In Celebration of Fall!

NASA has posted some spectacular pictures of Fall arriving in Wisconsin and Michigan taken by NASA’s Terra satellite.



In just one week Fall has spread across the Lake Superior and Lake Michigan areas. See these and other amazing images at NASA's website: Earth Obserbvatory.

Bill to Expand Open Access Beyond NIH Funded Research

Senate Bill 1373 sponsored by Senators Lieberman and Cornyn proposes to extend public access to government agencies with extramural expenditures of over $100,000,000 such as Health and Human Services, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Agriculture Department, NASA, etc. The bill states the following regarding what the proposed Federal research public access policy would provide--

• (1) submission to the Federal agency of an electronic version of the author's final manuscript of original research papers that have been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and result from research supported, in whole or in part, from funding by the Federal Government;
  
• (2) the incorporation of all changes resulting from the peer review publication process in the manuscript described under paragraph (1);
  
• (3) the replacement of the final manuscript with the final published version if--
  
  • (A) the publisher consents to the replacement; and
    
  • (B) the goals of the Federal agency for functionality and interoperability are retained;
  
  
• (4) free online public access to such final peer-reviewed manuscripts or published versions as soon as practicable, but not later than 6 months after publication in peer-reviewed journals;
  
• (5) production of an online bibliography of all research papers that are publicly accessible under the policy, with each entry linking to the corresponding free online full text; and
  
• (6) long-term preservation of, and free public access to, published research findings--
  
  
  • (A) in a stable digital repository maintained by the Federal agency; or
    
  • (B) if consistent with the purposes of the Federal agency, in any repository meeting conditions determined favorable by the Federal agency, including free public access, interoperability, and long-term preservation.
  
  

In addition to the THOMAS (Library of Congress) version linked above, GovTrack.us provides updates about the status of S.1373: Federal Research Public Access of Act of 2009.

Last Day to Register to Vote for Nov. 3, 2009 Elections

Today is the last day to register to vote in the November 3, 2009 elections. Voter registration forms are available in the basement of Fondren Library in the Kelley Center for Government Information and Microforms. A downloadable version is also available from the Harris County Tax Office. The tax office also lists all the eligibility requirements for voting.

The City of Houston, City of Bellaire, Houston Community College System, Alief ISD, Channelview ISD, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Houston ISD, Klein ISD, North Forest IDS, Spring ISD, Harris County Improvement District No. 3, Harris County MUD 127, Southwest Harris County MUD No. 1, and West Memorial MUD are all having elections. Ballots will also include state amendments.

League of Women Voters guides are being prepared and will be available soon in Fondren's Kelley Center and online at the League's site.

Early voting begins Oct. 19 and ends Oct. 30. A list of early voting locations and times is available on Harris Votes. A variety of election information is also available on Fondren's elections page.

Houston Oral History Interviews Now Online

The Houston Oral History Project, a collaboration among the Mayor's Office, the Houston Public Library, and the University of Houston now has interviews available online. The oral history project consists of three parts:

• The Mayor Bill White Collection of 100 initial interviews of well-known political, business and civic leaders. These interviews are available in the digital archives of the Houston Public Library, and copies are deposited at the University of Houston.
  
• The Neighborhood voices recordings created in the summer of 2008 by citizens who came to Houston Public Library locations to record their recollections about life in Houston. These will be digitized in the near future.
  
• HMRC (Houston Metropolitan Research Center) Oral Histories. This research center of the Houston Public Library has digitized more than 200 oral histories of artists, musicians, civil rights activists, politicians and civic leaders from the 1970s and 1980s. Click on one of the 200 names listed on the website to listen to the interview. At present interviews for names listed in bold are accessible digitally.

The project has several Rice University connections. Historian Dr. Louis Marchiafava joined the project at Rice in l974 before moving to the Houston Public Library as director the their research center. Marie Wise, the Houston Public Library's digital projects manager, worked at Rice's Digital Media Center on the TIMEA (Travelers in the Middle East Archive) project. Rice University's Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning worked with two middle school teachers at Hogg Middle School to teach middle school students how to interview WWII veterans from the Heights area. They created an oral history project entitled The Heights Remembers World War II. Melinda Wolfrum, a Rice University history major, edited the students' videotapes and interviewed them about what they learned in the process. Rice employees Tom Bisciglia and Eric Rombokas helped make excepts of the videos available on the Internet.

For more details about the Houston Oral History Project, see the Houston Chronicle's Sept. 29, 2009 story Homespun tales now on Web.

EPA Improving Transparency

According to a September 15, 2009 article posted on OMB Watch, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken seriously the Obama Administration push for all federal agencies to become more transparent. Examples of the steps that EPA is taking to increase transparency include:

• Releasing the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2008 early. Rulemaking under the Bush administration restricted the amount of toxic release information made available to communities and the public. This data release restores reporting to the levels that existed before that rulemaking.
  
• Releasing two sets of data about the herbicide atrazine which is commonly found in streams and groundwater but is toxic to humans and animals even at low levels. One data set is for drinking water monitoring and the other is for ecological monitoring.
  
• Making available online data about the air quality around selected schools.
  
• Publishing a list of the highest-risk coal-ash dumpsites in the nation.
  

On the cautionary side, however, OMB Watch notes that some data releases are the result of FOIA requests and lawsuits. The EPA also still lacks a permanent assistant administrator for the Office of Environmental Information (OEI) which plays a key role in releasing data to the public.

More information about each of these steps is available from the full article on OMB Watch.

SEC & Madoff's Ponzi Scheme

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has release Investigation of Failure of the SEC to Uncover Bernard Madoff's Ponzi Scheme - Public Version. A 22 page executive summary is also available. The SEC admits:

As the foregoing demonstrates, despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madofi's trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme. Had these efforts been made with appropriate follow-up at any time beginning in June of 1992 until December 2008, the SEC could have uncovered the Ponzi scheme well before Madoff confessed.

President Obama's Speech to School Children

In his speech to school children today President Obama emphasizes student responsibility:

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

He also stresses the importance of students' school success to the well being of our country:

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

President Obama's complete speech is available from the White House.