Come join other energy / clean / green technology-based entrepreneurs and small companies who are seeking funding for R&D and plan to submit a SBIR/STTR proposal within the next 12 months. All attendees of this event will receive detailed instructions on how to put the pieces together for SBIR/STTR grant proposals with specific focus on funding opportunities available with the Dept of Energy and National Science Foundation. Attendees will learn how to prepare each component of a proposal, get current information on the SBIR/STTR program and the agency’s proposal submission processes, and learn tools and information necessary to prepare a competitive proposal. Visit the website for more details or to register online.
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The adoption of broadband internet access slowed dramatically over the last year. Two-thirds of American adults (66%) now have a broadband internet connection at home, a figure that is little changed from the 63% with a high-speed home connection at a similar point in 2009. Most demographic groups experienced flat-to-modest broadband adoption growth over the last year. The notable exception to this trend came among African-Americans, who experienced 22% year-over-year broadband adoption growth.
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released its "2009 Wind Technologies Market Report." This report, authored primarily by DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, provides a comprehensive overview of trends in the rapidly-evolving U.S. wind power market. For the first time, this year's Wind Technologies Market Report estimates the amount of wind turbine and component imports from other countries. The study finds that a growing percentage of wind turbine equipment is being sourced domestically, as both domestic and foreign companies seek to minimize transportation costs and currency risks by establishing local manufacturing capabilities. When presented as a fraction of total wind turbine equipment-related costs, the overall U.S. content is found to have increased from about 50% in 2008 to roughly 60% in 2009.
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Faced with rising costs, General Electric is moving production of its new energy-efficient water heater halfway around the world. The country it's leaving? China. The one it's bringing 400 jobs and a newly renovated factory? The United States. A small but growing band of U.S. manufacturers—including giants such as General Electric, NCR and Caterpillar—are turning the seemingly inexorable offshoring movement on its head, bringing some production to the U.S. from far-flung locations such as China. Others that were buying components overseas are switching to U.S. suppliers.
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Leadership is compressed. Greater connectivity across the world means broader perspectives are more important than ever before, but leaders—no matter what their sector—have far fewer opportunities to think beyond their short term priorities and immediate responsibilities. Instant information flows are bringing planning horizons closer and closer to the present; pressures from multiple stakeholders are eroding prospects for consensus. It is increasingly difficult for leaders to act in the short term in ways that will yield long-term results.
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The changes in distribution and cargo-handling capabilities of the world's biggest container ports show the shifts that the world economy has undergone over the past two decades. The volume of cargo traded through the world’s biggest container ports has increased nearly sixfold in the past 20 years as globalisation has taken hold. Singapore has now nabbed the top spot and every other big port in 1989 has moved down the list.
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Operation REACH’s Gulfsouth Youth Action Fund, a youth philanthropy initiative that engages youth as leaders and empowers them with the resources to make strategic investments in their peers and their communities, is seeking nominations for the 2010 Youth Change Maker Awards. These awards honor outstanding young people between the ages of 7 and 25 who have shown exemplary leadership in recovery, education, entrepreneurship, and community service initiatives in the Gulfsouth region. Finalists will be recognized and winners announced during the Youth Change Maker Awards Dinner on October 16, 2010, in New Orleans. Each award recipient will be honored with a $500 donation to a nonprofit organization or project of his or her choice. Self-nominations are accepted. The application deadline is September 17, 2010.
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It’s too early to call it a movement, but state and local officials are beginning to ask hard questions about the multiplicity of government agencies. Huge administrative inefficiencies exist in the duplication and overlap among many county, city and township governments, as well as the many thousands of special districts that have mushroomed over the last three decades. In some cases, the answer appears to be intergovernmental service sharing, such as the “Minneconsin” experience. But a more fundamental question is also being asked: Are these entities simply obsolete relics of a bygone era?
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Last week, some 30,000 people stood on line in the heat in East Point, Georgia, hoping to land a federal housing voucher. The vouchers guarantee the local housing authority will pay a percentage of a tenant’s rent. It's one of the ways to make housing available to people with low incomes. But funding has decreased in recent years, and there are fewer public housing units, too. In most major cities, waiting lists for rent vouchers are closed. Those on the list may have to wait for up to 10 years. This edition of Talk of the Nation focuses on the challenges of low-income housing in a struggling economy.
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Over 28 million people—26.9 percent of all workers in 2001—earned low wages and were more likely than higher-wage workers to be female, young, black, or Hispanic. This study looks at the demographic profile of this population, the extent to which they move to higher-wage jobs, and their progress toward financial independence.
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As workforce intermediaries respond to dramatic changes in the U.S. labor market, community colleges are expanding their roles in workforce development and, in the process, often taking on many of the functions of intermediaries. JFF reviewed the growing literature on intermediaries in several settings, including community colleges. This brief by John Hoops and Randall Wilson summarizes the findings on the key functions and characteristics of effective workforce intermediaries and highlights the emerging intermediary roles being played by community colleges.
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When Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast town of Pass Christian, Mississippi, wiping away an elementary and a middle school, community leaders used the destruction as a chance for a new start. The story of renewal in the 1,500-student Pass Christian district is just one example of the revitalization, changes, and challenges seen by many school districts damaged when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast five years ago. The national economic crisis and the massive BP oil leak have stalled the recovery in some districts, but a steady pace of renewal continues in others.
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Governor Sonny Perdue announced Tuesday that three new Georgia broadband projects will receive almost $13 million in federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. All three projects are designed to bring high-speed Internet access to unserved homes and businesses in rural communities—many of which are in northeast Georgia.
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Industrial Technologies Program (ITP) recently kicked off a series of training sessions for seven manufacturers in the Southeast that are working to demonstrate energy management systems that meet the highest standards in energy efficiency. Representatives from the seven demonstration facilities—Nissan North America, Volvo Trucks, Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., Bridgestone America Tire Organization, Spirax Sarco, Eaton Corporation, and Schneider Electric—and demonstration support teams all took part in the first phase of a three-part training program. The ITP Energy Management demonstration project took place in June at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
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SJF Advisory Services has partnered with Green for All to launch the first award that will identify, recognize, and promote private companies that are leaders in creating quality green jobs. Private, for-profit companies with at least $500,000 in revenue, and a business model that preserves or enhances environmental quality are eligible. Winners will be featured in an insert in the Sustainable Industries Trendwatch 2011 edition, recognized in numerous media outlets, and will receive a package of business services. Stage 1 applications are available online and are being accepted through August 31.
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IBM recently released two important reports on the rapidly changing global business environment: the 2010 CEO Study, which is based on interviews conducted with more than 1,500 chief executive officers worldwide; and the Global Student Study 2010, which is based on a survey of more than 3,600 graduate and undergraduate students worldwide. Taken together, the studies compare side by side the value system, mindset, and management style of current-generation CEOs with those of the Millennials (aka Generation Y) who are poised to become future leaders. The reports found a big discrepancy between the Millennials' view of globalization and its impact on organizations and that of present CEOs.
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Declarations of love do not get much more highly charged than the one Zhao Xiuxia received from her husband recently on an LED screen bigger than a football pitch. "Dear wife, I adore you. You work so hard for our family. Let's struggle together for a better life," scrolled the giant letters on an electronic ceiling above one of Beijing's glitziest new shopping centres. As well as being a message of devotion, the mobile phone text message—magnified by 5m pixels—highlights the dramatic increase in the wattage of China’s economy.
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The world economy continued its rebound from the worst recession in decades, according to the quarterly ICC/Ifo World Economic Survey released today. However, some regions, notably North America and Asia, saw slowing growth and there was a marked difference in growth prospects among regions.
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Are you looking for new ways to invest and make a difference in your local community? Through a series of interactive webinars, community and regional banks will have the opportunity to learn about credit enhancements that encourage investment in their own small towns and rural areas. The Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Cleveland and Richmond, in partnership with the Appalachia Regional Commission, invite you to participate in a series of webinars about Financing Opportunities in Rural Communities. Each webinar will feature case studies from community bankers and other strategic partners on how they have financed Central Appalachian community facilities, infrastructure, housing and historic development projects. The first webinar in the series is scheduled for September 14, 2010 from 10:00 – 11:30 am ET.
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In the month following the opening of the much talked about nonprofit Panera in Clayton, Missouri, a lot can be learned about the viability and sustainability of the pay-what-you-want model for philanthropic restaurants. This innovative and experimental blend of business and charity has several advantages compared to a traditional nonprofit fundraising approach, like making philanthropy part of people’s daily routine, but the question still begs, does it really work?
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The role of economic developers has expanded to include everything from technology transfer to attracting retail that will expand a community’s tax base. A new podcast from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta summarizes the findings and case studies of a recent report that investigates the challenge economic developers face in putting it all together into a development strategy. Download this, and other podcasts in the Fed’s Economic Development series.
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If there’s one truism that goes virtually unchallenged these days, it’s that a college degree has great value. Beyond the great books, beyond the critical reasoning skills, and beyond the experience itself, there’s another way that a college degree has value: Over the course of a working life, college graduates earn more than high school graduates. Over the past decade, research estimates have pegged that figure at $900,000, $1.2 million, and $1.6 million. But new research suggests that the monetary value of a college degree may be vastly overblown. According to a study conducted by PayScale for Bloomberg Businessweek, the value of a college degree may be a lot closer to $400,000 over 30 years and varies wildly from school to school.
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Two reports released by The Education Trust—Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some Colleges Do Better Than Others in Graduating African-American Students and Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some Colleges Do Better Than Others in Graduating Hispanic Students—dig beneath national college-graduation averages and examine disaggregated six-year graduation rates at hundreds of the nation’s public and private institutions. Even though 57 percent of all students who enroll earn diplomas within six years, the graduation rates for different groups of students are vastly different. Nationally, 60 percent of whites but only 49 percent of Latinos and 40 percent of African-Americans who start college hold bachelor’s degrees six years later.
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Innovations in Labor Market Intelligence, a new report published by Jobs for the Future, examines the creative development, application, and integration of labor market research in strategic thinking and decision making. The effectiveness of these collaborative processes depends on engaging not only intelligence suppliers but also decision makers who use the information. Alignment between data producers and users is critical to being agile in responding to rapidly changing labor market dynamics.
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Over the past several years, the production of biomass for use as renewable energy has elicited criticism from some on Capitol Hill and from some in the environmental community who have drawn their conclusions from flawed assumptions and misconstrued data. This misguided and negative portrayal of biomass puts at risk a wide variety of clean energy and climate solutions from our nation’s farms, ranches and forests. The latest assault is focused on greenhouse gas emissions from bioenergy and other biogenic sources and more specifically how they should be calculated. In response, the 25x’25 Alliance has created a new work group that will develop recommendations for how greenhouse emissions (GHGs) from biomass energy development should be calculated.
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A leading site selection publication, Business Facilities magazine, recently released its 2010 State Rankings Report in which "locations positioned to dominate emerging job-creating sectors" are identified. Multiple states in the American South were included in a number of important survey categories, demonstrating the region’s position as a leader in emerging growth sectors, and landing six of the top 10 spots for "Economic Growth Potential."
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Murray State University and the Regional Business & Innovation Center launched a new bio-economy initiative. Kentucky Secretary of the Energy and Environment Cabinet Len Peters came and presented a check to launch the West Kentucky AgBioworks Initiative focused on growing the bio-mass economy in West Kentucky.
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The global economy continues to improve, although at a disappointing pace. Sharp recessions traditionally produce rapid recoveries, but the damage wrought by the disruption of global credit in fall 2008 is far in excess of anything we have seen since the 1930s. This could be the slowest recovery of the post-war period.
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People born in other countries represent a substantial and growing segment of the U.S. labor force—that is, people with a job or looking for one. In 2009, 24 million members of the labor force—more than one in seven—were foreign born, up from 21 million in 2004. However, the growth of the foreign-born labor force was much slower between 2004 and 2009 than between 1994 and 2004. In that earlier period, the size of the foreign-born labor force grew at an average annual rate of more than 5 percent, whereas from 2004 to 2009, the rate was about 2 percent. As a share of the total, the foreign-born labor force grew from 10.0 percent in 1994 to 14.5 percent in 2004 and to 15.5 percent in 2009.
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When discussing the health of the manufacturing sector, one major issue is whether we should be taking into account the number of people employed in the sector or looking at the amount of output created in manufacturing. Interestingly, each leads to the opposite conclusion about the strength of manufacturing in the United States, says William A. Strauss, a senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. According to Strauss, the United States still remains a manufacturing powerhouse. The nation's factories, he says, are just more efficient. Even as manufacturing jobs continue to decline in number, younger Americans will need a better education to compete for new high-tech jobs. Education is the big key to continued advancement, says Strauss.
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With the Great Recession, the red-hot commodities market has cooled, but that may not last long as the era of scarcity nips at the heels. One of the world’s top mineral holders—Australia—is proposing a tax on “super profits” of mining companies, or profits beyond what’s needed for reinvestment. The proposal signals a new backdrop for commodities, with far-reaching consequences for resource use, foreign trade and investment, and the global power balance. Irrespective of all arguments, such a tax would change relative prices in favor of commodities and against manufactured goods.
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The current fiscal crisis has many communities focused on maintaining current programs with shrinking budgets. But recovering from the economy also requires strategic planning to position your community for economic growth in the future. Authors Steven Koven and Thomas Lyons offered five strategies for economic development that will position your community for growth in a July 29 webconference sponsored by ICMA. Among them were “Assess your community’s economic strengths and weaknesses” and “Foster green business activity.”
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A new guide from the National League of Cities identifies fundamental ways elected officials can become informed and strategic decision-makers who can take a leadership role in economic development. The guide is based on the premise that elected officials can and should actively participate in and lead long-term development strategies that make sense for their community. The format of the guide is a “top 10 list” of things elected officials should know about economic development in order to be effective leaders.
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The National Trust for Historic Preservation and Project for Public Spaces (PPS) have selected Tupelo, Mississippi as the pilot site for a demonstration project that will tap into the power of Placemaking to revitalize this National Main Street community. The project will engage a wide range of Tupelo stakeholders, community members, and the Mississippi Department of Transportation to invigorate the city's Main Street corridor, a state highway that links downtown to the birthplace of Elvis Presley and other public spaces and local attractions. The demonstration project is the latest effort in a new partnership between the National Trust and PPS, aimed at enriching towns and cities across the nation through the power of Placemaking.
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A new study by the Office of Advocacy shows that early exposure to self-employment increases individuals’ engagement in self-employment during their early- and mid-career years. The study also found that a younger subgroup has much higher self-employment rates than an older subgroup when the two are compared by age 23. This increase is driven by recent increases in Black and Hispanic self-employment, and to a lesser extent by female self-employment.
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States are cutting hundreds of millions from their pre-kindergarten budgets, the Associated Press reports. States will slash nearly $350 million from their pre-K programs by next year, with more cuts likely once federal stimulus money ends, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The reductions mean fewer slots, teacher layoffs, and fewer services for needy families who can't afford private preschool programs. Four states made cuts last year, but the number jumped to 14 this year, and will likely add another 14 next year. The cuts come when the demand for quality prekindergarten is at an all-time high, and states struggle to improve test scores in early grades and help students earn a high school diploma. As of last year, 38 states had pre-K programs serving more than 1.2 million three- and four-year-olds.
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Governor Phil Bredesen recently signed Executive Order No. 68 establishing the Tennessee STEM Innovation Network. The Network is charged with promoting and expanding the teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in K-12 public schools across Tennessee. Established as a project within the Tennessee Department of Education, the Network will conduct various STEM educational activities in coordination with local education agencies, including teacher professional development and curriculum development.
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Global leaders critical to shaping science policy in the US, Europe and Asia will gather in Oslo for the first Kavli Prize Science Forum—a new biennial international meeting to facilitate high-level, global discussion of major topics on science and science policy. The theme of the inaugural Forum is "The Role of International Cooperation in Science." Read more about Kavli Prize Week.
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Accelerating Innovation: The Road Ahead for Tech-based Economic Development offers the knowledge, tools and connections that TBED professionals need to chart a course for success. Join them September 14-16 in Pittsburgh as SSTI examines the future of the U.S. high-tech economy and regional innovation. Federal officials, governors and state and regional TBED leaders will all be on hand to share strategies and resources that can help your region create high-quality jobs.
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When President Obama announced at his State of the Union address in January a goal of doubling American exports over five years, business owners applauded, envisioning a flood of goods moving into new markets in the Asian and Latin American countries that are leading the global recovery. The chief executives of Boeing and Xerox agreed to lead an advisory council to support the effort, called the National Export Initiative.
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One overlooked benefit of aging populations may be the prospect of a more peaceful world. Demographers have found that developing nations with “youth bulges”—more than 40 percent of people between the ages of 15 and 29—are 2.5 times more prone to internal conflict, including terrorism, than countries with fewer young people, largely because of high unemployment combined with youthful exuberance and vulnerability to peers.
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On June 21, 2010, in the run-up to the G-20 meeting in Toronto, China announced that it would shift to a more flexible exchange rate policy. From mid-June to July 30 the yuan rose 0.8 percent against the dollar. In contrast, the currency had remained fixed (at about 6.83 yuan to the dollar) from September 2008 to early June 2010. Pressure not only from the United States and the European Union but also from Russia, Brazil, and India as well as the IMF seems likely to have played a role in China's decision, although concerns about domestic inflation may also have been a factor.
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A new report from the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors reveals that local government job losses in the current and next fiscal years will approach 500,000, with public safety, public works, public health, social services and parks and recreation hardest hit by the cutbacks. Local governments are being forced to make significant cuts that will eliminate jobs, curtail essential services, and increase the number of people in need.
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People living in rural America are slightly more likely to have health insurance than are people in the cities, according to the latest data released from the Bureau of the Census. The Census data comes from 2007, before the beginning of the current recession. Across all rural counties, 17.1% of those under the age of 65 don’t have health insurance. In urban counties, 17.2% of those under 65 don’t have health insurance, and in exurban counties, the uninsured rate is 16.5%. Although rural America as a whole has a lower rate of uninsured than the cities, for most rural communities, that’s misleading. Only 48% of the nation’s 2,038 rural communities have uninsured rates below the national average. And, in most states, the rural uninsured rate is higher than the urban rate.
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In an effort to help cities and towns successfully engage young people in the democratic process, the National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, with support from the Surdna Foundation, has created a new report on promoting authentic youth civic engagement in municipal government. Authentic Youth Engagement: A Guide for Municipal Leaders defines authentic youthengagement as a process in which young people are seen as valuable participants in the work of local government, are prepared to take on meaningful roles in addressing relevant issues and work in partnership with adults who respect, listen to and support them.
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According to data in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2010 KIDS COUNT Data Book, overall improvements in child well-being that began in the late 1990s stalled in the years just before the current economic downturn. For example, the rate of children living in poverty in 2008 was 18 percent, indicating that 1 million more children were living in poverty in that year than in 2000. The full impact of the economic downturn on children and families will not be evident for a number of years. The annual Data Book profiles the well-being of America’s children on a state-by-state basis and ranks states on 10 measures of well-being.
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Of the 13 recessions that the American public has endured since the Great Depression of 1929-33, none has presented a more punishing combination of length, breadth and depth than this one. A new Pew Research survey finds that 30 months after it began, the Great Recession has led to a downsizing of Americans’ expectations about their retirements and their children’s future; a new frugality in their spending and borrowing habits; and a concern that it could take several years, at a minimum, for their house values and family finances to recover. The survey also finds that more than half of the adults in U.S. labor force (55%) have experienced some work-related hardship—be it a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work. In addition, the bursting of the pre-recession housing and stock market bubbles has shrunk the wealth of the average American household by an estimated 20%, the deepest such decline in the post-World War II era, according to government data.
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The Workforce Strategy Center is seeking respondents to a new survey designed to collect information about bridge programs across the country. They describe bridge programs as “a 21st century idea to help adult students obtain the necessary academic, employability, and technical skills they need to enter and succeed in post-secondary education and training programs.” They note that bridge programs are proliferating across the country at an exciting rate but there is no composite picture of how many bridge programs exist. The survey is designed to give funders and other key stakeholders a better sense of the depth and breadth of the field. The survey will be active until Friday, September 10, 2010. All respondents will have a chance to win an Apple iPad!
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DOE announced on July 14 that $30 million in funding will be made available to qualified small businesses to support the commercialization of promising new clean energy technologies. This initiative builds on efforts by DOE's existing Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program to develop near-term clean energy technologies and to support American small businesses. Small companies previously awarded Phase II grants through SBIR or STTR are eligible for funding. This is the first time DOE has offered Phase III awards under these small business programs. The money will come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and FY2010 budget appropriations.
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Twenty-six members, spanning university presidents, investors, serial entrepreneurs, and nonprofit leaders, were appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship announced yesterday by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. The group will support President Obama's innovation strategy by helping develop policies that foster entrepreneurship and identifying new ways to take ideas from the lab to the marketplace to drive economic growth and create jobs.
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The U.S. Department of State just launched a new initiative that leverages entrepreneurship as a tool for international economic development and cooperation. The Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) focuses on supporting entrepreneurs in communities around the world by helping to create supportive entrepreneurial ecosystems. The GEP will focus on twelve countries throughout the world, including seven Muslim-majority countries.
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According to Mauro Guillén, director of the Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies at Wharton, a manager must learn four key lessons at business school. Guillén outlined those lessons while moderating a panel on globalization at the recent Wharton Global Alumni Forum in Madrid.
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World growth is projected at about 4½ percent in 2010 and 4¼ percent in 2011. Relative to the April 2010 World Economic Outlook (WEO), this represents an upward revision of about ½ percentage point in 2010, reflecting stronger activity during the first half of the year.
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In the beginning of 2010, with the economy struggling to produce output or jobs, President Obama devoted a portion of his State of the Union Address to “fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.” One of these problems, he said, was a lack of exports. If the U.S. is to achieve a significant surge in exports ...metropolitan areas will play a huge role, say the authors of a new report from The Brookings Institution. Reflecting their high concentration of the nation’s human and physical capital, metropolitan areas produce 84 percent of the nation’s exports, making them the points of leverage for scaling up trade with the wider world. The 100 largest metropolitan areas alone account for over 64 percent of the nation’s exports, including 75 percent of its service exports.
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In the spring of 2009, the Federal Reserve System embarked on a collaborative effort known as Mortgage Outreach and Research Efforts (MORE), aimed at leveraging the substantial knowledge and expertise across the System related to mortgage markets that might prove useful to policymakers, community organizations, financial institutions, and the public. A new report highlights the work of the MORE initiative through June of 2010. In addition to the report, the Federal Reserve commissioned/produced four literature reviews that analyze existing literature, document the strengths and weaknesses of previous research efforts and methodologies, and identify gaps in knowledge.
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City officials last month fired all of Maywood’s employees and outsourced their jobs. While many communities are fearfully contemplating extensive cuts, Maywood says it is the first city in the nation in the current downturn to take an ax to everyone. At first, people in this poor, long-troubled and heavily Hispanic city southeast of Los Angeles braced for anarchy. The apocalypse never arrived. In fact, it seems this city was so bad at being a city that outsourcing—so far, at least—is being viewed as an act of municipal genius.
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In the early 20th century, the Progressive Era transformed municipal government, greatly improving operations and ending the culture of corruption that preceded it. The progressives’ rule-based approach worked well—for its time. But here in the early 21st century, the very rules which proved so valuable 100 years ago have become an albatross around the neck of public leaders. The fiscal crisis demands change. It’s time for a Post-Progressive Era, one predicated on creating public value as efficiently as possible. This means rethinking the rules of the early 20th century in light of the technology of the 21st century.
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The United States is facing an alarming education deficit that threatens our global competitiveness and economic future. The country is not keeping pace with other industrialized nations: Once a world leader in the proportion of adults ages 25 to 34 with postsecondary credentials, the United States now ranks 12th. To inform the debate and help shape policies related to college completion, the College Board has released three new resources for policymakers and educators: The College Completion Agenda 2010 Progress Report, The College Completion Agenda State Policy Guide, and an interactive website that combines the data with the policy strategies from the reports and allows the information to be easily accessed and customized by state.
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In this economy, community colleges are widely seen as the solution to many problems. Displaced workers are registering in droves to earn credentials that might get them back in the game. Strapped parents, daunted by the cost of four-year universities, are encouraging their children to spend two years at the local community college. But for students and professors at overstretched colleges, these are hardly the best of times. With state financing slashed almost everywhere, many institutions have cut so deeply into their course offerings and their faculty rosters that they cannot begin to handle the influx of students. In some parts of the country, the budget stresses are so serious that the whole concept of community colleges as open-access institutions—where anyone, with any educational background, can enroll at any point in life—is becoming more an aspiration than a reality.
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Nailing down the cost of providing college remedial education is riddled with challenges and controversy, but some national estimates run above $2 billion annually. Despite the pitfalls, some states and postsecondary systems have attempted to capture what they spend on bringing unprepared students up to college-level coursework. This new paper from ECS’ Getting Past Go project summarizes state reports on the cost of college remedial education. Some of the reports offer general expenditures, while others provide more a detailed examination of the costs of delivering remedial education.
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The Tennessee Alternative Fuels and Bioenergy Conference will be held on August 15-17, 2010 at the Montgomery Bell State Park Convention Center. This program will showcase the state of renewable energy and alternative fuels and what new technologies are on the horizon that will create a more secure, viable, and clean energy future for the region.
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The National Research Council today released a draft framework that proposes the science content and concepts students should learn for grades K-12. The independent, nonprofit Research Council is seeking comment on the draft from the science and education communities and the public. The final framework will serve as the basis for new science education standards, to replace those based on documents developed over 10 years ago. The comment period will run from July 12 through Aug. 2. During this time, the National Research Council will partner with the National Science Teachers Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Achieve, and the Council of State Science Supervisors to solicit feedback through meetings and focus groups. Individuals also can read the draft online and submit comments at www.nas.edu/BOSE.
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Amid the global recession in 2008–09, the U.S. auto industry experienced its worst downturn in recent memory. While conditions have improved in 2010, questions about which factors will shape the industry’s competitiveness remain. The Chicago Fed hosted a conference on May 10–11, 2010, at its Detroit Branch to explore the industry’s past, present, and future.
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Business executives are increasingly raising questions about Beijing's treatment of international companies, emboldened by a sense that the Chinese market has become too important to stay silent. The latest example came when two of Germany's leading industrialists—Jurgen Hambrecht, chairman of chemical giant BASF SE, and Peter Loscher, chief executive of conglomerate Siemens AG—raised complaints during a public meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That followed complaints in recent months from other top executives of General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc.
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Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman says that when we focus not on the infrastructure of globalization but on its actual use, we see that much of the world remains disconnected, even segregated. This trend is mirrored in digital media: As the world has become more global, average media consumption has become less so.
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International trade by developing countries is fundamentally changing the shape of the world economy. Have the developed OECD countries created a monster for themselves? Let’s go back to scratch. In the 1950s and 1960s, the global pattern of trade was a bit like the following. The developed OECD countries were mainly exporters of manufactured goods, both to themselves and to developing countries. The developing world exported primary commodities, like energy, minerals and agricultural products, principally to OECD markets. You could say that developing countries depended on OECD markets. They were not really drivers of trade.
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The Council on Competitiveness recently released Collaborate: Leading Regional Innovation Clusters, which identifies effective leadership as the cornerstone of regional economic growth, job creation and shared prosperity. Collaborate brings into focus the unexamined issues of regional leadership and explores the role of regional leadership in a globally competitive environment. The report was commissioned by the Economic Development Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce to understand how regional collaboration can become a bedrock for national competitiveness.
Access the report here

While much attention has been given to the overall decline of migration in the United States, its impact was strongest on particular regions, states, metropolitan areas, cities and suburbs. Shedding further light on the nature of the recent migration slowdown, this report details how different types of households and parts of the country have been affected and provides some insights on what may happen if and when migration again heats up.
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“We are, indeed, either on the cusp of a great rural reawakening, or in the final death throes of the rural agrarian vision,” Chuck Fluharty, President of the Rural Policy Research Institute, told those gathered at the National Rural Health Association’s 2010 Annual Conference in Savannah. “This is the ultimate tipping point for rural America, and I shall argue that the positive alternative remains possible, but only if rural advocates unite across sectors to achieve that outcome,” he went on. The full speech, entitled “The Role of Community in the Great Rural Renaissance: Addressing the Difficult Questions,” is available online.
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Looking for skilled, low-cost labor? Forget about India and China. How about Jonesboro, Ark.? As the national unemployment rate hovers near 10%, some companies are starting to eye job-hungry areas of the country as prime candidates for the kind of outsourced work that once would have gone overseas. Dubbed "ruralsourcing," "rural outsourcing" and "onshoring," the practice relies on two simple premises: Smaller towns need jobs, and they offer a cheaper cost of living than urban centers. So businesses that outsource work to these areas can expect to pay less—rates are often as much as 25% to 50% lower—than if they were hiring urbanites with comparable skills.
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Research completed since the 1980s has yielded substantial knowledge about how to help welfare recipients and other low-income individuals prepare for and find jobs. Many participants in these successful job preparation and placement programs, however, ended up in unstable, low-paying jobs, and little was known about how to effectively help them keep employment and advance in their jobs. The national Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project sought to fill this knowledge gap, by examining over a dozen innovative and diverse employment retention and advancement models developed by states and localities for different target groups, to determine whether effective strategies could be identified. Among the key findings are that, out of the 12 programs included in the report, three ERA programs produced positive economic impacts; nine did not.
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The labor market continues to place growing emphasis on postsecondary education and training, but many workers struggle to gain the skills valued by employers in today's economy. Even among adults who enroll in postsecondary education and training programs, many fail to complete the requirements necessary to gain needed credentials. In a new publication, Shifting Gears: State Innovation to Advance Workers and the Economy in the Midwest, CLASP Senior Fellow Julie Strawn describes how six Midwestern states are pursuing state policies that will help more low-skilled adults achieve postsecondary access and success.
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Nanotechnology is already used in thousands of products looking to explore the amazing properties of nanoparticles. Industries as diverse as the life sciences, clean technology, aerospace and defense are seeing the dramatic possibilities that nanotechnology can open in their fields. The Advances in Nanotechnology white paper describes some of these opportunities. Specifically, it discusses: some of the most promising and ambitious nanotech research projects and industry products; the advantages and challenges inherent in the nanotech field; and nanotech's applications in the life sciences, clean technology, aviation, aerospace and defense.
For more information, visit the link

This report assesses the short-term outlook for production of next-generation biofuels and the near-term challenges facing the sector. Next-generation U.S. biofuel capacity should reach about 88 million gallons in 2010, thanks in large measure to one plant becoming commercially operational in 2010, using noncellulosic animal fat to product green diesel. U.S. production capacity for cellulosic biofuels is estimated to be 10 million gallons for 2010, much less than the 100 million gallons originally mandated by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. Near-term sector challenges include reducing high capital and production costs, acquiring financial resources for precommercial development, developing new biomass supply arrangements, many of which will be with U.S. farmers, and overcoming the constraints of ethanol’s current 10-percent blending limit with gasoline.
Access the report here

Nissan North America Inc. has broken ground for a lithium-ion battery plant as part of its plan to start building electric cars and eventually create up to 1,300 jobs in Tennessee. The Smyrna plant is part of a $1.7 billion investment to start production of Nissan's all-electric Leaf starting in 2012. The investment includes a federal energy loan. The 1.3 million-square-foot battery plant will also create about 250 construction jobs at Smyrna, where Nissan currently has about 3,800 employees at what was the first foreign auto assembly plant to locate in the South.
For more information, visit the link

Only a tiny fraction of Africans can name the Prime Minister of Britain. It is of little consequence to them whether Labor or the Conservatives occupy 10 Downing Street. Very few citizens of Africa have any interest in the politics of the European Union or the crisis in Greece and Thailand. And likewise, only a few can name the leaders of African countries outside their immediate region. But when it comes to football (soccer), the majority of the young and middle-aged know how teams in Europe are performing; whether Manchester United won the last match against Chelsea. They generally hold strong opinions as to who should coach Inter Milan and which players should be dropped by Barcelona, or who is the best goal keeper for Real Madrid.
For more information, visit the link

The United States is missing out on opportunities to boost trade and jobs we'll need by 2020, we must leverage the opportunities presented by trade. This is why the Chamber applauded when President Barack Obama called for a national goal to double U.S. exports within five years. The opportunities we see abroad are vast: Outside our borders are markets that represent 73% of the world's purchasing power, 87% of its economic growth, and 95% of its consumers. Trade is recovering in the wake of the financial crisis, and the WTO reports a feared epidemic of protectionism did not materialize.
For more information, visit the link

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) area rose by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the fourth consecutive quarter of growth for the area. Strong GDP growth continued in the United States (0.8%) and Japan (1.2%). GDP growth was more subdued in both the Euro area and the European Union (0.2%). Italy returned to positive GDP growth in the first quarter of this year (0.5%), after the small decline of the previous quarter, while the pace of the recovery eased in both France and the United Kingdom and was unchanged in Germany.
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A new analysis of the Southern economy shows that the two recent recessions knocked the South off an upward trajectory that had broadened the middle class and nearly closed the poverty gaps that perennially separated it from the rest of the country. In the first chapter of The State of the South 2010, researchers at MDC found that the boom of the 1980s and ’90s amounted to a “gilded age” for the region, reducing poverty at a rate faster than the rest of the U.S. But the 2000s were a lost decade in the region as well as the nation. Over the past ten years, median household income declined more in the South than in any other region, and the South returned to the poverty rates of a decade ago.
Access the report here

Despite difficult economic times, the number of Americans volunteering in their communities jumped by 1.6 million last year, the largest increase in six years, according to a report by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The Corporation’s annual Volunteering in America report found that 63.4 million Americans volunteered through a formal organization last year, giving more than 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service worth an estimated $169 billion. Between 2007 and 2009, only four Southern states (OK, MO, VA and SC) exceeded the average national volunteer rate of 26.5 percent per year.
View the brief here

Most tourism advocates support the industry because it spurs economic development, but their decisions often destroy the very characteristics of place that make the place attractive. Dan Shilling, Director of the Civic Tourism Project, argues that tourism should be an enabler of healthy place-making, not only an economic tool.
For more information, visit the link

 
A new, highly detailed forecast shows that as the economy struggles to recover, and jobs slowly return, there will be a growing disconnect between the types of jobs employers need to fill and numbers of Americans who have the education and training to fill those jobs. The report, Help Wanted: Projecting Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018, by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, forecasts that by 2018, 63 percent of all jobs will require at least some postsecondary education. Employers will need 22 million new workers with postsecondary degrees—and the report shows that we will fall short by three million workers without a dramatic change in course. In addition to national projections, the report also includes state-by-state analyses.
Access the report here

A new briefing paper from the Economic Policy Institute looks at the employment situation for the class of 2010, which will be entering a labor market with the highest rates of unemployment in at least a generation. It also shows that unemployment rates for both college graduates and non-graduates younger than 25 are nearly double their pre-recession levels.
View the brief here

Georgia's landmark HOPE scholarship program was the first to give college students a free ride in exchange for earning good grades. Now, merit-based scholarships in Georgia and other states that copied the idea are threatened by a convergence of economic factors.
Access the article link here

At the 2010 Mississippi State University Biofuels Conference, international and national researchers and experts from industry and academia will discuss their progress on the science and engineering fundamentals, and the challenges with each of these technologies associated with scale-up, regulatory compliance, negotiations with stakeholders, feedstock logistics, and fuel distribution. The invited speakers will discuss the state of the next generation of biofuels and progress toward commercialization.
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This week the U.S. Department of Energy released a new roadmap for the development of algal biofuels. DOE researchers had dismissed this type of biofuel as too costly to be commercially successful in the mid-1990s following a nearly two-decade-long research project. The new roadmap was accompanied by the announcement of $24 million in new DOE funding for algal biofuels research. That money is in addition to $140 million in algae funding from last year's Recovery Act.
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This article examines the impact of the emerging model of open innovation on state public policy, particularly the practice of technology-based economic development in weak research and development (R&D) states. Open innovation describes the nascent practice of firms using knowledge created outside their boundaries and also marketing ideas they would not commercialize themselves.
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Huge trade imbalances, particularly between China and the US, Germany and the rest of Europe, ensure low interest rates and ongoing bubbles, contends Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute. Ongoing lending at low rates to nations already steeped in debt dulls incentives to increase competitiveness and reduce trade deficits as well. “’Imbalance’ is the word, and it creates multiple threats to the stability of the world economy,” Stelzer writes for the Wall Street Journal.
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The World Trade Organization found Airbus SAS benefited from illegal European government subsidies, with money for the A380 jumbo topping the list of violations. The panel opinion, made public today in Geneva after a confidential ruling nine months ago, supports U.S. arguments that loans by European governments constituted unfair aid. In the case of the A380, the panel ruled the aid constituted the strongest violation, because loans on interest rates were too low and the support was linked to export performance.
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Recent events in Arizona show how quickly concerns about possible crimes committed by immigrants can dominate the immigration policy debate. The murder of an Arizona rancher in March became the catalyst for the state legislature passing a controversial bill to grant police officers wider latitude to check the immigration status of individuals they encounter. But do the facts show immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than natives?
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Already off to a tough start in life, 49 percent of American babies born into poor families will be poor for at least half their childhoods. Among children who are not poor at birth, only four percent will be "persistently" poor as children. This is the first study connecting poverty status at birth, poverty persistence, and adult outcomes.
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William H. Lucy has examined America’s foreclosure epidemic in enormous detail and has arrived at this conclusion: Decades-old patterns of suburban growth and urban decline are now being reversed. “The years leading up to the 2008-2009 crises may be seen in retrospect as the last hurrah of the exurban extreme of the American dream,” says Lucy, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. Increasingly, people with choices and financial resources want to live in cities.
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Community transformation begins with a promise—a commitment by residents, advocates, and community leaders to demand more for the next generation. We all have the power to change our community with a single promise. The Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink asked dozens of people “What’s your promise to make your community better?” You can see the inspiring, moving responses they got in this video.
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June’s employment numbers highlight that our economic recovery is not yet on solid footing. An analysis by The Hamilton Project digs into the regional distribution of these unemployment trends and finds that, by one measure, the five hardest hit states are Alabama, Delaware, Colorado, Georgia, and Utah.
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The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that the dependency ratio, or the number of people 65 and older to every 100 people of traditional working ages, is projected to climb rapidly from 22 in 2010 to 35 in 2030. This time period coincides with the time when baby boomers are moving into the 65 and older age category. After 2030, however, the ratio of the aging population to the working-age population (ages 20 to 64) will rise more slowly, to 37 in 2050. The higher this old-age dependency ratio, the greater the potential burden.
Access the report here

NBT (the Foundation of the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association) and the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship have partnered together to launch a unique summer camp program that combines elements of manufacturing and entrepreneurship—how things are made and how businesses develop. Sixteen schools, including Itawamba Community College in Tupelo, Mississippi, have committed to host a 2010 camp as part of a pilot program that will eventually develop into a national program with 300 locations across the United States.
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While plans for offshore drilling are on ice, Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed an agreement with governors of nine states and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to create an Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium. The group intends to promote the development of wind resources on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf—a first step toward broader coordination among the Atlantic states and federal agencies.
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This $500K prize—known as "the Oscar for Inventors" — recognizes individuals who translate their ideas into inventions and innovations that improve the world in which we live. The award seeks to highlight the pivotal role inventive activity plays in the achievement of positive social, cultural and economic goals. Nominations are open through October 5.
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A solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth Future of the Internet survey expect that by 2020 most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks, rather than depending primarily on tools and information housed on their individual, personal computers. They say that cloud computing will become more dominant than the desktop in the next decade. In other words, most users will perform most computing and communicating activities through connections to servers operated by outside firms.
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Gordon Brown's rant about a “bigoted” voter sped his exit from the British prime minister’s post. What punctured his cool? Her complaint about immigrants. When an earthquake shattered Haiti, Dominicans sent soldiers and Americans sent ships—to discourage potential immigrants. The congressman who shouted “You lie!” at President Obama was upset about immigrants. “Birthers” think Mr. Obama is an immigrant. There was also the Hamas rocket that landed in Israel this spring, killing a farmworker. Not so unusual, except that the worker was Thai. Perhaps no force in modern life is as omnipresent yet overlooked as global migration, that vehicle of creative destruction that is reordering ever more of the world.
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The American consumer alone can no longer save the world, and nowhere is that more apparent than here inside the world's largest retailer: Wal-Mart. The company that began as a five-and-dime in rural northwest Arkansas opened its annual shareholder meeting last week with Bollywood-style dancers, Asian balancing acts and Brazilian martial artists representing some of the 14 foreign countries in which Wal-Mart operates. Last year, its international division topped $100 billion in sales for the first time and this year it is expected to surpass the United States in number of stores.
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As the world edges toward recovery, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn briefed economists, analysts, and reporters at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank, on the main outcomes of the weekend meeting of the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G-20) in Toronto—and looked ahead to a new round of reforms at the IMF to enable it to be even more effective for its member countries.
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In a poll conducted at the end of last year, the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project asked about online connections to communities and neighbors and found face-to-face encounters and phone calls remain the most frequent methods of interaction with neighbors. At the same time, Internet tools are gaining ground in community-oriented communications. In the 12 months preceding the survey, 22 percent of all adults signed up to receive alerts about local issues (such as traffic, school events, weather warnings or crime alerts) via email or text messaging and 20 percent of all adults used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.
Access the report here

 
Fiscal challenges for state and local governments are a potential threat to economic recovery in rural America. While many solutions to fiscal challenges can be painful, economist Alison Felix and Omaha Branch Executive Jason Henderson explain in the latest issue of The Main Street Economist that rural America has the opportunity to foster a new round of innovation in service delivery through consolidation, cooperation and privatization of services.
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Would it make sense if people in distressed neighborhoods could play a role in encouraging local commerce? And would businesses eyeing expansion like it if they could find out more about unmet demand for their products or services? Louisville Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson has created an innovative retail-focused economic development program which offers a resounding "Yes!" to those two questions. Corridors of Opportunity in Louisville (COOL) has succeeded in attracting to the city at least 400 businesses since 2003. It's quickly become a national model, with dozens of cities approaching Louisville in recent years to learn about how it works.
Access the report here

A new national report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center finds that the nation’s graduation rate has dropped for the second consecutive year, following a decade of mostly solid improvements. Although the latest decrease is considerably smaller than that found the previous year, the report shows that, on a national scale, 11,000 fewer students will earn diplomas. These new findings raise cause for concern, as those who fail to finish high school will face far greater hardships than their graduating peers, particularly during a period of economic instability.
Access the report here

An analysis by the Foundation for Child Development finds that the number of children living in poverty this year will climb to 22 percent, the highest in two decades, according to USA TODAY. In 2006 nearly 17 percent of children were living in poverty, and the recession could wipe out virtually all economic progress for children since 1975 when the foundation began analyzing data.
Access the article link here

The Education Commission of the States has released a policy framework on how states can develop comprehensive policies for increasing the college success of students who require remedial education. The framework states the case for making remedial education a key component of state strategies to increase college attainment. It challenges states to look more carefully at the data they collect, funds they appropriate, ways they assess and place students, instructional models they utilize and accountability mechanisms they rely on to meet the needs of remedial education students.
For more information, visit the link

This report assesses the short-term outlook for production of next-generation biofuels and the near-term challenges facing the sector. Next-generation U.S. biofuel capacity should reach about 88 million gallons in 2010, thanks in large measure to one plant becoming commercially operational in 2010, using noncellulosic animal fat to product green diesel. U.S. production capacity for cellulosic biofuels is estimated to be 10 million gallons for 2010, much less than the 100 million gallons originally mandated by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. Near-term sector challenges include reducing high capital and production costs, acquiring financial resources for precommercial development, developing new biomass supply arrangements, many of which will be with U.S. farmers, and overcoming the constraints of ethanol’s current 10-percent blending limit with gasoline.
Access the report here

Nanotechnology is already used in thousands of products looking to explore the amazing properties of nanoparticles. Industries as diverse as the life sciences, clean technology, aerospace and defense are seeing the dramatic possibilities that nanotechnology can open in their fields. The Advances in Nanotechnology white paper describes some of these opportunities. Specifically, it discusses: some of the most promising and ambitious nanotech research projects and industry products; the advantages and challenges inherent in the nanotech field; and nanotech's applications in the life sciences, clean technology, aviation, aerospace and defense.
For more information, visit the link

Nissan North America Inc. has broken ground for a lithium-ion battery plant as part of its plan to start building electric cars and eventually create up to 1,300 jobs in Tennessee. The Smyrna plant is part of a $1.7 billion investment to start production of Nissan's all-electric Leaf starting in 2012. The investment includes a federal energy loan. The 1.3 million-square-foot battery plant will also create about 250 construction jobs at Smyrna, where Nissan currently has about 3,800 employees at what was the first foreign auto assembly plant to locate in the South.
For more information, visit the link

Only a tiny fraction of Africans can name the Prime Minister of Britain. It is of little consequence to them whether Labor or the Conservatives occupy 10 Downing Street. Very few citizens of Africa have any interest in the politics of the European Union or the crisis in Greece and Thailand. And likewise, only a few can name the leaders of African countries outside their immediate region. But when it comes to football (soccer), the majority of the young and middle-aged know how teams in Europe are performing; whether Manchester United won the last match against Chelsea. They generally hold strong opinions as to who should coach Inter Milan and which players should be dropped by Barcelona, or who is the best goal keeper for Real Madrid.
For more information, visit the link

The United States is missing out on opportunities to boost trade and jobs we'll need by 2020, we must leverage the opportunities presented by trade. This is why the Chamber applauded when President Barack Obama called for a national goal to double U.S. exports within five years. The opportunities we see abroad are vast: Outside our borders are markets that represent 73% of the world's purchasing power, 87% of its economic growth, and 95% of its consumers. Trade is recovering in the wake of the financial crisis, and the WTO reports a feared epidemic of protectionism did not materialize.
For more information, visit the link

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) area rose by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the fourth consecutive quarter of growth for the area. Strong GDP growth continued in the United States (0.8%) and Japan (1.2%). GDP growth was more subdued in both the Euro area and the European Union (0.2%). Italy returned to positive GDP growth in the first quarter of this year (0.5%), after the small decline of the previous quarter, while the pace of the recovery eased in both France and the United Kingdom and was unchanged in Germany.
For more information, visit the link

A new analysis of the Southern economy shows that the two recent recessions knocked the South off an upward trajectory that had broadened the middle class and nearly closed the poverty gaps that perennially separated it from the rest of the country. In the first chapter of The State of the South 2010, researchers at MDC found that the boom of the 1980s and ’90s amounted to a “gilded age” for the region, reducing poverty at a rate faster than the rest of the U.S. But the 2000s were a lost decade in the region as well as the nation. Over the past ten years, median household income declined more in the South than in any other region, and the South returned to the poverty rates of a decade ago.
For more information, visit the link

Despite difficult economic times, the number of Americans volunteering in their communities jumped by 1.6 million last year, the largest increase in six years, according to a report by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The Corporation’s annual Volunteering in America report found that 63.4 million Americans volunteered through a formal organization last year, giving more than 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service worth an estimated $169 billion. Between 2007 and 2009, only four Southern states (OK, MO, VA and SC) exceeded the average national volunteer rate of 26.5 percent per year.
For more information, visit the link

Most tourism advocates support the industry because it spurs economic development, but their decisions often destroy the very characteristics of place that make the place attractive. Dan Shilling, Director of the Civic Tourism Project, argues that tourism should be an enabler of healthy place-making, not only an economic tool.
For more information, visit the link

A new, highly detailed forecast shows that as the economy struggles to recover, and jobs slowly return, there will be a growing disconnect between the types of jobs employers need to fill and numbers of Americans who have the education and training to fill those jobs. The report, Help Wanted: Projecting Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018, by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, forecasts that by 2018, 63 percent of all jobs will require at least some postsecondary education. Employers will need 22 million new workers with postsecondary degrees—and the report shows that we will fall short by three million workers without a dramatic change in course. In addition to national projections, the report also includes state-by-state analyses.
Access the report here

A new briefing paper from the Economic Policy Institute looks at the employment situation for the class of 2010, which will be entering a labor market with the highest rates of unemployment in at least a generation. It also shows that unemployment rates for both college graduates and non-graduates younger than 25 are nearly double their pre-recession levels.
View the brief here

Georgia's landmark HOPE scholarship program was the first to give college students a free ride in exchange for earning good grades. Now, merit-based scholarships in Georgia and other states that copied the idea are threatened by a convergence of economic factors.
Access the article link here

Americans are convinced that math and science skills are crucial for the future, with strong majorities who say there will be more jobs and college opportunities for students with those skills, according to a new Public Agenda survey. But while there's broad support from parents and the general public for K-12 national standards, more than half of parents (52%) say the math and science their child is getting in school is "fine as it is." These are just some of many surprising realities facing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in public schools, according to “Are We Beginning to See the Light?” a new Public Agenda survey exploring the views of more than 1,400 individuals nationwide, including 646 parents of children grades K-12. The national survey was underwritten by the GE Foundation.
For more information, visit the link

Mississippi State University (MSU) claimed top honors on May 27 in the second year of the EcoCAR competition, a three-year automotive engineering competition sponsored by DOE and General Motors Corporation (GM). Officially dubbed "EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge," the competition invited university engineering students from across North America to re-engineer a GM-donated sport utility vehicle to achieve improved fuel economy and reduced emissions. The 16 competing teams also strove to retain the vehicle's performance, safety, and consumer appeal. During the competition, the vehicle achieved a fuel economy equivalent to 118 miles per gallon of gasoline.
For more information, visit the link

After failing twice in the U.S. House of Representatives, the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act passed with a 262-150 vote. The final House version includes the full five-year reauthorization and increases in authorization levels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy Office of Science over the next three years that were removed in a previous version of the bill. The bill is expected to be marked up in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in the next few weeks, and to come to the Senate floor before the July 4 recess. Read the House committee press release.
Read the news release here

Economic activity in OECD countries is picking up faster than expected but volatile sovereign debt markets and overheating in emerging-market economies are presenting increasing risks to the recovery, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook. Gross domestic product (GDP) across OECD countries is projected to rise by 2.7% this year and by 2.8% in 2011. These are upward revisions from the previous, November 2009, forecasts of OECD-wide GDP growth of 1.9% in 2010 and 2.5% in 2011.
For more information, visit the link

Taiwan is now the home of many of the world’s largest makers of computers and associated hardware. Its firms produce more than 50% of all chips, nearly 70% of computer displays and more than 90% of all portable computers. The most successful are no longer huge but little-known contract manufacturers, such as Quanta or Hon Hai, in the news this week because of workers’ suicides (see article). Acer, for example, surpassed Dell last year to become the world’s second-biggest maker of personal computers. HTC, which started out making smart-phones for big Western brands, is now launching prominent products of its own.
Access the article link here

The rationale for the H-1B program is straightforward. The U.S. has a shortage of workers with specific skills, and the H-1B program allows firms to import the best and brightest to fill those gaps. Proponents claim the program prevents the outsourcing of jobs to low-cost countries and increases the U.S.’s competitiveness. Here’s why they are wrong.
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With more than 23 million of our nation’s children overweight or obese, this epidemic is estimated to cost governments, businesses, families and other payers $14 billion per year in direct health care expenses for childhood obesity alone. These additional costs pose a burden to cities already struggling to provide needed services to residents due to difficult economic conditions. In response to this issue, the National League of Cities has selected four Southern cities to participate in the Municipal Leadership for Healthy Southern Cities project, which will help local officials advance policies to promote healthy eating and active living in order to reduce childhood obesity. Those selected include Little Rock and North Little Rock, Arkansas, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tupelo, Mississippi.
For more information, visit the link

The makers of a viral sensation from last year (Built to Last) are back with a new video series that takes a hard look at America’s collective frustration with sprawl and the smarter alternatives for growth and development happening in communities across the country. “With ugly sprawl everywhere you look in America, it’s time for a national makeover,” they ask. “So what’s the alternative?” American Makeover is a new web-exclusive series that explores those alternatives in communities across America, looking at what can be done to help our communities grow in such a way that gives us the kind of neighborhoods and choices we’re increasingly looking for.
For more information, visit the link

The number of certified organic crop and livestock operations and acreage under organic management has grown rapidly over the past decade, but adoption of organic farming practices in the U.S. still lags behind many other countries.
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On “Pounding the Pavement, Hitting the Books: The Black-White Divide after High School,” panelists talk about an Urban Institute report finding that African American high school graduates will take 20 percent longer than white graduates to find a job lasting more than six months.
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This ECS Policy Brief considers several policy approaches to facilitate (or incentivize) early graduation and provides caveats and essential policy components for these various approaches.
View the brief here

The National Center for Education Statistics presents state-by-state data on the number of high school graduates, the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate, and the dropout data for grades 9 through 12 for public schools in school year 2007–08. Among the key findings are an Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate of 74.9 percent the nation, representing an estimate of the percentage of high school students starting at ninth grade who graduate on time with a regular diploma. In the South, this rate ranges from 63.5 percent in Louisiana to 82.4 percent in Missouri.
Access the report here

A long-awaited energy bill was unveiled today by its Senate sponsors, John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). According to a summary (pdf) of the bill, it would reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and by over 80 percent by 2050 by putting limits on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and heavy industry, and from producers and importers of refined fuels for transportation. The limits will only apply to those who emit over 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which works out to about 7,500 factories and power plants, according to the summary.
For more information, visit the link

A coalition of twelve private foundations will contribute $506 million to support U.S. education innovation and reform efforts. A portion of the contribution will be designated to match funds from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing In Innovation Fund (i3), which offers grants to local agencies, nonprofits and school districts to support innovative education initiatives.
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Nissan broke ground on May 26 on a manufacturing facility in Smyrna, Tennessee, that will produce the lithium-ion batteries that power the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle. Although it will initially be produced in Japan, the Nissan Leaf and its lithium-ion batteries will be produced in Smyrna beginning in 2012. Modifying Nissan's existing vehicle assembly plant in Smyrna to produce the Leaf and building the new battery plant will represent an investment of up to $1.7 billion, which is initially being supported by a DOE loan for 80% of that investment. According to Nissan, roughly 13,000 people in the United States have placed a reservation for the Nissan Leaf since reservations opened on April 20. The Nissan Leaf will start rolling out to select markets in the United States, Japan, and Europe in December, followed by increased availability in spring 2011 and full market rollout in 2012.
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“Knowledge is the main driver of today’s global economy,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the launch of the OECD Innovation Strategy in Paris. “Countries need to harness innovation and entrepreneurship to boost growth and employment. This is the key to a sustainable rise in living standards.” Governments have a key role to play to boost innovation, says the Strategy. The long-term nature of the investment needed to tackle challenges such as climate change and infectious diseases, and the risks involved in developing commercial responses to these challenges, mean that some essential research often attracts little private-sector support.
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Following the global financial crisis, troubled retirement systems around the world face new challenges that may result in sharply reduced income for retirees—as well as the possibility that younger workers will need to work much longer, according to Wharton insurance and risk management professor Olivia Mitchell. In a recent paper titled, "Implications of the Financial Crisis for Long Run Retirement Security," Mitchell argues that current and future generations must "build new frameworks [with] public and private partnerships to better educate people about the risks they face, to help them work longer ... and to better regulate products and markets for an aging world."
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Is the global economic recovery on track or are we in a lull before the next phase of the storm? This question dominates the news headlines and the current debate on the state of the global economy. But before we know where we are going, we need to know where the world economy now stands. This new index from the Brookings Institution and the Financial Times aims to track the recovery based on a set of macroeconomic, financial and confidence variables for the G-20 economies.
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The Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University has developed a Community Discussion Guide to help communities to understand the importance of creativity to their economies, see ways to build on local assets in place to foster creativity, and provide clear steps to further enhance and harness creativity for economic development. This Guide is intended for places where the community is just beginning a discussion on using creativity to create new local opportunities.
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The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently unveiled the 2010 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, an annual list that highlights important examples of the nation’s architectural, cultural and natural heritage that are at risk of destruction or irreparable damage. Among the 2010 endangered sites are: Eastern Kentucky’s Black Mountain, the highest peak in the Bluegrass State; the Threefoot Building in Meridian, Mississippi, a shiny, 16-story Art Deco skyscraper erected in 1930; and Virginia’s Wilderness Battlefield, site of one of the most important engagements of the Civil War and the first meeting of legendary generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.
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Beyond the Motor City is a new PBS documentary that shines a spotlight on one of our country’s most critical issues: America’s decaying and neglected infrastructure. In a journey that takes viewers into the neighborhoods of Detroit and then beyond to Spain, California, and our nation’s capital, Beyond the Motor City urges us to ask how a symbol of America’s urban decay might transform itself into a model of urban revitalization. Can we finally push America’s transit system into the 21st century? In conjunction with this documentary, Beyond the Motor City’s Blueprint America Screening Tour is going out into communities across the country to provide a public forum for discussion about the future of transportation in America. Stops have already included: Louisville, Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Fairhope, Alabama; upcoming stops include Nashville on June 17, Montgomery on June 19, and Oklahoma City on June 29.
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Despite positive signs of economic growth and a rising stock market, millions of unemployed American workers see no end to the Great Recession that wrecked their finances and threw their lives into turmoil. A new nationwide survey conducted in March 2010 of more than 900 workers who were jobless in August 2009 documents their continuing struggle to find jobs and the sacrifices they have endured in a punishing economy. Some of the key findings about the long-term unemployed are: fully two-thirds of those jobless last August were still jobless this March, and 12 percent had given up looking for jobs; and more than half of the newly reemployed settled for cuts in salaries or wages; more than a third accepted reduced benefit packages.
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Do students who take math in their senior year of high school fare better in their freshman year of college? If that doesn’t help, what does? Virginia education officials hope to find the answer to those questions and countless others by broadening the state’s student tracking system to follow graduates after high school.
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States that pursue a course based on free enterprise principles fare better economically than those who don’t, according to a new study prepared by The Praxis Group for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The study, Enterprising States, highlights successful state strategies for job creation and economic growth. It cites specific examples of innovative state policies—based on free enterprise—that have attracted more business, more economic activity, and more jobs.
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The director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), David Kappos, said at the annual trade show of the Biotechnology Industry Organization earlier this week that he thinks the USPTO is hampering the creation of millions of potential jobs because of its inability to keep pace with the volume and complexity of the applications it receives. This is occurring at a time when technology innovation has become the last remaining source of "sustainable competitive advantage."
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Governor Mark Sanford today joined Boeing in announcing that the company has chosen South Carolina as the location for fabrication and assembly of airplane interior parts to supply the 787 Dreamliner final assembly and delivery site currently under construction in North Charleston. The company is reviewing potential sites for the new airplane interiors facility and anticipates making a final decision by midsummer.
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The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) announced the fourth round of a grant competition this week to assist Appalachian communities in leveraging renewable-energy and energy-efficiency resources to revitalize their economies. ARC expects to provide eight to ten awards of up to $75,000 each, for a total of $545,000 in awards, to successful applicants. The goal of this grant competition is to develop a community infrastructure that grows markets for those enterprises, generating new energy jobs in Appalachia in the process. ARC will fund two complementary activities as part of this grant competition: the development of community energy plans; and the implementation of a demonstration energy-efficiency or renewable-energy project in target communities.
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The Greek crisis has provoked fresh worries about globalisation. But unlike the schadenfreude that greeted Asia’s financial crisis of 1997, the turmoil in Europe is producing less lecturing and more angst-ridden self-examination. If the Asian crisis was explained away by crony capitalism and greed, the upheaval in Greece is holding up a mirror to more than one over-leveraged western government. American analysts worry that Greece may be a precursor of what is in store for the debt-ridden US. Taking this concern further, Harvard economist Dani Rodrik even wonders whether the Greek crisis is forcing countries to choose between globalisation and democracy. With due respect to the professor, I would humbly submit that there is no such choice in the real world.
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Small-business owners that depend on China for manufacturing, cheaper raw materials and inexpensive labor are bracing for the potential revaluation of China's currency. Beaumaris Networks Inc., a software company in Boxborough, Mass., that has a research and development office in Beijing, is used to paying three engineers in China roughly the same salary just one engineer would make in the U.S. “We tried to factor in inflation and now we need to add another element—currency exposure—into our business plan," says Beaumaris's finance chief, Scott Bryce.
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Sovereign Wealth Funds, the large investment funds supported by governments, are mostly a positive economic force that can provide a shot in the arm to the companies—and countries—they invest in. They are also a stabilizing force for the nation where the investment originates. Those are some of the main takeaways from a new study, "The Brave New World of Sovereign Wealth Funds," conducted by Wharton MBA students and sponsored by the Wharton Leadership Center and the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies. The research suggests there is little reason to worry about these funds acting from political rather than economic motives.
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In Canada, the city of Edmonton is using the virtual world Second Life to engage its citizens in the urban planning and economic development process. The city will recreate itself online, importing buildings, geography, terrain, and landmarks. Proposed projects, such as a downtown arena, can be more realistically visualized by visitors to the city’s online world, which officials hope will help stimulate and inform urban planning discussions. The virtual Edmonton will also provide potential tourists with a more engaging way to see what the city has to offer. While other cities have a Second Life presence, Edmonton may be the first city to begin to replicate all of its environs online.
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This year marks the 30th anniversary of New Urbanism, the school of town planning and architectural design that highlights walkability, self-contained communities, and dense neighborhoods. Hailed as the antithesis of─and answer to─suburban sprawl, car culture, and the megamall, New Urbanism has proven both influential and contentious. (Its flagship development, Seaside, Florida, served as the too-quaint-to-be-real set for The Truman Show.) But its innovations and ideologies continue to shape the post-industrial streetscape, from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt.
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So what do twentysomethings want in a community? To get at this, my team and I analyzed the results of a Gallup survey of some 28,000 Americans in their 20s. Some key things stand out. Jobs are clearly important─but just as clearly, they’re not all-important. When asked what would keep them in their current location, twentysomethings ranked the availability of jobs second. Twentysomethings understand well they face not only fewer job options but dwindling corporate commitment—it’s not only harder to find a job, it’s also easier to lose it. What twentysomethings value the most is the ability to meet people and make friends. Personal networks are about much more than having fun, they’re among the best ways to find a job and move forward in a career.
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Students who attend high-poverty schools perform persistently lower in math and reading achievement and are less likely to attend four-year colleges when compared to their peers in low-poverty schools, according to The Condition of Education 2010 report by the National Center for Education Statistics. The Condition of Education is a congressionally mandated report that provides an annual portrait of education in the United States. There are 49 indicators in this year's report covering all aspects of education, including early childhood through postsecondary education, student achievement and educational outcomes, and school environments and resources.
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“Green jobs” have garnered attention and support from many circles. This brief discusses strategies for improving access to green jobs for low-skill individuals, particularly jobs that can improve workers' economic standing and better support families. To understand where green jobs for low-skill individuals can be found, we review green industries and occupations and what they pay. Next we identify "good" green jobs that pay enough to support employees' families. Finally we discuss how training for green jobs can equip low-skill workers with needed skills, recommend how to improve these training efforts, and detail examples of innovative programs.
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Many of the jobs lost during the recession are not coming back. Period. For the last two years, the weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to do what they would have done anyway: dismiss millions of people—like file clerks, ticket agents and autoworkers—who were displaced by technological advances and international trade.
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Russia recently announced a government-planned "science city," to be located outside Moscow, that it hopes will one day rival Silicon Valley's creative engine. The country plans to spend $200 million to turn a muddy field of birch groves and warehouses into a technology hub bursting with innovation and competitive companies. The government will dole out money to companies that it selects, powerful oligarchs will develop real estate, and government-appointed administrators will run it. Most of these projects are well-intentioned efforts to boost national competitiveness. But top-down clustering doesn't tend to work nearly as well as when hubs of commerce and academia spring up from private efforts.
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A Silicon Valley solar technology company will build a $175 million solar panel manufacturing facility in Senatobia, Mississippi. Twin Creeks Technologies, a venture-backed company, will build the factory in two phases over the next five years, creating more than 500 jobs, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour recently announced. It will be the first renewable solar production plant in the state, Barbour said.
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Silicon Valley’s apricot and cherry orchards disappeared decades ago, replaced by semiconductor plants and office parks populated by technologists. Now some of the Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists are looking to the region’s roots for what could be the next new thing in an old business: agriculture. A catch-all phrase for environmentally beneficial farming, sustainable agriculture has long been the province of organic enthusiasts. But venture capitalists say a growing awareness of conventional agriculture’s contribution to climate change and concerns over its consumption of water and energy are creating markets for technological innovation to minimize those effects.
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After a brief respite following the announcement last week of a nearly $1 trillion bailout plan for Europe, fear in the financial markets is building again, this time over worries that the Continent’s biggest banks face strains that will hobble European economies.
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Citizens around the globe understandably want to honor and protect their culture, expressed through language, food and art, from “foreign” influence—although such influences were often essential in creating traditions. The second article of this two-part series examines Italy’s battle against globalization, as politicians scramble to outdo one another with populist laws aimed at banning foreign food products in schools and historical town centers. The more outlandish legislation overlooks what can only be a point of pride—how Italian cuisine evolved through the innovative blending of ingredients from afar, from pasta to tomatoes. Formal bans and quotas may serve as a way to distract Italians from more pressing economic problems such as unemployment and massive debt. But the legislation also implies a tragic lack of confidence among some Italians that even their renowned cuisine cannot survive global competition.
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This article surveys the increasing comfort of cities in Georgia around using social media to notify the public about everything from emergencies to events. The proliferation of social networking, blogging, and webcasting comes at a fortuitous time as cities struggle to deliver effective services at lower costs.
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Chairwoman Velázquez and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify on an important national problem: how to promote more exports by small business firms. President Obama has committed his administration to the goal of doubling US exports in five years. This worthy initiative envisages a substantial boost in exports from small business firms. Toward this end, the administration has promised an additional $2 billion of lending authority to the Export-Import Bank, and the Commerce Department has embarked on an outreach program. These are useful steps, but they are small steps.
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The Ford Foundation has announced a five-year, $200 million effort to help transform the way that cities, suburbs and surrounding communities grow and plan for the future, promoting a new metropolitan approach that interweaves housing, transportation and land-use policy to foster greater economic growth. The new funds will allow Ford to develop and significantly expand successful collaborations and policy innovations that it has supported in communities throughout the country, providing models that can be adopted and adapted in other metropolitan regions.
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As described in earlier articles, children whose parents have higher income and education levels are more likely to grow up in stable two-parent households than their economically disadvantaged counterparts. These widening gaps in fathers’ involvement in parenting and in the quality and stability of parents’ relationships may reinforce disparities in outcomes for the next generation. This paper reviews evidence about the effectiveness of two strategies to strengthen fathers’ involvement and family relationships—fatherhood programs aimed at disadvantaged noncustodial fathers and relationship skills programs for parents who are together.
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Each year, even when the economy is growing, millions of people lose a job for reasons other than poor performance or misconduct. The ability of employers to quickly adjust the size of their workforces in response to changes in demand is generally considered a source of strength for the U.S. economy over the long term, because it prompts a shift of labor resources toward areas of higher productivity. Some people, however, bear substantial costs from employers’ flexibility—particularly during recessions, when many people lose jobs and new opportunities are relatively scarce. This issue brief reviews the research on the short- and long-term effects of involuntary job loss for reasons other than poor performance or misconduct on people’s future employment and earnings.
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The creation of 290,000 jobs in April brightens signs pointing toward a nation is on the road to recovery. But The Brookings Institution’s Michael Greenstone predicts that it will still take roughly 11.3 million new jobs to reach pre-recession employment levels and that erasing this “job gap” may take years.
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Teachers make a difference. The success of any plan for improving educational outcomes depends on the teachers who carry it out and thus on the abilities of those attracted to the field and their preparation. Yet, teacher preparation is often treated as an afterthought in discussions of improving the public education system. Preparing Teachers addresses the issue of teacher preparation with specific attention to reading, mathematics, and science. The book evaluates the characteristics of the candidates who enter teacher preparation programs, the sorts of instruction and experiences teacher candidates receive in preparation programs, and the extent that the required instruction and experiences are consistent with converging scientific evidence.
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Governor Beshear announced in September 2009 the establishment of a multimillion-dollar financing program to make public buildings more energy efficient. More than $14 million in federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds are now available to state agencies to finance energy-saving projects through the Green Bank of Kentucky.
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The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology approved the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. The bill adjusts the original spending projections based on the amount authorized in 2007, while maintaining the goal of doubling funding over the next ten years. Programs affected by the reauthorization include the Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee program, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the Regional Innovation Clusters program, among others.
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Smart investors recognize that cheap oil won’t last forever and emerging green technologies could revolutionize everyday business as much as computers did. As with any new technology, nations compete to perfect and produce new products for the world, making lots of money along the way, explains international economics columnist Bruce Stokes. But Stokes warns that the global trading system lacks adequate regulations on energy issues – and the result could be trade wars.
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About a mile past the Bountiful Blessings Church on the outskirts of Spartanburg, S.C., make a right turn. There, tucked into an industrial court behind a row of sapling cherry trees not much taller than I am, past a company that makes rubber stamps and another that stitches logos onto caps and bags, is a brand-new factory: the state-of-the-art American Yuncheng Gravure Cylinder plant. Due to open any day now, it will make cylinders used to print labels like the ones around plastic soda bottles. But unlike its neighbors in Spartanburg, Yuncheng is a Chinese company. It has come to South Carolina because by Chinese standards, America is darn cheap.
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Emerging market banks have raced ahead despite the financial crisis as their Western colleagues have languished. How will they use their newfound strength?
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AmericaSpeaks: Our Budget, Our Economy is a national discussion to find common ground on tough choices about our federal budget. Americans from across the country will come together to weigh-in on strategies to ensure a sustainable fiscal future and a strong economic recovery. As a part of this national discussion, on June 26, 2010, thousands of Americans across the country will participate simultaneously in an unprecedented National Town Meeting. Four Southern communities are among the initial 20 sites nationwide, including Columbia, South Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; Louisville, Kentucky; and Richmond, Virginia. Click here to register to participate at one of these sites or to find out about other ways of joining the conversation.
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Entrepreneurial activity in one U.S. county or state often reflects similar activity in neighboring jurisdictions, according to an analysis of geographic and other patterns in new business formation across the United States. The study, New Business Clustering in U.S. Counties, 1990- 2006, by Larry A. Plummer, sheds light on business activity related to levels of education, industry, economic growth patterns, and geography. The report uses 1990-2006 business startup and closure data from the Census Bureau’s Statistics of U.S. Businesses.
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America’s Future: Latino Child Well-Being in Numbers and Trends was produced by the National Council of La Raza and the Population Reference Bureau. This data book offers a comprehensive overview of the state of Latino children by integrating a range of key factors and outcomes in the areas of demography, citizenship, family structure, poverty, health, education, and juvenile justice. It provides an overview of current national and state-level trends for Latino children under age 18 relative to non-Hispanic White and Black children, documenting both regional variations and changing trends since the year 2000.
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America's Promise Alliance, in partnership with the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education and Families and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, will host a webinar titled How Municipal Leaders Can Engage Parents in Dropout Prevention on Thursday, May 20 from 3:00 – 4:00 pm ET. Parents and caregivers are arguably the most important contributors to a child's educational success, and it is critical that city leaders work with schools and other community partners to engage parents in dropout prevention and in the development of strategies to ensure the success of all children. This webinar will feature city practices and examples of the unique role that municipal leaders play in engaging families in education. Community leaders and managers of programs related to parent engagement, education and public/private partnerships are encouraged to attend.
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A new discussion paper from The Brookings Institution analyzes the state of the U.S. labor market over the past three decades to inform policymaking on two fronts. The first is to rigorously document and place in historical and international context the trajectory of the U.S. labor market, focusing on the evolving earnings, employment rates, and labor market opportunities for workers with low, moderate, and high levels of education. The second is to illuminate the key forces shaping this trajectory.
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The NGA Center for Best Practices has released an issue brief, Maximizing the Potential of Older Adults – Benefits to State Economies and Individual Well–Being, detailing ways states can engage older adults – who have the potential to greatly affect state economies – through both paid employment and volunteerism. Proposed strategies include: increasing awareness of the benefits of work, volunteering and education among older adults and businesses; creating connections between older adults and work, volunteer and educational opportunities; and strengthening engagement opportunities within state workforce, aging and education policies.
View the brief here

History teaches us a little-known lesson about innovation: Ideas don't matter. Good ideas languish all the time. What matters? Execution. It's everything - especially, ironically enough, with breakthrough technologies. As the world embraces and demands advances in clean technologies, it's time to look at what past technology revolutions teach us about the best ways to move clean technology innovations forward.
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Lehigh Technologies of Tucker, GA, has developed a process for rejuvenating discarded rubber that could open up new recycling opportunities. If the company's technology catches on, it could carve out a billion-dollar market for high-performance recycled rubber. Lehigh Technologies shatters rubber into a fine powder using a process that involves freezing old rubber and smashing it to pieces. Creating such fine powder transforms the rubber from a highly inert filler material to one that can bond with other materials.
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The 2010 FREEDM Systems Center Annual Conference will be hosted by Florida State University (FSU) and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) at FSU in Tallahassee, Florida from May 18 through May 20, 2010. The goal of the FREEDM Systems Center is to create a culture of innovation in engineering research and education that links scientific discovery to technological innovation through transformational engineered systems research.
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Asia has become the world's hottest arena for mergers and acquisitions. European and American companies are seeking a larger presence in the world's fastest-growing economies even as Asian companies with strong local currencies and ample credit are pushing to enter new markets or consolidate existing ones at home. Indeed, during the first quarter, Asian M&A activity more than doubled from a year earlier while activity in the United States and Europe declined. Yet the growth of Asian M&A is likely to have its rough patches, too, including legal barriers and foreign ownership restrictions, according to Wharton faculty and others.
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Even as China has set ambitious goals for itself in clean-energy production and reduction of global warming gases, the country’s surging demand for power from oil and coal has led to the largest six-month increase in the tonnage of human generated greenhouse gases ever by a single country.
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Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is sponsoring a two-day international symposium in August 2010 in Blacksburg that will gather experts in the field of naturalistic driving research to discuss a wide range of topics including real world operations; instrumentation of vehicles for data gathering; field operation testing (FOT); field technology demonstrations; extraction and analysis of naturalistic driving data; data access & sharing issues; and data analysis reporting. The symposium will include an international review of naturalistic driving study research with panelists who are experts in the field of naturalistic driving research in their respective countries. There will also be a workshop (additional registration fee required) on "Removing Roadblocks - Determining and Specifying Data Needs" for those interested.
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To put it simply, the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars—that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. “In the 1950s, suburbs were the future,” says University of Michigan architecture and urban-planning professor Robert Fishman, commenting on the striking cultural shift. “The city was then seen as a dingy environment. But today it’s these urban neighborhoods that are exciting and diverse and exploding with growth."
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Older adults face an array of housing challenges. Many live in homes that lack accessibility features, are unaffordable or energy inefficient, or are located far from important destinations and amenities. Others need various kind of assistance to maintain their independence and autonomy but cannot afford the supportive services that would allow them to age successfully in a residential environment. This toolkit provides a detailed exploration of these and other challenges facing older adults and describes a range of promising policies that some communities are adopting to address them.
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ICMA’s free podcasts feature interviews with city and county managers, authors, and consultants to bring you their expertise on important local government management issues. Podcast topics include sustainable communities, community building, healthy communities, performance measurement, ethics, career guidance, and more. You can listen to these audio files on your computer or download them to a portable MP3 player.
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Virginia illustrates concrete strategies for moving toward data-driven student success. Altered State, by Kay Mills, summarizes the progress of the Virginia Community College System in Achieving the Dream and provides a powerful example of how one system has leveraged participation in the initiative to make student success a central focus across all of the state’s community colleges.
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America’s Promise Alliance and AT&T are looking for the energy, enthusiasm, creativity and commitment to help make this country a Grad Nation through the My Idea grants program. “My Idea” will empower young people to examine the high school dropout crisis and take action to help more of their peers to graduate on time - improving outcomes for themselves and their community. National grants of $10,000-$20,000 will be awarded to 20 - 25 youth for the best of the submitted ideas to help increase a community’s graduation rate anywhere in the United States. Additional opportunities are available for young people living in cities that include Jackson, Louisville, Nashville and New Orleans, with grants of $500-$1500 to support targeted local projects. Applications are due by June 11, 2010.
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Early-education programs are struggling to serve all the children who qualify for them, as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has caused states to slash budgets and reduce spending, according to an annual survey an of state-funded programs by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Expansion of state-funded preschool was slower in 2009 and more uneven than in previous years, even though total enrollment and spending increased overall, the institute found.
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A new licensing process for commercializing university research will support American universities' startup companies and enable long-term economic growth, according to a new paper released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. As universities are debating how best to expedite commercialization of research, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has developed the Carolina Express License Agreement, a standard licensing agreement to commercialize academic discoveries that promises to ease the formation of new companies and maintain American competitiveness by promoting new firm formation.
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The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a new competition for high-risk, high-reward research funding under the Technology Innovation Program (TIP). The new TIP competition offers cost-shared funding for innovative research on “Manufacturing and Biomanufacturing: Materials Advances and Critical Processes.” Approximately $25 million is available for first-year funding for an expected 25 new TIP projects. The goal of the effort is to inspire revolutionary materials advances leading to new products with advanced features and improved characteristics that will enter the market more quickly.
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Southeast Agriculture & Forestry Resources Alliance (SAFER) announces that it has become a partner with the upcoming BioPro Expo and Conference to be held in Atlanta, Ga., USA August 24-26, 2010. BioPro Expo is a new, innovative cross-industry conference and tradeshow that will address issues around biomass supply and explore existing and emerging ways for transitioning a variety of biomass feedstocks into energy and fuel. The Conference Program at BioPro Expo is designed to provide technical and practical information for utilizing biomass. Members and constituents of SAFER will receive a 35 percent discount on registration for the conference.
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By artificially setting the price of its currency, China is robbing the United States of jobs and building up an unprecedented trade surplus. Former Treasury official Bergsten says that currency manipulation is a form of protectionism and the US and global institutions need to respond because it is a problem that affects economies around the world. He calls for a three-pronged strategy: the US should declare China a currency manipulator; join with European countries to press the IMF to deal with China; and have a WTO panel adjudicate the dispute. Thus, global institutions can be brought to bear on what is a global problem.
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World economic and financial leaders, gathered in Washington for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, made progress on a variety of fronts to help reinforce the global economic recovery and to reach agreement on a series of efforts to create a more stable international economic and financial system.
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A global revolution has been taking place in higher education during the past half-century that is at least as dramatic as the one that happened when the German research model fundamentally changed the nature of the university worldwide in the 19th century. And the transformation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is more extensive than the earlier one, due to the sheer numbers of institutions and people involved.
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Rural areas are home to about 50 million Americans and are an essential part of the overall economy. As the President embarks on the next stops on the White House to Main Street Tour in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, the Council of Economic Advisors has released a report that surveys the current state of rural America and describes the Obama Administration’s policies for strengthening the rural economy.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s State Fact Sheets contain frequently requested data for each state and for the total United States. These include current data on population, per-capita income, earnings per job, poverty rates, employment, unemployment, farm characteristics, farm financial characteristics, top agricultural commodities, top export commodities, and the top counties in agricultural sales. The latest (2009) state and county population estimates are now available.
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In a survey developed by Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy for New Geography, Joel Kotkin says the results are depressing. Only 13 metro areas saw any job growth in the last year. Jacksonville, North Carolina saw the most job growth according to the survey, with an economy that grew 1.4 percent. Kotkin writes, “With the exception of Austin, Texas, all the top 10 growers—and all the net gainers—were small communities. Americans have been moving to smaller towns and cities for much of the past decade, as well as jobs, and this recession may end up accelerating the trend.” Kotkin notes that much of the job growth over the last year was in government jobs, driven by the stimulus package.
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A New National Approach to Career Navigation for Working Learners, a report prepared by Jobs for the Future for the Center for American Progress, details the inadequacy of the career navigation assistance now available. The report showcases promising models of career navigation and envisions a more robust national approach to career navigation services for working adults. It concludes with recommendations of next steps and federal policy actions that would move the nation closer to achieving that vision.
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A new report from the Pew Research Center profiles the roughly 50 million Millennials who currently span the ages of 18 to 29. The report examines demographics, political and social values, lifestyles and life priorities, digital technology and social media habits, and their economic and educational aspirations. It also compares and contrasts Millennials with the nation’s three other living generations. Among the findings are that Millennials are on course to become the most educated generation in American history, a trend driven largely by the demands of a modern knowledge-based economy, but most likely accelerated in recent years by the millions of 20-somethings enrolling in graduate schools, colleges or community colleges in part because they can’t find a job.
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A new report from the Casey Foundation responds to the need for more information on the important work of leaders in changing systems by offering insights and observations from more than a dozen leaders who have worked on system change in the workforce development field. The report features the experiences of 13 key leaders who discuss the qualities that serve a change agent well, among them: flexibility, patience, determination and political acuity.
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The report, Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?, documents the dawning of a new worldwide industry—clean energy—which has experienced investment growth of 230 percent since 2005. Demonstrating its strength, the clean energy sector declined only 6.6 percent in 2009 despite the worst financial downturn in over half a century. In an encouraging sign for the future, many governments prioritized clean energy within economic recovery funding, the bulk of which will reach innovators, businesses and installers in 2010 and 2011. Clean energy investments are forecast to grow by 25 percent to $200 billion in 2010.
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Nine national organizations that support the start-up and growth of innovative small businesses, raise concern that the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 will damage angel investing and particularly the entrepreneurial businesses they support.
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Building on last year’s successful Summit, this year’s gathering will focus on Accelerating Growth and Impact and will feature national keynotes and speakers, a central Cleantech CEO Panel, business and community success stories, tips on developing key strategic partnerships, structured networking, and practical strategies attendees can implement in their own businesses and communities.
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After a career as a corporate executive with her name in brass on the office door, Amparo Kollman-Moore, an immigrant from Colombia, likes to drive a Jaguar and shop at Saks. “It was a good life,” she said, “a really good ride.” As a member of this city’s economic elite, Ms. Kollman-Moore is not unusual among immigrants who live in St. Louis. According to a new analysis of census data, more than half of the working immigrants in this metropolitan area hold higher-paying white-collar jobs—as professionals, technicians or administrators—rather than lower-paying blue-collar and service jobs.
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The pursuit of independence by former colonies during the 20th century often included efforts to minimize reliance on the imposed language. In some, like the former Spanish colony of the Philippines, the colonial language fell out of general use even as another colonial language English was embraced as a language of business. Today, less than 1 percent of Filipinos speak Spanish. But the few Filipinos who retained the language and accent, explains writer Margot Cohen, have since discovered they possess a skill that entitles them to higher wages in the business outsourcing industry along with pleasant customer interactions.
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A new ECS StateNote uses data collected and published by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to show how America's school funding system compares with other developed countries' systems from around the world.
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What makes a model neighborhood? GOOD Magazine devotes an issue to the topic, beginning with a list of traits that make a neighborhood great. Top of their list? A signature event. Human scale, third places, and diversity all make the list.
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In “Town Squares for Aging: A New Approach to Preserving Medicare and Medicaid," David M. Dunkelman, Sam Gill, and Marc Dunkelman argue that the demographic challenge facing America—a Baby Boomer generation that will live longer in retirement and therefore demand more costly care—demands a new approach. For generations, the frail elderly have often been forced to move into nursing homes and other institutions because we had no way to provide them the support they needed at home. Today, new technology and a new understanding of aging has changed that. And so we need to find ways to utilize our new capacity to care for the frail elderly by creating a real world alternative to institutional care. The answer is to build new networks of service among a community’s existing providers.
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A new Coldwell Banker survey of home purchases by singles turned up something surprising for city watchers: 52 percent chose suburbs over urban or rural areas. The survey reveals a couple of other interesting tidbits as well, says Samuel Staley, Director of Urban Growth and Land Use Policy at the Reason Foundation: Some 55 percent have less than a 30-minute commute to their office or work from home. And 40 percent live less than 30 minutes or even in the same neighborhood as their parents or extended family. In fact, an additional 12 percent live with at least one family member.
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Can school districts build online-only courses that meet state standards and engage students? What’s the best way to use e-courses from outside providers? How should those courses be evaluated? What are the pros and cons of building your own e-courses? How hard is it to create a high-quality, multimedia-rich, online curriculum? Join two leading experts, including Martha Rizzuto, Superintendant of Tarrant City Schools in Alabama, as they discuss the challenges of aligning online courses with brick-and-mortar realities. This Education Week webinar is scheduled for April 28 from 2:00 to 3:00 pm ET. It will also be archived and accessible online within 24 hours after the event. Register for this free, live event.
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The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) has released a paper titled What Is “Career Ready”? that outlines three broad sets of skills students need to be career-ready: core academic skills, employability skills and technical skills. ACTE created the paper to broaden the national discussion around the term “career readiness.”
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Support for education is one of the few polite conversations left between the reds and blues. It is the middle ground between those who favor an expansion in the welfare state and those who advocate laissez-faire government. Yet, despite postsecondary education and training’s growing importance, our understanding of its relationships with economic opportunity is woefully underdeveloped. The crucial nexus between postsecondary education and training and the economy remains a black box because these interactions extend beyond the operational and intellectual horizons of our existing institutional silos—in business, government, academe, and the foundation world.
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From the Executive Summary: This report describes the results of primary in-depth research focused on the size of the South's energy-efficiency resources and the types of policies that could convert this potential resource into reality over the next 20 years. We limit the scope of our analysis to energy-efficiency improvements in three sectors: residential and commercial buildings and industry (RCI). Our rigorous modeling approach - applied uniformly across the multi-state region and accompanied by a detailed documentation of assumptions and methods—separates this study from many previous assessments of energy-efficiency potential.
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Now is the time to highlight your organization's impact and gain high-profile exposure as a recipient of SSTI's national award for excellence in technology-based economic development (TBED). SSTI invites applications for the 2010 Excellence in TBED Awards in the following categories: Expanding the Research Capacity, Commercializing Research, Building Entrepreneurial Capacity, Increasing Access to Capital, Enhancing the Science & Technology Workforce, and Improving Competitiveness of Existing Industries. Deadline is June 1.
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A community celebration was held recently in Fort Smith, Arkansas for Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas (MPSA) and the commitment the company has made to locate its new wind turbine manufacturing facility at Fort Chaffee. "We are very excited in making this investment with the great state of Arkansas. With this first step, we look forward to further our growth of our wind turbine business and build up our supply chain in this region." said Ichiro Fukue, Executive Vice President of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
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A Jamaican nurse, Mary Seacole, cared for British soldiers during the Crimean war in the 1850s. Many more have followed in her footsteps. According to a report last month by the World Bank, almost three-quarters of the nurses who train in the English-speaking Caribbean leave to work in the United States, Britain or Canada. That is causing a problem. Only 7,800 nurses are left in a region with a rapidly ageing population of 6m—and 3,300 unfilled nursing posts. Many rich countries have ten times as many nursing staff per head.
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The rapid pace of globalization raises a new set of management questions for business leaders—and the MBA programs that train them. In this video interview, Garth Saloner, dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, talks about how MBA education is changing to meet the needs of a new world, one in which companies are borderless and emerging markets demand increasingly experienced talent. Requires free registration.
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It wasn’t so many years ago that Europeans loved to moan about American culture overrunning homegrown art forms. In the 1990s and early 2000s some in Europe were arguing for regulatory barriers to hold off the New World barbarians, particularly from Hollywood. In France, President Jacques Chirac’s culture minister, Jacques Toubon, warned about how the United States entertainment industry was trying “to impose domination by any means,” and Régis Debray, among other French intellectuals to hop on the same bandwagon, predicted that “the American empire will pass, like the others.”
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In nearly all metropolitan areas in the United States, jobs have been moving to the suburbs for several decades. In the largest metropolitan areas between 1998 and 2006, jobs shifted away from the city center to the suburbs in virtually all industries. As the U.S. population also continues to suburbanize, larger proportions of metropolitan area employment and population are locating beyond the traditional central business districts along the nation’s suburban beltways and the more distant fringes.
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Where people live, work, and play affects their health. The systems that shape communities—from how food is grown, processed, distributed and sold, to whether neighborhoods are built with sidewalks or parks to transportation systems—can all affect health. Some communities’ systems are broken and so don’t allow residents to lead healthy lives and prosper. Changing that will require collaboration from an informed, passionate, fair-minded group working across multiple fields. A new webinar series from the Convergence Partnership offers examples, information, tools, and connections with those creating healthy places through multi-field, equity-focused environmental policy change. The monthly webinars take place on Tuesdays from 2:00 – 3:00 pm ET, beginning April 27 and continuing through September 21.

The teen birth rate in the United States fell two percent between 2007 and 2008, after rising the previous two years, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. “Births: Preliminary Data for 2008,” based on an analysis of 99.9 percent of birth records for 2008, found there were 41.5 births per 1,000 teenagers aged 15-19 years, down from 42.5 in 2007 and 41.9 in 2006.
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Twenty-three percent of America’s unemployed have been jobless for a year or longer, the highest rate since World War II, according to a study by the Pew Economic Policy Group. The report, A Year or More: The High Cost of Long-Term Unemployment, finds that this trend cuts across nearly every industry and occupation, and affects people of all ages and educational backgrounds. The existence of such a large pool of people – 3.4 million – who have been out of work for so long has had a significant impact on the federal budget.
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Students and school systems across the nation are facing serious challenges as a result of the economic downturn, according to a new survey of school administrators by the American Association of School Administrators. This study, based on a survey of 453 school administrators conducted in March 2010, finds that school districts’ economic situation does not mimic the stability and recovery beginning to take hold nationwide. In fact, the latest survey findings document the continued erosion of fiscal resources available to school districts and demonstrate that, across the board, school budget cuts are noticeably more significant for 2010-11 than they were in 2008-09 or 2009-10. The new study, Cliff Hanger: How America’s Public Schools Continue to Feel the Impact of the Economic Downturn, is the seventh in a series of studies by AASA examining the impact of the economic downturn on schools.
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Opportunities for school choice in the United States have expanded since the 1960s. In some localities, parents now can select from a wide range of public school choice options which expand alternatives beyond the public school their children would be assigned. A new report from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) examines enrollment trends in public and private schools from 1993 to 2007, as well as the characteristics of students in these schools in 2007. Additionally, the report describes student enrollment in charter schools in 2007 and demographic characteristics of home-schooled students in 2007. It also examines parents’ satisfaction with and involvement in their children’s schools. This report updates two previous reports: Trends in the Use of School Choice: 1993 to 1999 and Trends in the Use of School Choice: 1993 to 2003.
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As the federal government continues to work to create the conditions for this new industry’s success, many state governments are implementing innovative policies to spur its development. To help state governments develop their own local bioenergy resources and advanced biofuels industries, EESI recently published a paper entitled Developing an Advanced Biofuel Industry: State Policy Options for Lean and Uncertain Times, funded by the Energy Foundation. The paper outlines 10 policy recommendations, including conducting an inventory of bioenergy resources and markets, developing sustainable feedstock production guidelines, and enacting a low carbon fuel standard.
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Innoventure Southeast 2010 will bring innovation leaders together to describe the future they are creating to attract the expertise and resources needed to succeed. Among the presenters are David Stafford, COO of the Michelin Americas Research Company and Chris Desoiza, Vice President of the Milliken Research Corporation. The conference is organized around four key areas of innovation: Clean Energy, Advanced Materials, Transformed Mobility and Smart Communities.
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Governor Jay Nixon is supporting 12 different proposals from across Missouri that would expand broadband Internet access in rural and underserved parts of the state for health care, business, education and consumers. Those proposals—from private companies, local governments and rural electric cooperatives—have been submitted for federal funding through the Recovery Act.
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When nine thriving Chinese universities banded together late last year to create an elite consortium informally known as China's Ivy League, the development seemed only natural for an education-loving nation that ardently embraces the view that world-class universities drive economic growth. Today, China is "Exhibit A" in the emergence of a new and increasingly freewheeling global university marketplace.
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There has been much ado as of late about China's efforts to use government procurement as a way to help local firms at the expense of foreign ones. Call it the backdoor revenge of import substitution industrialization or, to paraphrase Friedrich List, taking back the ladder. For instance, the American Chamber of Commerce in China has issued warnings about more aggressive use of government mandates promoting so-called "indigenous innovation" that may limit the access of foreign firms to Chinese markets.
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Cheap food causes hunger. On its face, the statement makes no sense. If food is cheaper it’s more affordable and more people should be able to get an adequate diet. That is true for people who buy food, such as those living in cities. But it is quite obviously not true if you’re the one growing the food. You’re getting less for your crops, less for your work, less for your family to live on. That is as true for Vermont dairy farmers as it is for rice farmers in the Philippines. Dairy farmers today are getting prices for their milk that are well below their costs of production. They are putting less food on their own tables. And they are going out of business at an alarming rate. When the economic dust settles, this will leave us with fewer family farmers producing the dairy products most of us depend on.
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The President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships presented its final report of recommendations to senior Administration officials at a day-long briefing at the White House. This first-of-its-kind White House advisory group made up of diverse religious and community non-profit leaders was appointed by the President last spring to develop recommendations on how the government can better partner with faith and neighborhood based organizations. They deliberated over months of proceedings and dozens of conference calls and developed more than 60 consensus recommendations.
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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research has released three important studies on homelessness in the United States: examining the cost of first-time homelessness, life after transitional housing for homeless families, and strategies for improving access to mainstream benefits and services. Taken together, the findings of these studies have significant policy implications as HUD seeks to understand the most effective and efficient ways of addressing homelessness among individuals and families. Norfolk, Virginia and Upstate South Carolina were among the areas studied.
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The NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) has released a report on the steps states are taking to fight childhood obesity, Shaping a Healthier Generation: Healthy Kids, Healthy America State Profiles of Progress. Through the Healthy Kids, Healthy America program, the NGA Center supported 15 states as they worked to develop policies to prevent childhood obesity. The strategies of the 15 states fall into three main categories: child care settings; policy planning and prioritization; and school-based efforts.
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Unemployment rates reached record highs in 2009 for people age 55 and older. Older African Americans, Hispanics, and adults with limited education were especially likely to find themselves unemployed. Older adults who lost their jobs spent more time out of work than their younger counterparts. However, employment rates for adults age 62 and older did not fall because many older workers stayed in the labor force, and earnings for full-time workers age 65 and older grew substantially.
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Roughly 30% of entering freshmen in the USA are first-generation college students, and 24%—4.5 million — are both first-gens and low income. Nationally, 89% of low-income first-gens leave college within six years without a degree. More than a quarter leave after their first year—four times the dropout rate of higher-income second-generation students. They’re driven out by a host of factors, from financial need to little understanding of what to expect of college. Many struggle with the feeling that they don’t belong on campus.
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Built on a research review and consultation with youth policy experts, this paper makes the case for developing a menu of approaches for the heterogeneous population of disconnected youth; building knowledge about mature programs (to better understand whether they work, for whom, and why), and creating new programs that address areas of unmet need.
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Fisk had a successful physics program that produced more terminal master's degrees for black students than any other U.S. institution, and Vanderbilt had good Ph.D. programs in physics, astronomy and materials science that produced very few minority graduates. Stassun's idea "was very granular and very proximal," he recalls: "Let's help those students get from the master's to the Ph.D."
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2009 will go down as one of the worst years in economic history. Overall venture capital spending fell to its lowest level in more than a decade. Initial public offerings (IPOs) in the U.S. continued at historic lows, with just 13 venture-backed IPOs in 2009 (up only slightly from a meager six venturebacked IPOs in 2008), according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. Once stalwart financial and market leaders crumbled under new harsh economic realities, with many shuttering their operations or surviving as a mere shell of their former selves. Governments around the world, working to stave off a global depression, announced unprecedented commitments to stimulus programs to keep the global economy on life support. But signs of hope have begun to emerge for the clean-tech sector.
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The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council have issued a request for information (RFI) on how best to encourage the commercialization of university research and on whether proof of concept centers are an effective tool in early-stage commercialization. The RFI asks for models, strategies and metrics that can help universities contribute to economic development. Responses are due by April 26.
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The world's mega-cities are merging to form vast "mega-regions" which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people, according to a major new UN report.
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The first international telegraphic message, sent by Queen Victoria in 1858, was tapped out in dots and dashes and took some 16 hours to reach President James Buchanan in Washington. In March this year, Cisco Systems announced the launch of a new Internet router that can transmit vast amounts of digital data in the blink of an eye. This technological advance not only promises to shrink the globe further, but also opens up new opportunities to those who are prepared to grab them. This torrent of information that would be enveloping us could push the revolution in rising expectations to a new level, exacerbating social tensions, especially if education standards and infrastructure development do not keep pace.
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Not so long ago in China, Western business executives traveling to the provinces could expect a hearty welcome and a banquet with endless toasts of maotai liquor. In February, however, representatives of General Electric and a dozen other U.S. companies got a taste of the way commercial relations have been changing. They were in Wuhan, a city of 9 million on the Yangtze River, for a seminar on water-treatment technology organized by the U.S. embassy. At a dinner after the meeting they were supposed to have a chance to mingle with top local officials. But at the last minute, Wuhan's mayor canceled his keynote speech and backed out of the gathering. That same day the provincial party secretary and governor begged off a separate event for American Ambassador Jon M. Huntsman Jr. One attendee, who won't be quoted by name, speculates that the Wuhan officials were responding to direct orders from the central government in Beijing not to meet the Americans. The provincial government acknowledges that the original lineup was changed but notes other officials attended the events.
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About 6% of districts closed or consolidated schools this year, compared to about 3% in 2008-09, according to a survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators. About 11% are expected to consider similar moves in 2010-11. The moves are money-savers, but they’re gut-wrenching propositions for communities.
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The presence of 100 million more Americans by 2050 will reshape the nation's geography. Scores of new communities will have to be built to accommodate them, creating a massive demand for new housing, as well as industrial and commercial space. This growth will include everything from the widespread “infilling” of once-desolate inner cities to the creation of new suburban and exurban towns to the resettling of the American heartland - the vast, still sparsely populated regions that constitute the majority of the U.S. landmass.
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An updated U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report shows a continuing shift in development toward urban neighborhoods in the United States, despite a slow real estate market. This trend, described in EPA’s 2010 report, Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions, shows that redevelopment continues in many urban neighborhoods. Taking advantage of opportunities to reuse land and to redevelop underused sites is a key smart growth strategy. It helps communities protect natural lands from being developed, strengthens the local economy, and puts new homes, stores, and jobs within easy reach of surrounding neighborhoods.
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Across the country many schools and communities are trying to create and support efforts to institutionalize partnerships for learning, including those that rethink the use of time across the school day and year, and across the developmental continuum. A new report from the Harvard Family Research Project is aimed to help out-of-school-time (OST) program leaders, decision-makers, and funders to understand and implement effective OST-school partnerships for learning.
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Public Agenda has released a new discussion guide to help communities identify obstacles to parent involvement in education and to find effective strategies that will have the greatest impact in the community. The guide is based on lessons learned from the organization’s work with community groups in Moss Point, Mississippi.
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In Michigan, where many enterprises are struggling to survive, the renowned University of Michigan is in the midst of a construction boom and hiring spree. Michigan State University, on the other hand, plans to lay off faculty and cut programs, blaming state funding that is lower than it was a decade ago. Flagship universities in other states, including Colorado, Virginia, Vermont and Wisconsin, are also prospering, while their lesser-known counterparts suffer from vanishing state appropriations. So, why not change the arrangement and require big-name universities be responsible for their own financing, leaving more state money to support the other state schools? As legislatures face their toughest budget year since the recession began, the idea of giving a few universities autonomy to control their own finances has some appeal.
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State Treasurer Janet Cowell announced today that Credit Suisse will manage the newly-created North Carolina Innovation Fund. Amid the backdrop of Durham’s Golden Belt Campus, Cowell and UNC President Erskine Bowles discussed what this initiative means for North Carolina. The primary goal of the Innovation Fund will be to achieve a risk-adjusted rate of return for the Pension Fund’s private equity portfolio. The $230 million Fund will seek to invest in businesses with significant operations based in North Carolina.
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The nation’s K-12 education system gets an average grade of D for the job it does “engaging and nurturing” minorities to pursue careers in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and a D-plus for such performance with girls, based on results released today from a survey of female and minority chemists and chemical engineers. Those polled also believe science teachers play a larger role than parents and others in inspiring an interest in science, with 70 percent saying teachers have the most influence at the elementary level, and nearly 90 percent saying teachers have the most influence at the high school level.
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The Federal government’s ten-year-old program for nurturing and coordinating the young science of nanotechnology—the engineering of materials at vanishingly small scales—has been highly successful and has helped to make the United States the world’s leader in this increasingly valuable manufacturing sector, concludes an independent report prepared for the President and Congress. But that leadership position is threatened by several aggressively investing competitors such as China, South Korea, and the European Union, according to the report, which recommends a number of changes in the Federal oversight program in order to assure U.S. dominance in the decade ahead. The report concludes that the NNI— which provided $12 billion in investments by 25 Federal agencies over the past decade—has had a “catalytic and substantial impact” on the growth of U.S. nanotechnology innovation and should be continued. However, the report warns, the United States stands to surrender its global lead in nanotechnology if it does not address some pressing needs.
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A decade ago, after European activists whipped up lots of negative coverage about the perils of toying with nature, the future of genetically modified (GM) crops seemed uncertain. The technology was adopted by farmers in the rich world outside Europe, but poor countries seemed likely to be left behind. However, according to a report released on February 23rd by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-profit outfit that monitors the use of GM crops, the sector is blossoming, especially in the developing world, where poor and unproductive farmers have the most to gain from such advances.
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This is a nation that builds dams, high-speed rail lines and skyscrapers with abandon. In newly muscular China, sheer force is not just an art, but a bedrock principle of its seemingly unstoppable rise to global prominence. Now China has tightened its grip on the much more variegated world of online information, effectively forcing Google, Inc., the world’s premier information provider, to choose between submitting to Chinese censorship and leaving the world’s largest community of Internet users to its rivals. It chose to leave.
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Being American is a little more complicated these days. That’s especially true for iconic brands like Levi’s, Converse, and Rawlings baseballs, all of which built their reputations on products produced in America. Globalization has changed all that. Here’s a look at all-American goods that no longer exclusively sport a “Made in the U.S.A.” label.
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“Federal Resources and You” is the theme of the Delta Regional Authority’s (DRA) upcoming annual conference, scheduled for April 13-15, 2010 in St. Louis. As DRA Federal Co-Chairman Pete Johnson has noted, “As tough as this economy is, federal resources are more important than ever.” Join other business and community leaders to hear speakers talk about resources available to help communities, including John Fernandez, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, who will talk about new initiatives and upcoming funding opportunities at the Economic Development Administration. DRA’s conference is free to attendees. However, seating is limited, so please register early.
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Experts say those lean years will finally dissipate to reveal a new reality: Local government will have been right-sized or wrong-sized, depending on your perspective, but it will be smaller. And our assumptions about it and our expectations of it will be altered, too. “In most past recessions you have that one year of pain and then you can put things back together. This is going to be very different. We are fundamentally resizing government,” Alan Essig, a former state budget analyst who heads the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If we’re not going to increase revenue some sizable amount, all these budget cuts are permanent.”
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The “American Dream” means different things to different people, but according to a new poll from Xavier University Americans think it is increasingly harder to attain, even as they say hard work makes the dream possible. When asked if it is now harder or easier to attain “the American Dream” than it was for their parents’ generation, 60 percent of Xavier's 1,022 respondents said it's getting harder; 68 percent, meanwhile, said it will be even harder for their children than it is for them.
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For city leaders endeavoring to achieve greater numbers of college graduates in their city, those people who have some college or began study but did not complete their degree represent an enormous opportunity. In order to develop strategies to get pre-graduates to complete a four-year degree, however, their special needs must be better understood. Through ethnographic research on pre-graduates and interviews with experts, opportunities for increasing access to college and college attainment were identified. From this research ideation salons were held to develop 101 new ideas for reclaiming a nation of pre-graduates.

A new study from MDRC takes an in-depth look at the perceptions and experiences of 87 African-American, Hispanic, and Native American men who were enrolled in developmental math courses at four community colleges that participate in Lumina Foundation’s Achieving the Dream initiative. The study explores how the students’ experiences in their high schools and communities, as well as their identities as men of color, influenced their decision to go to college and their engagement in school. It also offers insights into the kinds of programs and policies that might help community colleges better meet the needs of men of color and raise their chances of academic success.
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A new report from Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation underwritten by the MetLife Foundation points to significant shortfalls in preparation and support for those who change careers to teach, and debunks common assumptions about their paths to teaching. Its survey of 504 teachers found that that the majority of career changers-92 percent-pursued teacher education through a university program, and nearly nine in 10 considered their programs to have been excellent overall. Programs were mainly faulted for failing to prepare teachers for real-world challenges.
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The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a new report taking a first look at data collected through the Internet Usage Survey of more than 50,000 households, commissioned by NTIA and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in October 2009. Since 2007, the data show that while virtually all demographic groups have experienced rising broadband Internet access adoption at home, historic disparities among particular demographic groups overall continue to persist.
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Companies—and their engineers—are being drawn here more and more as China develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. A few American companies are even making deals with Chinese companies to license Chinese technology.
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You don’t have to travel far in this country to find heartfelt concern about the number of jobs that have been shipped overseas by American businesses. But in south Alabama, the biggest economic blessing in years has come from a foreign firm that decided to ship thousands of jobs here.
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Civics” often refers to the familiar constellation of rights and responsibilities emanating from citizenship in a nation-state. But what about global civics? Would this be feasible—or even desirable?
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Can you combat global warming and create jobs? Can you develop green energy on your own and spurn globalisation? Answers to these questions are becoming clearer as countries struggle to revive their economies through investment in green technologies. The answers may not please many politicians. “It just makes your blood boil,” fumed New York’s influential Senator Charles Schumer on learning that the stimulus package he voted for may be creating jobs in the wrong places. US President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, designed to create American jobs and usher in an era of renewable energy, has run smack into the reality of an interconnected world where nothing can be neatly packed within a national border. Being green in the U.S. may mean new jobs for Chinese workers.
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If the Transition Initiative were a person, you’d say he or she was charismatic, wise, practical, positive, resourceful, and very, very popular. Starting with the town of Totnes in Devon, England, in September 2006, the movement has spread like wildfire across the U.K and on to the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The core purpose of the Transition Initiative is to address, at the community level, the twin issues of climate change and peak oil—the declining availability of “ancient sunlight,” as fossil fuels have been called. The initiative is set up to enable towns or neighborhoods to plan for, and move toward, a post-oil and low-carbon future: what Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Initiative, has termed “the great transition of our time, away from fossil fuels.”
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While Washington debates how to help the country’s struggling small businesses, states and municipalities have stepped up with an array of initiatives to stanch closings and save jobs. The local approaches are as varied as subsidizing wages for new hires, running a $100,000 regional business-plan competition and giving out grants to help small manufacturers reposition themselves. Some states and cities are using federal stimulus dollars, and others are mixing federal, state and private dollars.
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Recently, challenges for newspaper readership as well as production costs have escalated for even the most prominent print newspapers. Some have collapsed, some daily papers are now weeklies, and some with the largest circulations have transitioned all or part of their content to online. While there are free online papers, some plan to charge for part, if not for all, access to the content. AARP commissioned a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of adults age 18 and over for the AARP Bulletin to gain a perspective on consumers’ behavior in this time of newspapers transitioning to different media.
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Mayor Karl Dean recently released a plan intended to reduce the number of people living in poverty in Nashville, which currently stands at 16 percent of the city’s total population. The plan was developed by a broad base of community members first convened in September 2008 for the Nashville Poverty Symposium. Nearly 500 city leaders, advocates, organizations and residents attended the Symposium to hear about existing efforts to reduce poverty, as well as the service gaps that prevent families from being able to sustain themselves.
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The latest research from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher includes findings that point to two interesting conclusions: while educators express strong belief in the importance of high expectations and high standards for all students, those standards and expectations fall short in practice for many students. There are also significant gaps in teacher and student perceptions about academic success, particularly evident in schools serving high proportions of low-income students, secondary schools, and between girls and boys. The second of three reports, Part 2: Student Achievement, from the new MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Collaborating for Student Success, includes the views of teachers, principals, and students on student goals and aspirations, the influence of teacher expectations, and factors educators believe would improve academic success.
Read the news release here

A new report from Achieve, a nonprofit group created by the nation’s governors and business leaders, charts changes in state standards and practices in the years following its National Education Summit in 2005. Five years after the summit, 31 states report having college- and career-ready standards, including eight that adopted aligned high school standards in the past year. In 2005, only three states had graduation requirements that all students complete four years of mathematics at the level of what is typically taught in an Algebra II course, and four years of grade-level English. Today, 20 states and the District of Columbia require these for graduation.
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The NGA Center has published a new issue brief, Building an Early Childhood Professional Development System, that examines strategies for building a statewide system of professional development for all program staff and personnel who work with young children. A growing body of child development research, neuroscience and program evaluation demonstrates that high-quality early childhood care and education programs improve school readiness and later outcomes for young children.
View the brief here

A national commitment to solar power transformed one community but big subsidies led to unsustainable growth.
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According to a new study released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, top-performing companies are the most fertile source of new jobs. High-Growth Firms and the Future of the American Economy, the third in the Kauffman Foundation Research Series on Firm Formation and Economic Growth, found that in any given year, the top-performing 1 percent of firms generate roughly 40 percent of all new jobs. The report includes recommendations for how policymakers can support high-growth start-ups.
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Information technology applied to healthcare—broadly termed e-health—is set to revolutionize patient care and how healthcare systems can be structured and managed. However, different obstacles are standing in the way for Europe to truly embrace the digital reform of its healthcare systems.
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To paraphrase the noted economist Woody Allen, Europe is at a crossroads as it confronts the Greek economic crisis. One path leads to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction. One can only hope that the Europeans have the wisdom to choose correctly.
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Will the next Winter Olympics—to be held in Sochi, Russia in 2014—provide the same platform for harmony and peace as did the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games? The German Marshall Fund's Alina Inayeh points out the particular challenges to peace and brotherhood that could crop up at the 2014 Games.
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Edward Dimmler dips a cotton swab in acetone and rubs it on the surface of a computer chip that was ostensibly manufactured by Samsung. The white tip turns black—the first clue that the part may be fake. Dimmler, director of warehouse operations at electronics distributor PCX, then inspects the chip under a microscope and sees the word Samsung smeared across the top of the chip. Clearly, this memory chip is counterfeit, ineligible for resale.
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A contest to develop online applications that would tap the power of broadband to help communities and citizens has been launched by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in partnership with the Federal Communications Commission. The Knight/FCC “Apps for Inclusion” Challenge encourages technology innovators to review government and community services and develop tools that will improve lives by making it easier for citizens to receive these services through mobile and online applications.
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Cities should be living labs. If cities become innovation hot spots, new investment and jobs will be created. We need ongoing R&D for new transformative models and systems. Developing a 21st century innovation economy depends on it and would also enable solutions for the big system challenges we face, such as health care, education, workforce development, and energy sustainability. These are system challenges that will not be fixed with incremental tweaks. We must design, demonstrate, and deploy new system approaches to these challenges. And the solutions should be coming from our cities.
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These are challenging times for the nation’s families and communities and our most disadvantaged citizens now face unparalleled need, with long-term unemployment, hunger and food stamp participation rates higher than at any other time on record. Yet if necessity is the mother of invention, communities and organizations across the country will look far and wide for new models of delivering services that use limited resources more efficiently, while providing better outcomes for those they serve. For rural human service delivery, that model may be the creation of regionally-centered human service providers for service integration and coordination. Read more from the RUPRI Rural Human Services Panel.
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A program that encourages companies to avoid layoffs by reducing workers’ hours could be expanded to nearly half the states this year. Legislation this year in at least seven states would create work-share programs in Colorado, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, growing the initiative for the first time in decades. Seventeen states already have programs in which employers can cut the hours of all or most employees in lieu of layoffs. The workers get jobless benefits to recover part of their lost wages.
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The nation’s high school guidance counselors get low marks from young adults, according to Public Agenda’s latest survey. Six in 10 young adults who go on to further education say the advice they got from high school counselors was fair or poor at best. Nearly half say they felt like “just another face in the crowd.” Can I Get a Little Advice Here? How an Overstretched High School Guidance System is Undermining Students’ College Aspirations is the second in Public Agenda’s series of reports on how young Americans see higher education and the challenges they face in completing college.
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The labor-force participation rate is increasing for older Americans (those age 55 and older) as older workers are faced with higher health costs and economic losses, according to a study published by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). For those ages 55–64 (the “near elderly”), the increase is being driven almost exclusively by the increase of women in the work force; the male participation rate is flat to declining. However, among those age 65 and older (the elderly), labor-force participation is increasing for both male and females, says the study in the February 2010 EBRI Notes.
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Analyzing hundreds of thousands of college freshmen, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles’ Higher Education Research Institute have found good news and bad news about students who are interested in studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The good news: students hoping to major in STEM fields are growing as a proportion of the overall student population, reaching Cold War-era levels of interest. The bad news: students who start out planning to major in STEM fields graduate at far lower rates than their non-STEM classmates, especially if they’re black, Latino or Native American.
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The Kauffman Foundation’s recent Ideas at Work features an essay about the changing nature of innovation by Nicholas Donofrio, Kauffman Senior Fellow and retired executive vice president of Innovation and Technology with IBM. Donofrio says, “The very nature of innovation is changing—I believe it has already changed, but most of us have not yet realized it or caught up.”
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U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke recently addressed a National Research Council forum on the role of regional innovation clusters—research parks that enable universities, government, and industry to collaborate—in spurring innovation and creating jobs. Listen to the audio.
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Judged by most standards, America and the world are better off today than they were a year ago when President Obama entered office. While few Americans will forget the fear of global economic meltdown that accompanied the 44th president’s inauguration and the drastic stimulus and triage measures that had to be taken to arrest the economic freefall, public optimism, as measured by a variety of opinion poll measures, has recovered. For all of President Obama’s domestic headaches, U.S. popularity abroad is up, especially in Europe, where approval of America has nearly doubled since 2006.
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For all the transatlantic divergences on the economy, social policy and the environment, many people believe that the most fundamental differences between the United States and Europe can be found over values. Peter Baldwin explores this argument in the fourth installment from "The Narcissism of Minor Differences."
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I was traveling via Los Angeles International Airport—LAX—last week. Walking through its faded, cramped domestic terminal, I got the feeling of a place that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore. In some ways, LAX is us. We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch.
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For the inaugural edition of Metro Matters, Next American City’s Editor in Chief, Diana Lind, talks with Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution about the Great Recession. Which cities have recovered best from the economic downturn? What’s next for the urban economy? And what should President Obama do to help out hurting metros? Listen to Metro Matters and find out.
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A little more than a dozen years ago, a collection of three adjacent suburban towns in the sprawling Sun Belt region of Charlotte did something extraordinary. After months of public workshops, lectures and community discussions, months of looking at slide shows to choose what kinds of streets, stores, houses and apartments they wanted for their towns, they revamped their town codes. They aimed to discourage conventional suburbia and encourage traditional neighborhood development, transit-oriented projects and farmland preservation. It warmed the hearts of planners. It drew national attention and awards and, after a couple of New Urbanist neighborhoods were built, busloads of visiting Smart Growth disciples. But as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys sang decades before, “Time changes everything.”
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President Obama’s plan to create jobs and rein in energy costs through a steep increase in money for weatherizing the homes of low-income Americans has so far borne little fruit, with many of the biggest states meeting less than 2 percent of their three-year goals to date, the Department of Energy’s inspector general said in a report Tuesday. The inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, called the lack of progress “alarming.” Far into the nation’s winter heating season, the program for the most part has neither saved energy nor put people to work, Mr. Friedman wrote.
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The Workforce Strategy Center has announced a three-part webinar series based on its recently released report, Employers, Low-Income Young Adults, and Postsecondary Credentials. With the goal of helping low-income young adults to attain postsecondary credentials, the one-hour webinars will focus on the roles employers can play, how employer involvement can be sustained, and how different sites use data to track their programs to continuously improve services to students and employers. The webinars will take place on March 9, April 6 and May 4.
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The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.
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A new report released by the Southern Education Foundation finds that Southern states are in danger of losing critical, hard-earned gains in early childhood education—the South’s most effective innovation in public education—if state legislatures in the region enact substantial cuts to pre-kindergarten programs (Pre-K). Update Pre-Kindergarten in the South: Preserving the Region’s Comparative Advantage in Education reports the South continues to lead the nation in offering high-quality state-funded Pre-K to 20 percent of the region’s three- and four-year-olds—double the rate in the rest of the nation. Southern legislatures are, however, facing a collective shortfall of almost $30 billion in revenues, and many are considering deep cuts to education and related programs.
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At the 2010 Southern Virginia Bioenergy Conference, Virginia Tech and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory will outline bioenergy research at their institutions. Afternoon sessions will focus on the process of moving the region from the planning stage to widespread implementation. Presentations include a discussion of ethanol production of Appomattox Bioenergy, mini-biorefineries, Piedmont Geriatric Hospital direct-firing strategies using warm season grasses, and combined heat and power projects of Western Virginia Water Authority. The Honorable Todd P. Haymore, Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry has also been invited. 

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A survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered. “Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. “There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools.”
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The National Economic Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) are asking for public input for a new initiative intended to address the challenges of the 21st century. The initiative, which would be similar to the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) Grand Challenges for Engineering program, would help catalyze innovations to spur economic growth, encourage multidisciplinary collaborations and improve STEM education. Responses are needed to help identify specific challenges, potential partners and models for the program.
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In February 2010, the National Issues Forums (NIF) will be releasing new issue book materials titled America's Role in the World: What Does National Security Mean in the 21st Century? A limited supply of material packets will be available FREE to individuals or groups interested in hosting a deliberative community forum this spring.
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The global economic downturn should not obscure the unprecedented material progress that globalization has brought to the world in recent years. As the CATO Institute's Daniel Griswold argues in this excerpt from "Mad About Trade," perhaps the most important accomplishment of globalization has been the creation of a global middle class.
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LONDON: While there is a broad consensus about relative decline of the United States as a superpower, political commentators have debated about emerging political rivalries. A study of recent events, however, shows that instead of a straightforward bipolar or multipolar relationship, simultaneous cooperation and competition will be the likely template of relationships among the major powers—United States, China, the European Union, Russia, India and Brazil. The new pattern of fluid and ever-changing relationships between such powers will underscore the end of the uncontested global supremacy in economics, politics, military and culture that the United States has enjoyed since 1991.
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With sustainability and green energy set to play a critical role in the growth of our national economy, community colleges represent a way to meet the needs of local businesses and residents. Join experts and practitioners from the U.S. and Europe in Asheville in April to highlight expanded roles for colleges in educating students, businesses, and communities about and for economic opportunities in renewable energy, conservation, ecotourism, and local sustainable agriculture and manufacturing.
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Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits. Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed. Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives—potentially for years to come.
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The Development, Community, and Environment Division (DCED), known as the Smart Growth Program, in EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation is seeking letters of interest from states, regions, and communities that want to develop in ways that reflect the principles of smart growth and meet environmental and other goals. EPA will provide technical assistance to successful applicants as described below. Eligible entities are tribal, local, regional, and state governments, and nonprofit organizations that have a demonstrated partnership with a governmental entity.
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Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college. The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore. High school students will begin the new coursework in the fall of 2011 in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The education commissioners of those states have pledged to sign up 10 to 20 schools each for the pilot project, and have begun to reach out to district superintendents.
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At many community colleges, students don’t get the support, like counseling and tutoring, they need to navigate through college successfully; often college staff are overburdened and students don’t know how to access the services that are available. Recent research from MDRC suggests that particular enhancements can lead to better use of student services and to modest improvements in academic outcomes.
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The number of students taking Advanced Placement tests hit a record high last year, but the portion who fail the exams—particularly in the South—is rising as well, a USA TODAY analysis finds. The findings about the failure rates raise questions about whether schools are pushing millions of students into AP courses without adequate preparation—and whether a race for higher standards means schools are not training enough teachers to deliver the high-level material.
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Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is partnering with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Siemens Foundation, College Board and Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications, LLC, to collaborate on a special program as part of new, nationwide education initiative that supports the Obama Administration's call to advance science literacy among American students. The program, called Siemens Teachers as Researchers (STARs), is a two-week, residential professional development program that will host 20 middle school and high school science and math teachers for short-term research experiences at ORNL. Applications to participate are being accepted now through March 1 and can be found on the website.
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Vivek Wadhwa recently discussed why women are so poorly represented in tech and other high-growth businesses in Boy's Club: The Dearth of Female Entrepreneurs. Wadhwa argues that the lack of female entrepreneurs is a societal failure, citing evidence that men and women entrepreneurs are similar in many respects, such as levels of education, work experience, and access to financing. “Given all the similarities in background and motivation for men and women entrepreneurs—and the fact that women now outnumber men in universities—we remain perplexed by the dearth of female startup executives,” said the author.
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The conference will be held at the Harrah’s Sheraton resort and the theme this year is “growing the regional bio-based economy” with great emphasis on the regional aspect of developing bio-based products and energy systems. This conference serves as a focal point to attract speakers from all over the country who represent new and emerging businesses in this industry as well as cutting edge research. It provides an excellent opportunity to network with other professionals and individuals with diverse backgrounds such as farming and energy producers. The conference is co-hosted by the Mississippi Biomass and Renewable Energy Council, Mississippi Technology Alliance – Strategic Biomass Solutions and Mississippi State University – Industrial Outreach Service. For more information and early registration, please contact Sumesh Arora at sarora@mta.ms.
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Ever since the autumn of 2008, when the financial crisis shook the world economy, it has been almost axiomatic that the downturn would have a serious impact on globalization. Headlines warned that a less-globalised world was around the corner. Now, with the economic data for the past year becoming available, the verdict is nuanced. Global integration has lost momentum in some areas, but picked up speed in others. Deceleration of globalization has hurt the developed West more than East Asia. And with the growth in mobile telephony in India and other parts of Asia and expanding bandwidth, the region seems set to increase, rather than slow, its integration with the rest of the world.
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It is easier to climb the social ladder and earn more than one’s parents in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada than in France, Italy, Britain and the United States, according to a new OECD study. Intergenerational Social Mobility: a family affair? says weak social mobility can signal a lack of equal opportunities, constrain productivity and curb economic growth.
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Jack Rodman has cashed in on property busts from Los Angeles to Tokyo, buying and selling soured loans and counseling other investors. Now he's convinced the Beijing real estate market is about to tumble. Rodman figures about half of the city's commercial space is vacant, and to prove it he keeps a slide show of 55 empty office buildings in the Chinese capital on his computer. There are an additional dozen, he says, that he hasn't had time to photograph.
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Two years after the nation fell into the longest recession since the 1930s, states still are groping to find the bottom of this grueling fiscal crisis amid double-digit unemployment, historic revenue drops and predictions of at least a couple more years of eye-popping budget deficits. But equally critical at the troubled start of this decade is a need to pay attention to the choices lawmakers and voters are about to make that will affect states’ fiscal well-being in the long term. In State of the States 2010, the Pew Center on the States takes a nonpartisan, analytical look at forces already at work with the potential to reshape state government in lasting ways. Addressing “How the recession might change states,” the publication raises intriguing questions that have yet to play out.
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State lawmakers are holding onto payments owed to municipal governments and using the money to balance state books. Conflict between state and local governments is nothing new. But by holding money back, state officials are forcing their local counterparts to make even more difficult decisions about program cuts and tax increases. That has opened up a new gulf between the two levels of government and sparked lawsuits accusing state governments of improperly withholding money.
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The County Health Rankings—the first set of reports to rank the overall health of every county in all 50 states—were released by the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at a briefing in Washington, D.C and on www.countyhealthrankings.org. The 50 state reports help public health and community leaders, policy-makers, consumers and others to see how healthy their county is, compare it with others within their state and find ways to improve the health of their community. Each county is ranked within the state on how healthy people are and how long they live. They also are ranked on key factors that affect health such as: smoking, obesity, binge drinking, access to primary care providers, rates of high school graduation, rates of violent crime, air pollution levels, liquor store density, unemployment rates and number of children living in poverty.
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Most Americans believe that colleges today operate like businesses, concerned more with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students, according to a new study. And the proportion of people who hold that view has increased to 60 percent, from 52 percent in 2007.
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In The Harvard Business Review, the headlining breakthrough idea (out of ten) for 2010 is that what motivates “knowledge workers” the most is not recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, or clear goals. It’s a sense of progress. “On days when workers have the sense they're making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles,” the authors write, “their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak.” On the other hand, days when they spin their wheels or encounter roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest. The article is based on a multiyear study that tracked day-to-day activities, emotions, and motivation levels of hundreds of knowledge workers in a wide range of settings.
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The romantic Ozzie and Harriet-era notion of a worker spending a lifetime with a single employer and then retiring with the proverbial gold watch is just that—a romantic notion. Career jobs never existed for most workers, and still do not, according to a study by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The study, in the January 2010 EBRI Notes, finds that the median tenure of workers—the midpoint of wage and salary workers’ length of employment in their current job—was virtually unchanged over the past 25 years: 5.1 years at the same job in 2008, compared with 5.0 years in 1983.
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President Barack Obama announced on February 3 three actions that the federal government is taking to boost U.S. biofuels production. The measures include: the final rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) of 36 billion gallons by 2022; a proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which provides financing to increase the production of biomass for bioenergy (see article below); and the release of Growing America's Fuel, the first report from the president's Biofuels Interagency Working Group. The report lays out a strategy to advance the development and commercialization of a sustainable biofuels industry.
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A national effort is getting under way to craft a set of “next generation” science standards for elementary and secondary education that are intended to reshape the focus and delivery of instruction across U.S. schools. The congressionally chartered National Research Council late last month convened for the first time a 16-member panel of experts here that has the task of devising a “conceptual framework” to guide the new standards.
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International patent filings fell by 4.5 percent in 2009 with sharper than average declines experienced by some industrialized countries and growth in a number of East Asian countries, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. With 45,790 applications, the U.S. filing rate dropped 11.4 percent in 2009, but maintained its top ranking by filing just under a third of all international applications.
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Despite the G20's work at the London Summit in 2009, there is much to be done at the Korea Summit in 2010. Olivier Cattaneo explores whether policymakers have exhausted the margins of maneuver that made success possible—and that differentiated 2009 from 1929.
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The benefits of trade have been frequently noted by supporters of globalization. Jagdish Bhagwati recently stated that a half-billion people in India and China have been pulled out of poverty as a result of economic growth stemming from trade. Singapore’s Prime Minister has similarly cited his region’s “astonishing rise in prosperity” and its “more than doubling or even tripling of per capita GDPs” as “clear evidence of the benefits of free trade and globalization.” Both make the point that trade has been the key to the post-World War II explosion of world economic growth and the widening prosperity it has brought.
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The 1990s was “the age of abundance”, argued Brink Lindsey in a book of that title. Round the world, incomes were rising; capital markets were processing endless flows of money and investment; technological gains meant that ever more information was available ever more cheaply. The 2010s, it is sometimes said, will be an age of scarcity. The main problems of scarcity are water and food shortages, demographic change and state failure. How will that change politics?
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On February 18, the Brookings Institution will host a forum on partnerships between government and faith-based and neighborhood groups during President Obama’s first year in office. The event will focus on understanding what has been accomplished thus far. Discussion will also center on what will and should happen in this area over the rest of the president’s term. Panelists will include some of the country’s leading scholars and religious figures focused on examining partnerships with faith-based groups and other nonprofits.
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The two agencies in charge of awarding billions of dollars of stimulus grants for broadband projects announced Thursday, Jan. 7, the launch of BroadbandMatch. On BroadbandMatch, users can post a profile and search for similar partners. The Web site's aim is to bring together companies, nonprofits, state and local governments, and "expert" individuals who are interested in teaming together to apply for stimulus money. According to the Web site, it was launched in hopes of creating "a stronger, more creative applicant pool" for the $7.2 billion set aside from the stimulus. According to a Gartner analyst who spoke with Government Technology this week, only $182 million of that total has been awarded so far.
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Bicycling and Walking in the U.S.: 2010 Benchmarking Report is an essential resource and tool for government officials, advocates, and those working to promote bicycling and walking. The Benchmarking Project is an on-going effort to collect and analyze data on bicycling and walking in all 50 states and the 51 largest U.S. cities. The report is full of data tables and graphs so you can see how your state or city stacks up. Inside you will find unprecedented statistics to help support your case for increasing safe bicycling and walking in your community.
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Kentucky became the first state to adopt common academic standards that were drafted as part of a nationwide initiative to establish a widely shared and ambitious vision of student learning. With a unanimous vote, the Kentucky board of education approved the substitution of the common standards in mathematics and English/language arts for the state’s own standards in those two subjects. Then, in a rare joint session, the panel met in Frankfort with the two boards that oversee teacher licensure and public higher education in the state and adopted a resolution directing the staffs of all three agencies to begin incorporating the standards into their work.
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One of the major objectives of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is to narrow the achievement gap among demographic subgroups of K-12 students. In NCLB’s implementation, the principal focus has been on minimum competency—of bringing a larger proportion of students to a basic level of educational achievement and closing achievement gaps. However, some observers believe the focus on minimum competency has come at a price. Although there has been a general improvement in academic performance, are achievement gaps shrinking at the highest levels of student achievement? A new report from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University reviews national and state assessment data for the existence of “excellence gaps,” differences between subgroups of students performing at the highest levels of achievement.
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Minority male students continue to face overwhelming barriers in educational attainment, notes a report released by the College Board. The report highlights some of the undeniable challenges among minority students, including a lack of role models, search for respect outside of education, loss of cultural memory, poverty challenges, language barriers, community pressures and a sense of a failing education system. In The Educational Crisis Facing Young Men of Color, the College Board gathered the insights and firsthand experiences of more than 60 scholars, practitioners and activists from the African American, Latino, Asian American/Pacific Islander and Native American communities, based on a series of four one-day seminars called Dialogue Days, in which scholars, advocates and representatives from each community participated in a meaningful discussion to address the education needs of minority males.
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The South Carolina Engineering Cluster has published the January 2010 edition of its Company Directory. This directory is the largest source for information on the South Carolina Engineering Industry. The directory provides detailed information on providers of civil, mechanical, electrical, automation, environmental, safety, maintenance services and more. South Carolina Engineering Companies are also providers of "Green Engineering" and can make sure that your business is using the latest technologies for efficiency and sustainability requirements.
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A slate of nationally and internationally recognized speakers will provide the most up to date information on the energy economy. Exhibitors from the wide range of energy-related fields provide a valuable opportunity to network and establish resource relationships. Energy professionals, business leaders, policy shapers and key decision-makers gather at this conference from across the state and region. Those who attend the conference will hear from the top thinkers, policy makers and opinion shapers on the energy issues―from renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, emerging energy technologies, expansion of state and federal tax credits and uncertainty in the global energy markets.
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As the global recession took hold, all ventures regardless of their technology and stage of corporate development instituted capital conservation programs until the effects were better known. While the headlines were dominated by the loss of jobs on Wall Street and at large global enterprises like Dow and Dupont (not to mention BP deciding to restructure their alternative energy strategies), smaller next generation alternative and renewable energy companies were suffering the same effects. Companies like Codon Devices, GreenFuel, and VeraSun shut their doors or declared bankruptcy while high profile Tesla Motors laid people off and continued to reshuffle their executive team.
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After falling into a deep recession a year ago, the global economy has begun to recover, buoyed by extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimuli. Led by developing countries, the global expansion should continue in 2010; however, as financial systems remain considerably impaired around the globe, most countries will likely experience slow growth in the near future. Importantly, sustaining the nascent recovery will require stronger private consumption and investment as governments’ fiscal support fades. The risks to growth appear to be mostly on the downside, including financial fragility, rising unemployment, and increasing commodity prices.
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BCG has developed an analytical framework—the Global Advantage Diamond—for assessing a company’s current market position and devising strategies to achieve global competitive advantage. The Global Advantage Diamond differs from previous global-strategy models in its focus on all four aspects of global advantage: market access to reach new markets and segments, resource access to maximize competitive advantage, local adaptation to meet the full range of needs of RDE customers, and network coordination to capitalize on the business’s global reach.
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The tussle between Google and China is laying bare a strained relationship between China and the Western world that had previously been covered up by the financial crisis. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent speech on Internet freedom, though it did not specifically mention China, marked a shift for the US administration in emphasizing human rights. Western corporations are increasingly frustrated by the business climate in China due to lack of transparency, weak intellectual property rights, and a whole host of other grievances. This is not to mention the annoyance’s caused by China's perennial trade imbalances and artificially low currency. Beijing may be trying to create its own universe, where it can make all the rules. But it's not clear the rest of the world will accept.
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Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts, today announced the National Arts Index at a press conference held at the National Press Club and kicking-off its 50th anniversary year. The National Arts Index is the first study designed to measure the health and vitality of the arts industries in the United States. The National Arts Index is composed of 76 national-level research indicators produced by the federal government and private research organizations. The National Arts Index fell 4 points in 2008 to a score of 98.4, reflecting losses in charitable giving and declining attendance at larger cultural institutions, even as the number of arts organizations grew.
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Welfare rolls rose in 2009 for the first time in 15 years, but the 5% increase was dwarfed by spikes in the number of people receiving food stamps and unemployment insurance. The cash-assistance program that once helped more than 14 million people served an average of 4 million in the 2009 fiscal year, up from 3.8 million in fiscal 2008. By comparison, there were more than 37 million people receiving food stamps in September, an increase of 18% from the year before. The number receiving unemployment benefits more than doubled, to about 9.1 million.
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“This may be the most calamitous fiscal year states have known in decades,” reports Rob Gurwitt in Governing magazine, the 23-year old bible on coverage of state and local governance across the continent. And the coming fiscal year, experts are predicting, may be almost as grim as the states run out of budget gimmicks, rainy day funds and the infusion of federal stimulus money that helped them, finally, to balance their current budgets. The states’ cumulative 2010 and 2011 budget shortfalls may be about $350 billion–a third of a trillion dollars–estimates the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
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It’s no surprise, really, but it turns out Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates is a strong supporter of the open-courseware movement that has swept through higher education in the last few years. On a new web site that Gates launched this past week, he discusses some of his favorite sources for online lectures and other learning materials. He also offers his thoughts on education reform and a host of other topics.
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The four organizations that represent major education stakeholders within each state (the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National Association of State Boards of Education) collaborated in 2008 and 2009 to develop a jointly authored report, Accelerating the Agenda: Actions to Improve America’s High Schools, to help policymakers accelerate development of a college- and career-ready policy agenda. To help state legislators’ continued progress, NCSL has expanded the recommendations in that report to call attention to important legislative achievements and showcase innovative legislation that has the potential to dramatically improve high school performance and better prepare high school students for success in college and careers.
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College- and career-readiness has become a focal point in American education, but a new report by Education Sector finds that most high school accountability systems fail to recognize college- and career-ready goals. Many districts rate schools solely on graduation rates and on student scores on basic-skills tests in a single year. Some states have added end-of-course or graduation exams, but these are often stymied by lawsuits or devalued by near-universal pass rates after re-takes and alternate routes. The report looks at various measures some states are taking to remedy this by building "powerful new data systems that track student progress after high school into the workforce and college, allowing vital information to flow between K12, higher education, and workforce information systems."
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Governor Steve Beshear announced that Kentucky Space has received the official launch assignment from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its first satellite, KySat-1 on the Glory mission set to launch in November 2010. Kentucky Space is a nonprofit enterprise involved in designing and developing entrepreneurial and educational space platforms. It is a consortium involving the combined resources and capacity of the University of Kentucky, Morehead State University, University of Louisville, Western Kentucky University, Murray State University, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, The Kentucky Space Grant Consortium, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and Belcan. The managing partner and founder of the Kentucky Space consortium is the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation. This week, NASA announced that it will launch small research satellites for several universities as part of the agency's Educational Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNA, mission. The satellites are manifested as an auxiliary payload on the Taurus XL launch vehicle for NASA's Glory mission, planned for liftoff in late November.
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory invites universities to apply to compete in the fourth annual Global Venture Challenge to be held March 24-26. Global Venture Challenge 2010 is a unique educational event that brings together graduate student teams from across the country and around the world to present entrepreneurial ideas and to compete for significant cash prizes. The event also attracts venture investors and industry experts from across the country to serve as competition judges, and provides the opportunity for all participants to learn more about the emerging energy-related research being conducted at ORNL.
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Tennessee's governor and a gaggle of corporate and college officials will gather Friday in Vonore to christen the nation's first biorefinery dedicated to turning switchgrass into "grassoline." Officials hope the demonstration plant, which also uses corncobs as raw, non-edible material for making ethanol, will prove the process is economically and environmentally sound.
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Canadians and Americans do not have the same likelihood of climbing the income ladder and experiencing economic mobility, but not because of different underlying values or societal goals, according to new data released today by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project. Sons born to Canadian fathers in the bottom third of the earnings distribution are more likely to make it to the top half of the distribution in adulthood than are sons of comparably low-earning American fathers. Of those who start in the bottom decile, for instance, nearly 40 percent of Canadian sons move to the top half of the distribution compared to 30 percent of American sons.
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In response to the global financial crisis that began in 2007, governments worldwide are rethinking their approach to regulating financial institutions. Among the financial institutions that have fallen under the gaze of regulators have been private equity (PE) funds. There are many open questions regarding the economic impact of PE funds, many of which cannot be definitively answered until the aftermath of the buyout boom of the mid-2000s can be fully assessed. HBS professor Josh Lerner and coauthors address one of these open questions, by examining the impact of PE investments across 20 industries in 26 major nations between 1991 and 2007. In particular, they look at the relationship between the presence of PE investments and the growth rates of productivity, employment, and capital formation.
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As Americans were trying to shake off the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the consulting firm IHS/Global Insight recently delivered a bit of humbling news: China will surpass the United States as the world's leader in manufacturing by 2015. Critics of U.S. trade policy trumpeted the news as another sign that we are losing an economic war to China. But China's emergence as the world's top manufacturer is nothing to worry about. Manufacturing long ago ceased to be the chief benchmark of economic might and success. It is time we adjusted our economic and political thinking and understanding Americans will not stop making things. The IHS/Global Insight study projects that America's manufacturing, as measured in value-added terms, or the value of goods manufactured after subtracting the cost of imported inputs, will resume its growth after the recession and reach new highs.
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Susan Urahn, Managing Director of the Pew Center on the States, appeared on "PBS Newshour" to discuss the difficulties that many states are having in closing their budget gaps. She also covers the issues that states will face in fiscal years 2011 and 2012 as federal stimulus money disappears. View the entire video State Budgets Collapsing Under Poor Economy on the "PBS Newshour" Web site.
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The unemployment insurance system is in crisis due to a combination skyrocketing unemployment and-in some cases-poor planning. A record 20 million Americans collected unemployment benefits last year, and twenty-six states have run out of funds and been forced to borrow from the federal government, raise taxes, or cut benefits. In many other states the situation is deteriorating fast. Using near real-time data on state revenues and the benefits they pay out, we estimate how long state trust funds will hold up.
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Green affordable housing or affordable housing incorporating sustainable building practices and materials can provide significant financial and environmental benefits to residents over the long term. However, the upfront costs associated with green building can be higher when compared to regular building practices. To offset these development costs and promote green affordable housing, many state and local governments offer financial assistance in the form of tax credits, rebate programs, tax exemptions, and funding grants. In this article, we’ll take a look at some regulatory incentives adopted by state and local governments, such as lot size reductions, density bonuses, and expedited approvals.
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The most common way of measuring the achievement gap in a given school, district, or area is by simple subtraction: The performance of white students minus the performance of African-American students equals the gap. A new brief from the Education Trust suggests this formulation is misleading, and offers four ways to gain a more sophisticated, comprehensive, and accurate picture. Meaningful differences between states-as well as between districts and schools-emerge when assessing performance in these ways, and should be considered when evaluating how much state and local leaders have advanced academic equity to date, as well as their readiness to make additional progress.
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The priorities of some of the nation’s most prestigious public universities are undermining the goal of helping more low-income and minority students attend and succeed in college, says a new report from The Education Trust. The report, Opportunity Adrift: Our Flagship Universities Are Straying From Their Public Mission, examines how well the flagships are serving the student populations of their respective states. Public flagship and research universities spend millions of dollars every year subsidizing wealthy students who don’t need aid, while providing inadequate support to low-income and minority students who do, the report concludes.
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Because investing in education only pays off in the future, it is possible to underestimate the value and the importance of improvements. A new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) uses recent economic modeling to relate cognitive skills to economic growth, demonstrating that relatively small improvements to labor force skills can largely impact the future well-being of a nation. According to the report, a modest goal of all OECD countries boosting their average PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores by 25 points over the next 20 years would increase OECD gross domestic product by USD 115 trillion over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010.
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Commerce Secretary Gary Locke pointed to severe weaknesses with the US innovation system when he took part in a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST) on January 7. “America simply doesn’t have an efficient system to take new ideas from government, academic and private-sector research labs and translate them into commercially-viable products and businesses,” Secretary Locke said. In terms of approaches to fixing these problems, Locke said that recent boosts to federal R&D spending by President Obama and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are not enough because much of the problem lies in inefficiencies in moving technologies from labs to the marketplace. Locke said the current attitude was: “If we fund it, the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists will come.” Learn more about ideas he thought were worth pursuing.
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Many other countries show clear trends toward rising happiness. Indeed, among the countries for which we have long-term data, 19 of the 26 countries show rising happiness levels. In several of these countries—India, Ireland, Mexico, Puerto Rico and South Korea—there are steeply rising trends. The other countries with rising trends are Argentina, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain and Sweden. Three countries (the U.S., Switzerland and Norway) show flat trends from the earliest to latest available survey. Only four countries (Austria, Belgium, the U.K. and West Germany) show downward trends. Almost five times as many countries show rising trends as downward trends. Thus, even if we choose to read the U.S. data as flat rather than curvilinear, it cannot be taken as a universal model: happiness actually rose in most countries for which long-term data are available.
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The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has published two white papers on the need to adopt an innovation-based strategy for economic development. Both papers focus on the needed components of a statewide strategy: research and commercialization, entrepreneurship and workforce development, risk capital, and statewide coordination.
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Three years ago, when a task force of the congressionally chartered National Research Council issued influential recommendations for improving K-8 science education, it also made a pitch for introducing scientific study even before the start of formal schooling, with children as young as 4. Concerns about American students’ performance on international science tests and the supply of students pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, fields, combined with the expansion of federal testing requirements to include science, have served in recent years only to heighten that call.
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While Chinese Web users on Thursday considered the prospect of life without Google, the issue, viewed from a Chinese perspective, seemed to boil down to this: Well-wishers who showed up to lay flowers and candles, in mock-mourning, at Google’s Beijing headquarters on Wednesday discovered that the flowers were promptly removed. A security guard from the neighborhood informed them that they would need to “apply for permits at the relevant department; otherwise they were conducting an ‘illegal flower tribute.’
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When and why do multinationals group together overseas? Do they agglomerate in the same fashion abroad as they do at home? An answer to these questions is central to the long-standing debate over the consequences of foreign direct investment (FDI). It is critical to understand interdependencies of multinational networks and how multinationals influence one another in their activities at home and overseas. HBS professor Laura Alfaro and George Washington University professor Maggie Chen examine the global network of multinationals and study the significance and causes of multinational agglomeration. Their results provide further evidence of the increasing separation of headquarters services and production activities within multinational firms. The differential specialization of headquarters and subsidiaries leads to distinct patterns of agglomeration.
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From Loch Striven in Scotland to the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, more than a tenth of the vessels that transport the world’s manufactured goods in containers are idle. For most, orders to sail will not come for some time. Although world trade, which collapsed last year, is beginning to recover, driven by demand from developing countries, the recovery is being offset by added capacity in the large number of new container ships coming out of shipyard.
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By 2008, suburbs were home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country. Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities. As a result, by 2008 large suburbs were home to 1.5 million more poor than their primary cities and housed almost one-third of the nation’s poor overall.
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Transportation reformers and members of Congress have long clamored for changes to the federal government's major transit grant program, otherwise known as "New Starts," and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood answered today with an announcement of sweeping changes in the works. The first move: LaHood's DOT will rescind a 2005 rule that elevated "cost-effectiveness" above all other criteria used to determine whether a local transit project can receive federal funds. Cost remains a factor in the "New Starts" process, but is no longer given more weight than factors such as congestion relief. House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), his top lieutenant, quickly issued a statement hailing the reversal of the Bush-era mandate, which is blamed for slowing down transit expansions in several major cities.
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One in seven American children has an unemployed parent as a result of the current recession, known by many as the "Great Recession." These 10.5 million children are more likely to experience homelessness, suffer from child abuse, fail to complete high school or college, and live in poverty as adults than other children. The economy is technically emerging from the recession and is likely to recover in the coming years. However, the same may not be the case for our children without a concerted effort to address their needs and provide them with every opportunity to work hard and attain the American Dream. The following brief analyzes the number of children and youth who are impacted by the recession, examines the consequences, and recommends policy solutions.
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The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced nearly $190 million in green jobs training grants, as authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). The State Energy Sector Partnership and Training Grants are designed to teach workers the skills required in emerging industries, including energy efficiency and renewable energy. This set of green grants is the third awarded in as many weeks by the U.S. Department of Labor. Less than a month into 2010, the department's investment in this growing area of the job marketplace is close to the $440 million mark. Seven Southern states were among the recent recipients.
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Despite calls to more closely link higher education with job needs in the United States, American colleges are only “moderately responsive” to changes in the labor markets, according to a new working paper by three economists. The study, whose preliminary results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, found that some academic programs, such as computer science, appear to be highly responsive to labor-market trends, while others, like medicine and dentistry, are largely unaffected by changes in employment opportunities.
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Academic preparation in high school plays a critical role in students’ transition to college. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, which provides information about the transitions students make as they move through high school and into postsecondary education or careers, this set of Issue Tables from the National Center for Education Statistics describes the academic preparation for college among the 2003-04 high school senior class. Indicators of academic preparation include academic course taking, performance, high school completion status, and college remediation.
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President Obama announced the award of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for clean energy manufacturing projects across the United States. One hundred eighty three projects in 43 states will create tens of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and the domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind, and efficiency and energy management technologies.
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The Missouri Science and Innovation Reinvestment Act (MOSIRA) is a key component of Governor Jay Nixon’s Missouri First Initiative, a comprehensive legislative proposal designed to get Missourians back to work, educate Missourians for the careers of tomorrow and harness innovation and technology to revolutionize government and business. MOSIRA would create a funding source to spark growth in research and technology enterprises by capturing a small percentage of the growth in state revenue over a base year from a designated group of Missouri science and innovation companies. The monies would then be transferred into the Missouri Technology Investment Fund. The Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC) will administer the funding created by MOSIRA. The MTC will reinvest the MOSIRA funding to generate further economic growth in the science and innovation industry sectors, with emphasis on biotechnology and life sciences.
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U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu recently announced that the inaugural "ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit" will take place March 1-3, 2010 at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center in Washington, DC. The event will serve as a forum for members of the scientific and research communities, investors, technology entrepreneurs, corporations with an interest in clean energy technologies, policymakers and government officials to share ideas, collaborate, and identify key technology opportunities and challenges.
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The world economy has just been through a severe recession marked by financial turmoil, large-scale destruction of wealth, and declines in industrial production and global trade. According to the International Labor Organization, continued labor-market deterioration in 2009 may lead to an estimated increase in global unemployment of 39-61 million workers relative to 2007. By the end of this year, the worldwide ranks of the unemployed may range from 219-241 million—the highest number on record.
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As the world economy edges away from the precipice, we can see the enormity of the catastrophe we averted. In the first 12 months of the financial crisis, world industrial output fell at nearly the same rate as during the first year of the Great Depression. Trade declined at an even faster pace than in 1929. But a year later, growth, albeit anaemic, is back and the stockmarket is rising again—so much so that experts are now warning against a new bubble. How was it possible? The short answer is globalisation. The globalised economy transferred the shock of Wall Street to all. But, grasping the common danger, major countries launched an unprecedented rescue operation. The task now is to collectively remedy the trade and financial imbalances that brought the world economy to the brink.
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Scientists in the United States were not overly surprised in 2008 when the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland awarded a $10 million research grant to a Princeton University molecular biologist, Shi Yigong. Dr. Shi’s cell studies had already opened a new line of research into cancer treatment. At Princeton, his laboratory occupied an entire floor and had a $2 million annual budget. The surprise—shock, actually—came a few months later, when Dr. Shi, a naturalized American citizen and 18-year resident of the United States, announced that he was leaving for good to pursue science in China. He declined the grant, resigned from Princeton’s faculty and became the dean of life sciences at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
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Nearly one in five children under age 18 lived in poor families in 2008, according to poverty statistics released by the Census Bureau in September 2009. Though high, this statistic does not capture the full impact of the economic downturn, which is expected to drive poverty even higher in 2009. However, updated poverty statistics will not be released by the Census Bureau until next August or September. To better understand the effects of the recession on children and families, this brief examines child poverty rates in 2008 in conjunction with increases in families’ use of nutrition assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps).
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The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced today that it intends to invest $70 million over the next seven years to community foundations serving cities and towns where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. The new Community Foundation Initiative will deepen Knight Foundation's focus on fostering informed, engaged communities. Community foundations make contributions to local groups from funds established by individuals, families, businesses and others to address needs in specific geographic areas. These organizations offer a national funder like Knight the benefit of their grassroots grasp of issues. The grants will help community foundations enlarge their donor-advised funds supporting the work of local non-profits.
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More than just a pleasant amenity, the walkability of cities translates directly into increases in home values. Homes located in more walkable neighborhoods—those with a mix of common daily shopping and social destinations within a short distance—command a price premium over otherwise similar homes in less walkable areas. Houses with above-average levels of walkability command a premium of about $4,000 to $34,000 over houses with just average levels of walkability in the typical metropolitan areas studied.
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What does a job training program do when there are simply no jobs available? The Aspen Institute's Maureen Conway and Casey's Center for Family Economic Success Director Robert P. Giloth explore this dilemma in an online op-ed that appeared in December in Spotlight on Poverty, the Denver Post and the Huffington Post. In Job Training in a Jobless Recovery, Conway and Giloth point to successful workforce development programs that are placing workers despite the economic downturn. They rely on sector-based approaches that work closely with industries to determine what jobs and skills are needed and match training to those needs.
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A new report from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities presents the top 10 issues most likely to affect public higher education across the 50 states in 2010. The synopsis is informed by a scan of state policy activities of the past year, an analysis of trends and consideration of events that will likely shape the policy landscape.
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The nation and many states face a continuing struggle to deliver a high-quality education to all students, according to Education Week’s annual education report card. The nation received a C when graded across the six distinct areas of policy and performance tracked by Quality Counts, the most comprehensive ongoing assessment of the state of American education. Maryland topped the nation with a B-plus overall, followed closely by Massachusetts and New York, both of which earned a B. The majority of states received grades of C or lower. The full Quality Counts 2010 report and interactive state report cards are available here. A live online chat on common standards, using data from Quality Counts, will take place on January 26, 2010 at 3:00 pm.
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In an effort to encourage original research regarding social and economic issues affecting Appalachia, the Appalachian Regional Commission will be moderating three sessions at the next Southern Regional Science Association Conference, to be held here in Washington, DC, March 25-27, 2010. You are invited to submit abstracts and completed papers for presentation at the conference, in three broad topic areas: Economic Diversification/ Mine Reclamation & Reforestation/ Land & Natural Resources; Alternative Energy/ Energy Efficiency/ Carbon Mitigation/ Biomass and Biofuels; and Sustainable Economic Development/ Triple Bottom Line. Abstracts should be submitted via the conference registration web site. Please note that since the web site does not accept completed papers, they should be emailed directly to David Carrier (dcarrier@arc.gov).
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Creating an open, competitive licensing system for university innovators is one of Harvard Business Review's "Ten Breakthrough Ideas for 2010" and the brainchild of researchers at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The free agency solution is one of the 10 ideas that HBR says "will make the world better." Current restrictions imposed by U.S. research universities on the ways their faculty can commercialize federally funded discoveries are slowing the diffusion of new technologies, according to the article by Robert E. Litan and Lesa Mitchell published this week in the January-February 2010 issue of HBR. These limitations are detrimental to the U.S. economy and universities themselves.
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In Virginia, competitions help state agencies and localities become more green. The Virginia Municipal League's Go Green Virginia initiative pits localities against one another, with opportunities for towns to learn and share best practices with one another through forums and tips submitted to an online Green Book. Participating localities earn points for doing things like formally adopting a sustainability plan, establishing LEED certifications for new buildings, and creating innovative practices for reducing carbon emissions. Cities that earn 100 out of 200 points earn a "green government" classification. Last year, Governor Tim Kaine also challenged state agencies to be more sustainable, and thirty-seven agencies accepted that challenge. The Green Commonwealth Challenge helped increase carpooling and alternative transportation, and expanded recycling programs in 19 agencies.
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The sense of optimism in Brazil is palpable and it's not just because the country is getting ready to host soccer's World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016. Brazil's economy was the first in Latin America to stage a recovery following the global economic crisis—in the second quarter of this year. What has helped Brazil to remain so resilient while other markets are still struggling? And what can it do to maintain economic growth and become, as the World Bank predicts, the world's fifth-largest economy by 2016?
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The third Festival of Thinkers brought together an array of Nobel laureates, well-known intellectuals and students from the UAE (United Arab Republics) and neighboring countries to celebrate what Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan calls “the power and importance of thinking.” Sheikh Nahayan is Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology. The event, which took place November 1-4, 2009, in Abu Dhabi, focused on nine themes that are key to shaping the future of the Middle East and the rest of the global community. The themes touched on such challenges as “Moving beyond the Global Crisis,” “Envisioning Sustainable Development” and “Promoting Science and Technology.” Additional topics discussed included world health, the globalization of culture and language, development economics and poverty alleviation, and military spending, research and innovation, among others.
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As Kraft bids on a hostile take-over of Cadbury, the chocolate world becomes even smaller and more concentrated then before. Fueling civil wars, spurring child trafficking and child labor, and destroying rain forests, cocoa has a spotted history that unfortunately has not been fully rectified in recent years. While governments, NGOs, and industry try to right past wrongs and address the issues of child labor and sustainability, the cocoa industry seems to making progress, but has not completed the herculean task. Consumers worldwide have not yet demanded a full-fledged accounting for the sourcing of this product and until they do, we cannot expect to see major changes in the cocoa industry.
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“In my experience as a politician, I'd say that when things go wrong in a country, there are two potential targets: one is the government, the other is the foreigners.” Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and former Prime Minister of Portugal.  
 
One worrying consequence of the global downturn has been a rise in anti-migrant and anti-immigrant sentiment in countries with significant expatriate populations, most notably, in Europe.
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State and local tax revenues fell 7% in the third quarter of 2009 from a year ago, the Census Bureau said in a report underscoring how the economic downturn is stressing government collections. Sales taxes declined 9% to $70 billion in the third quarter compared with the year-ago period, the Census Bureau said. Income taxes plunged 12% to about $58 billion. Together, sales and income taxes make up roughly half of state and local tax revenue. Property taxes increased 3.6% in the third quarter compared with a year ago. But as property assessments catch up with falling residential and commercial real-estate values, property-tax revenues are expected to be weak. That will have a particularly severe impact on local governments, which fund much of their operations from property taxes.
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New Census numbers released last week underscore an often unnoticed consequence of the what Time magazine called the “Decade from Hell”: a topsy-turvy pattern of population movement both across the U.S. and into its borders over a 10 year period which is ending with the greatest migration slowdown since the end of World War II. These migration shifts were affected by a series of events that include a mid-decade housing bubble, followed by the financial crises and Great Recession, in addition to the mobility implications of Katrina and the 9-11 terrorist attacks. They led to boom, and then bust experiences for much of the South and West as the decade began, and windfall gains for northern and coastal states that were major donors to the earlier Sun Belt surge.
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The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks. Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami.
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Despite recent high school reform efforts, the dropout problem in the United States remains daunting. To address this troubling issue that affects all states, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices announced it has selected six states—Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Tennessee and West Virginia—to develop comprehensive state dropout prevention and recovery policies through the State Strategies to Achieve Graduation for All initiative. The initiative will help states clearly identify their dropout problem; assess the gaps in student supports for preventing students from dropping out of school and recovering the students that drop out; and create a dropout prevention and recovery action plan for implementation that includes tactics such as state policies, executive orders, advisory councils, legislation or regulatory reforms.
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A new report released by the Southern Education Foundation finds that public schools in the American South no longer enroll a majority of white students for the first time in history and examines both the factors behind the new trend and its implications. A New Majority: Low Income Students in the South’s Public Schools finds that African American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, American Indian, and multi-racial children now constitute slightly more than half of all students attending public schools in the 15 states of the South as well as in the 11 states of the old Southern Confederacy. The SEF report analyzes this important landmark by examining the over-arching historical, social political and demographic events of the last 140 years that established today's trend in Southern public school enrollment and the implications of the South's new diverse majority for Southern education and the Southern economy.
Access the report here

A new ECS paper, Revving the Education Engine, engages education, policy and workforce leaders to explore how to effectively align education, workforce and economic development policy to meet state and regional workforce needs. Programs in several Southern states, including Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia, are featured.
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With sustainability and green energy set to play a critical role in the growth of our national economy, community colleges represent a way to meet the needs of local businesses and residents. Join experts and practitioners from the U.S. and Europe in Asheville in April to highlight expanded roles for colleges in educating students, businesses, and communities about and for economic opportunities in renewable energy, conservation, ecotourism, and local sustainable agriculture and manufacturing.
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On November 19, 11 budding entrepreneurs graduated from the FastTrac TechVenture program presented by TECworks. More than a graduation ceremony, the entrepreneurs were given the opportunity to deliver their “elevator pitch” to an audience of more than 25 Memphis business leaders. The graduation and pitch were the culmination of the 10-week program.
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The 2010 North Carolina Green Business Fund Solicitation (call for Proposals) is now open. The North Carolina Green Business Fund is a competitive grants program established by the State of North Carolina in 2007, and administered by the NC Office of Science and Technology, a division of the North Carolina Department of Commerce. Eligibility for the grant is limited to small for-profit businesses, non-profit organizations, State agencies, and local governments to encourage the expansion of small to medium sized businesses with 100 or fewer employees that have innovative commercial technologies, products and services to grow a green economy in the State. Agencies MUST have their principal base of business in North Carolina. Those interested in applying for the NC Green Business Fund should obtain a copy of the Solicitation and familiarize themselves with the application requirements.
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The 2009 edition of the World Trade Organization’s International Trade Statistics, a comprehensive overview of world trade up to 2008, is now available for download. The report was published in electronic format on October 28, 2009, and is now available in print.
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Leading in crisis requires a combination of skills and behaviors—personal and professional—that can be mastered, says HBS professor Bill George. A crisis, difficult as it is, also presents an opportunity to develop and grow. Q&A and excerpt from 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis.
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Nationwide, the recession is over—at least in the view of most economists in light of third quarter 2009 indicators. They revealed a real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increasing at a 2.8 percent annual rate, after four consecutive quarters of contraction. Most interpreted that rate of output growth, along with other signals such as increasing housing prices, as indication that the economic recovery is underway. Yet the recovery seems fragile. This edition of the MetroMonitor examines indicators through the third quarter of 2009 (ending in September) in the areas of employment, unemployment, output, home prices, and foreclosure rates for the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.
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China is leading the world out of recession and has a key role to play in the longer-term reform and rebalancing of the global economy, Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said in a speech to the International Finance Forum in Beijing today.
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Many states eliminated expected deficits earlier this year with budget cuts, tax increases, short-term borrowing, accounting moves and planned gambling expansions. But despite a slight improvement in the U.S. economy, states are now finding those measures didn't go far enough. Tax collections continue to trail projections in some states, and court rulings and political battles have blocked some gap-filling moves. Plus, some legislatures didn't fully deal with the deficits, leaving the toughest decisions to governors.
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Since 2006, more than 5 million homes in the country have been lost to foreclosure. It is estimated that 8.1 million homes will go into foreclosure during 2008-2012. Many communities worry that these properties will destabilize their neighborhoods because they are often concentrated and fall into disrepair. Such neighborhood blight is linked to increases in crime and declining property values. The following pages compare the strategies and challenges of two community organizations—one in Virginia and the other in South Carolina—that are trying to tackle the negative impacts of foreclosure through the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP).
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With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them, by Public Agenda, is the first of three reports describing young Americans' views on higher education and college completion. Coming at a time when the United States has slipped to tenth place in international college completion rates, these reports explore the issue directly from the student point of view. Based on a national survey of young adults, ages 22 to 30, this research dispels some common myths about why so many students do not graduate and details what kinds of changes—by government, higher education, business and others—might make a difference.
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Colleges and universities are turning the financial crisis into a teachable moment for their students, revamping curriculum and syllabi for business and economics courses, as well as courses in political science, sociology, American history and even English literature. The crisis not only impacts the way these various subjects are understood (and taught), but also students’ immediate job prospects, which makes understanding and adjusting to the crisis all the more important.
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In a recent entry in The Huffington Post, Tom Vander Ark, the former Executive Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, expresses the opinion that, “There is much to forget and regret about the last decade but it wasn't so bad for education.” He goes on to outline ten big advances that he thinks bode well for the decade to come.
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Of the 40 states (including the District of Columbia) that allow for charter schools, only 13 have strong laws that do not require significant revisions, according to a report released by The Center for Education Reform. The report, Charter Laws Across the States, highlights the key elements in education law that separate reform-minded states from the rest of the pack provides a roadmap for states to identify and model themselves after state laws that work and that allow for high-quality charter schools.
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Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. The key to a new battery, developed by scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden, turned out to be a green algae known as Cladophora. The new battery can hold 50 to 200% more charge than similar conducting polymer batteries, and once better optimised, it might even be competitive with commercial lithium batteries, the researchers say. It also recharges much faster than a conventional rechargeable battery. The new battery also shows a dramatic boost in the ability to hold a charge over use.
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A new, stimulus-funded research center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could help strengthen the very 'fiber' of America's automotive and energy industries. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, DOE has allocated $34.7 million to establish the Carbon Fiber Technology Center at ORNL. The project will enable the development and commercialization of low-cost carbon fiber for use in composite materials.
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Between 2003 and 2008, on the back of a growing world economy, remittances more than doubled, reaching as much as $330 billion in 2008. Now, with the world's largest economies in steep decline, many fear that the flow of remittances will also take a hit, threatening the millions who depend on funds sent by relatives and friends working abroad to meet basic needs.
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Wake Technical Community College and the N.C. Solar Center at N.C. State University have been awarded a $301,852 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy for a two-year project to educate the public about alternative fuels and clean transportation. The institutions will conduct 48 workshops across the country focusing on biodiesel, ethanol, natural gas and propane and fuel economy. The workshops will start in the spring and continue through September 2011.
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While urban and suburban real estate is still generally under pressure, the rural market is holding up better in many areas, thanks in part to buyers such as the Dawleys. Sometimes dubbed "ruralpolitans," these city and town dwellers are looking at land as their new safe investment, one they hope could prove more stable than their jobs and 401(k)s—and provide a better lifestyle. Motivations can vary, but typically there are three groups: young people buying land as an asset or investment, with vague hopes to live on it someday; exurban commuters who have jobs in big towns or cities but want to escape the sprawl; and back-to-the-land types who want to dabble in hobby farming. While the 76 million-strong baby boomers eyeing retirement represent the largest ruralpolitan segment, they're being joined by a growing contingent of 20-to-early-40-somethings freshly imprinted by this recession's pain.
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A new type of 21st century company is emerging that is transforming how business is conducted. These are values-driven companies that define a core set of values and rely on these values in making all strategic decisions.
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President Obama’s first official visit to China brings him this weekend to a country that, despite the global downturn, is increasingly wealthy, confident, ambitious — and perplexing. Over the past decade, even as China’s exports have soared, the nation has begun transforming itself from a global font of low-priced goods fueled by cheap labor into a much more diverse and complex economic power. Along with that, it has developed huge disparities of wealth.
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Homeownership has long been considered the cornerstone of the American dream, and considerable research has pointed to the social benefits of homeownership for both families and communities. Yet research concerning this link between homeownership and social participation has recently undergone critique for failing to consider neighbor- hood context. Do homeowners in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods become active participants in neighborhood improvement, or do they feel stuck in undesirable neighborhoods where they perceive little potential for change? The research addresses endogeneity concerns and shows that, when compared with renters, homeowners are more likely to have voted in recent local elections. Neighborhood context does moderate this relationship, with homeowners in disadvantaged neighborhoods being more likely to vote than owners in other areas. These findings suggest that, despite potential household-level costs associated with owning a home in a disadvantaged urban area, responsible homeownership in such areas promotes local political involvement among lower income residents.
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College seniors who graduated in 2008 carried an average of $23,200 in student loan debt. Meanwhile, unemployment climbed from an already challenging 7.6 percent in the third quarter of 2008 to 10.6 percent in 2009—the highest third-quarter rate for college graduates aged 20 to 24 this decade. The Project on Student Debt’s new report, Student Debt and the Class of 2008 (PDF), and an interactive online map include debt levels for the 50 states and District of Columbia and nearly 2,000 U.S. colleges and universities.
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It’s a story that comes with its own truism: “nothing succeeds like success.” States with higher gross state product growth are more likely to attract highly mobile and high-achieving college graduates, both self-employed and wage-and-salary workers, according to Office of Advocacy research based on the U.S. Department of Education’s 2003 Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) data base. The paper Educational Attainment, “Brain Drain,” and Self-employment: Examining the Interstate Mobility of Baccalaureate Graduates, 1993-2003, uses the B&B data to study the employment and location of self-employed and wage-and- salary workers 10 years after graduation.
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Tennessee’s Economic Development Commissioner, Matt Kisber, recently wrote an editorial for the Tennessean on solar opportunities in the state: “Last week, Gov. Phil Bredesen gave the keynote address at a symposium on the future of the solar industry in Tennessee, sponsored by my department and the Tennessee Economic Partnership. Despite a challenging economic picture, the mood at the meeting was positive and upbeat. Gov. Bredesen's advice to the gathering of industry leaders and economic developers was simple and to the point. ‘Take this industry seriously,’ he said. ‘The potential for the creation of new jobs and investment from solar is very real.’"
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President Obama today helped launch a new campaign, “Educate to Innovate,” designed to energize and excite America’s students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It builds on the President’s pledge that he would use his position to help encourage students to study and consider careers in science, engineering, technology, and innovation—fields upon which America’s future depends—and elevate those students from the middle to the top of the pack worldwide.
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The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has launched a new website called, “The Economy: Crisis & Response.” The site provides information on what caused the crisis, what the Fed has done in response, and what to look for in signs of recovery.
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As borders come down within and beyond Europe, it is not only legitimate businesses that are benefiting, but also those that produce illegal drugs, traffic in humans, manufacture fake luxury goods, and counterfeit euros—businesses better known as organized crime—are profiting too, according to a new report from the EU's criminal intelligence agency.
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The U.S. government said Wednesday it had ended its 11-year contract with the nonprofit body that oversees key aspects of the Internet's architecture, after demands from other countries for more say in how the Web works. The move addresses mounting criticism in recent years that no one country should have sole control over important underpinnings of the Internet, such as determining domain name suffixes like ".com."
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It's not Twitter or Facebook that's reinventing the planet. Eighty years after the first commercial broadcast crackled to life, television still rules our world. And let's hear it for the growing legions of couch potatoes: All those soap operas might be the ticket to a better future after all.
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With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs. From the ailing resorts of the Florida Keys to Alaskan villages along the Bering Sea, the program is now expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day.
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They’re quite a mayoral couple. From Atlanta: Shirley Franklin, Democrat, African-American, spunky, results-focused, no-nonsense. From Charlotte: Pat McCrory, Republican, white, business oriented, driving force of the new light rail system destined to remake Charlotte in the next generation. Working in tandem, with bipartisanship rare in today’s America, Franklin and McCrory have been pushing for a common action plan to build imaginative and “green” infrastructure systems for the South’s dominant “megaregion” string of metro areas, centered on Atlanta and Charlotte but extending as far as Raleigh on the east, Birmingham on the west.
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Some states, struggling to balance their budgets, are selling or leasing public property, including state office buildings, prisons and major toll ways. While a quick way to raise revenue, this strategy is attacked by some as a short-term fix that postpones making more difficult decisions. The deals afford the states quick cash, while guaranteeing investors a profit after recouping the cost of the building through the long-term lease payments from the state.
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A new compendium from the American Youth Policy Forum describes programs that have been proven to help young people successfully complete high school and be prepared for success in postsecondary education and careers. These programs represent a wide range of interventions, including school-wide reform initiatives, community-based afterschool services, work-based learning opportunities and college access programs.
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Kira Cassels applied to 11 colleges and got in to every one. Over two arduous weeks last spring, Cassels sat with her parents and weighed the costs and benefits of each program until the list was narrowed to one: an honors track at the local community college. Cassels, 18, is one of an increasing number of high school graduates who pass over top-drawer public and private universities to become honor students at community colleges. Recession-wary students are flocking to selective two-year programs, which allow students to complete half of their college education for about $8,000, then transfer to a more prestigious four-year institution.
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A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office examines the types of instructional practices that schools and teachers most frequently use to help students achieve state academic standards and whether these instructional practices differ by school characteristics. Based on a review of relevant literature, as well as data from prior surveys of principals and teachers, the three most common practices were found to be: 1) using student achievement data to inform instruction and school improvement; 2) providing additional instruction to low-achieving students; and 3) aligning curriculum and instruction with standards and/or assessments.
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An upgrade to a Cray XT5 high-performance computing system deployed by the Department of Energy has made the "Jaguar" supercomputer the world's fastest. Located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jaguar is the scientific research community's most powerful computational tool for exploring solutions to some of today's most difficult problems. The upgrade, funded with $19.9 million under the Recovery Act, will enable scientific simulations for exploring solutions to climate change and the development of new energy technologies.
Read the news release here

The global financial crisis is prompting huge government interventions to stimulate the economies of the United States and many other nations. The burning question is this: Can public-sector initiatives in the private sector be successful, or are they inevitably doomed to failure?
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The tangled web of the new trading world includes relationships between exchanges, between clearing houses and exchanges, between the securities, futures and options markets and between countries on different continents. The electronic thrust of the new world has changed the landscape forever. In this chart, which is a moving target as agreements are made every day, we’ve tried to illustrate the complications that regulators may have in getting a handle on today’s evolving derivatives world (see “The tangled web”).
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International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said he expects finance ministers from Group of 20 nations to adopt a timetable and plan to ensure the next global economic expansion is more balanced.
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Despite one of the worst recessions in history, Americans have increasing faith in technology innovation as an engine of economic growth, but are plagued with doubts about the nation's ability to maintain its global leadership mantle. These were among the telling findings of a report released today by Intel Corporation and Newsweek. While a global majority said that the economic downturn has hurt the United States' ability to innovate, the prevailing view across every nation polled was technology innovation is critical to America's future economic success. In the United States, almost half of Americans said the recession has resulted in an increased reliance on technology innovation; and 3 of 4 Americans said that technology innovation will be "more important" during the next 30 years.
Read the news release here

Over the course of the recent recession, rural economies have held up better than their metro peers, thanks to strong rural economic gains early in the downturn. But author Jason Henderson finds that the long-term health of rural American in the twenty-first century will rest on developing policies that focus on amenity-based development, entrepreneurship, and innovation in the article "Prospects for a Rural Recovery."
Access the report here

The recession and housing collapse have halted four decades of double-digit growth for nearly half of the nation's biggest rapidly expanding suburbs. Twenty-four of the 53 cities of 100,000 or more that grew by at least 10% every decade since 1970 lost population in the last two years.
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Regionalism makes complete sense conceptually. Our economies, our natural systems, and our transportation systems are, indeed, regional and require a regional approach. Regionalism can be relatively easy to impose in regions with big, dominant core cities, such as New York and Chicago. But in those regions with cities of equal size or with a weak central city, the conflicts are writ large. The real problem comes when, in the name of regionalism, decision makers become place agnostic. In other words, they can’t favor any one place in the region for fear of offending every other place in the region. The result too often is places with no strong center and blurred identity, places of no distinction and no vibrancy, places that force us to drive too much and generate too much carbon, places that are linked together not only by an economy and a transportation system but also by mind-numbingly repetitive development strung in between.
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The U.S. education system neglects the needs of our gifted and talented students, leaving the nation ill-prepared to identify and effectively serve high-potential students, a new survey reports. The report, 2008-2009 State of the States in Gifted Education, by the National Association for Gifted Children and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted finds a fragmented collection of policies and resources that vary greatly between states and local districts and that are almost universally underfunded and under-resourced. More than a quarter of all states provided no funding for gifted students during the last school year, and most high-potential students are taught by teachers with little to no training in gifted education, the report concludes.
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The wages and earnings of low-income workers have been stagnant or declining in real terms for some 35-plus years. As a result, many low-wage workers and their families struggle to make ends meet. Research evidence shows that work support—which include child care subsidies, public health insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, and other related programs—can substantially boost income and improve family well-being, both while low-wage workers are employed and during periods of unemployment. A new practitioner brief from MDRC offers lessons learned from four innovative programs aimed at helping public, nonprofit, and other social service agencies increase low-wage workers’ access to these supports.
View the brief here

The Aspen Institute’s Workforce Strategies Initiative (WSI) recently conducted a nationwide census project assessing pre-apprenticeship programs in the construction trades. Funded by the Casey Foundation, the survey explores the number, geographic location, and scope of these programs through responses from 260 program leaders across the country. To build on this work, WSI has received a grant from Casey to interview a select group of leaders from some of the nation’s most successful pre-apprenticeship programs. In conjunction with the results from the survey, the interview results ultimately will provide decision-makers and stakeholders with a picture of several different approaches to pre-apprenticeship programs and strategies across the U.S.
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From Change Papers, a new North Carolina blog on innovation: The success of the 21st century economy in North Carolina depends on how often and how fast we can INNOVATE—turn new ideas and technologies into new systems, products, and services. This conversation—The Change Papers—is about how we do just that. We want to bring together the best thinking from the people of our state on how North Carolina can become more innovative than any other place in the world—in our schools, in our government, in our workplace. Then we want those ideas to plant roots and grow wings.
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Carbon dioxide generated by power plants may find a second life as a working fluid to help recover geothermal heat from kilometers underground. Such a system would not only capture the carbon dioxide and keep it out of the atmosphere; it would also be a cost-effective way to use the greenhouse gas to generate new power.
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Nobelists are urging Congress to support a bipartisan bill, The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 (S. 1373), which would require the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research to be broadly and quickly shared, speeding the progress of science and its subsequent benefits to the public. The removal of access barriers and the expanded use of these research results can dramatically transform how scientists and citizens approach issues of vital importance to the public, such as medicine, climate change, and sustainable energy solutions. It is a crucial building block in laying a strong national foundation to support accelerated discovery and innovation, which will in turn create economic and social benefits for the taxpayers who supported the research.
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America will not try to contain a rising China, Barack Obama, the US president, told an audience in Japan on Saturday on the eve of his first visit to the world’s most populous nation. Speaking during the first leg of his inaugural visit to Asia, which will include stops in Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul, Mr. Obama said the US did not view China as a threat. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations,” Mr. Obama said in his Tokyo speech.
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The implosion on Wall Street last year was seen by many as signaling the end of globalization. De-globalisation became a favourite word to describe the worldwide economic contraction. For the first time since 1982, the volume of global trade actually shrank. Not surprisingly, the outsourcing of services, which had grown dramatically in the past decade, was considered most vulnerable to the global downturn. The pronouncement of the death of outsourcing, however, seems to have been premature.
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During the best of the times, Miguel Salcedo’s son, an illegal immigrant in San Diego, would be sending home hundreds of dollars a month to support his struggling family in Mexico. But at times like these, with the American economy out of whack and his son out of work, Mr. Salcedo finds himself doing what he never imagined he would have to do: wiring pesos north.
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America's small cities are losing some of their traditional appeal to upwardly mobile families seeking wholesome neighborhoods, a stable economy and affordable living. A review of newly released census data shows, for example, that smaller cities of between 20,000 and 50,000 residents have lagged behind their larger counterparts in attracting higher-educated residents in this decade.
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About one million laid-off workers will see their unemployment benefits end in January unless Congress acts quickly to renew existing federally paid extensions, according to a new survey and legislators and state officials. The record extension of emergency benefits that was signed into law on November 6 was widely praised as a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of Americans who had spent a year or more in fruitless searches for jobs. But many legislators, state aid officials and struggling workers apparently failed to read the fine print. The added federal benefits were built on a series of previous extensions that are slated to end on December 31, unless Congress renews these programs. People who lost their jobs after July 1 of this year, for example, would receive no federal extensions once their customary six months of state aid ran out.
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The number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by more than 3.2 million between 2003 and 2008—and a disproportionate number of those newly poor people live in rural America. Newly released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that 13.2% of Americans were living in poverty in 2008, the highest rate since 1997. In rural counties, however, that rate had climbed to 16.3%. The increase in the number of poor Americans was heavily weighted in rural communities. Rural counties were home to just over 16% of the nation’s population in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But 33% of the increase in the number of poor Americans from 2003 to 2008—more than one million people—was found in rural counties.
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Two years ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute came together to grade the states on school performance in a report titled Leaders and Laggards. In this follow-up report, they turn their attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. The focus is on eight key areas, including school management, finance, staffing, data and technology. Across the categories, not a single state earned as in more than one or two areas, and most received a host of Cs and Ds. Access the 2007 and 2009 reports, as well as individual state profiles, at the website.
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A new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University details the high cost of the dropout epidemic for both students and taxpayers. The paper outlines data for the employment, earnings, incarceration, teen and young adult parenting, and family incomes of the nation's high school dropouts and their better-educated peers from 2006 to 2008, and the news is not good. The most startling statistic, contained in the report’s subtitle, indicates a 22 percent daily jailing rate for young black men who have dropped out. Over their working lives, the average high school dropout will have a negative net fiscal contribution to society of nearly $5,200, while the average high school graduate generates a positive lifetime net fiscal contribution of $287,000.
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The state of the U.S. public education system has been the issue of much debate, particularly when more than 30 percent of 56 million U.S. students drop out before graduating from high school and a persistent achievement gap between students from different economic circumstances and racial and ethnic backgrounds remains. A new report by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, entitled “Performance Management in Action,” demonstrates how school districts and charter management organizations are improving student achievement and making significant progress in closing the achievement gap through performance management. Performance management is defined as a leadership culture designed to improve student academic achievement enabled through technology to gather, share and act upon relevant and timely information.
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A report produced for the Southern Governors’ Association presents economy- and region-wide opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and evaluates their projected potential financial costs or savings. Prepared by The Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), the report was commissioned as part of Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine's 2008-09 SGA Chairman's initiative that focused on engaging the region's governors in a dialogue about how best to understand and address climate change issues in the South. 
 
Titled "Southern Regional Economic Assessment of Climate Policy Options and Review of Economic Studies of Climate Policy," the report also contains a review and comparison of several dozen economic studies of relevance to the South, including a framework explanation of why some of these studies predict government action on climate will spur job growth and positive economic benefits, while others predict job losses and negative economic consequences.
Access the report here

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has released the study, Where will the jobs come from?, which shows that companies less than five years old created nearly two-thirds of net new jobs in 2007. These firms create more net new jobs than their older counterparts, as well as a higher average number of jobs per firm. Furthermore, there is a substantial set of rapidly growing businesses within this group of companies.
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Classroom instruction in five South Carolina school districts is “going green” with a pilot program to get students ready for jobs in the emerging field of alternative energy. The new GreenSTEM initiative is an innovative high school course focused on green technologies. It combines science, technology, engineering and mathematics teaching with hands-on student projects using wind energy, solar power and fuel cells, among other resources.
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President Obama heads for Asia this week to talk about U.S. economic recovery and reform, and one theme that we expect he'll hear from Asian leaders is this: America is leaving itself behind as the rest of the world tries to liberalize trade. The numbers tell the story. At least 266 bilateral or regional trade deals are in force, according to the World Trade Organization, and there are roughly 100 more of which the WTO has not yet been formally informed. The U.S. is a party to only five of the 64 trade pacts that have taken effect since 2005—with Australia, Morocco, Bahrain, Oman and Peru.
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The reason why mobile phones are so valuable to people in the poor world is that they are providing access to telecommunications for the very first time, rather than just being portable adjuncts to existing fixed-line phones, as in the rich world. “For you it was incremental—here it’s revolutionary,” says Isaac Nsereko of MTN, Africa’s biggest operator. According to a recent study, adding an extra ten mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country boosts growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points.
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Developing countries can shift to lower-carbon paths while promoting development and reducing poverty, but this depends on financial and technical assistance from high-income countries, says a new World Bank report. High-income countries also need to act quickly to reduce their carbon footprints and boost development of alternative energy sources to help tackle the problem of climate change.
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The Clorox Company has announced the availability of five grants of $10,000 to youth programs that enrich the lives of young people. Nominees must submit an essay by November 29th, at which point 50 finalists will be selected, which will then be voted on by the public. The winning nominations will be announced at the end of January.
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By failing to guarantee a roof over every American’s head, we’ve failed the test—as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan puts it—of “a civilized society.” On a typical night 650,000 Americans are have no place to call home. 
 
We created this crisis ourselves, by the states emptying out their mental hospitals and cities demolishing thousands of low-income rental units. The result was a huge gap in affordable shelter. Plus, by failing to restrain medical system costs or guarantee care for all Americans, we’ve forced thousands of families to go into bankruptcy. Today alarming numbers are being forced to take to the streets where their health is even more endangered by extremes of pelting rain or stone-cold nights, unsanitary conditions, sometimes violence. Yet as grim as all this sounds, it’s possible to see strong glimmers of light.
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As the national economy starts its slow recovery, 11 states and the District of Columbia are showing signs of emerging from the recession, according to a new report. Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington, D.C., are in recovery, according to Moody’s Economy.com, an economic forecasting firm. It determines where a state is in the recession based on employment rates, home prices, residential construction and manufacturing production figures. Some or all of these indicators were stable or improving in these states.
For more information, visit the link

A new report from the Workforce Strategy Center offers lessons learned from Year Up—an initiative whose goal is to prepare young urban adults for careers and higher education. Year Up offers students six months of college-credit bearing, intensive skills training followed by a six-month corporate internship. Results have been promising, with 87 percent of graduates placed in full- or part-time jobs within four months of graduation and nearly half continuing in post-secondary education. Earlier this year, Atlanta became the sixth site to offer the program.
Access the report here

The Alliance for Excellent Education has released a brief that offers a new vision for secondary teacher preparation that ensures teacher candidates possess the critical skills necessary to make certain that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. According to the brief, Teaching for a New World: Preparing High School Educators to Deliver College- and Career-Ready Instruction, educating all students to the high standards now required for success in college and careers requires a host of new skills that many secondary school teachers do not currently develop during pre-service preparation or in-service professional development. The brief identifies five critical areas for teachers to develop competency in before they enter the classroom.
View the brief here

Literacy is shot through everything at this 1,350-student Alabama school in a former cotton field 10 miles south of the Tennessee state line. It’s been an obsession for a decade, ever since school leaders tested their students and found that one-third of the entering freshmen were reading at or below the 7th grade level, many at the 4th or 5th grade level. 
 
The Buckhorn staff immersed itself in figuring out how to improve student learning by boosting literacy skills in all subjects, something few high schools do now, and even fewer were doing then. That work has made the school a national model. Hosting visitors and making presentations—including at a White House conference in 2006—have become routine parts of its staff members’ schedules.
For more information, visit the link

A start-up based in Menlo Park, CA, plans to sell a new type of anode for lithium-ion batteries that, the company says, will let electric vehicles travel farther and mobile devices last longer without a recharge. Amprius’ lithium-ion anodes are made of silicon nanowires, which can store 10 times more charge than graphite, the material used for today's lithium-ion battery anodes. According to the company, electric vehicles that run 200 miles between charges could go 380 miles on its batteries, and laptops that have four hours of run time could last for seven hours between charges.
For more information, visit the link

The 2009 Mid-Atlantic SBIR/STTR Conference will bring together federal agencies, entrepreneurs, small companies, large companies, researchers, colleges and universities, venture capitalists and angel investors, federal laboratory and university representatives, as well as experts who provide assistance to or have an interest in doing business with ventures at various maturity levels.
For more information, visit the link

SJF is pleased to announce the launch of our SJF Cleantech Mentorship Program which will take place in New York starting in January 2010, with support from the Citi Foundation. This program provides a unique opportunity for cleantech entrepreneurs to accelerate the growth of their companies by engaging with experienced entrepreneurial and industry leaders. The program will include guidance and feedback to early stage ventures from experienced mentors, peer-to-peer discussions, educational sessions, networking events, access to SJF's cleantech network, and input from a strategy roundtable on a key strategic issue. The nine-month program will begin in January 2010 and conclude in the fall of 2010; program events will be held in New York. We are currently recruiting entrepreneurs and mentors, as well as sponsors. The deadline to fill out the simple online application is November 16.
For more information, visit the link

With the convention on climate change in Copenhagen in December fast approaching, countries tend to be focusing on measures that punish carbon users. As 2009 Yale World Fellow and trade specialist Emmanuelle Ganne puts it, governments favor a stick approach. But while popular, such policies place significant costs on households and create an image of fighting climate change as a burden. They do little to change behavior.
Access the article link here

Many college graduates are passing up industrial centers and former hotspots in the Southwest, which have been hit hard by the recession, in favor of life in urban, high-tech meccas. Their moves are fueling a resurgence of brainiacs in parts of California, North Carolina and Texas. Census data released Tuesday offer the first detailed look at U.S. migration data, broken down by education and income, since the recession began in late 2007.
For more information, visit the link

How can workers better collaborate across vast geographical distances? Distributed collaboration—in which employees work with, and meaningfully depend on, distant colleagues on a day-to-day basis—allows firms to leverage their intellectual capital, enhance work unit performance, face ever-changing customer demands more fluidly, and gain competitive advantage in a dynamic marketplace. Research over the last decade, however, has provided mounting evidence that while global collaboration is a necessary strategic choice for an ever-increasing number of organizations, socio-demographic, contextual, and temporal barriers engender many interpersonal challenges for distant coworkers and are likely to adversely affect trust between and among workers across sites.
For more information, visit the link

Youth Service America, America’s Promise Alliance, and State Farm® Companies Foundation today unveiled an important new resource for teachers seeking to learn how to incorporate service-learning into their lessons. GoToServiceLearning.org is an interactive Web site housing a database of quality service-learning lesson plans from across the country, all tied to state academic standards. In a year where the need for volunteer service and civic engagement has received increased attention, the ability to offer all students an opportunity to combine academics and service as a way to improve their communities has never been more important. GoToServiceLearning.org makes this possibility a reality.
For more information, visit the link

News stories have swirled for months that the United States is losing its global competitiveness because our college graduation rates are slipping. The fact is U.S. graduation rates remain comparable to those of other developed countries, claims a new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The only major difference—the data most commonly highlighted, but rarely understood—is the categorization of graduation rate data, the authors explain. The United States measures its graduation rates by “institution” while other developed nations measure their attainment rates by “system.”
For more information, visit the link

With 2014 approaching as the deadline by which states must get their all their students up to “proficient” levels on state tests, the U.S. Department of Education’s top statistics agency has released data suggesting that some states may have lowered student-proficiency standards on such tests in recent years. For the 47-state study, researchers for the National Center for Education Statistics used student test scores to figure out where the proficiency levels on various state tests would lie on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Their results suggest that between 2005 and 2007, various states made their standards less rigorous in one or more grade levels or subjects in at least 26 instances. In 12 instances, particular states appeared to make their standards more stringent in one or more grade levels or subjects.
Access the report here

A new study paints a national picture of Generation Y teachers, revealing an openness to incentive pay. Seventy-one percent of Gen Y teachers are open to rewarding teachers based on incentive pay, whereas only 10 percent of Gen Y teachers think that student performance on standardized tests is an “excellent” measure of teacher success. The nationwide study, Supporting Teacher Talent: The View from Generation Y, from Public Agenda, a nonprofit research organization, and Learning Point Associates, a nonprofit education research and consulting organization, offers a comprehensive and nuanced look at the question of whether different generations bring different aspirations, concerns, and perspectives to teaching.
For more information, visit the link

Serial entrepreneur and investor David Rose, gives a talk on how to pitch to a venture capital (VC) firm. Rose focuses on the things you need to convey and how to convey them about yourself and your product.
For more information, visit the link

Despite the known reluctance of the overwhelming majority of people in most countries to let in immigrants, governments continue to promote policies that maintain or increase immigration levels. This thorny gap between public opinion and government policies on immigration is leading increasingly to social unrest, political upheaval and in some instances even violence.
Access the article link here

A new report from the National Research Council examines and, when possible, estimates "hidden" costs of energy production and use—such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health—that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them. The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize.
Access the report here

In a recent op ed piece in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman talks about the need to innovate our way out of the recession. “Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive,” he explains. “We not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education,” he adds.
Access the article link here

As economists, pundits and politicians debate the reasons for the dollar’s rapid fall, Robert Stevenson and his workers in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., watch the slide with glee. Mr. Stevenson’s family-owned company, Eastman Machine, has been making cutting tools for the textile industry for 120 years. A year ago, in the depths of the financial crisis, Mr. Stevenson had to lay off a dozen workers, but the dollar’s almost 20 percent decline since March has made his goods much more competitive overseas. Next month, Mr. Stevenson hopes to sign a multimillion-dollar deal in Europe that could enable him to rehire his workers.
Access the article link here

The rural outdoors has become a major asset for rural communities—and a key advantage that some rural areas have over urban areas. The rural outdoors can be enhanced through the construction of recreation facilities, but undeveloped rural landscapes have appeal on their own, both for recreation and as attractive places to live. This briefing room looks at the appeal of rural landscapes, the importance of forest landscape preferences, and the role of scenic amenities across the rural-urban continuum.
For more information, visit the link

Since the beginning of the financial crisis, Latin America has faced both challenges and opportunities. The region has dealt very well with the challenges, but still has to seize this crisis as an opportunity to make important reforms to solve longstanding problems.
For more information, visit the link

With unemployment continuing to creep up to levels not seen for decades, a lot of focus has been placed on the sheer number of people without jobs. But high rates of joblessness are also pushing more people into poverty. More disturbing still is the fact that they are likely to stay there for a long time. Indeed, the poverty rate will likely remain higher than it was in 2007 for at least a decade. Thus, in the absence of a stronger safety net or more opportunity for those at the bottom, the recession could end up widening income disparities in the U.S.—disparities that were already large, long before the economic meltdown began.
For more information, visit the link

Two new College Board reports, Trends in College Pricing 2008 and Trends in Student Aid 2008, document a wide variation in prices in a diverse higher education system. Among the findings were that, after adjusting for the 5.6 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index, average published tuition and fees declined this year by 0.8 percent at public two-year colleges and increased by just 0.7 percent for in-state students at public four-year institutions and by 0.3 percent at private four-year colleges and universities. The Trends reports also contain data on enrollment and degree patterns. Both reports, including an online tool with expanded data and graphics, are available on the new Trends website.

As the economy makes the long, slow climb to recovery, the lagging commercial real estate market will tug against progress each step of the way. Job losses, store closings and corporate cost-cutting have put office buildings, shopping centers, hotels and apartments in a bind. This slump won't have as dramatic an effect as the housing collapse, which contributed to a near-breakdown of the nation's financial system. But the nation's $6.5 trillion commercial real estate market certainly won't be much of a contributor to economic growth during the next few years, analysts say.
For more information, visit the link

Why Rural Matters 2009 is the fifth in a series of biennial reports by the Rural School and Community Trust analyzing the contexts and conditions of rural education in each of the 50 states and calling attention to the need for policymakers to address rural education issues in their respective states. In 2006-07 (the school year used in the report), 9,063,790 public school students were enrolled in rural school districts—19% of the nation’s total public school enrollment. The report is framed around 25 key indicators in five areas: 1) the importance of rural education; 2) the diversity of rural students and their families; 3) the educational policy context impacting rural schools; 4) the educational outcomes of students in rural schools in each state; and 5) the characteristics of school districts experiencing concentrated poverty conditions.
Access the report here

Based on retirement, dropout, skill, and demographic figures, the U.S. Department of Labor is predicting a labor shortage of more than 35 million skilled and educated workers over the next 30 years. What the data don’t tell you is what will happen to those who are insufficiently skilled to do the work. Or for that matter, what of a practical nature might be done to avert the long unemployment lines. Funded by the Gates Foundation, this report by the Workforce Strategy Center investigates a number of education and training programs involving employers in efforts to help disadvantaged young adults attain postsecondary credentials leading to career track employment. The report highlights successful programs in 14 communities, including the Arkansas Delta Training and Education Consortium, The Apprentice School in Newport News, Virginia, and Metropolitan College in Louisville.
Access the report here

Fortune Small Business and the Kauffman Foundation have ranked their best places to launch a business. Taking top honors for large cities was Oklahoma City, citing its stability, affordability, and deep-pocketed local investors. Other Southern cities in the top 10 included Raleigh and Charlotte. Southern cities also dominated the midsize city’s rankings with Huntsville, AL ranked first followed by Lafayette, LA, Clarksville, TN, Lexington, KY, and Baton Rouge, LA.
Access the article link here

In California, cellulosic ethanol pioneer BlueFire Ethanol Fuels announced strategic relocation of its second planned biorefinery to Fulton, Mississippi. “We wanted to move quicker, and DOE said we needed to move quicker than we were able to in California. The Economic Development people in Mississippi, and in Itawamba County, welcomed us, and facilitated the project in every way. After going through a 20-month process with our Lancaster facility in California, we expect to be done with permitting by the end of the first quarter, after starting in July, and we have already located an off-take partner for our ethanol, upriver in the Memphis area. California, which stood to gain $8.3 million in tax revenue from the Mecca project (in addition to the $5.3 million from Lancaster, which also saw taxes rise, to $6.3 million), will see the revenues and jobs move to Mississippi, after the proposed increase to $9.3 million.
Visit the website here

Voting for Business Week’s Best Young Entrepreneur has begun. Included in the 25 finalists is Augusta, Georgia native Jamail Larkins. Larkins is the founder of Ascension Aircrafts which has earned over $7 million in revenue through the sale and leasing of aircraft. Learn more about the other entrepreneurs and vote at the website.
For more information, visit the link

Average broadband speeds in 15 countries are faster than in the U.S. In Japan, citizens check in to airlines, pay transit fares, and back through their cell phones. Average broadband speeds in 15 countries are faster than in the United States. And in Finland, virtually all primary care physicians use electronic health records. German leads the United States in innovation and development of solar cells, Demand leads in wind power, Japan Leads in robotics, and the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries at the heart of GM’s vaunted all-electric Volt were designed and manufactured in South Korea.
For more information, visit the link

The power grid of the future is one of humanity's boldest visions. Gigantic wind farms in the sea and enormous solar fields in the desert are to generate the bulk of our power in the years to come. But consumers and companies are also producing energy with mini-power plants in their own basements and solar panels on the roof. And intelligent appliances are saving energy in our homes: washers, dryers and refrigerators that communicate with each other wash, dry or cool when electricity is cheapest. The information age is arriving at a new level: It's becoming the electricity age.
For more information, visit the link

Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Monday that global trade imbalances played a central role in the global economic crisis and warned that both the United States and fast-growing Asian nations needed to do more to prevent them from recurring.
For more information, visit the link

A forthcoming examination of evidence from the Making Connections initiative, a decade-long effort sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to improve neighborhoods in 10 cities, shows that poverty rates declined primarily because of the departure of poor families, while changes in the economic circumstances of those who stayed were limited. Panelists will discuss: 

• whether low-income families move because of financial and other problems or to find better homes or communities;  
  
• whether mobility supports or undermines neighborhood stability; 
  
• how federal neighborhood revitalization efforts should respond to high rates of family mobility; and  
  
• what role cities and nonprofits should play in serving families that move and those that stay.

For more information, visit the link


New Report Analyzes Health Insurance Coverage
Urban Institute( October 5, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 27, 2009


New data on health insurance coverage from the American Community Survey show extensive variation in rates of private and public coverage and uninsurance across congressional districts in the United States. Rates of private coverage are lowest in districts that have higher poverty rates which tend to be concentrated in the South and West and uninsurance remains most serious in districts with low rates of private coverage. This analysis identifies the districts in which residents would have the most to gain from health reforms that are designed to increase health insurance coverage toward a higher and more uniform national standard.
For more information, visit the link



Wall Street Journal Surveys the Housing Landscape
Wall Street Journal( October 22, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 27, 2009


Despite some tentative signs of recovery, the U.S. housing market remains vulnerable to further price drops—especially in areas where large numbers of mortgages are headed toward foreclosure over the next few years. The Wall Street Journal's quarterly survey of housing-market data in 28 major metro areas shows sharp drops in the number of homes listed for sale across the country. But the potential supply of homes is far larger because banks are likely to acquire significant numbers of foreclosed homes in some areas, notably Las Vegas, Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Miami and other parts of Florida, and Sacramento, Calif., over the next few years. Sales of those homes may depress prices further. By contrast, metro areas with relatively low foreclosure and mortgage-delinquency rates include Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Raleigh, N.C., and Portland, Ore., making them less vulnerable.
Access the article link here



Is the Class of 2009 Prepared for College and Careers?
( Dec 31, 1969 )
Workforce
Oct 27, 2009


ACT has released a state-specific analysis for all 50 states that helps answer the question: Are your students prepared for college and careers? The analysis compares data from two sources for each of the 50 states: long-term occupational projections and the recently released ACT report titled Measuring College and Career Readiness: The Class of 2009. Among the information presented in the report is a bar graph comparing each state’s projected job openings versus career interests of the state’s most recent ACT-tested high school graduating class, revealing where gaps may exist in the future workforce. On a national level, ACT research indicates many students are not on the right path to take advantage of career opportunities in high-growth fields requiring a two-year degree or more.
Access the report here



Two out of Five Teachers Disheartened by their Jobs
Public Agenda Alert( October 19, 2009 )
Workforce
Oct 27, 2009


Two out of five American K-12 teachers appear disheartened and disappointed about their jobs, according to a nationwide study, Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today. This new research by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates looks at how teachers view their profession, why they entered teaching, the problems they face, and ideas for reform. Additionally, Public Agenda examined whether teachers’ views have shifted since a similar 2003 report, Stand by Me.
For more information, visit the link



New Report on Community Colleges and Economic Mobility
Pew News Now( October 20, 2009 )
Workforce
Oct 27, 2009


A report by The Pew Charitable Trust’s Economic Mobility Project shows that community colleges are an important stepping stone for students of all backgrounds, income levels and high school achievements to improve their economic mobility prospects. Earning a community college degree boosts earnings by an average of $7,900 annually, an increase of 29 percent over those with only a high school diploma. For low-income, high-achieving high school students in particular, community colleges serve as a springboard to further postsecondary education; more than half eventually transfer to four-year programs, and three-quarters of those who transfer earn a bachelor’s degree.
Access the report here



Louisiana Tech Using Nanotechnology to Improve Biofuels
ScienceDaily( October 10, 2009 )
Technology and Innovation
Oct 20, 2009


Dr. James Palmer, associate professor of chemical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, is collaborating with fellow professors Dr. Yuri Lvov, Dr. Dale Snow, and Dr. Hisham Hegab to capitalize on the environmental and financial benefits of “biofuels” by using nanotechnology to further improve the cellulosic ethanol processes. The nanotechnology processes developed at Louisiana Tech University can immobilize the expensive enzymes used to convert cellulose to sugars, allowing them to be reused several times over and, thus significantly reducing the overall cost of the process. Savings estimates range from approximately $32 million for each cellulosic ethanol plant to a total of $7.5 billion if a federally-established goal of 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol is achieved. This process can easily be applied in large-scale commercial environments and can immobilize a wide variety or mixture of enzymes for production.
Access the article link here



NGA Release State Green Economy Profiles
National Governors Association( September 29, 2009 )
Technology and Innovation
Oct 20, 2009


As governors across the country look at ways they can help build a green economy in their state, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) has commissioned Collaborative Economics Inc. (CEI) to prepare a profile of each state’s "green" economy. This data is designed to provide a detailed, empirical account of each state’s existing assets across multiple green sectors and serve as a foundation for identifying future growth areas and related needs. The profile analyzes the scope of green business activity in each state from 2000 to 2007 (the latest year data is available) and patent activity from 1994 to¬ 2008. Such an analysis can reveal areas of comparative advantage, targets for workforce development, and opportunities for building partnerships within and across green industry segments. This information also helps reveal the extent to which a state’s business base can meet the coming demand for things such as highly efficiency appliances, renewable energy generation systems, high-efficiency building products, and low-emission fuels.
Visit the website here



NanoTeach 2009: South Regional Conference
Wall Street Journal( October 5, 2009 )
Technology and Innovation
Oct 20, 2009


The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research is the site for NanoTeach 2009. NanoTeach will introduce and equip K-12 teachers to introduce their students to the world of nanotechnology. The event will take place on November 3, 2009 in Danville, Virginia.
For more information, visit the link



Can Government Help Revive Innovation and Trade?
The Economist( October 1, 2009 )
Globalization
Oct 20, 2009


An economy's potential output depends on the amount of labour and capital available, and on the ingenuity with which those resources are put to use. Of these three factors ingenuity is by far the most important. It accounted for about 88% of the growth in output per man-hour between 1909 and 1949, according to a 1957 paper by Robert Solow which helped bag him a Nobel Prize. Mr. Solow labeled this all-important factor “technical change”, a catch-all term for anything that yields more output from the same inputs of labour and capital. It could include breakthrough inventions, like the internal combustion engine, or organizational improvements, like the assembly line or the traffic roundabout.
For more information, visit the link



Book Review: Globalization and Sport
Susan Froetschel in YaleGlobal Online ( Sep 03, 2010 )
Globalization
Oct 20, 2009


In a few short centuries, primitive pasture games relying on balls of rocks, rags, feathers or hair transformed into global events with intricate rules, with television and the internet tracking cricket matches in Australia to soccer in Zaire. Any sport can now attract players or audiences in any part of the globe, and yet conventional wisdom suggests that as an activity takes on global stature, it becomes more controlled and competitive, disconnecting from local origins. But does the process of global growth necessarily eliminate local connections or fervor? Can innovation accompany tradition? And how do endeavors that require fierce competition reveal a common humanity? Editors Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson delve into such questions with “Sport and Globalization,” a compilation of essays written by sociologists and anthropologists.
For more information, visit the link



Podcast: Globalization and the IRS Response
Price Waterhouse Coopers ( Dec 31, 1969 )
Globalization
Oct 20, 2009


In today's international marketplace, increasing globalization has created a number of challenges for multinational companies. Ever-increasing fiscal demands, competitive pressures, and regulation transparency and disclosure all contribute to an environment of tax risk and exposure. Furthermore, the IRS is more involved in the international arena by collaborating with taxing authorities in various treaty countries, sharing audit techniques, and exchanging tax information.
For more information, visit the link



Brookings Discusses Metro Planning for Sustainable Growth
The Brookings Institution( October 16, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 20, 2009


On October 13, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program hosted a panel discussion around building smartly for the future. Architect and planner Peter Calthorpe delivered opening remarks, and Brookings Visiting Fellow Christopher B. Leinberger moderated a conversation among metropolitan leaders who are utilizing blueprint-style planning to guide transportation and other infrastructure investments. After the program, panelists took audience questions. 
 
Listen to audio of the event on the website.
Visit the website here



Southern Cities Fare Well in Ranking of Healthy Housing Markets
BuilderOnline.com( October 6, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 20, 2009


Much has changed since February, when we published our first list of the healthiest housing markets for 2009. The federal government’s $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers spurred sales around the country. Companies with cash are buying land again. A handful of builders have begun emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 
 
But the housing downturn surely is not over yet, despite economists’ assertions that statistics will show that the recession ended in June. Home values have fallen dramatically this year, and some believe prices still haven’t hit bottom. In terms of employment (a key factor for home sales), all but three of the top 100 housing markets have lost jobs since we published our February story. Given these factors, we decided to revisit our list and see how individual markets have fared this year—and where builders need to be in the months to come.
For more information, visit the link



Report Highlights Sources of State Revenue
Tax Foundation( October 9, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 20, 2009


Newly released Census data show how different the 50 states’ fiscal systems are. Their reliance on various sources of tax revenue differs widely because they have different endowed resources and policy priorities. These differences are reflected in state-local tax collections no matter how large or small a fraction of the residents’ income state and local governments have decided to take in taxes.
For more information, visit the link



Working with Late High School Graduates Pays Off
PEN Weekly NewsBlast( October 2, 2009 )
Workforce
Oct 20, 2009


While we admire the staying power of so-called late graduates, is their extra effort to finish high school worth it? According to a policy guide from the Center for Public Education, yes. The extra work that late graduates and their schools put toward earning a diploma pays off, not only in academic outcomes but in every aspect of life. The center drew these conclusions by looking at the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, which followed a nationally representative sample of eighth graders through high school, college, and the workforce until the year 2000.
For more information, visit the link



Report Presents Findings on Initiative Aimed at Low-Income, Non-Custodial Fathers
( Dec 31, 1969 )
Workforce
Oct 20, 2009


Noncustodial fathers have an essential role to play—both financially and emotionally—in the lives of their children. However, of the 11 million noncustodial fathers in the U.S., two thirds do not pay any formal child support. Many of these fathers are poor themselves and face multiple barriers, including low education levels, limited work experience, and criminal records, which impede their success in the labor market as well as their ability to provide for their children. Working Dads: Final Report on the Fathers at Work Initiative presents findings from Public/Private Venture's evaluation of Fathers at Work, a national demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, designed to help low-income noncustodial fathers increase their employment and earnings, become more involved in their children's lives, and provide them with more consistent financial support. Roanoke, Virginia was one of six demonstration sites nationwide.
For more information, visit the link



Policy Brief Presents Strategy for Testing Parent Training Initiatives
Brookings Alert( October 5, 2009 )
Workforce
Oct 20, 2009


Three decades of research has shown that parent training can improve developmental outcomes for children. Recent research suggests that parent training can also reduce child abuse and neglect, especially when the training is embedded in a broader community campaign. Parent training and community campaigns warrant further rigorous experimental evaluation to determine cost-effectiveness. This policy brief from the Brookings Institution presents a strategy for testing community-developed parent training initiatives.
For more information, visit the link



NIST TIP-MEP Regional Meeting to be Held at SSTI Conference
SSTI( September 30, 2009 )
Technology and Innovation
Oct 13, 2009


On October 21, from 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m, SSTI is co-hosting a regional meeting with officials from the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) that we encourage you or one of your colleagues to attend. TIP and MEP are two of the most market-driven programs operated by the federal government. Both programs have launched new investments and innovative services in the last year.
For more information, visit the link



Secretary of Commerce Announces New Office for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
EntrepreneurshipBlog( October 1, 2009 )
Technology and Innovation
Oct 13, 2009


Last week, the U.S. government took a bold move in favor of entrepreneurs. At the Inc. 500/5000 conference, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke announced the formation of the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, as well as a National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
For more information, visit the link



Five Firms Leaving U.S. Chamber of Commerce Over Climate Legislation
Wall Street Journal( October 5, 2009 )
Technology and Innovation
Oct 13, 2009


And then there were five—defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its climate-change policy, that is. Apple today resigned its membership in the Chamber “effective immediately.” That’s a harsher tone than the other departures—three utilities said they’d let their membership lapse at the end of the year, and Nike simply quite the Chamber’s board of directors. At issue, again, is the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to the Obama administration’s climate policy, most notably the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.
For more information, visit the link



Mobile Phones Promote Economic Growth in Developing World
YaleGlobal Online( September 25, 2009 )
Globalization
Oct 13, 2009


In the last decade, mobile phones penetrated even the world's poorest communities, as established Western companies and developing world upstarts filled demand for communication that could not be met in time through landlines and traditional mail delivery. Studies suggest that this telecommunications boom leads to substantial growth in GDP per capita. As a result, the developing world's market share in the industry has grown at a staggering rate: from 25 percent of the world’s mobile phone subscriptions in 2000, the developing world accounts for 75 percent today. But this revolution might have only just begun, as three major trends promise yet another boom.
For more information, visit the link



World’s Best Companies, 2009
Business Week Online( October 1, 2009 )
Globalization
Oct 13, 2009


Any athlete will tell you that the time to train is in dismal weather, not on perfect, sun-drenched days. If you want to excel at the best of times, it seems, you need to be prepared for the worst. Companies are little different. So as the economic outlook brightens, those that have worked hard to survive the tough times of the past year are best prepared to seize new opportunities. It is these enterprises that have risen to the top of the World's Best Companies/Global Top 40 list, compiled for BusinessWeek by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.
For more information, visit the link



Climate Agency Sees China’s Efforts Paying Big Dividends
New York Times( October 6, 2009 )
Globalization
Oct 13, 2009


Little good can be said about the worst economic slump since the 1930s, but it has produced at least one piece of positive news: the downturn will make it a bit easier to slow the rise in emissions responsible for climate change. The International Energy Agency made that prediction in a report Tuesday on global greenhouse gas emissions. Because of slower economic growth, the agency slashed, by 5 percent, its estimate of how much greenhouse gas emissions will be produced in 2020.
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Article Examines Rural Brain Drain Crisis
The Chronicle of Higher Education( September 21, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 13, 2009


The most dramatic evidence of the rural meltdown has been the hollowing out—that is, losing the most talented young people at precisely the same time that changes in farming and industry have transformed the landscape for those who stay. This so-called rural "brain drain" isn't a new phenomenon, but by the 21st century the shortage of young people has reached a tipping point, and its consequences are more severe now than ever before. Simply put, many small towns are mere years away from extinction, while others limp along in a weakened and disabled state.
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Report Finds Lowered Civic Engagement During Economic Downturn
National Conference on Citizenship( August 27, 2009 )
Community & Quality of Life
Oct 13, 2009


As economic distress continues through the summer and into the fall, Americans are suffering from a “civic foreclosure” that is limiting the range and depth of their civic engagement, according to a new study by National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC). The annual America’s Civic Health Index, based on survey data collected in May 2009, is a look at the state of civic engagement in America that reflects the impact of the economic crisis. The survey’s results reflect the hard choices Americans have made during the downturn, with 72 percent of respondents saying they have cut back on time engaged in civic participation, which includes time spent volunteering, participating in groups or performing other civic activities in their communities.