Business & management:
• Karen Stephenson is a business anthropologist who “considers an organizational network as the “genetic code” that can be used to unlock any organizational culture”.
• A list of the best online collaborative tools for 2009 has been made available in the form of a collaborative map.
• There is increasing discussion about the death of newspapers, but a big issue that needs to be overcome if they are to survive, is the conflict between open access to the information that they contain, and content control.
• "Doing Well by Doing Good? An analysis of the financial performance of green office buildings in the USA," is a report published by the the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. It is the first report that investigates whether there is a financial benefit from building green offices.
• While going completely paperless isn't a realistic goal for most companies, decreasing paper use or going "paper-light" is a strategy that reaps several positive results.
Education
• A teachers and lecturers association in the UK has done a survey that has found more than one in 10 teachers are bullied by pupils and colleagues through text messages, emails and social networking sites.
• The same association has also discovered that growing numbers of pupils have mental health issues because of exam stress, family breakdown and pressures to look good.
Environment & sustainability:
• A ban on dishwasher detergents containing phosphates in a US county, has resulted in residents crossing state lines to buy the forbidden cleaners.
• A 5.6 acre flexible solar power generating system covering is being used as a landfill cover in Texas. Combined with the site’s methane gas-to-energy system, the landfill is expected to generate 9 megawatts of power.
• A Michigan-based financial group has announced ambitious plans to turn large areas of crime-ridden Detroit into urban farmland. The group wants develop up to 10,000 acres of underutilized and vacant land in downtown Detroit, and turn it into a mixture of cash crop land, ornamental gardens, and riding trails.
• The Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) Internation Biofuels Project has published the proceedings of its workshop on the environmental effects of biofuel technologies.
Health & wellbeing:
• Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have confirmed that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages while you are trying to lose weight will affect your ability to reduce weight.
• A Norwegian study of over 27000 mothers and their 18-month-old child, shows that mothers with negative thoughts and feelings are more likely to give their children unhealthy food.
• Men's mental health is a dramatically understudied and poorly understood area of human wellbeing. Men are half as likely as women to be diagnosed with depression, yet twice as likely to abuse alcohol and drugs.
Law & Government:
• A mix of rural and urban councils around the UK are being funded in a pilot project to provide better local information for an estimated one million people. The initiatives provide better access to information, but some also allow for more opportunities for communities to influence local decision making.
• The director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, says that public services in the UK may need to be delivered by the private sector after the UK gets through the recession.
• A new law in the UK has extended the right of parents to ask for more flexible family-friendly working hours. The law previously only applied to parents of children under 6, but is now being extended to parents with children up to the age of 16.
• Birmingham is investing in a £193m library, that will be the biggest public library in Britain, a clear sign of the renaissance of the UK’s construction of grand civic libraries.
• Attitudes towards ownership of land and buildings are changing dramatically in the wake of the credit crunch and the global financial meltdown in the UK. There is now a move to mutual or community-based ownership of sites for development.
People, culture & diversity:
• UNESCO and 32 other partner institutions, have collaborated to bring together the World Digital Library (WDL), that will be launched on the 21st of April. The WDL will feature unique cultural materials from around the world, and provide free and unrestricted public access.
• Thanks to a partnership with the United Nations refugee agency, the over two million users of the popular social networking website Facebook can now lend a hand to uprooted people around the world in need of shelter.
• A carbon typescript copy of Schindler’s list has been “discovered” again in cartons of papers from Thomas Kenneally’s work on his book “Schindler’s Ark”. The cartons were bought in 1996, but the list was only recently found.
Science, technology & transport:
• Cyberspies have infiltrated control systems of the U.S. electrical supply network and planted computer software tools that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, when triggered.
• If you were just getting a handle on Web 2.0 technology, Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media says that the new term will be “Web Squared”.
• A controversial EU Directive has come into force this week, that requires internet service providers to store the details of emails and internet phone calls.
• During a renovation of the art deco Empire State Building, its owners intend to invest an additional $20m to reduce its carbon footprint and energy consumption.
• According to a European Environmental Agency report, transportation continues to contribute disproportionately to Europe’s greenhouse gases, and still uses the least efficient modes to move people and goods.
• A French power plant that has been through a retrofit is to start operating this month with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
• Boris Johnson intends to make London the electric car capital of Europe. He is pledging funds from the Greater London Authority’s budget, and wants to see 100,000 electric cars and 25,000 charging points, as well as proposing to change planning regulations so that developers must install charging points.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
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