“UNC re-structures international studies major (The Daily Tar Heel)” plus 3 more |
- UNC re-structures international studies major (The Daily Tar Heel)
- Retrospective of Influential Architect's Career, Concludes International Tour at Yale (Art Daily)
- Number of storms may drop, but more could be intense, study says (The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News)
- Is Hawaii a Candidate for International ICT Assistance? (SYS-CON Media)
| UNC re-structures international studies major (The Daily Tar Heel) Posted: 21 Feb 2010 08:29 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Being international is no longer good enough. UNC is going global. Effective July 1, the International and Area Studies major will be renamed Global Studies, have more courses that qualify for the major and receive roughly an extra $60,000 to $80,000 annually from the University. A new lecturer position is also being hired for the next school year that will help students find internships. The extra money will support the new faculty position, additional funding for events and a budget for faculty development, said Andy Reynolds, chairman of the International and Area Studies curriculum. The new major will replace the quickly growing International and Area Studies major. The major has grown from about 300 students in 2001 to more than 700 in 2009, Reynolds said. There are currently 749 declared International and Area Studies majors. Changing the curriculum will let students count more courses toward their major and reflects the school's continued push toward more international initiatives. "The name change reflects the whole trend of the University," Reynolds said. "Global Studies is a new, emerging field. It's more current." There are two main reasons UNC decided in favor of the name change, Reynolds said. The first is that it would recognize UNC as a leader in a new field, because there are few universities of the size and caliber of UNC that have Global Studies programs. "It's about being a part of the discussion of what this field becomes," Reynolds said. The second reason for the change is that it will allow the curriculum to properly accept courses that are relevant to the major. "International Studies simply didn't allow us to run the type of major we wanted," Reynolds said. With the curriculum being expanded to incorporate courses with "global relevance," such as those involving North America or relating to pre-1850 history, students have the option of counting a wider range of classes toward their degree. "If you were studying Africa, shouldn't you also be studying the issues that caused African colonization and shaped that continent?" Reynolds said. "Students need to have a grasp for what happened in previous centuries as well." Courses such as those in the religious studies or classics departments, which weren't counted toward the international studies major, could also be used to connect global studies to other disciplines, Reynolds said. Students will be able to petition courses to count toward their major. Despite its growth, the Curriculum in Global Studies is not seeking to become a full academic department. This is due to the multidisciplinary nature of the program and faculty members that hold appointments in other areas of the College of Arts and Sciences. Reynolds said he hopes offering the global studies major will keep UNC ahead of the curve, making it a leader in the field. Global studies programs are becoming increasingly popular across the country. Universities that already have programs include University of California at Los Angeles, University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Minnesota. "I think the fact that students have been so interested in this curriculum has led UNC to want to continue encouraging internationalization on campus," said Jonathan Hartlyn, senior associate dean for social sciences and international programs for the College of Arts and Sciences. Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Retrospective of Influential Architect's Career, Concludes International Tour at Yale (Art Daily) Posted: 21 Feb 2010 07:44 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.
NEW HAVEN, CT.- Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the critically acclaimed exhibition that explores the career of one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century, concludes its international tour with a presentation at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale School of Architecture Gallery. It is the first major museum retrospective devoted to the Finnish-born architect—who both studied and worked at Yale—and was in large part enabled by the 2002 creation of the Eero Saarinen Collection at the University's Sterling Memorial Library.
| Eero Saarinen (1910–61) was one of the most prolific, unorthodox, and controversial masters of twentieth-century architecture. Using progressive construction techniques and a personal aesthetic, he defied modernist doctrine to create some of the era's iconic designs, ranging from the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport, in New York, to the 630-foot-high Gateway Arch, in Saint Louis, to the General Motors headquarters, outside Detroit, to the "tulip chair." Together, these and other designs helped to create the international image of the United States in the decades following World War II. Robert A.M. Stern, Dean, Yale School of Architecture, states, "The School of Architecture is delighted to have played a central part in the creation of Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future. It is fitting that the exhibition is concluding its tour at Yale, where Saarinen studied architecture and designed some of his most significant buildings, and where the major archive devoted to his work resides. Moreover, the show is installed within two masterpieces by contemporaries of Saarinen: Louis Kahn's building for the Yale University Art Gallery and the School of Architecture's Paul Rudolph Hall. The resulting dialogue among three of the greatest, most distinctive architects of their time promises to be a powerful architectural experience." Jock Reynolds, The Henry J. Heinz II Director, Yale University Art Gallery, adds, "The Gallery is pleased to be collaborating with the School of Architecture to mark Eero Saarinen's centennial year with this exhibition. It is apt that the portion of the exhibition shown in the Gallery, which has such great strength in furniture and decorative arts, concentrates on the architect's domestic projects and furnishings. Moreover, visitors to the exhibition can also see, on the Gallery's third floor, two very rare pieces of domestic silver—a bowl and the prototype for a knife—designed by Eero Saarinen's father, architect Eliel Saarinen, who was a seminal influence and collaborator for the younger architect." Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future includes never-before-exhibited sketches, working drawings, models, photographs, furnishings, films, and other material, all drawn from various archives and collections internationally. Together, these objects open a window onto the architect's innovations in the use of new materials and construction techniques, reveal his rejection of the dogma of orthodox modernism in favor of letting subject and site guide his design solutions, and illuminate the ways in which his work expressed American ideals of the time. Unique to the Yale presentation is a special display devoted to the projects that Saarinen designed for the University, including a short film, original drawings, photographs, and digital imagery. Indeed, with three buildings designed by Saarinen—David S. Ingalls Rink (1958) and Samuel Morse College and its companion Ezra Stiles College (both 1962)—and with the Eero Saarinen Collection, Yale is one of the premier destinations for those interested in the architect's work. Visitors therefore have the opportunity to view the exhibition and then go on to see some of Saarinen's best known buildings, located just blocks away. Exhibition
The installation in the School of Architecture Gallery opens with a display of drawings, letters, photographs, and other materials dating from Saarinen's years as an architecture student at Yale—when his designs ranged from a residence for a college dean, to a $1,000-dollar bill, to a synagogue. A highlight here is a watercolor made by Saarinen while on student travels. Titled Acropolis, it was recently donated to the Yale School of Architecture by Richard Nash Gould `68 B.A.,`72 M.Arch. A section devoted to Saarinen's large-scale work, titled "Building for Post-War America," examines the major public and semi-public buildings that helped to create potent expressions of American aspirations and values at mid-century. Through large-scale models (created by Saarinen's firm in order to review projects with clients), drawings, photographs, and other materials, the exhibition examines the expressive and technical aspects of an array of iconic buildings. These include Dulles International Airport, near Washington, D.C., and the TWA Terminal, where the architect's pioneering designs and dynamic forms expressed the glamour of international travel; the soaring St. Louis Gateway Arch, which celebrates America's westward growth; and the American chancelleries in London and Oslo, which simultaneously make use of modern technologies and adapt to local conditions, conveying an image of the United States as a powerful and good neighbor. Saarinen's projects for leading corporations were pioneering designs for the then-new typology of the corporate campus, deploying the power and authority of the traditional country estate in the service of corporate programs and image. "Creating Corporate Style," the portion of the exhibition that focuses on this aspect of his work, reveals how, with their advanced building technologies and materials and their strong forms, these projects created potent images of innovative and forward-thinking companies. For example, General Motors' promotional brochure for Saarinen's GM Technical Center, which is on view in the exhibition, was titled Where Today Meets Tomorrow, while Life magazine called the Center "A Versailles of Industry." The exhibition explores this and other designs, including the corporate headquarters for companies ranging from IBM, to CBS, for which Saarinen created the first reinforced-concrete skyscraper in New York City, and John Deere, where he used Cor-ten steel for the first time in architectural practice. Saarinen's work for colleges and universities is explored in a section titled "Forging Community." Here, buildings for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brandeis University, Vassar College, and Yale, for example, demonstrate his efforts to balance social interaction with privacy, while campus master-plans provided the architect with the opportunity to design a total environment. "Saarinen and Yale" encompasses drawings and photographs of David S. Ingalls Rink, a structurally innovative, sculptural masterpiece; Samuel Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, inspired in part by medieval Italian hill towns; and planning studies for the Yale campus. A highlight of this section is the first public showing of a video by KDN Films comprising interviews about Morse and Stiles Colleges with architectural historian Vincent Scully and architects Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli, both of whom worked with Saarinen. In addition, digital displays feature the renovations of Ingalls Rink, recently completed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, and of Morse and Stiles Colleges, being undertaken by the architecture firm KieranTimberlake. The installation in the Yale University Art Gallery begins with a section devoted to Saarinen's life, training, and work during the crucial period spent collaborating with his father at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in suburban Detroit. Included here are letters, photographs, early sketches and drawings, a wrought-iron gate designed for a school, and a biographical film. Saarinen's first architectural project, a 1939 competition for a new building for the Smithsonian Gallery of Art, is represented by a model, sketches, and photography. Following this is a display of early furniture, including examples from among the hundreds of tables, chairs, sofas, beds, and other pieces that Saarinen designed in 1929–31 for the Kingswood School for Girls, among other items. These show Saarinen's early engagement with the European modernist aesthetic that he would later redefine. The house and cottage that Saarinen designed for the Miller family of Indiana are explored through photographs, drawings, a video, and a re-creation of a table setting, complete with dishes, from the Columbus, Indiana, house, which is considered one of the masterworks of twentieth-century modernism. Saarinen worked with Kevin Roche on the design of the Miller House, which reveals the architects' close attention to Mies van der Rohe's designs for his Barcelona pavilion and Farnsworth House. Alexander Girard was in charge of the interior design for the Miller House, and the tableware he created for it is a central part of the display.
Saarinen's exploration of new materials, techniques, and forms was not limited to his work with buildings, but also informed his designs for furniture, which was a career-long pursuit. In designing his "Womb Chair," for example, he turned to reinforced polyester resin, a then-new material that had been developed in order to build the hulls of Navy boats, while his pedestal chairs represent the solution to a problem he expressed as "the slum of legs" beneath "typical chairs and tables," resulting in an "ugly, confusing, unrestful world." These and some eight other examples of Saarinen's furniture, including the Grasshopper Chair and pedestal table, as well as the chair he designed with Charles Eames for the Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design" competition, are spaciously displayed on an L-shaped platform, highlighting the sculptural quality of each piece. They are complemented by related drawings—including one of the lounge for the TWA Terminal, populated with womb chairs and pedestal tables—as well as by sketches and advertisements.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2010 11:32 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. The number of hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical storms globally is likely to either fall or remain flat over the course of the 21st century. But an increasing proportion of the storms are likely to hit the highest levels of intensity because of the projected effects of global warming, an international team of scientists concludes. However, it's unclear whether past trends in the number and intensity of storms – which some research suggested may be due to global warming – fall outside the range of natural variation. This is particularly true of the Atlantic basin, the team writes. These results appear Sunday in the online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. The work updates a 2006 review of tropical cyclones and climate change, which many of the scientists on this team provided at the behest of the World Meteorological Organization. It also updates the related portions of a major survey of climate science published in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as a 2008 assessment on severe storms and global warming by the US Climate Change Science Program. The new review represents "a chance to look back and see where the science has gone since that time," says Thomas Knutson, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. He is the lead author for the review. Many conclusions in the latest work are similar to those in past assessments. But some differ in significant ways. This illustrates the changes that scientists typically make to their conclusions as they continually test them. For instance, the team notes, the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report concluded that, "more likely than not," global warming helped fuel a rise in the number of the most intense tropical cyclones. Sunday's review doesn't support that statement, the team writes, citing uncertainties in records for storms globally, as well as the influence of natural variability in the Atlantic. In that region, records do suggest a recent increase in storm intensity. But it's unclear, the team says, how much of that change is because of natural swings in conditions that take place over many decades, and how much may be due to the effects of global warming. However, the team also notes, recent research allows for a higher degree of confidence that in the future, the overall number of storms "more likely than not" will decrease globally, while the number of intense storms "more likely than not" will increase substantially – even though some regions may not follow the broader trend. Using studies with a new class of improved computer models, and assuming a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse-gas emissions, the team estimates that maximum wind speeds in those storms are likely to increase by 2 to 11 percent over the century. Also, rainfall rates are likely to rise by as much as 20 percent for distances up to 60 miles from a storm's eye. One important factor for reducing uncertainties in such projections: getting a better hand on El Niño and its mirror opposite, La Niña, in the models, suggests Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who produces seasonal hurricane forecasts for the Atlantic basin. The projections of the team producing the Sunday's report, he says, rely heavily on sea-surface temperatures (SSTs), which he acknowledges are important. But "if future climate were to shift more towards an El Niño or La Niña-like basic state, it could easily overwhelm any changes in basin-specific SSTs," he writes in an e-mail. ----- Follow us on Twitter. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Is Hawaii a Candidate for International ICT Assistance? (SYS-CON Media) Posted: 21 Feb 2010 01:44 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.
The Information and Communication Services Division (ICSD) of the Department of Accounting and General Services is the lead agency for information technology in the Executive Branch. It is responsible for comprehensively managing the information processing and telecommunication systems in order to provide services to all agencies of the State of Hawaii. The ICSD plans, coordinates, organizes, directs, and administers services to insure the efficient and effective development of systems.
Browsing through the ICSD site is quite interesting. Having spent a fair amount of time drilling through California's CIO landing page, where you are greeted with a well stocked mashup of not less than 14 interactive objects giving access to topics from current news, to blog entries, to CIO department links, to instructions on following the CIO's activities through Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (all meetings and public activities are recorded and made available to the 'Ether), I expected a similar menu of objects on the Hawaii page. Clearly Hawaii is a much smaller state, so expectations were set, but I did expect a fairly good semaphore of directions I could take to learn more about Hawaii's office of the CIO. Hot Buttons on the ICSD Landing Page My vision of a governmental CIO was defined by Vivek Kundra, CIO of the United States. A guy who talks about the future of ICT, the strategy of applying ICT to government projects, the leadership, both in thoughts and actions, or the government as a role model for the rest of the country. Cloud computing, data center consolidation, green technology, R&D, cooperation with the private sector, aggressive use of COTS (common of-the-shelf) technology. I love the guy. NOTE: ICT is a term unfamiliar to most Americans. It means "Information and Communications Technology," and is a term most other countries around the world have adopted to acknowledge the critical role communications plays in any information technology discussion. So I select the button on IT Standards. Cool. Being a cloud computing enthusiast, to put it mildly, I could not help pinging on the item for 11.17 Virtual Storage Access Method, with the expectation this might give me some insight on the cloud computing and virtualization initiatives Hawaii is taking under the guidance of either the CIO or ICSD. VSAM is an IBM/MVS Operating System access method system. It is not a data base management system. VSAM supports batch users, on-line transactions, and data base applications. (VSAM Entry on ICSD website) Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390
Ooops. Well, how about an overview of IT Standards? Written in 2003, the document is general cut and paste information that could be found in pretty much any basic IT book, with the exception that everything is manual – meaning any standard, recommendation, or update must be done through use of CD-ROM. Well, perhaps document management and approval process doesn't need to be online. Enough – I am not excited by the ICSD website. Let's look at a couple other areas that might provide a bit more information on how Hawaii is doing with topics like overall IT architecture, disaster recovery, and IT strategies. "The CIO's role is to provide vision and leadership for developing and implementing information technology initiatives." (Info-Tech Research Group) In a recent report delivered by the Hawaii state auditor, "Audit of the State of Hawai'i's Information Technology: Who's in Charge?" - a disturbing summary of the auditor's findings declare:
The audit further finds the guidance and governance provided by the ICSD ineffective, stating: "ICSD was originally tasked to compile an overall State technology plan from annual technology plans submitted by the various departments. However, ICSD no longer enforces or monitors compliance with this requirement. In fact, the division has actively discouraged departments from submitting these distributed information processing and information resource management plans." Finally, the report concludes with an ominous message for the state "If the State's management does not improve, the State will eventually be compelled to outsource or co-source IT functions, a complicated and expensive undertaking. Based on the issues that have been raised, future focus areas include data security and business continuity. Lack of an alternate data center and general lack of business continuity and disaster recovery plans tempt fate, since a major disruption of State IT services is not a matter of if, but when." If you would like some more interesting food for controversy, dig into the state's disaster recovery situation, which was recently summarized with the statement "a breakdown of or interruption to data center services or telecommunication services will seriously diminish the ability of State (of Hawaii) agencies to deliver critical services to the public and other federal, state, and local government agencies. The primary data center serves all three branches of State government. The loss of the primary data center would impact all State employees, and without an alternative data center, health, public safety, child protective services, homeland security and other critical services would not be delivered" How International Organizations Might Help Hawai'I's ICT and eGovernment Program United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) A surge in the use of ICTs by government, civil society and the private sector started in the late 1990s, with the aim not only of improving government efficiency and service delivery, but also to promote increase participation of citizens in the various governance and democratic processes. The use of ICT in the overall field of democratic governance activities relates to three distinct areas where UNDP has already been doing innovative work to support the achievement of the MDGs.
That sounds awful darn close to objectives Hawaii might find useful in to developing their own long term, strategic ICT plan. Taking a look at some of the countries listed in UNDP's "UN eGovernment Survey 2008: From eGovernment to Connected Governance," a lot of great government program case studies are included, such as the government of Singapore: "Similarly, as part justification for ranking Singapore as its 2007 leader in e-government and customer service, Accenture reports that in terms of back-end infrastructure, the Singaporean government has made an enterprise architecture called SGEA a strategic thrust. SGEA offers a blueprint for identifying potential business areas for interagency collaboration as well as technology, data and application standards to facilitate the sharing of information and systems across agencies." That sounds good. As do a couple dozen other examples of equally relevant eGovernment programs included in the study. In fact, current eGovernment development projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, Ghana, and Palestine follow a well documented plan to design, train, plan, and implement eGovernment projects. And they are working. Perhaps Hawai'I could hire a full time CIO, participate in US and international programs supporting development of eGovernment (including the US Trade and Development Agency which sponsors eGoverment programs in many developing countries – such as Palestine, Ethiopia, and Ghana), and use that to develop a 22nd century ICT plan for Hawai'i. The line is drawn As taxpayers and residents of America's 50th state, we deserve the best possible government and governance possible. Let's take a bit of responsibility on ourselves. Study the issue, contact your representative, and demand either an explanation of the current situation – or even better, give recommendations on how we can make Hawai'i's situation better. Such as:
We initially touched the topic in a previous post "A Developing Country that Can Teach Hawaii a Lesson." We'll continue exploring the topic, and hopefully start working on positive, constructive ideas on how we can make our state more efficient, and a better place to work and live. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
Try a search engine query on "Hawaii CIO," or "Hawaii Chief Information Officer." You might get a couple corporate links pop up, or possibly the University of Hawaii's CIO link, but the only state agency within the first two pages of links is for the Information and Communications Services Division of the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS). The first impression, once hitting the Hawaii Information and Communications Services Division (ICSD) landing page on the State of Hawaii's website, is the microwave tower graphic.
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