Penn State Great Valley Library Blog

Introduced in 2006 as a simplified gateway to the most popular news on the internet, popurls (
http://popurls.com/) recently ranked among Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites for 2009.

After examining the site, it is easy to see why popurls rates so highly. Organized with simple-to-read headlines, interspersed with video and photo links, popurls provides readers with a single source for the most up-to-date internet activity on all the major websites. Users can start on the basic site, or customize their own popurls homepage with their favorite news feeds and sources. Users can also visit the popurls network (http://popurls.net/) to access the many mobile versions and add-ons.

With many newspaper’s elimination of science sections, where can readers turn for reliable Science News? Futurity (http://Futurity.org) is one option. This site collects and posts science news releases from universities. Universities such as Penn State, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, University of Penn, etc. needed a way to easily post their scientific findings and Futurity fits the bill. “It’s ironic that we have fewer writers in our major media focusing on science, while we have ever more issues that have a science base — from climate change to the health care debate, stem cells, evolution and swine flu — many of which are very controversial,” said Cristine Russell, a former Washington Post science reporter. Although a reliable source, Futurity lacks the impartiality of an independent science reporter. For that, readers can still turn to Knight Science Journalism Tracker, an MIT website of published science articles (http://ksjtracker.mit.edu).

For more details about locating science news, click on the link to the article on the Baltimore Sun:
Universities establish own way to tell public about findings
http://www.baltimoresun.com/technology/bal-university-wire-0916,0,6633143.story.

Want to know what to expect on the education front over the coming years? Who will be our students? How many degrees will be conferred? The National Center for Educational Statistics has released its report Projections of Education Statitics to 2018. The full report can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009062.pdf .

Looking for socially & environmentally responsible companies? Check out Business Week’s listing of B Corporations. A Certified B Corporation is one which is socially and environmentally responsible. As defined on the site, the B Corporation Net, (http://bcorporation.net), a B Corp “uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems”. It is part of “a new sector of the economy which harnesses the power of private enterprise for public benefit”. Examples of certified B Corporations are: King Arthur Flour (an employee-owned, open-book, team-managed company), Seventh Generation (a company committed to “becoming the world’s most trusted brand of authentic, safe, and environmentally-responsible products for a healthy home”), and Sustainable Harvest (one of the highest volume importers of organic & fair trade coffee in North America). For more information click on the link http://bcorporation.net