From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 12/03):

Business & management:
• A Cheshire salt mine still in operation is being used to store valuable archives, book collections and artifacts.
• The UN World Tourism Organisation says that the tourism industry has a key role to play in helping the world recover from the current financial crisis. Tourism growth in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to ease, while the Americas and Europe will be impacted the most.
• In an address delivered on International Women’s Day, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor made the point that while every NZer is concerned about job security as the economic recession bites, women suffer a double whammy because of the gender pay gap.
• A recent US study has found that shopping online has less of an environmental impact than going to a traditional bricks-and-mortar store.

Education
• A school in the UK is trialling the use of facial recognition software to confirm attendance, rather than using the old-fashioned roll-call. Using biometrics in schools in the UK is widespread, but some campaigners say that schools’ use of biometrics is "a disproportionate response to a nonexistent problem".
• The chief executive of a UK university says that in the 21st century, higher education must adapt to serve the needs of a much wider section of the community than simply fresh-faced 18-year-olds.

Environment & sustainability:
• Water banking has been suggested recently for NZ’s future water management. Western states in the US have invested heavily in water banking, and the Washington State Dept of Ecology has released a report, Analysis of water banks in the Western states, which covers legislation, policies and programmes.
• An American think tank brought together prominent climate change deniers for a convention in New York this week. Although 58% of Americans believe human activity is causing climate change, many don’t see a need for urgent action. (For an alternative view of the background of the deniers, visit Grist, a US environmental news and commentary website.
• David J C Mackay is Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He has just written a detailed analysis of sustainable energy, and the book is available for download from the Web.
• James Lovelock (developer of the Gaia theory) has joined a former UK environment minister to condemn the European carbon trading scheme, saying it has proved to be "disastrous" and a "scam" in which companies have profited with no effect on emissions.
• A growing number of scientists and business leaders have concluded that there will need to be a 60-80% reduction in worldwide emissions in the next two to three decades, but climate impacts from greenhouse gas levels expected by 2050 will persist for about 1,000 years regardless of how well decision makers reduce future emissions.

Health & wellbeing:
• The World Lung Foundation and the American Cancer Society have launched the 3rd edition of the Tobacco Atlas (note also the World Health Organisation’s Tobacco Atlas) which includes interactive maps of global statistics relating to many aspects of the tobacco industry and its impact on health.
• The latest issue of Australasian Leisure Management refers in an article to the Australian draft national planning guidelines in the “Healthy Places and Spaces” project. Fact sheets, a consultation report , the draft and presentations are available via the website.
• Paranoia is a mental disorder once thought to afflict 1% of the population but now, according to studies, it affects a quarter of us. Environment, social influence, and the role of the media are discussed in a new book that discusses why paranoia may be on the rise.
• Mental health difficulties are most pronounced in countries that are rich but have high levels of income and social inequality. It is inequality that has the most profound and far-reaching consequences for individuals and wider society. These are conclusions from a report for the World Health Organisation on mental health in Europe.

Law & Government:
• The Reserves and Other Lands Disposal (ROLD) Bill has finally passed its first reading. The bill covers areas all over the country, including Albert Park and volcanic cones in Auckland.
• The introduction of “young mayors” in the UK has had a positive impact on issues that affect or are of concern to teenagers and raises involvement in the democratic process. As a result the initiative is to be expanded.

People, culture & diversity:
• European archives have been dealt a devastating blow with the collapse of the 6-storey building containing the Cologne archives. Microfilm duplicates of some of the archives are in a central warehouse in the Black Forest, but 26k of original materials were held in the 1971 building, dating from as early as 922.
• A large and powerful group of leaders’ wives in the Arab world, not well-known in the West, is influencing policies and attitudes towards women in 15 of the 22 Arab countries.
• A UK headmaster has suggested that giving teenagers another 2 hours to sleep in the morning would improve their ability to learn. Unfortunately, for any parents who might object scientists are proving that there is a good reason for letting teenagers have more sleep.
• According to David Armano, technology doesn't change human nature, but it changes human behaviour, because it allows us to communicate more quickly and easily. That results in networks, which have begun to take the place of institutions in the function of major roles in society. Armano describes this in his presentation “The microsociology of networks”.
• A new book argues that the single root cause of almost every social problem common in developed societies is inequality.

Science, technology & transport:
• A report from UK think tank Demos “Knowledge Nomads” explains who this new, global breed of scientists are, what motivates them and why their movement around the world is so important.
• A UK commentator explains why simply building technological infrastructure won't be enough to drive digital innovation in the UK.
• US & Japanese researchers have been able to prove the existence of a "spin battery," a battery that is "charged" by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). Meanwhile, research continues on how to get more energy out of lithium batteries, and MIT researchers believe that they have found a way to do this with only simple changes to the production process.
• A UK Nielsen survey of users' habits found that 67% of all those going online were spending time at social network and blogging sites, and that they are becoming more popular than personal e-mail.
• A US congressional investigation has revealed that plans to refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists "lost knowledge" of how to make a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank.
• Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has said that browsing habits can now be monitored as if someone had put a "TV camera in one's room". He believes the integrity of the internet is under threat if online "snooping" goes unchecked.
• The city of Yokohama will jointly participate with Nissan in a 5-year project aimed at achieving zero emission-mobility. This follows a joint study completed in November last year, and the project will mean that the city adopts a zoning system with a zero-carbon central zone and a low-carbon zone in the outer areas.
• The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority has contracted a company to develop electronic vehicle charging infrastructure guidelines for planning design and installation of the infrastructure for plug-in vehicles.
• Mercedes has joined the sceptics who question the feasibility of the battery-swapping idea behind the Better Place concept for electric vehicles. Mercedes says they exhaustively studied the idea in the 1970s, and rejected it as potentially dangerous.
• The first new research for more than 50 years in the UK into the relationship between street lighting and road traffic accidents, will be published in the next few weeks. The report is not expected to support the widely held belief that street lighting reduces accidents by up to 30%. However, there are acute public fears that any switch-off will lead to higher crime rates.
• Energy generation using the ocean is on the rise with increasing numbers of commercial sites already generating power around the world, and a large number of other projects being tested.