“Extreme volatility during the global financial crisis complicated economic forecasting, leading to large errors that underline the need for better modelling methods and new approaches for making and presenting projections, according to an OECD report. OECD forecasts during and after the financial crisis: a post-mortem says that the Organisation’s economic projections under-predicted the depth of the collapse… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2014
The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income
“Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers… Continue Reading
New GAO Report – Federal Student Loans
FEDERAL STUDENT LOANS: Impact of Loan Limit Increases on College Prices Is Difficult to Discern, GAO-14-7: Published: Feb 18, 2014. Publicly Released: Feb 18, 2014. “For more than a decade, college prices have been rising consistently and have continued to rise at a gradual pace after the Stafford loan limit increases were enacted in 2008 and 2009.… Continue Reading
Study – Asian elephants reassure others in distress
Plotnik JM, de Waal FB. (2014) Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) reassure others in distress. PeerJ 2:e278 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.278 “Contact directed by uninvolved bystanders toward others in distress, often termed consolation, is uncommon in the animal kingdom, thus far only demonstrated in the great apes, canines, and corvids. Whereas the typical agonistic context of such contact is relatively rare within natural elephant… Continue Reading
Handbook on European data protection law
“This handbook is designed to familiarise legal practitioners who are not specialised in the field of data protection with this area of law. It provides an overview of the EU’s and the CoE’s applicable legal frameworks. The rapid development of information and communication technologies underscores the growing need for the robust protection of personal data –… Continue Reading
Commentary – How Gracenote Became a Big Metadata Player
Vijith Assar via Slashdot: “Last week, Tribune Company completed the $170 million acquisition of Gracenote, a deal originally set in motion in late 2013. The merger is an unusual one: Gracenote owns a massive library of media metadata, and the Tribune Company is best known as the publisher of print newspapers and tabloids, most notably its flagship paper in Chicago. Five… Continue Reading
K-12 Edtech Cloud Service Inventory
Meister, Isaac and Solow-Niederman, Alicia, K-12 Edtech Cloud Service Inventory (January 15, 2014). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2014-2. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2378570 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2378570 “A wide range of cloud technologies are now available to K-12 educators, ranging from replacements for school- and district-maintained servers (infrastructure as a service, in which servers traditionally maintained by… Continue Reading
Academic Libraries: 2012 First Look
“This report presents tabulations for the 2012 Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences. The 2012 ALS population included postsecondary institutions with all of the following: total library expenditures that exceed $10,000; an organized collection of printed or other materials, or a combination… Continue Reading
Borrowing Culture and Debt Relief: Evidence from a Policy Experiment
De, Sankar and Tantri, Prasanna L., Borrowing Culture and Debt Relief: Evidence from a Policy Experiment (February 15, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2396368 “Using a model as well as extensive empirical tests, the present paper investigates the effects of a large-scale debt waiver program on the post-waiver debt repayment behavior of borrowers in a typical… Continue Reading
ISS observation – When can I spot the Space Station?
Observation of the International Space Station – “The International Space Station can easily be spotted with the naked eye. Because of its size (110m x 100m x 30m) it reflects very much sunlight. The best time to observe the ISS is when it is night time at your location, but the Space Station is sunlit. Such… Continue Reading
Doctoral Candidate Publishes The Color of Corporate Corrections, Part II
Via Moyers and Company: “It’s well known that people of color are overrepresented in America’s prisons relative to their share of the population. But a recent study finds that they make up an even larger share of the populations of private, for-profit prisons than publicly run institutions. According to Christopher Petrella, a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley who… Continue Reading
North Korea: UN Commission documents wide-ranging and ongoing crimes against humanity
UN Commission on Human Rights – “A wide array of crimes against humanity, arising from “policies established at the highest level of State,” have been committed and continue to take place in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, according to a UN report released Monday, which also calls for urgent action by the international community… Continue Reading
