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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici

New GAO Reports – Coast Guard, Pesticide Safety, Retirement Security, School Meals Programs, Defense Health Care, Corporate Tax Noncompliance

COAST GUARD: Resources Provided for Drug Interdiction Operations in the Transit Zone, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, GAO-14-527: Published: Jun 16, 2014. Publicly Released: Jun 16, 2014. PESTICIDE SAFETY: Improvements Needed in EPA’s Good Laboratory Practices Inspection Program, GAO-14-289: Published: May 15, 2014. Publicly Released: Jun 16, 2014. RETIREMENT SECURITY: Oversight of the National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust, GAO-14-312:  Published: May… Continue Reading

Emerging Markets Face Tough Climb Back to Past Growth Levels

IMF – “As the global environment turns less supportive and productivity gains of the last decade fade, growth in emerging markets will have to come from new engines, supported by a new wave of structural reforms, a new IMF study says. Emerging Markets in Transition: Growth Prospects and Challenges sheds light on the factors behind last decade’s… Continue Reading

International Banking Research Network

“The International Banking Research Network (IBRN) brings together central bank researchers from around the world to analyze issues pertaining to global banks. It was established in 2012 by Austrian, German, U.S., and U.K. researchers who saw a need for joint analysis of key questions, such as the role of cross-border banking in the transmission of… Continue Reading

Financial Accounts of the United States – Federal Reserve – First Quarter 2014

Z.1 Financial Accounts  of the United States. Flow of Funds, Balance Sheets, and Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts First Quarter 2014. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, June 5, 2014. “The net worth of households and nonprofits was $81.8 trillion at end of the first quarter this year, about $1.5 trillion more than at end of 2013.… Continue Reading

The Art and Science of Data-driven Journalism | Why Data Journalism Matters

Tow Center for Digital Journalism: “While it’s easy to get excited about gorgeous data visualizations or a national budget that’s now more comprehensible to citizens, the use of data journalism in investigations that stretch over months or years is one of the most important trends in media today. Powerful Web-based tools for scraping, cleaning, analyzing, storing,… Continue Reading

Investment, Growth and the Natural Rate of Interest

Carr, Douglas, Investment, Growth and the Natural Rate of Interest – How the Marginal Product of Capital Explains (Almost) Everything (June 13, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2450200 “An Investment-Growth model is developed based upon generalized conditions that an economy’s participants: 1) act to maximize economic growth, and 2) are indifferent at the margin between consumption and… Continue Reading

Reflections on How Designers Design With Data

Reflections on How Designers Design With Data – Alex Bigelow, Steven Drucker, Danyel Fisher, and Miriah Meyer. Microsoft Research. May 2014. “In recent years many popular data visualizations have emerged that are created largely by designers whose main area of expertise is not computer science. Designers generate these visualizations using a handful of design tools and environments.… Continue Reading

Handbook on European data protection law

“This handbook on European data protection law is jointly prepared by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the Council of Europe together with the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights. It is the third in a series of legal handbooks jointly prepared by FRA and the Council of Europe. In… Continue Reading

Opt Out From Online Behavioral Advertising (Beta)

“Welcome to the consumer opt out page for the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. Our participating companies are committed to transparency and choice. Some of the ads you receive on Web pages are customized based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits over time and across different Web sites. This type of ad… Continue Reading

Enabling Privacy Through Transparency

Oshani Seneviratne, Lalana Kagal – Enabling Privacy Through Transparency, 2014 – MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “Many access control systems, particularly those utilized in hospital environments, exercise optimistic security, because preventing access to information may have undesirable consequences. However, in the wrong hands, these over-broad permissions may result in privacy violations. To circumvent this issue, we have developed… Continue Reading

Multi-Person Motion Tracking via RF Body Reflections

Multi-Person Motion Tracking via RF Body Reflections, Fadel Adib; Zachary Kabelac; Dina Katabi. MIT-CSAIL-TR-2014-008. April 26, 2014. “Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of technologies that can localize a user and track her gestures based purely on radio reflections off the person’s body. These technologies work even if the user is behind a wall or obstruction. However,… Continue Reading

New Yorker Commentary – A Wider War

Dexter Filkins via the The New Yorker [snipped] “…the events unfolding in Iraq point toward a much wider war, reaching from the Iranian frontier to the Mediterranean coast. The long open border between Iraq and Syria, and the big stretches of ungoverned space, has allowed extremists on each side to grow and to support one another. isis and… Continue Reading