On Monday, before heading out to toss the first pitch at Tuesday's baseball All-Star Game, the president kicked off a White House forum on urban policy by criticizing past federal measures that have encouraged sprawl and promising a new look at ways, including support for public transit, to help metropolitan (in other words, not just traditionally "urban") areas become more sustainable.

As the Obama administration and Congress mull reinventing for the third time a legal system to try terrorism suspects, three hearings were held today at Guantanamo Bay in the military commission cases of Omar Khadr, Mohammed Kamin, and Ibrahim al Qosi. The good news is that changes the Obama administration has asked for may help improve a process that has never operated in a way that folks familiar with the American legal system would recognize as justice. The bad news is that the system is so flawed that these changes cannot salvage it.

There are many competing standards out there for how to publish datasets with due credit to the author and publisher. Rich, structured metadata and interoperable standards for data identification are rapidly developing, but it's not clear which standard is going to win the day or which search engines will successfully organize all that data.

Californians are scratching their heads trying to figure out why their government has run out of cash. Some blame the constitution. Some blame the governor. Some blame the lobbyists. Let's run a few numbers.

Food Not Bombs continues to be a very interesting experience in York. Far from feeding lots of homeless people (though Big Issue vendors are always thankful) we seem to be finding ourselves in a very different struggle: proving that there is such a thing as a free lunch, something that isn't easy in a city where many residents seem to proud not to spend money on lunch.

We investigate the use, determinants, and earnings effects of special purpose vehicles. Based on a proxy of SPV activity that can be applied to a broad cross-section of firms over time, we find a two-and-a-half fold monotonic increase in the percentage of firms using at least one SPV during the eight-year period from 1997 through 2004.

There is much Republicans and Democrats disagree on when it comes to health care, energy legislation, immigration, etc, ad infinitum. But in the midst of the partisan-driven health care reform "debate", a sliver of bipartisan agreement has arose. Why are we doing this so quickly?

One-third of all people over 65 suffer falls in their home, a problem that affects both the physical and emotional well-being of the elderly. As many as 25 percent of people 75 or over restrict the activities they undertake because of fear of falling, according to a 1996 study by Colorado State University professors K.R. Tremblay Jr. and C.E. Barber.

The results of experiments comparing the virulence in animals of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus with seasonal strains have spawned the headline "Study Suggests H1N1 Virus More Dangerous Than Suspected." In my view, the best experiment is now being done in humans: infection of millions with the pandemic virus. The results show that the virus is no more virulent than last season's pandemic strain.

Though I haven't been extremely busy on Wikipedia lately, I've been an administrator there for 3 years. I'm always glad when medical professionals come to edit articles, improve the quality and insert proper references into the medical entries.

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