Climate Change
As the World Meterological Association has recorded the warmest year on record The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 or CMP 11 is being held in Paris from November 30 to December 11. It will be the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
See some useful links on our recent blog posting.
World AIDS day 2015
Also occurred this week. The 2015 campaign urges people to rethink HIV stereotypes.
This is necessary as the People Living with HIV Stigma Index 2015 survey (the global study of the impact of stigma), revealed that one in five felt pressure from employers or co-workers to disclose their status. Since the project began in 2008 more than 50 countries have completed the study. The website provides free access to individual country reports and data on the methodology used.
Challenge yourself with Biomed centrals quiz on what you know about AIDS research
The Terence Higgins Trust has statistics about HIV aids and stigma in the UK
UNAIDS has worldwide and country level epidemiology reports and data. AidsInfo enables you to chart your own map of indicators.
Art Lives is a digital archives which showcases the work of a number of Artists who were victims.
Is your bank under stress?
Read the latest report from the Bank of England for 2015 – the tests ‘assess the resilience of UK banks and building societies to a deterioration in global economic conditions.’ The website provides details of the methods used.
The European Banking Authority has details of Europe wide tests and differences in their methodology.
The Journal Coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a Comparative Analysis
Philippe Mongeon, Adele Paul-Hus On arXiv.org
This article considers the journals indexed in both sources examining their coverage of different subject areas, languages and regions of the world. As they are used for calculating bibliometric scores what they index can have a significant impact on the resulting H-Index citation scores. It generally finds greater coverage of scientific rather than social science titles and of English language rather than non English language.
See more reports on higher education teaching and learning using our scoop.it page
Africa in Fact
Good Governance Africa are an organisation based in Africa which aims to improve government performance on the continent. Its website offers free access to its Africa in Fact publication for the last few years this contains articles discussing governance and government management in Africa.
Other useful resources on standards of African governance include:
Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) . This measures governance using 93 indicators. These include human rights, safety and the rule of law, human development, economic opportunities. Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index measures perception people have of levels of corruption in specific areas of the world. World Bank CPIA report describes the progress 38 African countries are making on strengthening the quality of their economic, social and political policies and institutions.
Maritime Trade Economic history source
The Sound Toll Registers (STR) are the accounts of the toll which the king of Denmark levied on the shipping through the Sound, the strait between Sweden and Denmark. They have been conserved (with gaps in the first decades) for the period from 1497 to 1857, when the toll was abolished. From 1574 on, the series is almost complete.
The STR are held by Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet) in Copenhagen. And scanned as part of an ongoing digitisation project. They are a great source for economic history of trade in these areas of Europe providing insight into shipping, cargoes and activity in certain ports. The scanned primary registers can be a bit difficult to read but are a good searchable primary source and the handwriting is amazing even if you don’t understand the language . They can be used to generate basic statistics on passages. The workshop and papers section is especially good has it provides access to full text research on the registers see for example this paper on the salt trade in the 17th-19th century. Note some features of the site are offered in Danish only.
Digital Asia Hub - Launched
A new independent, non-profit Internet and society research think tank based in Hong Kong. It is supported by The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and seeks to discuss digital society in Asian context. The site has just launched with a useful collection of essays grouped into five broad chapters: “Connecting the Unconnected,” “Being Online,” “Digital Economy,” “Governance, Rights, and Policy,” and future perspectives (“Onward”).
Onlinecensorship.org
Created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This new website seeks to improve transparency of Twitter, Google and Facebook in take down policies and to understand their nature and impact. It encourage users to report instances, collects news stories. Maintains a bibliography of online readings.
Also on this topic a recent report on public opinion about free speech can be downloaded from the Pew Research center website It surveyed people from 38 nations on their attitudes to free speech, freedom of the press and free speech on the internet. Did they feel some topics should be censored download the report to find out more!
Uk Disability History Month
Started on 22nd November. This year its website provides free access to a collection of resources on disability then and now there are a series of film clips showing changing attitudes in film from 1909 to the present day.
Get in the mood for Christmas with these advent calendars
University of West London has 12 apps of Christmas ideal if you want to get started with those technical skills. Excellent posts on what they do an how they might be used in education.
University of Sheffield special collections. See the recipe for Christmas
cake from 1903
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