Brewed Fresh Daily

Good overview from Wayne Watkins…


Wayne Watkins Testimony House Committee on Science and Technology June 2010


Two of the more interesting articles on a boring question: Will Lebron stay or go?

Economist John Skorburg of the University of Illinois Chicago estimates that James coming to the Bulls would be worth an extra $2.7 billion to the city of Chicago if the team can enjoy the same amount of success it did during the ’90s.

How much would LeBron James boost Chicago’s economy?

Business Week looks more closely at the problems of managing a superstar.

The hardest problems in business are the ones that money alone can’t solve. A gushing oil leak on the ocean floor is one example. LeBron James is another. When the 25-year-old aspiring “global icon” becomes a free agent on July 1, his price will be fixed. The rules worked out by the National Basketball Assn. owners and players union dictate that as a seven-year veteran, James can receive more than 30 percent of a team’s salary cap, which is projected to be $56.1 million next year. The Cleveland Cavaliers, his current employer and hometown team, can offer a six-year contract while the competition can offer only five, but regardless of where he signs, James will have to survive on an average of about $20 million a year.

A Problem Like LeBron

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an insightful report on the impact of educational attainment on the future of the metro region’s economy.

Does Milwaukee have enough college graduates to thrive?

The question is prompted by an initiative by CEOs for Cities on the impact of educational attainment on economic performance. You can read the report below.

The newspaper then followed up with an editorial:

To prosper, Milwaukee should focus on degrees

Building talent pipelines into high growth businesses represents an emerging area of regional economic development. The reason: We face a major skills gap. See how Ann Arbor Spark is moving its focus to talent:

Ann Arbor SPARK placing increased emphasis on ‘talent enhancement’


CEOs for Cities City Dividends Report


Northeast Ohio is engaged in this conversation. You can download the Northeast Ohio Talent Dividend plan here. You can see the plan needs a good deal more detail and focus.

To get some idea of what a strong commitment to educational attainment looks like, go to Cincinnati.

Cincinnati has one of the most ambitious initiatives underway to improve prospects for educational attainment. The initiative, called Strive, is summarized in this paper. You can also view the Strive web site.


Strive Career Pathways


WKYC has a good report on the new collaboration by the First Suburbs Consortium.

Cleveland, 16 suburbs form Ohio’s first renewable energy district

In case you missed it, USA Today this week carried a good article on Toledo’s emergence as a center for solar power innovation.

Toledo reinvents itself as a solar-power innovator

A proposal by three Summit County cities to join economic forces — the first of its kind in Ohio — is making its official rounds through the respective city councils.

The Western Reserve Joint Economic Development Zone has been under negotiation for two years, and if approved would have Hudson, Stow and Cuyahoga Falls sharing the development of the property and tax revenue from a 99-acre area off the state Route 8 Seasons Road interchange.

Hudson, Stow, Falls consider tax zone

Following up on an earlier BFD post on merit pay for teachers, the parties passed the Pittsburgh pact.

The Pittsburgh school district and its American Federation of Teachers-affiliated local union have reached agreement on a five-year contract that contains significant new pay elements and that officials there say is the result of a new approach to collective bargaining.

The new contract includes a revamped salary schedule for new hires, with a focus on teacher performance, and the creation of two programs to award pay bonuses to school staffs and individual teachers who significantly boost student achievement.

In large part, the pact codifies elements of the district’s Empowering Effective Teaching plan—its successful bid for $40 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $500 million Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative.

Pittsburgh Teacher Pact Tests 3 New Pay Elements

See also: Pittsburgh board, teachers OK pact: Five-year contract introduces concept of performance pay incentives

FYI – Another posting from Jim Brodrick, head of the Dept. of Energy’s Solid State Lighting program, regarding the performance concerns for LED T8 (4’ florescent) replacement lamps.

See full post by downloading the PDF here.

 Some of the best take away quotes:

 “…in this country alone there are tens of millions of recessed… 4′ fluorescent T8 lamps in use… and a ton of LED products being touted as energy-saving “drop-in” equivalents… those LED products are a far cry from matching the performance of fluorescent T8s, it all adds up to a surefire recipe for consumer disappointment.”

 “when it comes to general ambient lighting for offices and other commercial spaces, LED T8s have not proven competitive with linear fluorescent lamps. This is not a vague impression “sensed” from the marketplace; it’s a DOE finding based on careful analysis and testing results from DOE’s CALiPER program…testing have shown that LED T8s produce far less light than the fluorescents they’re intended to replace, out of proportion to the energy savings.”

 “the average initial bare-lamp light output of the LED replacement products was only about one-third of the average for the fluorescent lamps tested – with the best-performing LED T8 producing only half of the light output of a typical 4′ fluorescent. Not exactly what I’d call a stellar performance.

 “Solid-state lighting technology is improving all the time, but for now, when it comes to LED replacement T8s, the best policy is to “just say no.”

  To sign-up to receive the weekly newsletter go to:

 http://lightingfacts.com/default.aspx?cp=user/mailinglist

Tomorrow, the Pittsburgh school board and and union officials would decide on whether to accept a new collective bargaining agreement that puts performance pay into a new contract.

Merit pay for city’s teachers a large change

That’s the conclusion of new research announced in Science.

Employing the mathematics of network analysis, the team found that communities in which people have more diverse social networks, at least as gauged by their phone calls, also tend to be more prosperous….

Eagle notes that the team has seen a correlation only between greater diversity in social contacts and prosperity. So the researchers cannot tell whether social diversity promotes prosperity or the other way around. “The causality probably works both ways,” Eagle says. He hopes the results will influence public policy officials to consider not just giving aid to poor, insular communities but also finding ways to help people foster relationships with others outside their communities.

Is That Prosperity Calling? – ScienceNOW