“Between 2005 and 2015, the number of migrants living in the Middle East more than doubled, from about 25 million to around 54 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from United Nations agencies. Some of this growth was due to individuals and families seeking economic opportunities. But the majority of the… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: October 2016
Authors Alliance and Internet Archive Team Up to Make Books Available
Internet Archive Blog, Michael Wolfe, Executive Director, Authors Alliance – “To write a book takes time, effort, more often than not, love. Happily, books are built to last, and with the proper stewardship remain relevant, provide insight and information, or entertain for generations. So why is it that, when the internet provides more avenues than… Continue Reading
Electoral Integrity Project
“An independent academic study, the Electoral Integrity Project addresses three questions: *When do elections meet international standards of electoral integrity? *What happens when elections fail to do so? *And what can be done to mitigate these problems? Under the direction of Pippa Norris, the research team is based at the University of Sydney and… Continue Reading
American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample Files Now Available
“The U.S. Census Bureau released the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files from the 2015 American Community Survey 1-year estimates. The PUMS files contain data on approximately 1 percent of the U.S. population and are now available for users to create their own tabulations. The files show population and housing characteristics down to Public Use… Continue Reading
The Effects of Increasing Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s Capital
“In this report, CBO analyzes a policy that would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their capital by reducing their payments to the government and discusses the effects that it would have on the budget and the mortgage market…Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that help finance the majority of… Continue Reading
Breast Cancer Education: HHS Has Implemented Initiatives Aimed at Young Women
Breast Cancer Education: HHS Has Implemented Initiatives Aimed at Young Women, GAO-17-19: Published: Oct 20, 2016. Publicly Released: Oct 20, 2016. “Young women account for 11% of all new cases of breast cancer in the United States, tend to have worse outcomes than older women, and face unique issues in managing the disease. We looked… Continue Reading
Paper – Want to Learn a New Skill? Faster? Change Up Your Practice Sessions
Johns Hopkins Medicine news: “When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, Johns Hopkins researchers report. In a study of 86 healthy volunteers asked to learn a computer-based motor skill, those who quickly… Continue Reading
Heleo – Keith Houston Investigates the Long, Strange History of Books
“Most people who are involved in making books, or writing them, are acutely aware that there’s a very big shift happening.” “…The thing that I hadn’t appreciated was that so much of the history of the book came from elsewhere, from China mostly. Just the invention of paper, which is absolutely vital, and then printing.… Continue Reading
ProPublica – Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking
Julia Angwin: “When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company’s “number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.” And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick’s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names… Continue Reading
Extensive botnet DDoS attacks take major sites offline
TechCrunch: “Several waves of major cyberattacks against an internet directory service knocked dozens of popular websites offline today, with outages continuing into the afternoon. Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, Shopify, and other websites have been inaccessible to many users throughout the day. The outages are the result of several distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the DNS provider… Continue Reading
Elections 2016: A librarian guide to information on upcoming elections
Via Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library – University of Montana: Elections 2016: A guide to information on the upcoming elections Continue Reading
Brookings – Black-white disparity in student loan debt more than triples after graduation
Brookings – “The moment they earn their bachelor’s degrees, black college graduates owe $7,400 more on average than their white peers ($23,400 versus $16,000, including non-borrowers in the averages). But over the next few years, the black-white debt gap more than triples to a whopping $25,000. Differences in interest accrual and graduate school borrowing lead… Continue Reading
