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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

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Google Books is fair use

By Maurizio Borghi and Stavroula Karapapa
After almost a decade of litigation, on 14 November the Southern District Court of New York has ruled on the class action Authors Guild v Google. Judge Chin, who had rejected in March 2011 the agreement proposing to settle the case, found that the activities carried out in the context of the Google Books project do not infringe copyright.

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The speciousness of “fetal pain”

What is “fetal personhood”? What role does poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights? Questions about reproductive rights are just as complex–and controversial–as they were in the Roe v. Wade-era. The following is adapted from Rickie Solinger’s Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know

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From radio to YouTube

By Cynthia B. Meyers
AT&T has produced a teen reality program, @summerbreak—seen not on TV but on social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. General Electric is sponsoring articles in the magazine The Economist. And Pepsico has a blog site, Green- Label, devoted to skateboarding, rap music, and other interests of “millennial males.”

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Reading the tea leaves: a Q&A with Costas Panagopoulos

In a matter of months, federal elections in the United States will enter full-swing. I recently asked Costas Panagopoulos, a professor at Fordham University and an expert on political campaigns, a few questions about the important elections recently conducted in the United States and what we might learn from those recent campaigns.

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Performance pay and ethnic earnings

By Colin P. Green, John S. Heywood, and Nikolaos Theodoropoulos
The British labour market shares two important trends with that in the US. Wage inequality has increased dramatically since the 1980s and there has been increased use of performance pay, earnings that vary with worker job performance.

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The migration-displacement nexus

By Khalid Koser
International Migrants Day is intended to celebrate the enormous contribution that migrants make to economic growth and development, social innovation, and cultural diversity, worldwide. It also reminds us of the importance of protecting the human rights of migrants.

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The G20: policies, politics, and power

Five years after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the world waits for recovery. Last time it took a world war and forty million deaths to achieve. In 2008, a domino — Lehman Brothers — fell over, sparking a financial crisis that quickly threatened to bring the developed economies of the world crashing down. “This sucker could go down” was President George W. Bush’s pithy summary.

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Around the world in eighty mouse clicks

Are you a geography buff? Are the facts and figures of the world your forte? Make the new year’s resolution to learn something new about the world we live in. We’ve have drawn up a quiz culled from the wealth of geographic knowledge contained within the borders of the beautiful Atlas of the World. Broaden the horizons of your global perspective, levitate above the labyrinthine veins of London, or study the wake of a sailboat as it cuts through the deep, cerulean waters off the coast of Sydney. But, first, put your knowledge to the test below.

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Orwell in America

By Robert Colls
The man wants to admit his rebellious thoughts and reveal the deception but knows that by doing so he is going to make the rest of his life difficult, not to say short, and there will be no going back. He does it all the same. He has no accomplices, except his girlfriend. The world has yet to decide what will happen to him. I am of course talking about Edward Snowden.

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Thinking of applying to medical school?

By Kelly Hewinson
Applying for medical school becomes harder every year. Many would-be doctors are discouraged by mounting competition for places, achieving A* grades, spiraling student fees, and negative headlines about the NHS.

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Kenya’s government 50 years after independence

By Justin Willis
Like many large and diverse countries, Kenya has long debated the value of introducing a form of devolved government. That debate seems to have come full circle. The majimbo, ‘regional’, constitution of 1963 was intended to devolve authority away from the centre. It lasted less than a year.

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University libraries and the e-books revolution

By Luke Swindler
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Libraries, it took well over a century, from the university’s founding in 1789, to reach a collection of one million volumes. In the last five years alone, the campus has added nearly one million “volume-equivalents”, mainly due to massive e-book acquisitions.

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Why evolution wouldn’t favour Homo economicus

By Peter E. Earl
Economists traditionally have assumed that all decisions are taken by weighing up costs and benefits of alternative courses of action. In reality, people seem to make their choices in at least three ways, and which way they use depends on the kind of context in which they are choosing.

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