ACLU Report Documents FBI Abuse Since 9/11

Abstract:

On September 4, 2013, James B. Comey was sworn in as the 7th director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Comey is taking the helm of an agency that has been radically transformed during the 12-year term of Director Robert S. Mueller, III, into a domestic intelligence and law enforcement agency of unprecedented power and international reach.

The FBI remains widely admired on Capitol Hill and within the Obama administration, despite a record of extraordinary abuse—particularly targeting racial and religious minorities, immigrants, and protest groups under the guise of counterterrorism after 9/11.

The abuse, enabled by a roll-back of post-Watergate intelligence reforms and encouraged by long-standing Justice Department and FBI practices, has subverted internal and external oversight by squelching whistleblowers, imposing and enforcing unnecessary secrecy, and actively misleading Congress and the American people.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Download PDF:  Unleashed and Unaccountable: The FBI's Unchecked Abuse of Authority

Who Commits Virtual Identity Suicide? Differences in Privacy Concerns, Internet Addiction, and Personality Between Facebook Users and Quitters

Abstract:

Social networking sites such as Facebook attract millions of users by offering highly interactive social communications. Recently, a counter movement of users has formed, deciding to leave social networks by quitting their accounts (i.e., virtual identity suicide). To investigate whether Facebook quitters (n=310) differ from Facebook users (n=321), we examined privacy concerns, Internet addiction scores, and personality. We found Facebook quitters to be significantly more cautious about their privacy, having higher Internet addiction scores, and being more conscientious than Facebook users. The main self-stated reason for committing virtual identity suicide was privacy concerns (48 percent). Although the adequacy of privacy in online communication has been questioned, privacy is still an important issue in online social communications.

Source:  Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking

Download: Who Commits Virtual Identity Suicide? Differences in Privacy Concerns, Internet Addiction, and Personality Between Facebook Users and Quitters 

Demography and Migration: An Outlook for the 21st Century

Abstract:
Economic and demographic disparities will shape the mobility of labor and skills during the 21st century. The populations of richer societies in Europe, North America, and East Asia are aging rapidly, and some are already shrinking in absolute terms. At the same time, working-age populations will continue to grow in some emerging economies and in most low-income countries. Despite these trends, many highly developed countries and emerging economies continue to assume that today’s demographic realities will persist. People will continue to move from youthful to aging societies, and from poorer to richer regions. The current geography of migration will, however, change, as this policy brief explains.

Source: By Rainer Münz, Migration Policy Institute

Download Demography and Migration: An Outlook for the 21st Century

Undocumented and Uninsured: Barriers to Affordable Care for Immigrant Population

Abstract:

While many in the United States will gain health insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, undocumented immigrants are one group that will not see much benefit from the law. That's because the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States — most often young, working adults in good health — are excluded from participation in the new insurance marketplaces and state Medicaid expansions.
Focusing on the state with the largest number of undocumented residents ― California ― this report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and The Commonwealth Fund examines the health status and health care use of undocumented immigrants and suggests policy alternatives that could improve their access to needed health care.

Source: UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, UCLA

Download Undocumented and Uninsured: Barriers to Affordable Care for Immigrant Population

The 'Bitch Tape': How Male Batterers Find The Woman in the State

Abstract:

Women’s experiences have been the nucleus of domestic violence literature, discourse, and policy, and have shaped the therapeutic and/or punitive measures that are characteristic of domestic violence prevention – measures that research has shown are largely ineffective in curbing violence. Consequently, we still know relatively little about why men batter, and how they make sense of the negative “batterer” credential that corresponds with their offense. The few studies that explore batterer behavior are primarily psychological, reducing their violence to individual pathology that can be “treated” in therapy. Accordingly, non-psychological studies are characterized by evaluations of the utility, effectiveness, and/or therapeutic techniques of Batterer Intervention Programs, thus missing thesociologicalroots of batterer behavior. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 15 male batterers, my research shows that these men make sense of the offenses of which they have been accused in different ways, both with regard to the role they attribute to the state in their felt disempowerment and emasculation, and the role they attribute to their female victims. These different meanings are attributable to a number of factors – factors I argue must be addressed to the extent that they are linked to recidivistic risks of battering. The analysis presented in this paper therefore provides a foundation for creating more effective social remedies for battering behavior, and it provides an opportunity to reconsider gender-based theories of interpersonal violence more generally.

 

Source: ISSI Fellows Working Papers, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, UC Berkeley

Download:  The 'Bitch Tape': How Male Batterers Find The Woman in the State

 

 

Quantified Traveler: Travel Feedback Meets the Cloud to Change Behavior

Abstract:

We describe the design and evaluation of a system named Quantified Traveler (QT). QT is a Computational Travel Feedback System. Travel Feedback is an established programmatic method whereby travelers record travel in diaries, and meet with a counselor who guides her to alternate mode or trip decisions that are more sustainable or otherwise beneficial to society, while still meeting the subject’s mobility needs. QT is a computation surrogate for the counselor. Since counselor costs can limit the size of travel feedback programs, a system such as QT at the low costs of cloud computing, could dramatically increase scale, and thereby sustainable travel. QT uses an app on the phone to collect travel data, a server in the cloud to process it into travel diaries and then a personalized carbon, exercise, time, and cost footprint. The subject is able to see all of this information on the web. We evaluate with 135 subjects to learn if subjects let us use their personal phones and data-plans to build travel diaries, whether they actually use the website to look at their travel information, whether the design creates pro-environmental shifts in psychological variables measured by entry and exit surveys, and finally whether the revealed travel behavior records reduced driving. Before and after statistical analysis and the results from a structural equation model suggest that the results are a qualified success.

Source: University of California Transportation Center via eScholarship Repository
Download pdf of Quantified Traveler: Travel Feedback Meets the Cloud to Change Behavior

The global burden of unsafe medical care: analytic modelling of observational studies

Abstract:

 

Objective To contextualise the degree of harm that comes from unsafe medical care compared with individual health conditions using the global burden of disease (GBD), a metric to determine how much suffering is caused by individual diseases.

Design Analytic modelling of observational studies investigating unsafe medical care in countries’ inpatient care settings, stratified by national income, to identify incidence of seven adverse events for GBD modelling. Observational studies were generated through a comprehensive search of over 16 000 articles written in English after 1976, of which over 4000 were appropriate for full text review.

Results The incidence, clinical outcomes, demographics and costs for each of the seven adverse events were collected from each publication when available. We used disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost as a standardised metric to measure morbidity and mortality due to specific adverse events. We estimate that there are 421 million hospitalisations in the world annually, and approximately 42.7 million adverse events. These adverse events result in 23 million DALYs lost per year. Approximately two-thirds of all adverse events, and the DALYs lost from them, occurred in low-income and middle-income countries.

Conclusions This study provides early evidence that adverse events due to medical care represent a major source of morbidity and mortality globally. Though suffering related to the lack of access to care in many countries remains, these findings suggest the importance of critically evaluating the quality and safety of the care provided once a person accesses health services. While further refinements of the estimates are needed, these data should be a call to global health policymakers to make patient safety an international priority.

 Source: British Medical Journal

BMJ Qual Saf 2013;22:809-815 doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2012-001748

Download:  The global burden of unsafe medical care: analytic modelling of observational studies

The Heart of the Matter a report on the Humanities from the American Academy

From the Executive Summary:

This report invites all stakeholders, public and private alike, to embrace a new commitment to collaboration, and a new sense of mutual obligation to the critical role of the humanities and social sciences for a vibrant democracy.

The Heart of the Matter, a report of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, is intended to advance a dialogue on the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the future of our nation. The report was requested by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Representa- tives Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin) and David Price (D-North Carolina). 

Source: American Academy Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences via http://www.humanitiesmontana.org

Download full pdf report: The Heart of the Matter a report on the Humanities from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Technology and Education: A Primer

Abstract:

For all intents and purposes, we educate our children in much the same way as we did a century ago. Despite our stubborn attachment to an instructional model from a bygone era, technology is set to revolutionize the learning process. Examples include interactive lessons that adapt to a specific student’s learning style to lectures taught by a single professor to tens of thousands of students around the world who are enrolled in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Such innovations have the potential to radically alter the nature of learning. 

Adaptive technology is defined as software that learns and alters itself based on the user’s inputs, while allowing for interaction with a broad base of learning styles. Adaptive technology software fills the role of the coach/tutor. 

Should this technology be adopted in classrooms, it holds the potential for changing a teacher from a “one-size-fits-all” instructor to an individual learning coach. Using adaptive technology, students can learn material through an avenue of their choosing and at the pace that best suits them; when they encounter a difficulty, the teacher can step in and coach them past the problem individually or in a small group, while their classmates continue. In many cases the software is becoming advanced enough to recognize when the student is struggling, and is capable of pre-empting the need for intervention by the teacher.

Two key areas of adaptive learning require additional research in Canada. First, we need better quantitative, empirical research about the benefits of adaptive technology and its successful implementation and use. The second area pertains to policy barriers for the introduction of adaptive technology. Other questions, such as the cost of potential technologies, teacher training, and quality control, are also relevant.

source: Fraser Institute- Canada

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Internet Freedom and Political Space

Abstract:

The Internet has become a new battleground between governments that censor online content and those who advocate freedom to browse, post, and share information online for all, regardless of their place of residence. This report examines whether and how furthering Internet freedom can empower civil society vis-à-vis public officials, make the government more accountable to its citizens, and integrate citizens into the policymaking process. Using case studies of events in 2011 in Egypt, Syria, China, and Russia, researchers focus on the impact of Internet freedom on freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and the right to cast a meaningful vote, all of which are the key pillars of political space. Researchers analyze the mechanisms by which Internet freedom can enhance the opportunities to enjoy these freedoms, how different political contexts can alter the opportunities for online mobilization, and how, subsequently, online activism can grow out into offline mobilization leading to visible policy changes. To provide historical context, researchers also draw parallels between the effects of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty programs in the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the ongoing efforts to expand Internet freedom for all. The report concludes by discussing implications for the design of Internet freedom programs and other measures to protect "freedom to connect."

Source: RAND Corporation

Download full pdf publication: Internet Freedom and Political Space

United Nations World Happiness Report

Introduction:

As heads of state get ready for the United Nations General Assembly in two weeks, the second World Happiness Report further strengthens the case that well-being should be a critical component of how the world measures its economic and social development. The report is published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), under the auspices of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.  Leading experts in several fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The Report is edited by Professor John F. Helliwell, of the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; Lord Richard Layard, Director of the Well-Being Programme at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance; and Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director of the SDSN, and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General.

Source: United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Download full pdf of  United Nations World Happiness Report 

Tea Party Increasingly Unhappy with GOP Leadership

From the overview:

As lawmakers return for what promises to be a busy fall session, GOP congressional leaders face mounting disapproval among Tea Party Republicans. Just 27% of Republicans and GOP leaners who agree with the Tea Party approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing, compared with 71% who disapprove. 

The job rating of GOP leaders among Tea Party Republicans has fallen 15 points since February, from 42% to 27%. Disapproval has risen from 54% to 71% over this period. There has been no similar decline among Republicans who do not agree with the Tea Party. Currently, 42% of non-Tea Party Republicans and Republican leaners approve of how GOP leaders in Congress are handling their job, which is little changed over the past year.

Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

Download pdf report  Tea Party Increasingly Unhappy with GOP Leadership | Download pdf topline questionnaire

Guns & Suicide: The Hidden Toll

Introduction:

In the national debate over gun violence—a debate stoked by mass murders such as last December’s tragedy in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school—a glaring fact gets obscured: Far more people kill themselves with a firearm each year than are murdered with one. In 2010 in the U.S., 19,392 people committed suicide with guns, compared with 11,078 who were killed by others. According to Matthew Miller, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICRC) at Harvard School of Public Health, “If every life is important, and if you’re trying to save people from dying by gunfire, then you can’t ignore nearly two-thirds of the people who are dying.” Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S.; in 2010, 38,364 people killed themselves. In more than half of these cases, they used firearms. Indeed, more people in this country kill themselves with guns than with all other intentional means combined, including hanging, poisoning or overdose, jumping, or cutting.
Though guns are not the most common method by which people attempt suicide, they are the most lethal. About 85 percent of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death. (Drug overdose, the most widely used method in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of cases.) Moreover, guns are an irreversible solution to what is often a passing crisis. Suicidal individuals who take pills or inhale car exhaust or use razors have time to reconsider their actions or summon help. With a firearm, once the trigger is pulled, there’s no turning back.

Source: Harvard School of Public Health

Download pdf: Guns & Suicide: The Hidden Toll 

Nielsen Global Survey: Education Is an Investment for the Future Around the Globe

 Introduction:

 The road to better jobs, more money and improved lifestyles is paved by education, according to a new Nielsen survey. More than three-quarters (78%) of global online respondents agreed that receiving a higher education, such as college, is important. Likewise, three-fourths also believed that better employment (75%) and higher income (72%) are accessible because of educational opportunities. 

The Nielsen Global Survey of Education Aspirations polled more than 29,000 Internet respondents in 58 countries to measure consumer sentiment on the availability of educational opportunities at all levels of study and the resulting opportunity for job and salary advancement. While the opportunity to receive a quality education is a multi-dimensional topic with underlying socio-economic factors to consider, the findings help shed light on what the future holds for both consumers and companies alike in the context of driving innovation, economic advancement and social development. 

Source: Nielsen Global Survey

Link to download page for report (free registration is required for download).

What Will Happen When Foreigners Stop Lending to the United States?

From the abstract:

Since the early 1990s, the United States has borrowed heavily from its trading partners. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of an end to this borrowing, an end that could occur suddenly or gradually.
Modeling U.S. borrowing as the result of what Bernanke (2005) calls a global saving glut—where foreigners sell goods and services to the United States but prefer purchasing U.S. assets to purchasing U.S. goods and services—we capture four key features of the United States and its position in the world economy over 1992–2012. In the model, as in the data: (1) the U.S. trade deficit first increases, then decreases; (2) the U.S. real exchange rate first appreciates, then depreciates; (3) the U.S. trade deficit is driven by a deficit in goods trade, with a steady U.S. surplus in service trade; and (4) the fraction of U.S labor dedicated to producing goods—agriculture, mining and manufacturing—falls throughout the period.

Using this model, we analyze two possible ends to the saving glut: an orderly, gradual rebalancing and a disorderly, sudden stop in foreign lending as occurred in Mexico in 1995–96. We find that a sudden stop would be very disruptive for the U.S. economy in the short term, particularly for the construction industry.

In the long term, however, a sudden stop would have a surprisingly small impact. As the U.S. trade deficit becomes a surplus, gradually or suddenly, employment in goods production will not return to its level in the early 1990s because much of this surplus will be trade in services and because much of the decline in employment in goods production has been, and will be, due to faster productivity growth in goods than in services.

Source: Economic Policy Paper produced by Minneapolis Federal Reserve

Download pdf publication: What Will Happen When Foreigners Stop Lending to the United States?

The Google Scholar Experiment: how to index false papers and manipulate bibliometric indicators

Abstract:

Google Scholar has been well received by the research community. Its promises of free, universal and easy access to scientific literature as well as the perception that it covers better than other traditional multidisciplinary databases the areas of the Social Sciences and the Humanities have contributed to the quick expansion of Google Scholar Citations and Google Scholar Metrics: two new bibliometric products that offer citation data at the individual level and at journal level. In this paper we show the results of a experiment undertaken to analyze Google Scholar's capacity to detect citation counting manipulation. For this, six documents were uploaded to an institutional web domain authored by a false researcher and referencing all the publications of the members of the EC3 research group at the University of Granada. The detection of Google Scholar of these papers outburst the citations included in the Google Scholar Citations profiles of the authors. We discuss the effects of such outburst and how it could affect the future development of such products not only at individual level but also at journal level, especially if Google Scholar persists with its lack of transparency. 

Comments:

This paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (via Cornell University Library ArXiv)

Download pdf: The Google Scholar Experiment: how to index false papers and manipulate bibliometric indicators

United Nations Resource: World Statistics Pocketbook

Overview: 

The World Statistics Pocketbook, 2013 edition is an annual compilation of key statistical indicators prepared by the United Nations Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Over 50 indicators have been collected from more than 20 international statistical sources and are presented in one-page profiles for 216 countries or areas of the world. This issue covers various years from 2005 to 2012. For the economic indicators, in general, three years - 2005, 2010 and 2011 - are shown; for the indicators in the social and environmental categories, data for one year are presented. 

The topics covered include: agriculture, balance of payments, education, energy, environment, food, gender, health, industrial production, information and communication, international finance, international tourism, international trade, labour, migration, national accounts, population and prices. The technical notes contain brief descriptions of the concepts and methodologies used in the compilation of the indicators as well as information on the statistical sources for the indicators. Reference to primary sources of the data is provided for readers interested in longer time-series data or more detailed descriptions of the concepts or methodologies.

Source: United Nations

Download World Statistics Pocketbook, 2013 edition

Study Confirms that LGBT Teens Are at Higher Risk of Being Victims of Dating Violence

From the National Institute of Justice:

A new study on teen dating violence has found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teenagers are at much greater risk of dating abuse than their heterosexual counterparts. Transgender teens are especially vulnerable.

Analyzing data from their larger study, “Technology, Teen Dating Violence and Abuse, and Bullying,” researchers at the Urban Institute provide one of the first examinations of dating violence and abuse through the distinct lens of sexual orientation and gender identity. Of the 3,745 youth in 7th to 12th grades, in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey surveyed in the study, six percent identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Download and read the full study “Technology, Teen Dating Violence and Abuse, and Bullying.” 

Read an abstract of the article about LGBT teens, which appeared in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 U.S. public-use datafile

This datafile contains the U.S. TIMSS 2011 data, including data that were collected only in the United States and not included on the international database available from the IEA. The additional data relate to the race and ethnicity of students and the percentage of students in a school eligible for the Federal free and reduced-price lunch program, among other variables. This datafile is intended to be used in conjunction with the international datafile available from the IEA.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

Link to download datasets at NCES

The Criminal Diaspora: The Spread of Transnational Organized Crime and How to Contain its Expansion

Abstract:

The Criminal Diaspora: The Spread of Transnational Organized Crime and How to Contain its Expansion, examines the multiple factors leading to the international expansion and diffusion of organized crime networks.  Government efforts to dismantle or displace criminal groups have helped push them beyond traditional borders, while new markets and rising demand for illicit products have led criminal groups to expand their networks.  To account for this phenomenon, The Criminal Diaspora moves beyond the analysis of specific countries to examine “criminal clusters,” such as the so-called “Mexican  cartels”—with international linkages between criminal groups operating in the United States, Central America, and the Andes—as  well as Colombian and Brazilian clusters.  Many criminal groups have now established links and operations throughout the hemisphere and beyond, including in Africa and Europe.  New and expanding illicit markets, the fragmentation of criminal organizations, and increased deportations of criminals from the United States to Latin America have contributed to what the authors call a criminal diaspora, the spread of crime and violence throughout the region and beyond.

 Source: Wilson Center Latin American Program

Download pdf of The Criminal Diaspora: The Spread of Transnational Organized Crime and How to Contain its Expansion