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Global communication, international workflow, and connected learning are converging to realign power, wealth, and work. As Friedman (2006) explained, many forces are coming together to cause a flattening or leveling effect of the world's workforce. This has allowed many skilled workers from emerging nations to enter the workplace and compete for jobs that were traditionally held by only a few wealthy industrial nations. Although the playing field is being leveled for some occupations, Florida (2005) convincingly argues that the international economic landscape is becoming spiky with innovations being concentrated in a few urban centers. These urban centers provide the new creative class with ecosystems that enable their prosperity. Innovations are improved and brought to market more quickly in settings where talented people collocate (Florida 2005). It is vital that graduates enter the workforce prepared to orchestrate globally distributed work using computer-based communication systems and know how to engage creatively in collocated activities. Despite these demands on our graduates, many university computer laboratories are sociofugal environments (environments that discourage social interaction), fostering the individual consumption of information versus collaboration. This paper examines the college computer lab as an ecological system that may impede transference of critical 21st century sociocutural norms and workplace skills.

Brazil's meteoric rise as Latin America's economic superpower has prompted the United States government to reassess its strategic vision of South America and its relationship with Brazil. The next generation of US economic, business, political, and military leaders will likely be faced with a South American landscape heavily dominated by Brazil. The US Department of Defense (DoD) in particular has recognized the strategic importance of Brazil and the critical need for Portuguese language and culture training for military leaders involved in DoD missions in South America. This paper describes the reasons for adding Portuguese as one of the Air Force Academy's eight strategic foreign languages and the future of Portuguese FL education for tomorrow's military leaders.

Discusses the role of libraries and productivity, one of the three main themes that will be addressed at the 1991 White House Conference on Library and Information Services. Statewide coordinated efforts to serve business and government clientele are emphasized, and statewide databases in Colorado, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are described. (two references) (LRW)

Recently, several seminal works have been drawing attention to the revolution of shale gas production technology of the USA, the impact of shale gas on energy sectors, as well as the influences of shale gas on macroeconomic variables of employment, economic growth, etc. Nevertheless, one may claim that two gaps appear in literature. The first gap is the absence of an econometric study estimating the effect of shale oil/gas on national economies. The more considerable second gap is the absence of econometric analyses revealing the impulses of shale gas on local economies. Therefore, this paper observes the possible causalities between the shale gas and local gross domestic product (GDP) employing quarterly data covering the period 2007-2016 for 12 states in the US. After performing the tests of cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity, stationarity, and cointegration, the paper conducts the panel Granger causality analyses. The empirical findings depict that (i) there is available unidirectional relationship from local shale gas production to local GDP in Colorado, Ohio, and West Virginia; (ii) there occurs an impulse from GDP to local shale gas production for Louisiana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma; (iii) a bidirectional causality coexists between local shale gas production and GDP in Arkansas, California, and Texas; and (iv) there exists no association between local GDP and local shale gas extraction in Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Private markets constantly assess project investment opportunities across a spectrum of such possibilities. The market's perspective on the boundary of viable projects, however, may be more limited than socially optimal due to informational constraints. In the case of economic development projects in particular, this boundary could be extended by public researchers. This paper constructs a method to estimate the private and social value-added of such research, providing a new means to understand and assess the public/private sector interface. The framework uses agents’ evolving subjective perceptions through Bayesian updating to value research information, along with methods to estimate functional forms and relative optima. Two case studies of regional development research on value-added agriculture in Colorado highlight the utility of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities regularly face a wide range of economic development choices that inevitably create both winners and losers within their communities. Proper assessment of the impacts of such choices requires not only an appropriate modelling framework but also explicit understanding and incorporation of a city's income distribution priorities. This paper proposes that a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, which includes a structured social welfare function, can provide precisely such a tool to fully evaluate economic development choices, tradeoffs and implications. We leverage such a model for a small Colorado city and simulate sector-specific expansionary economic development policies. We apply the framework to understand the gains and losses of two distinct groups, namely original residents versus new arrivals, likely to be affected by such choices, alongside the welfare impacts to the city as whole. Resumen. Las ciudades se enfrentan regularmente a un amplio abanico de decisiones en cuanto al desarrollo económico, que a la vez crean inevitablemente ganadores y perdedores dentro de sus comunidades. Una evaluación adecuada de los impactos de tales decisiones requiere no solamente un marco de modelización apropiado sino también el entender y responsabilizarse explícitamente de las prioridades en cuanto a la distribución de ingresos de una ciudad. Este artículo propone que un modelo de equilibrio general computable (CGE), que incluya una función de asistencia social estructurada, puede precisamente proporcionar dicha herramienta para evaluar por completo las decisiones en cuanto al desarrollo económico, las ventajas relativas y las implicaciones. Empleamos dicho modelo para una pequeña ciudad del estado de Colorado y simulamos políticas de desarrollo económico expansionistas específicas para un sector. Aplicamos este marco de trabajo para entender las pérdidas y ganancias de dos grupos diferentes, como son los residentes originales y los recién llegados, quienes probablemente se verán afectados por tales decisiones, junto con los impactos en asistencia social para la totalidad de la ciudad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses poverty, ethnicity and water resources in Hispanic Souther Colorado, and presents an alternate analysis of the transfer of resources. The article has three major goals: to ascertain the extent of poverty in Colorado; to determine the associations between rural poverty, ethnicity, and water resources; and, to analyze the case for rural economic development through the development of small-scale agriculture in Costilla and Conejos counties of Colorado. For the specific case of Hispanic farmers in Costilla and Conejos counties, the paper argues that economic invigortaion through the development of agricultural resources, runs counter to local cultural experience, and is impractical and unlikely. For the more general case of Hispanic poverty in the sample counties, economic invigortaion through specialty crop production, even if successful, would be ineffective due to the minute percentage of Hispanics owning farm land. To define counties having a substantial degree of poverty, this study used the following sampling criteria: 20% or more of their population living below the poverty level; and, county per capita income of less than 75% of the national per capita income. This study showed that in the sample counties, poverty and ethnicity are linked.

Casino gaming has spread across America, but its impacts remain unclear. This study extends research about crime impacts of gaming development in rural communities, addressing whether tourism growth leads to an increase in crime, or whether crime is an inherent by-product of gaming tourism. Using a sample of rural Colorado counties, this study compared crime effects in casino gaming counties, ski counties, natural resources access counties, and cultural tourist attraction counties. In contrast to conventional wisdom, this study found that ski counties had a significantly higher property crime rate than did gaming, natural resource access, and cultural tourist attraction counties. Results also suggest the presence of interaction effects between tourism types and growth levels, affecting crime rates. These results provide valuable information to communities considering tourism alternatives for economic development, and they also inform public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]