On 7 November 2008, the directors of the law libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Yale University met in Durham, North Carolina at the Duke Law School. That meeting resulted in the "Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship," which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats.

Advances in interdisciplinary research and teaching are critical to producing workable solutions to many of society's most pressing problems. "Fostering Interdisciplinary Inquiry: An Invitational Conference" will focus on policies and practices of academic institutions and is intended to foster institutional cooperation among the nation's top research universities, public and private, and to expand understanding of both opportunities and challenges in advancing interdisciplinary research, academic programs, teaching, and training. A key goal of the conference is to create a consortium for interdisciplinary transformation that will continue to advance progress on these important issues.

Called Gradshare and developed by ProQuest, the Web site follows on the heels of other social-networking sites aimed at graduate students, like Graduate Junction. However, Gradshare's developers hope that the site, which opened in beta form last October, will carve out a niche with its question-and-answer focus.

Summary of Macy Foundation report

A report released on Thursday by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, "Revisiting the Medical School Educational Mission at a Time of Expansion," calls on medical schools to adopt sweeping changes in order to attract students of more diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds, train them in community settings as well as hospitals, and, in some cases, compress the time it takes to become a physician.

IBM Advances Research Through Cloud Computing to Help Solve Real-World Problems

Builds Cloud Computing Environments for Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Qatar University, Texas A&M University at Qatar, University of Pretoria, HEALTH Alliance and Kyushu University

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)'s Horizon Project, a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The 2009 Horizon Report is the sixth annual report in the series. The report is produced again in 2009 as a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program.

More services will be running on cellphones or handheld computers, and more devices will be able to broadcast their location to others, says a new report from Educause's Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium.

The "2009 Horizon Report," the latest edition of the annual list of technology trends to watch in education, is compiled based on news reports, research studies, and interviews with experts.

Topping the list of hot technologies are smart phones and other mobile devices.

Partnerships with African universities-- Botswana-UPenn Partnership is highlighted.

The Office of UW Technology at University of Washington is developing Research1, a Web site that will allow scattered researchers to reunite in online communities and share their projects with the general public through various media, including audio and video files.