United States Attorney’s Office Announces Creation of Lipoban Victim Website

R. Alexander Acosta, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, announced today the creation of a website to be used by victims to obtain current information about the prosecution of U.S. v. George Forgione and Frank Sarcona a/k/a Dave Johnson, Case No. 07-80138-Cr-Marra. This prosecution concerns the fraudulent marketing of Lipoban, a purported weight loss product, sold by the Lipoban Clinic.

+ LipoBan Clinic (US v George Forgione and Frank Sarcona; 07-80138-CR-MARRA/VITUNAC) - Case Information

Source: United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida

Gold bookmark that once belonged to Adolph Hitler recovered by ICE

A Romanian national who attempted to sell an 18-carat gold bookmark that reportedly belonged to Adolf Hitler, will make his initial appearance in federal court at 1:30 this afternoon charged with sale or receipt of stolen goods.

Christian Popescu, 37, of Kenmore, Wash., was arrested by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside a Bellevue, Wash., Starbucks Coffee yesterday, after setting up a clandestine meeting to negotiate the sale of the stolen bookmark, which allegedly had been given to Hitler as a gift by his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, in 1943.

Considered an historical artifact, the bookmark was set to be auctioned in October 2002, by a Madrid, Spain auction house when it was stolen by three eastern European thieves, along with several pieces of jewelry. The bookmark is believed to have previously belonged to the family of Wilhelm Keitel, an armed forces chief under Hitler, who was executed following the Nuremberg trials.

+ U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Florida Virtual School: Virtual Library

The FLVS library is a collection of links and sites that have been reviewed for educational value, currency, and accuracy. However, FLVS has no control over the content of these websites and does not accept responsibility or liability for the material found in them. Additionally, the viewpoints found on these websites are not the viewpoints of FLVS, nor does FLVS endorse products for sale on these websites.

Source: Florida Virtual School

Top 100 DoD Contractors FY 2007 (preliminary) (PDF; 12 KB)

This interim report summarizes data on the 100 companies, including their subsidiaries, which were awarded the largest total dollar volume of Department of Defense prime contract awards during fiscal year 2007.

1 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION
2 THE BOEING COMPANY
3 NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION
4 GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION
5 RAYTHEON COMPANY
6 BAE SYSTEMS PLC
7 L-3 COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS, INC.
8 UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
9 KBR, INC.
10 SAIC, INC.

See also: Contractors with Contracts Exceeding $25,000 (PDF; 954 KB)

Source: DoD Standards of Conduct Office

Group think: The turn to online research is narrowing the range of modern scholarship, a new study suggests

But perhaps the greatest boon is the sheer quantity of readily accessible knowledge. Millions of journal articles are available online, enabling scholars to find material they never would have encountered at their university libraries. From classic psychology studies to the most esoteric literary theory, it’s all just a few clicks away.

A recent study, however, suggests that despite this cornucopia, the boom in online research may actually have a “narrowing” effect on scholarship. James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, analyzed a database of 34 million articles in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and determined that as more journal issues came online, new papers referenced a relatively smaller pool of articles, which tended to be more recent, at the expense of older and more obscure work. Overall, Evans says, published research has expanded, due to a proliferation of journals, authors, and conferences. But the paper, which appeared in July in the journal Science, concludes that the Internet’s influence is to tighten consensus, posing the risk that good ideas may be ignored and lost - the opposite of the Internet’s promise.

“Winners are inadvertently picked,” says Evans. “It drives out diversity.”

Source: Boston.com

Adapting to the Era of Information: While some tribal colleges are working to give students access to the Internet, a digital divide persists

When professors at Northwest Indian College began giving more and more assignments requiring the use of the Internet for study and research, a harsh reality began to set in: More than a few students at the tribal college couldn’t make good use of this increasingly important electronic path to knowledge of the world.

Despite having wireless connectivity to the Internet on campus, the students could not afford a laptop computer of their own to access the Internet. Using the school’s three computer labs was also problematic, as many students were working parents who traveled long distances and had little time to stay on campus after classes to use school computers to go online. There was also the problem of not being able to afford increasingly expensive Internet access at home.

Rather than write the students off or risk seeing them lose interest in a college education for lack of the modern tools, the Bellingham, Wash.-based college that serves students throughout the state and in Idaho came up with a simple solution: use funds from a small federal grant to purchase 15 laptop computers and have a laptop loan program for students, one that runs much like borrowing a book from a library.

Source: Diverse

MIT Creates Version of Its Web Site for Smartphones (and Plans to Share Code)

Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who want to use their iPhones to look at course syllabi or check the campus-shuttle schedule can now surf to a version of the MIT Web site designed especially for cellphones. And officials plan to let other colleges use the Mobile Web project software.

The goal of the project is to create MIT Web pages that load quickly and look good on all kinds of Web-capable cellphones, often referred to as smartphones. Most college Web sites are designed for big monitors and fast Internet connections, but those pages are often hard to navigate on smartphones. So MIT officials are now encouraging cellphone users to use the new mobile Web site, at m.mit.edu, when visiting the Web site from their phones.

Source: Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education)

7 Things You Should Know About Ustream

Ustream is an interactive web streaming platform that lets users broadcast their own channels on the Ustream network or on a third-party website such as MySpace or Facebook. Ustream offers a platform for users to host events, promote their own shows, or set up interactive conversations with participants across the globe. Ustream’s broadcasting model offers an attractive new way for Internet broadcasters to connect with audiences, allowing dialogue between users and opportunities to build connections across the globe. Ustream gives faculty free, easy-to-use options for streaming video to geographically disparate audiences, and the service also introduces new frontiers for authentic assessment in the classroom.

+ Full Document (PDF; 152 KB)

Source: EDUCAUSE

Florida’s Museums in the Sea

Welcome to the Florida “Museums in the Sea” website. Here you will find information about all of Florida’s Underwater Archaeological Preserves. Click on the name of a ship to explore the remains located at that site.

Source: Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Archaeological Research

Glossary of Teen Slang Around Drugs & Alcohol

Below are teen slang terms that are popular references for drugs, alcohol and some of the behaviors associated with them. Included are examples of sentences that offer the context in which they can be used.

Source: Caron Treatment Centers

Online Threats to Youth: Solicitation, Harassment, and Problematic Content (PDF; 395 KB)

In the United States, youth have rapidly integrated the Internet into their daily lives (Center for the Digital Future, 2008; Madden, 2006). The recent rise of social media has provided youth with a powerful space for socializing, learning, and engaging in public life (Ito et al., Forthcoming; boyd, 2007; Gross, 2004; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008). The majority of parents say the Internet is a “positive influence” in their children’s lives, while only 7% say it is a “negative influence” (Rideout, 2007).

While there is little doubt that social media can be beneficial for youth, grave concerns have emerged with respect to the dangers posed by networked technology. Many of the contemporary fears parallel those of earlier technologies (Nye, 2007; Springhall, 1998; Potter & Potter, 2001) and unmediated public spaces where youth congregate (Valentine, 2004).

Recently, a “moral panic” (Cohen, 1972; Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994) erupted over the potential dangers presented by social network sites (Marwick, 2008; Cassell & Cramer, 2007). As with earlier moral panics (Victor, 1993), media-driven fear mongering was disproportionate to the number of problematic incidents, the actual threats youth face, and the data about youth risks.

That said, there are serious questions that must be addressed to provide an accurate picture of the online environment: 1. What threats do youth face when going online? 2. Where and when are youth most at risk? 3. Which youth are at risk and what makes some youth more at risk than others? 4. How are different threats interrelated?

The goal of this literature review is to map out what is currently known about the risks youth face and the youth who face them to further discussions about online safety. We believe that the first step in helping youth is to understand the problems that are occurring. The best solutions will be those that address real dangers, real risks, and the interrelated dynamics that put youth at risk. We do not discuss potential solutions, but we feel as though the research described in this document is essential for those who are looking to develop solutions.

Source: Internet Safety Technical Task Force

Find Government Employees and Salaries

In the past few years, general circulation newspapers have furthered the cause of government transparency by providing searchable databases of government employees and their salaries. Although these are federal, state, county and municipal government public records the corresponding government agencies have not made these available at their Web sites. Government agency Web sites sometimes post a staff list or employee directory — not salaries — with name, telephone number and email. Often, school districts don’t list staff beyond those in the top level administration, but school sites that have their own Web pages may have a staff and faculty directory with names of administrators and teachers. An example of a very flexible school staff and teacher directory is hosted by the Ventura County Office of Education. Search by district, school or employee last name to find the district, school site, job title and phone number (Internet Explorer, only). I’ve endeavored to compile links to all of the government pay databases hosted at newspaper sites on a page called Government Pay.

The disadvantage of the separate databases is you have to know which one to search in order to verify your subject’s employment. The beta site, myDanwei, is a nascent attempt at a cross-agency compilation of government employee names, salaries, job titles and departments. Select the link,
National public employee salary database, to search by partial name, county, state, agency or institution. There’s only one search box, but you can enter a combination of keywords. The words (without quotation marks) “physician santa clara” will return a list of doctors who work for the County of Santa Clara, California. The extent of the coverage becomes apparent with various queries. The keywords “Weir Idaho” doesn’t return any records, but “Weir Washington” results in a handful of names from Washington State agencies. Just enter a state name into the search box to find out if any data is included from that location and from which government departments.

Source: PIbuzz.com

Bloggers take German national library to task

For someone writing under the name Robert Basic, it seemed too good to be true.

“My parents are never going to believe I’m going to be catalogued by the German national library,” the blogger wrote about the library’s plans to collect things German on the web to add to its century-old collection of the nation’s books.

But such expressions of delight were drowned out by outraged disbelief as websites reported that the Nationalbibliothek, based in Frankfurt and Leipzig, could force every private website owner and amateur blogger to submit material – and fine the noncompliant up to €10,000 ($13,000, £8,500).

Blogs have since been alive with jokes about German thoroughness, and calls to resist.

Source: FT.com

Schoolhouse Rock Is No Longer Enough: The Presidential Signing Statements Controversy and Its Implications for Library Professionals (PDF; 140 KB)

Presidential signing statements, a potent but previously little-discussed lawmaking device, have recently become the focus of fierce controversy both inside and outside the academy. The author presents an overview of the debates, identifies informational gaps that characterize the subject area, and reviews practical and policy implications for library professionals.

Source: I-Wei Wang, Reference Librarian, Berkeley (Lexis/Nexis Call for Paper Award)
Hat tip: Law Librarian Blog

Bargains For The Holidays May Be Just Clicks Away

With the economy in a tailspin, consumers may be looking for every edge they can get this holiday season when they shop for bargains.

Many are heading to the Web, where retail sales are expected to reach $44 billion in November and December, Forrester Research said last month. That’s a 12 percent increase over last holiday season, but online retailers are accustomed to bigger gains.
…
Want to get in on the savings? Here are some Web sites that can help you find coupons, discount codes, free shipping and the lowest price out there, even if you prefer to pound the pavement to find the perfect gift.

Source: TBO.com