Posted 20 November 2008 on DocuTicker:
+ Ginkgo biloba for Prevention of Dementia: A Randomized Controlled Trial (Journal of the American Medical Association)
+ New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development (American Anthropological Association/John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)
+ U.S. Tort Costs Up Slightly in 2007; Significant Increases Anticipated for 2008 (Towers Perrin)

North American Transportation Statistics
From Introduction:

Statistics On-Line Database presents information on transportation and transportation-related activities among Canada, the United States and Mexico, both within individual countries and between the countries. This database, presented in French, English, and Spanish is, accessible in table and time series formats, and covers twelve thematic areas, including transportation and the economy, transportation safety, transportation’s impact on energy and the environment, passenger and freight activity, and transportation and trade.

This On-Line Database currently contains 31 tables with additions planned for the future, and allows users to obtain both value data in any of the three national currencies and volume data in metric or U.S. measurement units via the time series function. Data in table or time series format can be printed or downloaded for further processing and analysis. For most tables, data are available for 1990, 1995 to 2004. The data will be updated on a regular basis, thus a few tables already contain more recent data.

The On-Line Database updates a subset of tables and figures from the North American Transportation in Figures report published in 2000. The report, also released in French, English and Spanish, includes data for 1990, 1995 and 1996, with value data reported only in current U.S. dollars and all measurement units in metric.

Source: Statistics Canada and Transport Canada from Canada; the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) (Ministry of Communications and Transportation), the Instituto Mexicano del Transporte (IMT) (Mexican Institute of Transportation) and the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI) (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics) from Mexico; and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the U.S. Census Bureau from the United States.

From the article:

The British Library in London is among more than 1,000 cultural organisations making contributions to a European online library.

The free multimedia venture, Europeana, will also see input from the European Commission and the Louvre Museum.

Internet users will be able to access more than two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archive documents, paintings and films.

These will be sourced from institutions across the EU’s member states.

Source: BBC

Direct to European Digital Library

See Also: Learn More About Europeana
Backround, contact info, and history.

Source: BBC

See also: France Dominates Europe’s Digital Library (New York Times)

Clustering Tags in Enterprise and Web Folksonomies

Tags lack organizational structure limiting their utility for navigation. We present two clustering algorithms that improve this by organizing tags automatically. We apply the algorithms to two very different datasets, visualize the results and propose future improvements. Publication Info: To be published and Presented at International Conference on Weblogs & Social Media, Seattle, March 31st, 2008

+ Full Paper (PDF; 231 KB)

Source: HP Labs

New Google Watching Service Launched by ArnoldIT.com

Blogger and technology expert Stephen Arnold has launched a free service (www.arnoldit.com/overflight) that aggregates the headlines from Google’s own blogs. Overflight, “An ArnoldIT.com Intelligence Service,” is an RSS aggregation service that aggregates the headlines from Google’s 74 weblogs. The most recent headlines are grouped using the same categories that Google favors. A fee-based service offers more bells and whistles.

SOurce: Information Today NewsBreaks

Who’s Who to vet U.S. vets after Tribune report

Who’s Who, the country’s biographical reference standard since its founding in Chicago 110 years ago, spends up to $1.5 million a year checking the educational and work histories submitted by those listed in the volume.

But military decorations? “We never thought anybody would be dumb enough” to lie about those, said Who’s Who publisher Jim Pfister, so Who’s Who never vetted those. Now it will.

Pfister, himself a decorated Vietnam veteran, decided to do so after a Tribune investigation discovered that a third of the medals for valor claimed by hundreds of Who’s Who “biographees” are not supported by their military records. “We will change some of our processes in scrutinizing the awards section,” he said.

See also: Claims of medals amount to stolen valor
See also: Top excuses for unverified medals of valor

Source: Chicago Tribune

News Briefs

+ eHarmony agrees to provide same-sex matches (AP, via TBO.com)

+ Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts (Wired Campus/Chronicle of Higher Education)

+ Online degrees appealing option for soldiers (AP, via Boston.com)

+ With Students Flocking Online, Will Faculty Follow? (Inside Higher Ed)

+ Study shows how spammers cash in (BBC News)

Top 10 Best Newspaper Websites

As a follow-up to our research on newspaper websites that we published recently, we decided to break out a list of the best examples of “good” newspaper websites. Steve, Todd and I collaborated on the following list, judging sites not only on their web features but also on the design, aesthetics and general usability of the site.

Top ten, in order, are New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Denver Post, Houston Chronicle, Knoxville News Sentinel, Fresno Bee, Austin American Statesman, Tennessean, San Jose Mercury News.

Source: Bivings Report

Online Map Shows Ease of Doing Business in 175 Countries

The World Bank Group has created the “Doing Business Map,” a visual learning tool to complement the Doing Business database, which provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 175 economies.

Take a trip around the world to discover how easy (or difficult) it is to do business in various developing countries. Click on green, yellow, or red placemarks to learn more about each country. Countries marked with a star were the top 10 reformers in 2005/06, the timeframe of the most recent Doing Business report.

Source: World Bank Group, International Finance Corporation

Animal Testing: Launch of a new website to inform about the development of alternative methods

The European Commission has launched today a new website, the so-called ‘Tracking System for Alternative test methods Review Validation and Approval (TSAR)’, designed to track the development of new alternative test methods which should replace, reduce and refine current animal testing.

“The launch of this website is good news: it proves that we are serious about our commitment to develop alternative methods to animal testing and to be transparent about progress being made” said European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Poto?nik. “It is in all our interests to avoid the use of animals in testing, for both ethical and animal welfare reasons. We also need fast, reliable and cost-effective test methods which ensure the safety of products for users, to help European industry, and which satisfy regulators.”

The purpose of TSAR is to enable citizens and other interested parties to track progress of the review, validation and approval of alternative test methods, ensuring greater transparency of the process. The ultimate aim will be to cover each and every step of the validation route, from submission of a new method for pre-validation through to final adoption by its inclusion in EU legislation and/or related Guidance Documents. It will also explain the decisions that have been made at every step of the process. When the final decision on a proposed test method is negative, TSAR will clearly indicate the reasons why this decision has been taken. The website will be updated whenever a phase in the process is completed, ensuring the latest information is always available. However, to enable a rapid launch, the initial version covers only the part of regulatory approval of methods in the field of chemicals.

Source: EUROPA

University Publishing in a Digital Age

Scholars have a vast range of opportunities to distribute their work, from setting up web pages or blogs, to posting articles to working paper websites or institutional repositories, to including them in peer-reviewed journals or books. In American colleges and universities, access to the internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous; consequently nearly all intellectual effort results in some form of “publishing”. Yet universities do not treat this function as an important, mission-centric endeavor. The result has been a scholarly publishing industry that many in the university community find to be increasingly out of step with the important values of the academy.

This paper argues that a renewed commitment to publishing in its broadest sense can enable universities to more fully realize the potential global impact of their academic programs, enhance the reputations of their institutions, maintain a strong voice in determining what constitutes important scholarship, and in some cases reduce costs.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 471 KB)

Source: Ithaka

Compare credit cards’ rental car insurance policies

If you’re a veteran car renter, it’s likely you routinely decline the rental company’s offer of additional insurance coverage, smug in the knowledge that you’re not wasting money. After all, if you get in an accident, your credit card will cover your deductible, right?

Maybe not. A closer look shows that credit card companies’ policies vary sharply in who’s covered, at what level, in which vehicles and where.

+ Includes chart.

Source: CreditCards.com

Posted 18 November 2008 on DocuTicker:
+ Speculation a Major Contributor to Global Food Crisis (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy)
+ USPTO 2008 Fiscal Year-End Results Demonstrate Commitment to Sustaining High Performance (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)
+ Record High Number of American Students Studying Abroad, International Students at U.S. Colleges and Universities (Institute of International Education)

News Briefs

+ Indiana Governor Seeks Library Consolidation; Most Libraries Resist (Library Journal)

+ Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Out of Beta and Ready for Purchase (Microsoft)

+ NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

+ UNC gets $1.1M for library science scholarships (Triangle Business Journal)

+ Google Taps LIFE’s Image Library, Offers It To Everyone (InformationWeek)

+ New Firefox app lets users pimp their browsers (Computerworld)

Contexts Crawler

Contexts Crawler is a human-powered crawler scanning the internet with the sociological imagination turned on.
…
The Contexts Crawler offers catchy & concise snapshots of what sociology is and what sociologists are doing.

Essentially a weblog

Source: American Sociological Association