“In a little more than a generation, the Internet has grown from a nascent technology to a tool that is transforming how people, businesses, and governments communicate and engage. The Internet’s economic impact has been massive, making significant contributions to nations’ gross domestic product (GDP) and fueling new, innovative industries. It has also generated societal change by connecting individuals and communities, providing access to information and education, and promoting greater transparency. However, not all countries have harnessed the Internet’s benefits to the same degree. In a new report, we examine the evolution of Internet adoption around the world, the factors that enable the development of a vibrant Internet ecosystem, and the barriers that are impeding more than 60 percent of the global population from getting online. Several findings emerged.”
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Daily Archives: October 1, 2014
On Front Lines of Recycling, Turning Food Waste into Biogas
Rachel Cernansky, Yale environment 360: “An increasing number of sewage treatment plants in the U.S. and Europe are processing food waste in anaerobic biodigesters, keeping more garbage out of landfills, reducing methane emissions, and producing energy to defray their operating costs. In February, trucks from Waste Management, Inc. started working new routes in Los Angeles County, California.… Continue Reading
Confronting Cognitive ‘Anchoring Effect’ and ‘Blind Spot’ Biases in Federal Sentencing
Bennett, Mark W., Confronting Cognitive ‘Anchoring Effect’ and ‘Blind Spot’ Biases in Federal Sentencing: A Modest Solution for Reforming a Fundamental Flaw (July 5, 2014). Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 104, No. 3, p. 489, 2014. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2503423 “Cognitive “anchoring effect” bias, especially related to numbers, like sentencing guidelines ranges,… Continue Reading
Heads Up – A Single Fire Can Cripple America’s Aging Air-Traffic System
Alex Davis – Wired: “The ground radar network dates back to the 1950s, when air traffic finally got busy enough that officials needed a new way to track aircraft on the move. Since then, the network has greatly expanded, and the radars have been upgraded, though small air traffic facilities didn’t upgrade from vacuum tube… Continue Reading
PulseNet – connecting foodborne illness cases together using DNA “fingerprinting” of the bacteria making people sick
“PulseNet connects cases of foodborne illness to potential outbreaks. PulseNet is a national laboratory network made up of 87 laboratories−at least one in each state. PulseNet connects foodborne illness cases together to detect and define outbreaks using DNA “fingerprinting” of the bacteria making people sick using a standardized process called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Every state has… Continue Reading
New Data Release from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
FCW.com: “A new government database that debuted Sept. 30 offers information on financial connections between doctors and teaching hospitals and pharmaceutical firms and medical device manufacturers. The open-data play by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was mandated under provisions of the 2010 health care overhaul. The inaugural data dump covers $3.5 billion in payments from… Continue Reading
Reconstructing Native Language Typology from Foreign Language Usage
Proceedings of the Eighteenth Conference on Computational Language Learning, pages 21–29,. Baltimore, Maryland USA, June 26-27 2014. c 2014 Association for Computational Linguistics. Reconstructing Native Language Typology from Foreign Language Usage. Larry Hardesty | MIT News Office, July 23, 2014: “Computer scientists at MIT and Israel’s Technion have discovered an unexpected source of information about the world’s languages:… Continue Reading
African-Born Population in U.S. Roughly Doubled Every Decade Since 1970
“The foreign-born population from Africa has grown rapidly in the United States during the last 40 years, increasing from about 80,000 in 1970 to about 1.6 million in the period from 2008 to 2012, according to a U.S. Census Bureau brief released today. The population has roughly doubled each decade since 1970, with the largest… Continue Reading
EIA – Canada Country Analysis Brief
“Canada is one of the world’s five largest energy producers and is the principal source of U.S. energy imports. – Canada is a net exporter of most energy commodities and is an especially significant producer of conventional and unconventional oil, natural gas, and hydroelectricity. It stands out as the largest foreign supplier of energy to the… Continue Reading
