http://www.odu.edu/about/odu-publications/insideodu/2018/02/08/morenews1
"…He was joined for the announcement by military family advocates and military spouses, including Taylor Miller, a Navy wife and student at Old Dominion pursuing a master’s degree in public administration."
“Recent scandals about the role of social media in key political events in the US, UK and other European countries over the past couple of years have underscored the need to understand the interactions between digital platforms, misleading information and propaganda, and their influence on collective life in democracies,” writes First Draft, an online journal published by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Hence comes A Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ and Other Information Disorders–a free manual that helps “students, journalists and researchers investigate misleading and viral content, memes and trolling practices online.” Packed with valuable data visualizations, the manual highlights a “series of research protocols or ‘recipes’ that can be used to trace trolling practices, the ways false viral news and memes circulate online, and the commercial underpinnings of problematic content.
https://theconversation.com/3-questions-about-the-fisa-court-answered-91208
In 2016, the FISA court reviewed 1,485 requests for surveillance. While higher than the number of requests reviewed in 2014 (1,379) and 2015 (1,457), the number of requests has remained at 1,200 or higher since 2001.
It is rare for these requests to be denied. Of the requests made in 2016, only 34 were rejected. In most years, no requests were denied.
Since the proceedings of the court are secret, it is unclear why these denials occurred or why so few cases were denied.
It is also unclear how the current controversy over the Nunes memo will affect FISA operations in the future, if at all.
https://theconversation.com/does-wearing-a-school-uniform-improve-student-behavior-51553
Interestingly, even when evidence is available, educators’ perceptions could be at odds with it. For example, a study of educators in 38 North Carolina high schools found that 61% of the responding principals and assistant principals believed that there was a reduction in cases of misbehavior on campus when school uniforms were introduced. In reality, the data showed no change in incidents of crime, violence and suspensions.
Similarly, research on the efficacy of school uniforms on increasing student attendance and achievement is conflicted. For example, one study concluded that school uniforms resulted in increased student achievement and increased attendance.
However, another study found little impact on academics at all levels and little evidence of improvement in attendance for girls and drop in attendance for boys.
Besides being large employers themselves, Warren Buffett knows insurance through his Gen Re reinsurance company. Amazon has taught everyone how to shop far better online than in stores, and JPMorgan has had extensive experience with Health Savings Accounts, which are tax-sheltered savings accounts paired with high-deductible insurance polices that eligible people can use to pay for health care costs. They know the elements of the past playbook individually.
Though some of his examples (the language of cigarette advertisements, for instance) may look dated now, the course’s core principles have only grown more useful, and indeed necessary, with time — as Sagan, who wrote darkly of "the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media," surely knew they would.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/what-was-this-article-about-again/551603/
Books, shows, movies, and songs aren’t files we upload to our brains—they’re part of the tapestry of life, woven in with everything else. From a distance, it may become harder to see a single thread clearly, but it’s still in there.
https://theconversation.com/macrons-pledge-to-wipe-out-coal-is-just-as-meaningless-as-trumps-plan-to-revive-it-90729
Coal-fired power plants are disappearing in the U.S. for two reasons.
First, fracking has unleashed enormous quantities of natural gas. This has driven the price power plants pay for gas down dramatically. At the same time natural gas prices have been falling, coal prices have been rising.
This is making natural gas and other alternative energy sources more attractive. For example, the cost of solar and wind power has fallen steadily over the past decade, making those sources more competitive.
Second, it costs more to operate a coal-fired plant than one that runs on natural gas. Coal has to be crushed and washed, and the residue cleared from power plant boilers. These are steps that are not needed for natural gas and renewable fuels.
From the article:
We found no changes in low-income and underrepresented student enrollment after the colleges went test-optional. Instead, we found an unintended consequence of these efforts: Test-optional policies led to an increase in the number of applications overall. That necessarily forced the colleges to become more selective. That’s because more applications typically mean more rejections. More rejections make it look like the colleges are being more selective. That appearance of selectivity enables a college to claim a higher spot in college rankings that view selectivity as a good thing. This all creates a perverse incentive for colleges to go test-optional that has nothing to do with expanding access for students from low-income families.
We also found a 25-point increase in the reported SAT scores of enrolled students. This increase may be driven by higher-scoring students being more likely to submit scores to bolster their applications. Meanwhile, lower-scoring students keep their scores to themselves. This results in higher average scores being reported to the federal government and magazines that publish college rankings. Thus, it appears as though by increasing competition for a limited number of seats on campus and increasing the SAT scores used to generate college rankings, test-optional policies may actually threaten the very access goals they were designed to achieve.
https://theconversation.com/reaching-rural-america-with-broadband-internet-service-82488
Rural Americans want faster, cheaper internet like their city-dwelling compatriots have, letting them work remotely and use online services, to access shopping, news, information and government data.
With an upcoming Federal Communications Commission vote on whether cellphone data speeds are fast enough for work, entertainment and other online activities, Americans face a choice: Is modest-speed internet appropriate for rural areas, or do rural Americans deserve access to the far faster service options available in urban areas?
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