Thursday, 7 January 2016

Social Science sites of the week



Happy new year
Welcome to 2016 with the latest update of new and interesting sites for social scientists
 

New Year’s resolutions.
Try  the RSA social brain quiz to find out what new year’s resolution you should choose and how you can stick to it.
It is based on the findings of a recent Royal Society report Easier Said than done – why we struggle with healthy behaviours and what can be done about it. This 33 page report has some practical tips on positive lifestyle changes to encourage healthy walking, eating, sleeping and talking which are based on psychological research
See some links to insights from psychology research on our recent blog posting.


Central African Republic elections.
Elections finally took place on the 31st December. Find out more about the human rights background plus get news reports and  press releases from the 2015 election observation teams on our elections blog.

Fat Cat Tuesday
On the 5th January 2016 top bosses salaries  FTSE CEOS will already have exceeded the average annual pay of many workers (£27,645) according to the High Pay Centre
Price Waterhouse Cooper conducts regular surveys on the state of executive pay in the UK
According to a recent survey from CIPD 71% of employees think CEO pay is too high in the UK.
In an associated report on the behavioural impact of high wages on CEO behaviour and motivation CIPD recommended that pay rises became evidence based.
NCVO conducted an inquiry into executive pay in the charity sector. The final report from 2014 can be downloaded from their website
Norton Rose Fulbright maintain a UK Corporate Governance portal which as a really useful collection of links to recent reports from the UK government, trade associations and other bodies on executive pay. These cover regulation, performance related pay and ethics related issues.

First Anniversary of Charlie Hebdo attacks
The University of Oxford has translated and made free on the Internet a book on tolerance. With extracts from key French philosophers and writers. The original text was
La Société Française d'Etude du Dix-Huitième Siècle (ed.), Tolerance: le combat des Lumières (Paris: SFEDS, 2015). Contents include:
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, 1789
Voltaire, ‘Prayer to God’, from Treatise on Tolerance, 1763
Three aphorisms from Denis Diderot, Philosophical Thoughts, 1746; Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 1748; and Voltaire, Portable Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
Nicolas de Condorcet, 'On Admitting Women to the Rights of Citizenship', 1790
John Locke, Letter on Toleration, 1686

Harvard University is in the middle of creating a physical and virtual archive of materials relating to the 2015 attack. See an explanation of the archive on its own pages. This page has some preliminary data visualizations of georeferenced tweets using the Je suis charlie hashtag
New York Times Learning Network lesson plans to encourage students to consider concepts relating to journalism and blasphemy
Newsmuseum – has archived front pages of over 900 newspapers which enables some brief comparison of coverage and headlines across the world. January 8th 2015 coverage and
The Internet Archive has preserved over 3,000 pages from a variety of institutions and social media preserving contemporary responses to the attacks


What makes cities competitive?
Find out by downloading a recent working paper from the World Bank
Kilroy, Austin Francis Louis; Mukim, Megha; Negri, Stefano. 2015. Competitive cities for jobs and growth : what, who, and how. Competitive cities for jobs and growth. Its objective is to create a knowledge base on what  makes cities competitive, to improve the understanding of  job creation at the city level, and to establish a foundation for
a community of practice on this topic
The A.T. Kearney Global Cities Index (GCI) ranks 125 cities according to 27criteria  across five main themes  business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement.
JLL’s Global300 cities has a ranking of cities worldwide attracting the most commercial real estate activity.
Cities of Opportunity Price Waterhouse Cooper ranks 30 leading cities in terms of social and economic factors such as cost, transport infrastructure, safety, ease of doing business

‘Many Postgraduates are overwhelmed by their workloads’
According to the results of the latest Postgraduate Taught Experience survey published by the Higher Education Academy 72,000 students from over a 100 institutions took part giving their opinion on workloads, motivation, and quality of teaching and learning.
Some potentially interesting points arising for service providers problems relating to workload – can libraries help students organise their time / research more effectively/ develop time management skills?
Employability – large numbers of students mention that a key motivation in enrolling was to improve career prospects. Can libraries highlight / teach skills that will help students in the workplace or find jobs?
Find more free reports on HE education, teaching and learning on our scoop,it page

Agents of Future Promise: children’s burden or benefit?
During 2015 researchers at the University of Leeds, Cardiff and Huddersfield. Examined ideology in the portrayal of children in British and French history from the 19th century to the post war era. The project website now has videoed discussion from the end of project workshop help in September 2015. Topics covered include toys and gender, toys and the British empire, the Vichy regime and children, the use of children to envisage the future in wartime Britain.

Top 100  Global Innovators.
Thomson Reuters has just released its annual ranking of the most innovative global organisations .  It analyses patent  and citation data across four main criteria: volume, success, globalization and
influence using Thomson Reuters solutions including Derwent World Patents
Index (DWPI), Thomson Innovation and Derwent Patent Citations Index (PCI). The site includes breakdowns by region and industry as well as details on the methodology used.

Coming soon: 2016 US elections.
RealClearPolitics: Election 2016
This site from RealClearPolitics offers readers daily updates on polls, interviews, speeches, and other news related to the 2016 election. It currently includes polls relating to the Republican and Democratic nominations.

Stunning images of Earth
As Tim Peake and space continue to dominate the news. View some amazing images of earth from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. The site also has some free downloads of lunaserv mapping

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