Eric is a current MPA student!

http://aspahr.org/2016/05/13/2016-aspa-hampton-roads-awards-luncheon/

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/11/americas-shrinking-middle-class-a-close-look-at-changes-within-metropolitan-areas/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=1173200409-Weekly_May_12_20165_12_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-1173200409-399726609

The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee. From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally.

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2016/05/avoiding-plagiarism.html

Computerization has made it easy to cut-and-paste the words of others. It has also made it easy to detect when plagiarism has occurred. You can avoid allegations of plagiarism through awareness and honest effort.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/09/facebook-twitter-mobile-news/

Facebook sends by far the most mobile readers to news sites of any social media site, while Twitter mobile users spend more engaged time with news content, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of audience behavior metrics from 30 news sites. This gap holds true for both longer and shorter news articles.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/why-kids-should-use-their-fingers-in-math-class/478053/

Some scholars note that it will be those who have developed visual thinking who will be “at the top of the class” in the world’s new high-tech workplace that increasingly draws upon visualization technologies and techniques, in business, technology, art, and science. Work on mathematics draws from different areas of the brain and students need to be strong with visuals, numbers, symbols and words—but schools are not encouraging this broad development in mathematics now. This is not because of a lack of research knowledge on the best ways to teach and learn mathematics, it is because that knowledge has not been communicated in accessible forms to teachers. Research on the brain is often among the most impenetrable for a lay audience but the knowledge that is being produced by neuroscientists, if communicated well, may be the spark that finally ignites productive change in mathematics classrooms and homes across the country.

Good stuff… but may be slightly offensive to some!

https://youtu.be/0Rnq1NpHdmw

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2016/05/05/early-research-on-police-body-cameras-supports-use/

The first experimental evidence concerning use-of-force comes from a large study in the Rialto, California Police Department, and the results should encourage advocates of body cameras. The study randomly assigned particular police shifts to wear body cameras (the “treatment”). Police shifts in the treatment condition are associated with reduced use-of-force and citizen complaints against the police were significantly reduced. Shifts in the control condition, in contrast, saw roughly twice as much use-of-force as the treatment condition.

The research so far suggests that body cameras are a promising way to reduce unnecessary use of force.

Interesting (fascinating!) stuff about people…

http://www.fastcompany.com/3059450/netflix-knows-which-pictures-youll-click-on-and-why

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/higher-ed/Mobile-Device-Proliferation-Puts-Pressure-on-College-Residential-Networks.html

Worldwide, more than 3 billion people use the Internet each day; smart watches and digital fitness trackers have become more common; and according to a 2015 re:fuel College Explorer study, students own an average of nearly seven devices. So it’s no wonder IT leaders are feeling the heat to keep up with this ever-growing demand on their residential networks.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-s-wrong-with-open-data-sites-and-how-we-can-fix-them/

Imagine shopping in a supermarket where every item is stored in boxes that look exactly the same. Some are filled with cereal, others with apples, and others with shampoo. Shopping would be an absolute nightmare! The design of most open data sites—the (usually government) sites that distribute census, economic and other data to be used and redistributed freely—is not exactly equivalent to this nightmarish supermarke. But it’s pretty close.
During the last decade, such sites—data.gov, data.gov.uk, data.gob.cl, data.gouv.fr, and many others—have been created throughout the world. Most of them, however, still deliver data as sets of links to tables, or links to other sites that are also hard to comprehend. In the best cases, data is delivered through APIs, or application program interfaces, which are simple data query languages that require a user to have a basic knowledge of programming. So understanding what is inside each dataset requires downloading, opening, and exploring the set in ways that are extremely