U.S. Abortion Reporting Systems Should Be Strengthened, Not Subverted to Promote Antiabortion Agenda

U.S. Abortion Reporting Systems Should Be Strengthened, Not Subverted to Promote Antiabortion Agenda
Source: Guttmacher Institute

The current U.S. abortion surveillance system yields reliable statistics on abortion incidence and patient characteristics, thanks to the joint efforts of state and federal governments and the Guttmacher Institute. Still, a new analysis in the Guttmacher Policy Review argues that this system should be strengthened in two key ways: First, the state and federal governments should collect data in a more complete and timely manner. Second, government abortion surveillance at the state and federal levels must be focused solely on collecting basic incidence and demographic data needed for legitimate public health purposes.

While very effective in informing public health policies and programs, the current U.S. abortion surveillance system is a patchwork. Most states report aggregate abortion data to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but reporting from some of them is incomplete and California, Maryland and New Hampshire do not report to the CDC at all. The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that funds its abortion surveillance work through private sources, supplements these government collection efforts through its own periodic census of abortion providers and survey of abortion patients.

Poll: Americans sleeping better as economy recovers

Poll: Americans sleeping better as economy recovers
Source: CreditCards.com

Losing sleep over financial stress is on the decline in the U.S., according to a new CreditCards.com poll.

A national poll commissioned by CreditCards.com found that 62 percent of adult Americans are losing sleep over at least one financial problem — 7 percentage points lower than in June 2009, the last time this poll was conducted.

Today’s most common money worry is saving enough for retirement; two in five Americans say this keeps them up at night at least occasionally. The second biggest concern is educational expenses, which trouble young adults the most.

7 In 10 Insurers Unprepared For Potential Disruption Caused By Autonomous Vehicles: KPMG Survey

7 In 10 Insurers Unprepared For Potential Disruption Caused By Autonomous Vehicles: KPMG Survey
Source: KPMG

Although the automotive and technology industries are moving swiftly to bring autonomous vehicles to market, the vast majority of insurers believe the potential impact is too distant in the future to begin preparing, according to the results of the Automobile Insurance in the Era of Autonomous Vehicles Survey conducted by KPMG LLP, the U.S. audit, tax and advisory services firm.

In surveying senior U.S. insurance executives whose companies, in aggregate, account for almost $85 billion in personal and commercial auto premium, KPMG found skepticism about the potential transformation autonomous vehicles will bring in the near-term. Few carriers have taken action—not due to doubts about the possible ramifications, but rather because most believe the change will happen far into the future, if at all. In fact, 84 percent of executives don’t expect autonomous vehicles to have a significant impact on their business until 2025, while 42 percent expect a significant impact in six to 10 years. Nearly three quarters of insurers (74 percent) feel they are unprepared for autonomous vehicles today. In addition, more than half of respondents (55 percent) believe that regulators will impede the adoption of autonomous vehicles, which may help to explain why they anticipate a more distant effect on their business.

Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat

Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat (PDF)
Source: Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security (Duke University/University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)

Key Findings & Methods:

• Law enforcement agencies in the United States consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face.
• They perceive violent extremism to be a much more severe threat nationally than the threat of violent extremism in their own jurisdictions.
• And a large majority of law enforcement agencies rank the threat of all forms of violent extremism in their own jurisdictions as moderate or lower (3 or less on a 1-5 scale).
• These findings emerge from a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum in 2014, with funding from the National Institute of Justice. The sampling frame was all 480 state, county, and municipal law enforcement agencies with more than 200 sworn officers, plus 63 additional county and municipal agencies with 200 or fewer sworn officers in selected jurisdictions that experienced an incident or prosecution for violent extremism in recent years. The survey yielded responses from 339 of the larger agencies (a 71 percent response rate) and 43 of the smaller agencies (a 68 percent response rate), for a total of 382 law enforcement agencies (a 70 percent response rate), including 35 state agencies, 141 county agencies, and 206 municipal agencies, whose combined jurisdictions cover 86 percent of the U.S. population.

Trends in State Courts 2015

Trends in State Courts 2015
Source: National Center for State Courts

Leadership and technology are the central themes of Trends in State Courts 2015, an annual NCSC publication dedicated to making courts aware of key trends that affect not only court operations, but also society. Articles discuss numerous aspects of court leadership, such as judges and court administrators as “productive pairs,” collaboration between stakeholders inside and outside of courts, and engagement of court staff. A special section looks at topics in state of the judiciary messages and how interest in them has risen or fallen between 2010 and 2015. Court technology topics include developing an online benchbook, using online portals to help self-­represented litigants, and archiving records via the “cloud.” Other articles examine how Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District became a “high­functioning court,” accessibility and fairness in Nevada, and more.

Past Water Patterns Drive Present Wading Bird Numbers

Past Water Patterns Drive Present Wading Bird Numbers
Source: USGS/PLoS ONE

Wading bird numbers in the Florida Everglades are driven by water patterns that play out over multiple years according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and Florida Atlantic University. Previously, existing water conditions were seen as the primary driving factor affecting numbers of birds, but this research shows that the preceding years’ water conditions and availability are equally important.

GAO — Electricity: Generation Mix Has Shifted, and Growth in Consumption Has Slowed, Affecting System Operations and Prices

Electricity: Generation Mix Has Shifted, and Growth in Consumption Has Slowed, Affecting System Operations and Prices
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office

The mix of energy sources for electricity generation has changed, and the growth in electricity consumption has slowed. As shown in the figure below, from 2001 through 2013, natural gas, wind, and solar became larger portions of the nation’s electricity generation, and the share of coal has declined. These changes have varied by region. For example, the majority of wind and solar electricity generation is concentrated in a few states—in 2013, California and Arizona accounted for over half of electricity generated at solar power plants. Regarding consumption, national retail sales of electricity grew by over 1 percent per year from 2001 through 2007 and remained largely flat from that time through 2014.
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Understanding the Underserved Learner: The Condition of STEM 2014

Understanding the Underserved Learner: The Condition of STEM 2014 (PDF)
Source: ACT
From email:

Understanding the Underserved Learner: The Condition of STEM 2014 is an ACT report that determines underserved students’ interest and their college and career readiness in math- and science-related areas. Students’ readiness in these areas could affect their STEM career opportunities and help address the national deficit of skilled STEM workers.

The report, released today, identifies underserved learners using student characteristics that are often related to a lack of access to high-quality educational and career planning opportunities and resources.

+ Underserved students make up a large portion of the potential STEM target group. Of the 899,684 students from the 2014 graduating class who reported an interest in STEM, more than 418,000 (47%) were underserved students.

+ Underserved graduates are just as likely as ACT-tested students overall to be interested in STEM—49 percent have an interest in STEM in each case.

+ Underserved students are far less prepared for success in college STEM coursework than are students overall. For example, only 25 percent of underserved STEM students met the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in science, compared to 59 percent of students who are not underserved. Erasing this readiness gap in science would help more than 140,000 students become ready for first-year college science coursework.

Unemployment in the EU [What Think Tanks are thinking]

Unemployment in the EU [What Think Tanks are thinking]
Source: European Parliament Think Tank

Unemployment in the euro zone and the whole European Union has been inching down for many months, adding to signs of economic recovery, but remains well above levels recorded before the start of the financial crisis in 2008. The seasonally-adjusted euro area unemployment rate was 11.1 percent in April 2015 down from 11.7 percent in the same month last year. The EU-28 rate was 9.7 percent in April 2015, compared with 10.3 percent in April 2014. There are significant differences among member states in the jobless rate, which was 4.7 percent in Germany in April 2015 and 25.4 percent in Greece. The slow decline in current unemployment levels and the fact that, even before the crisis, unemployment was much higher in the EU than in many other regions of the world are attributed by some economists to certain labour market issues. High joblessness, especially among young people, is now considered a major social and economic problem, prompting calls for reform. Boosting what is the still sluggish economic growth and increasing the number of jobs are a key priority for European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This note highlights a selection of commentaries and studies by major international think tanks and research institutes on labour market issues, with hyperlinks to the texts concerned.

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014
Source: U.S. Department of State

The fundamental struggle for dignity has been a driving force in human history worldwide, and what drives us toward it is a set of universal values and aspirations.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are ideals that cannot be contained by national boundaries or ocean shores.

That is why it is especially troubling that so many people in so many places face grotesque restrictions on their freedoms and rights from their own governments.

For far too many people, 2014 was defined by suffering and abuse perpetrated by terrorist groups exploiting religious discourse and divisions to advance their totalitarian ideology, or by governments, such as Syria, sometimes acting in the name of combatting terrorism.

CBO — China’s Growing Energy Demand: Implications for the United States: Working Paper 2015-05

China’s Growing Energy Demand: Implications for the United States: Working Paper 2015-05
Source: Congressional Budget Office

Growing rapidly in recent decades, China’s demand for energy has nearly doubled since 2005—making China the world’s largest consumer of energy. That growth and the energy policies that China pursues increase the level and possibly the volatility of some energy prices, reduce the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing firms in relation to Chinese firms but provide benefits for U.S. consumers, and increase greenhouse gas emissions. This paper examines trends in China’s energy consumption, the implications of those trends for U.S. households and businesses, and policy options that might help minimize adverse effects.

Unlocking the potential of the Internet of Things

Unlocking the potential of the Internet of Things
Source: McKinsey & Company

The Internet of Things—sensors and actuators connected by networks to computing systems—has received enormous attention over the past five years. A new McKinsey Global Institute report, The Internet of Things: Mapping the value beyond the hype, attempts to determine exactly how IoT technology can create real economic value. Our central finding is that the hype may actually understate the full potential—but that capturing it will require an understanding of where real value can be created and a successful effort to address a set of systems issues, including interoperability.

To get a broader view of the IoT’s potential benefits and challenges across the global economy, we analyzed more than 150 use cases, ranging from people whose devices monitor health and wellness to manufacturers that utilize sensors to optimize the maintenance of equipment and protect the safety of workers. Our bottom-up analysis for the applications we size estimates that the IoT has a total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. At the top end, that level of value—including the consumer surplus—would be equivalent to about 11 percent of the world economy (exhibit).

Donor Governance and Financial Management in Prominent U.S. Art Museums

Donor Governance and Financial Management in Prominent U.S. Art Museums
Source: Social Science Research Service

I study “donor governance,” which occurs when contributors to non-profit firms place restrictions on their gifts to limit the discretion of managers. In a study of U.S. art museums, I find that this practice has grown significantly in recent years, and it represents the largest source of permanent capital in the industry. When donor restrictions are strong, museums shift their cost structures away from administration and toward program services, and they exhibit very high savings rates, retaining in their endowments 45 cents of each incremental dollar donated. Retention rates are near zero for cash generated from other activities. Restricted donations appear to stabilize non-profits and significantly influence their activities, but they reduce management flexibility and may contribute to lower profit margins. Rising donor governance in U.S. art museums may represent a reaction by contributors to the industry’s high rates of financial distress, weak boards of trustees, and large private benefits of control enjoyed by managers.

Psychological Testing in the Service of Disability Determination (2015)

Psychological Testing in the Service of Disability Determination (2015) (PDF)
Source: Institute of Medicine

The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two disability programs: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), for disabled individuals, and their dependent family members, who have worked and contributed to the Social Security trust funds, and Supplemental Security Income (SSSI), which is a means-tested program based on income and financial assets for adults aged 65 years or older and disabled adults and children. Both programs require that claimants have a disability and meet specific medical criteria in order to qualify for benefits. SSA establishes the presence of a medically-determined impairment in individuals with mental disorders other than intellectual disability through the use of standard diagnostic criteria, which include symptoms and signs. These impairments are established largely on reports of signs and symptoms of impairment and functional limitation.

Psychological Testing in the Service of Disability Determination considers the use of psychological tests in evaluating disability claims submitted to the SSA. This report critically reviews selected psychological tests, including symptom validity tests, that could contribute to SSA disability determinations. The report discusses the possible uses of such tests and their contribution to disability determinations. Psychological Testing in the Service of Disability Determination discusses testing norms, qualifications for administration of tests, administration of tests, and reporting results. The recommendations of this report will help SSA improve the consistency and accuracy of disability determination in certain cases.

CGS Report Highlights Completion Trends of Underrepresented Minorities in STEM Doctoral Programs

CGS Report Highlights Completion Trends of Underrepresented Minorities in STEM Doctoral Programs
Source: Council of Graduate Schools (CGS)

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) today released findings from the Doctoral Initiative on Minority Attrition and Completion (DIMAC), a 3-year study that examined patterns of degree completion and attrition among underrepresented minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF #1138814), the project collected data from doctoral students at twenty-one universities in the United States, including universities affiliated with NSF’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program.

The most recent project in a series of CGS research studies on doctoral completion trends, DIMAC has resulted in the most comprehensive account of STEM doctoral completion and attrition for underrepresented minorities (URM) in the U.S. In the context of the study, URM includes U.S. students and permanent residents who self-identify as American Indian/Alaska Native, Black/African-American, and Hispanic/Latino.

The DIMAC report provides completion rates, attrition rates, times-to-degree and times-to-attrition of URM STEM doctoral students using data spanning academic years 1992/93 to 2011/12. There is some data to suggest that from the earliest cohort to the most recent, there have been slight improvements in completion outcomes.

A key finding of the data on student completion rates is that completion outcomes vary by student characteristics, with some of the most notable differences emerging in the analysis of race/ethnicity and field of study. Over a ten-year period, 54% of students completed a doctorate. Looking at ten-year completion data by student characteristics,

• doctoral students in the life sciences completed at 63%, while candidates in physical &mathematical sciences experienced a rate of 45%.
• Hispanic/Latinos completed at a rate of 58%, while Black/African Americans completed at a rate of50%.
• women completed at a rate of 56%, while the ten-year completion rate for men was 52%.
• ten-year completion was 57% for students with a prior master’s degree, and 52% for those withouta master’s.

CRS — U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production in Federal and Non-Federal Areas (April 3, 2015)

U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production in Federal and Non-Federal Areas (PDF)
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)

A number of proposals designed to increase domestic energy supply, enhance security, and/or amend the requirements of environmental statutes that apply to energy development were before the 113th Congress and are likely to be reintroduced in the 114th Congress. A key question in this discussion is how much oil and gas is produced in the United States each year and how much of that comes from federal versus non-federal areas. Oil production has fluctuated on federal lands over the past five fiscal years but has increased dramatically on non-federal lands. Non-federal crude oil production has been rapidly increasing in the past few years, partly due to favorable geology and the ease of leasing, rising by 3.0 million barrels per day (mbd) between FY2010 and FY2014, causing the federal share of total U.S. crude oil production to fall from 36.4% to 21.4%.

Crude oil production on federal lands, particularly offshore, however, is likely to continue to make a significant contribution to the U.S energy supply picture and could remain consistently higher than previous decades, but still fall as a percent of total U.S. production, if production on non-federal lands continues to rise at a faster rate.

Quantifying Hope: Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys

Quantifying Hope: Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys
Source: BMAfunders (Open Society Foundations and Foundation Center)

Quantifying Hope: Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys analyzes U.S. funding trends for Black men and boys and describes recent initiatives in the field of Black male achievement.

Following up on the analysis in Where Do We Go From Here? Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys, the 2015 research brief shows a distinct trend toward increased U.S. foundation funding for organizations and programs that are working to improve the life outcomes of Black males.

CRS — Ballistic Missile Defense in the Asia-Pacific Region: Cooperation and Opposition (April 3, 2015)

Ballistic Missile Defense in the Asia-Pacific Region: Cooperation and Opposition (PDF)
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)

The growing number and modernization of ballistic missiles in the Asia-Pacific region poses a security challenge for the United States and its allies and is thus a concern for many in Congress. The United States has made ballistic missile defense (BMD) a central component of protection for forward-deployed U.S. forces and extended deterrence for allied security. The configuration of sensors, command-and-control centers, and BMD assets in the region has slowly evolved with contributions from treaty allies, primarily Japan, Australia, and South Korea.

Observers believe that North Korea has an arsenal of hundreds of short-range ballistic missiles and likely dozens of medium-range Nodong missiles; the extended-range Nodongs are considered capable of reaching Japan and U.S. bases there. Longer-range North Korean missiles appear to be under development but remain unreliable, with only one successful test out of five in the past 15 years. The U.S. intelligence community has not yet concluded that North Korea can build nuclear warheads small enough to put on ballistic missiles, but there is significant debate among experts on this question.

Educate to Innovate: Factors That Influence Innovation: Based on Input from Innovators and Stakeholders (2015)

Educate to Innovate: Factors That Influence Innovation: Based on Input from Innovators and Stakeholders (2015)
Source: National Academy of Engineering

Robust innovation in the United States is key to a strong and competitive industry and workforce. Efforts to improve the capacity of individuals and organizations to innovate must be a high national priority to ensure that the United States remains a leader in the global economy. How is the United States preparing its students and workers to innovate and excel? What skills and attributes need to be nurtured?

The aim of the Educate to Innovate project is to expand and improve the innovative capacity of individuals and organizations by identifying critical skills, attributes, and best practices – indeed, cultures – for nurturing them. The project findings will enable educators in industry and at all levels of academia to cultivate the next generation of American innovators and thus ensure that the U.S. workforce remains highly competitive in the face of rapid technological changes. Educate to Innovate summarizes the keynote and plenary presentations from a workshop convened in October 2013. The workshop brought together innovators and leaders from various fields to share insights on innovation and its education. This report continues on to describe the specific skills, experiences, and environments that contribute to the success of innovators, and suggests next steps based on discussion from the workshop.

Collusion to Crackdown: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt

Collusion to Crackdown: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt
Source: Brookings Institution

Nearly two years after ousting President Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s military continues to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Much like during Egypt’s 1952-54 political transition, the recent interactions between the powerful armed state bureaucracy and the influential religious organization have had a major impact on the country’s political trajectory. In both instances, the military and Muslim Brotherhood initially cooperated before ultimately clashing violently. How has each entity determined what approach to take toward the other? What does a continued imbalance in civil-military relations mean for Egypt’s future?

In a new Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, Omar Ashour examines the legacies and patterns of cooperation and conflict between the leaderships of Egypt’s military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Relying on extensive field research, he analyzes how each entity has made its critical decisions regarding the other by applying various decision-making models. Ashour considers the impact of cost-benefit analysis, organizational dynamics, factional disputes, and psychological factors to gain a deep understanding of the leaders’ motives.