Education
• Robin Good provides an introduction to a resource article by Peter Morville, on visual thinking and communication solutions.
• Youtube has partnered with some major US universities (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc) to provide Youtube EDU. The more interesting content on the channel is straight from classrooms or lectures, and many schools have posted videos of guest lecturers, introductory classes and even a full semester's course.
• The final instalment of a UK government-commissioned report on school discipline has suggested that children shouldn’t have televisions in their bedrooms, and that a celebrity-saturated culture had led to bad role models.
Environment & sustainability:
• New Zealanders strongly support signing up to a new international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
• A new study on Monsant’s Roundup herbicide, shows that heavy reliance on Roundup may be weakening the herbicide’s ability to kill weeds.
• Climate change may cause weeds to become a more serious problem in Australia, as scientists there warned last month that tropical weeds may start to “move” southwards.
• According to a new US study, the higher a mother's level of exposure to air pollution in early and late pregnancy, the more likely it is that the baby would not grow properly. At the same time, researchers at Harvard say they are finally able to determine to what extent city air pollution impacts on average life expectancy.
• Researchers at the University of Ediburgh have discovered that failure to control type 2 diabetes may lead to poorer memory and diminished brain power.
• More and more news is appearing around the world to show how serious our water shortages are becoming.
Health & wellbeing:
• The Ministry of Health has launched a depression website to provide practical information, with video clips from NZers who talk about what worked for them. John Kirwan continues to play an integral part in the Ministyr of Health campaign.
• Doubt has been cast on Australian national guidelines that suggest there is a "low risk" level of drinking for under-18s. A Melbourne study shows no "safe" or "sensible" level of drinking for adolescents.
Law & Government:
• The UK government is promoting the idea of temporarily converting empty shops into social enterprises, local art displays or learning centres to help innovative communities prevent high streets declining The hope is to reduce the negative impact empty shops have on the high street - vital for town centre and business confidence.
• The UK Local Government Association is refuting claims by the press industry that council-run newspapers and magazines damage local newspapers.
• A UK commentator warns that the relationship between the press and politicians, will not work for the relationship between politicians and bloggers, who are less concerned about playing by “old rules”.
• The controversial French internet piracy bill that was going to introduce a “three strikes” system, has been defeated in the National Assembly, and an amended version will be reintroduced later in the year.
People, culture & diversity:
• Research from Unisys NZ shows that NZers believe that the global economic crisis will increase their risk of identity theft.
• Social networking users have still not learnt about being caught out by the material they post on their profiles. Tenants in the UK have been evicted after posting photos of a party on Facebook.
• A UK environmental charity has been getting teenagers involved in regenerating neighbourhoods with unused and neglected parks.
Science, technology & transport:
• New research by NASA scientists suggests the ozone layer of the future is unlikely to look much like the past because greenhouse gases are changing the dynamics of the atmosphere.
• A UK parish council is talking about taking a slightly alternative approach to traffic calming.
• Buying a PC with Windows 7 pre-installed, will still mean being able to downgrade to either Vista or XP, although there will only be security updates to the earlier versions.
• A new European study is suggesting that new CO2 standards for vehicles to be introduced in Europe from 2012 will lead not only to savings on oil (mainly via lower oil import volumes) but also to slightly lower global oil prices.
• Investing heavily in electric vehicles raises the need to consider recharging methods. Which is best - charging stations, battery swaps or home charging?
• The US report that showed just how high the risks are from shipping pollution has triggered criticism that European governments are underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution.
• One of London’s least appealing shopping destinations, Oxford Circus, is to have a “Barne’s Dance” crossing intersection. That’s the same kind of pedestrian crossing used at Queen Street intersections, where all traffic stops so that pediestrians can cross in any direction at the same time.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Thursday, 9 April 2009
From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 09/04):
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.
• 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, 2 April 2009
From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 02/04):
Business & management:
• The UK Green Building Council is making recommendations that will impact on developers, planners and policy-makers by increasing the level of biodiversity to be expected in building and urban environments.
• Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group are collaborating to work on finding the sustainability challenges that will have the greatest effect on managerial decision-making. An excerpt from the first of this series of interviews, includes a discussion about how to get out of the belief that success is only measured by growth.
• Scotland is intending to build the world’s largest tidal energy project, creating 700 jobs, to power a large computer data centre.
Education
• Male primary teachers may be unlikely to apply for jobs in schools where there are few other male teachers, contributing to the problem primary schools have in attracting them.
• British teachers are blaming an increase in bad behaviour in primary and secondary schools on the television programmes that children are watching.
• Also in the UK, researchers have confirmed that clever children may protect themselves from bullying or being shunned, by dumbing down and deliberately failing.
Environment & sustainability:
• A recent US online summit hosted by the Climate Savers Computing initiative and the EPA's Energy Star Program has been promoting the benefits of PC power management, emphasizing that some simple solutions can save a lot of power and money.
• Chicago is leading the US in green roofs in terms of total area, and has a goal of 6,000 rooftop gardens.
• Metro Vancouver Recycles is a reuse and recycling database set up in line with the region’s zero-waste policy. The database for customers, uses on-line maps to show the closest drop-off destinations, providing people with even more options than offered by municipal blue box collection programs.
• The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published a guide, "Climate Literacy" to help people understand how climate influences them and how they influence climate.
Health & wellbeing:
• Initial results on a heart “polypill” seem encouraging, but experts still disagree whether it is ethical to prescribe a pill for “lifestyle issues”.
• British scientists are warning that the washing of disinfectants, shampoos and other household cleaners into sewers and rivers, is triggering the growth of drug-resistant bacteria.
• A US study has surprised South Florida public health officials by saying that commercial vessels - freighters, tankers and cruise ships - generate enough air pollution to pose "a significant health concern for coastal communities".
• A Canadian study has found that people who take public transport are more likely to meet a heart and stroke foundation’s suggested daily minimum of physical activity, with implications for urban planning and public transport development.
• “Broken heart syndrome” was recognised by doctors in the 1990s – most of the patients have recently suffered some sort of physical or emotional distress, just before their heart symptoms appear.
• A £140m scheme to offer free swimming pool use to people aged 16 and under or over 60 in England is under way (about 20 million people), but about 140 councils turned down funding, saying they could not afford to offer free swimming to children.
Law & Government:
• Identifying people through social networking took on a new focus, when a Facebook site went up in the UK attempting to catch a rapist, and there are concerns that social networking sites are being used to promote sectarian violence.
• An EU report supports security and fundamental freedoms on the Internet, in spite of moves by some countries (eg France) to implement restrictions similar to our S92A copyright amendment.
• From April 1st, 44 councils in the UK will combine to become just 9 councils, bringing two thirds of England under unitary governance, which already exists in Scotland and Wales. The challenge for these new councils is to overcome scepticism that they can deliver better, more efficient services.
• The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission is proposing that fathers get more paid time off when their child is born in recommendations to change maternity legislation, and redress the gender imbalance.
• In the latest annual survey of UK local e-government, a plea was included to authorities "to get a permissive copyright policy on your website, publish your data in a way that computers can read easily, don't charge for your data and respond positively to people who ask you for basic data sets".
• Local governments in the US expand at an astonishing rate, and one of the biggest challenges involves deciding what to do about local governments that have grown unsustainably numerous, large, intrusive, and irresponsible.
People, culture & diversity:
• An influential US science advisor says that the human population on Earth has exceeded it’s “limits of sustainability”.
• Research shows that greater use of social networking is making it more difficult for users to maintain their privacy.
• Newspapers in print may be waning, and some may simply shrug if news goes completely online, but there is a risk that the in-depth investigative journalism that newspapers produce, will not be duplicated in online media formats.
Science, technology & transport:
• An experiment has begun in Moscow involving 6 volunteers from Russia, France and Germany, to see whether humans could cope with the isolation of travelling to Mars and back.
• Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox internet browser has joined with a graphics company to work on “accelerated 3D graphics on the web”.
• Microsoft Windows 7 will have multi-touch controls built in, to help bring touch into the mainstream of computer technology.
• France’s Gendarmerie are saving millions of euros, thanks to their migration away from a Microsoft-based desktop to an open source desktop and web applications.
• US research has found that it may be necessary to have regulations in place around the number of rocket launches made globally. They have discovered that ozone losses in the atmosphere from launches will eventually exceed the damage done by CFCs if limits aren’t placed on the space industry.
• The UK Green Building Council is making recommendations that will impact on developers, planners and policy-makers by increasing the level of biodiversity to be expected in building and urban environments.
• Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group are collaborating to work on finding the sustainability challenges that will have the greatest effect on managerial decision-making. An excerpt from the first of this series of interviews, includes a discussion about how to get out of the belief that success is only measured by growth.
• Scotland is intending to build the world’s largest tidal energy project, creating 700 jobs, to power a large computer data centre.
Education
• Male primary teachers may be unlikely to apply for jobs in schools where there are few other male teachers, contributing to the problem primary schools have in attracting them.
• British teachers are blaming an increase in bad behaviour in primary and secondary schools on the television programmes that children are watching.
• Also in the UK, researchers have confirmed that clever children may protect themselves from bullying or being shunned, by dumbing down and deliberately failing.
Environment & sustainability:
• A recent US online summit hosted by the Climate Savers Computing initiative and the EPA's Energy Star Program has been promoting the benefits of PC power management, emphasizing that some simple solutions can save a lot of power and money.
• Chicago is leading the US in green roofs in terms of total area, and has a goal of 6,000 rooftop gardens.
• Metro Vancouver Recycles is a reuse and recycling database set up in line with the region’s zero-waste policy. The database for customers, uses on-line maps to show the closest drop-off destinations, providing people with even more options than offered by municipal blue box collection programs.
• The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published a guide, "Climate Literacy" to help people understand how climate influences them and how they influence climate.
Health & wellbeing:
• Initial results on a heart “polypill” seem encouraging, but experts still disagree whether it is ethical to prescribe a pill for “lifestyle issues”.
• British scientists are warning that the washing of disinfectants, shampoos and other household cleaners into sewers and rivers, is triggering the growth of drug-resistant bacteria.
• A US study has surprised South Florida public health officials by saying that commercial vessels - freighters, tankers and cruise ships - generate enough air pollution to pose "a significant health concern for coastal communities".
• A Canadian study has found that people who take public transport are more likely to meet a heart and stroke foundation’s suggested daily minimum of physical activity, with implications for urban planning and public transport development.
• “Broken heart syndrome” was recognised by doctors in the 1990s – most of the patients have recently suffered some sort of physical or emotional distress, just before their heart symptoms appear.
• A £140m scheme to offer free swimming pool use to people aged 16 and under or over 60 in England is under way (about 20 million people), but about 140 councils turned down funding, saying they could not afford to offer free swimming to children.
Law & Government:
• Identifying people through social networking took on a new focus, when a Facebook site went up in the UK attempting to catch a rapist, and there are concerns that social networking sites are being used to promote sectarian violence.
• An EU report supports security and fundamental freedoms on the Internet, in spite of moves by some countries (eg France) to implement restrictions similar to our S92A copyright amendment.
• From April 1st, 44 councils in the UK will combine to become just 9 councils, bringing two thirds of England under unitary governance, which already exists in Scotland and Wales. The challenge for these new councils is to overcome scepticism that they can deliver better, more efficient services.
• The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission is proposing that fathers get more paid time off when their child is born in recommendations to change maternity legislation, and redress the gender imbalance.
• In the latest annual survey of UK local e-government, a plea was included to authorities "to get a permissive copyright policy on your website, publish your data in a way that computers can read easily, don't charge for your data and respond positively to people who ask you for basic data sets".
• Local governments in the US expand at an astonishing rate, and one of the biggest challenges involves deciding what to do about local governments that have grown unsustainably numerous, large, intrusive, and irresponsible.
People, culture & diversity:
• An influential US science advisor says that the human population on Earth has exceeded it’s “limits of sustainability”.
• Research shows that greater use of social networking is making it more difficult for users to maintain their privacy.
• Newspapers in print may be waning, and some may simply shrug if news goes completely online, but there is a risk that the in-depth investigative journalism that newspapers produce, will not be duplicated in online media formats.
Science, technology & transport:
• An experiment has begun in Moscow involving 6 volunteers from Russia, France and Germany, to see whether humans could cope with the isolation of travelling to Mars and back.
• Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox internet browser has joined with a graphics company to work on “accelerated 3D graphics on the web”.
• Microsoft Windows 7 will have multi-touch controls built in, to help bring touch into the mainstream of computer technology.
• France’s Gendarmerie are saving millions of euros, thanks to their migration away from a Microsoft-based desktop to an open source desktop and web applications.
• US research has found that it may be necessary to have regulations in place around the number of rocket launches made globally. They have discovered that ozone losses in the atmosphere from launches will eventually exceed the damage done by CFCs if limits aren’t placed on the space industry.
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