Hell Week has become Heck Weekend so I’m sneaking off to work on ResearchBuzz.

NEW RESOURCES

The US Department of Health and Human Services has launched an online compendium of resources for mitigating the health impacts of emergencies. “The compendium offers an easy-to-navigate, comprehensive, web-based repository of HHS products, services and capabilities available to state, state, tribal, territorial, and local agencies before, during, and after public health and medical incidents. The information spans 24 categories, and each category showcases the relevant disaster resources available from HHS and partner agencies, a brief description of each resource and information on accessing each one.” Categories include Patient Movement, Mass Care, Vector Control, and Blood Products and Services.

Inscriptions from cultural heritage sites in Iraq are are being saved into an online database. “Between 1997 and 2014, [Amir] Harrak made several trips to cultural heritage sites throughout Iraq, cleaning and recording engraved inscriptions that date between the seventh and 20th centuries. During a trip to Mosul in 2014, he recorded inscriptions and art at the monastery of Mar Behnam. Islamic State fighters captured the city and monastery in June 2014, but Harrak managed to leave before they arrived. Since then, the militant grouphas destroyed the monastery along with many sites in Mosul and other parts of Iraq…. Because of this destruction, the photographs he took during these trips (about 700 in total) have become scientifically irreplaceable. He’s now working with the Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents (CCED) to create an online database of all the inscriptions, which will allow new research on them and, despite the destruction, allow more people to see them than ever before.”

Annette Demers has created a new Google Custom search for open access law journals. The blog post with the announcement notes a few other CSEs she’s created which you might find useful. Use the second link to try the CSE – the first one at the top of the blog post apparently leads to the wrong place.

USEFUL STUFF

Interesting blog post from Dartmouth: Live Office Hours With Google Hangouts on Air: A Recipe. Two professors wanted to do live office hours with Google Hangouts, and present a “recipe” of equipment and timing to make the most of the office hours. “DartmouthX has recently offered Live Office Hours with students in an Introduction to Environmental Science (ENVX) with Google Hangouts on Air. Instructors Prof. Andy Friedland and Mike Goudzwaard along with the course team hosted four sessions over two offerings of the course. In each session we tried something slightly different based on feedback from that last session. This ‘recipe’ is based on what we learned from the experience. Like any recipe, feel free to use, improvise, simplify, or spice it up.” At the end of the blog post there are YouTube links to completed hangouts.

From The Next Web: How to take better photos for Instagram.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google is doing more with Safe Browsing. “We want to be really clear that Google Safe Browsing’s mandate remains unchanged: we’re exclusively focused on protecting users from malware, phishing, unwanted software, and similar harm. You won’t see Safe Browsing warnings for any other reasons. Unwanted software is being distributed on web sites via a variety of sources, including ad injectors as well as ad networks lacking strict quality guidelines. In many cases, Safe Browsing within your browser is your last line of defense.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Google is indexing a LOT more tweets, but it’s still nowhere near the number being produced. “From February to June, Stone Temple found a 466% increase in Tweets indexed within the first seven days. In February, just 0.6% of Tweets were indexed and last month that number shot to 3.4%. While these increases are promising, there is still more than 96% of Tweets that aren’t indexed.”

More Google: one of its self-driving cars was in its first injury accident. It was rear-ended. “The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain.”

Catching up… is Facebook about to get into music streaming? “The social network has been making a concerted effort to push video content, recently citing billions of video views, and now a report from music industry site Music Ally suggest it is seeking deals with labels, first for a music video streaming service and later a straight audio service too.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Language use is so important, and the way you use language online can be incredibly unique! Check out this article on forensic linguistics. “Experts claim a regular anonymous internet user may be tracked through linguistic clues they unwittingly leave behind in their writing. According to Dr Tim Grant in an article for The Conversation, ‘everything from the way someone uses capitalization or personal pronouns, to the words someone typically omits or includes, to a breakdown of average word or sentence length, can help identify the writer of even a short text like a Tweet or text message.’ ”

MIT did a huge study of MOOCs. “The study, one of the largest ever undertaken on the topic of MOOCs, examined 68 courses offered through the edX platform, encompassing 1.7 million participants, 10 million participant-hours, and 1.1 billion logged events—or clicks, recorded by the edX servers. edX is an online, non-profit learning platform founded by MIT and Harvard in 2012.”

In a conclusion that should surprise absolutely nobody, CMU researchers that Twitter outrage does not lead to real-world action. “Conducted by CMU assistant research professor Juergen Pfeffer with graduate students Hemank Lamba and Momin M. Malik, the paper studied 80 firestorm events between January 2011 and September 2014 to see if Twitter outrage eventually turned to grassroots activism. Whether ire was sparked by a hashtag demanding cancellation of the Stephen Colbert show or one attempting to drum up support for the New York Police Department, the study found the social media anger overwhelmingly did not result in new Twitter groups or long-term initiatives designed to address the issue online.” Hemank Lamba also did some interesting research on the accuracy of tweets after the Boston Marathon bombing. Good morning, Internet…

I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!