford of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
• American scientists have discovered a fungus that produces its own version of diesel (dubbed “mycodiesel”) as part of its natural lifecycle.
• A Texas-based company is manufacturing a completely automated mini-refinery for consumer use that can manufacture both ethanol and biodiesel, and can fit in an area about 2.8 meters square.
• Honda has developed and is testing set of robotic legs on one of its assembly lines to help reduce injuries in people spending a lot of time on their feet. The device could also be used to make it easier for the elderly or the sick to walk.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
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