From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 07/05):

From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 07/05):

Business & management:
• The Office of Ethnic Affairs is holding a series of events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch on the economic benefits of ethnic diversity from 11 - 22 May.
• Social networking can be used to create new opportunities for innovation, for business development and for maintaining relationships between the most talented people. But they can also become exclusive clubs that hoard power and undermine equality, meritocracy and openness.
• Providing sustainable working environments post-recession, might mean more casual and open areas in which many employees share the same equipment and space.

Environment & sustainability:
• A UK government commissioned report will assess the full energy potential of English and Welsh waters, to work out how and where to install marine renewable energy resources.
• The Internet's increasing appetite for electricity poses a major threat to companies such as Google, according to scientists and industry executives, and may mean that there is a need for provider companies to limit the Internet’s carbon footprint.
• In a recent survey, NZers overwhelmingly support a range of policies to manage climate change in addition to the emissions trading scheme (ETS).
• A NZ not-for-profit organisation is promoting the idea of introducing a renewable energy policy known as a Feed-In Tariff (FIT). In other OECD countries, FITs increase the uptake of small-scale renewable energy production.
• Russia has serious plans to exploit oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, and is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations in the region, to provide power to its oil companies. An environmentalist has condemned the plans as “highly risky”.
• A former industrial park on Chicago’s south side is the proposed site of a $60 million project to add 10 MW of solar photovoltaic panels, creating the US’s largest urban solar installation.
• The Improvement and Development Agency in the UK provides resource pages showing how local government needs to act on environment sustainability and climate change. Some in the sector are pioneering much of the best practice in the UK.
• Landcare Research's carboNZero programme has become the first greenhouse gas certification scheme in the world to receive international accreditation under the auspices of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF).
• US researchers have found that mercury levels in the Pacific Ocean have risen 30% in the last 20 years, exposing more people to mercury in fish and other seafood.
• A great deal more work needs to be done in the US, so that water is not wasted, nor the energy required to move the water around. A good example of water wastage are irrigation systems, especially those using automatic timers that take no account of whether the water is actually needed or not.

Health & wellbeing:
• Healthy families, young minds, and developing brains is a report from the Families Commission showing that parents play a critical role in the physical development of children’s brains, with future impacts on family violence, crime, social and educational success and mental health.

Law & Government:
• Freedom on the Net is a report from Freedom House, on a selected number of countries across the globe. The report assesses access and control to the Internet by governments and others around the world.
• The UK government has released a proposed new Planning Policy Statement that sets out a comprehensive approach for planning for sustainable economic growth in all parts of the country.
• Social networking software will be a future trend that governments will need to learn to handle. A US report examines the issues around security and social networking use by government. The report identifies 4 broad government functions in sharing, that impact on defense, diplomacy and developmnet.
• And in the New Statesman, the use of social media in disaster management and emergency planning is discussed by the author of “Resilient Nation”
• The Bronx zoo, the oldest city zoo in America, is so badly affected by a multimillion dollar budget deficit, that it has ordered the shipping of hundreds of animals to other institutions.

People, culture & diversity:
• The Human Rights Commissioner says that NZ needs a Sign Language Commission that advocates for the language, much as the current Maori Language Commission does for te reo.
• A UK study has found that stalking of teenagers is taken less seriously by parents, schools and police, because of the belief that teenagers are simply being bullied. However, the study found that teenagers are more likely to come to physical harm from a stalker.
• Data from several surveys in Canada (including ones from Statistics Canada) have been used to produce the report How Canadians' Use of the Internet Affects Social Life and Civic Participation. Contrary to the view that heavy Internet users are withdrawn from society, the research has found that Internet users participate in society more.
• Surveys of a range of social media websites and other research are showing that users and designers of social media are from older generations, and that Gen Y (the 18 to 24 year-olds) are less likely to be connecting as much as older users.

Science, technology & transport:
• NZ scientists have discovered that the growth and retreat of NZ glaciers differs from glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 7000 years.
• The US Environmental Defense Fund has published a report on the new generation of innovative public transit already operating in a variety of communities in America.
• McAfee has released a report on the carbon footprint of spam emails – while these emails are often only seen as a nuisance, sending and deleting them actually uses a surprising amount of energy.
• A UK university has developed a retrofit plug-in hybrid conversion system for a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle. The sytem was developed using a van, but it’s believed that the technology could be scaled up to larger vans or even city buses.
• The good news – you can get rid of polystyrene by dissolving it in biodiesel and it will boost the engine’s power. The bad news – it will also boost harmful emissions.
• The CEO of a company manufacturing electric vehicle recharging systems, points out 5 features that will be necessary in building in any charging infrastructure.
• When the lights failed at a busy London intersection, but the traffic flowed better than before, the council decided to investigate. There will now be a 6 month trial with traffic lights at up to 7 junctions “bagged”, so that an assessment can be made as to whether accidents and traffic congestion will drop without the lights controlling traffic.
• A study of the most and least safe places to cycle in Britain shows that where there are more riders on the roads there is generally a lower accident rate, while in areas less popular for bikes, cycling can be more dangerous.