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Most Americans on Brink of Financial Disaster
Pew Charitable Trusts | READ STORY
Despite reports of economic recovery, most Americans' household financial security is anything but secure. So finds a report released Thursday by Pew Charitable Trusts which looks at three elements of a household balance sheet - income, expenditures and wealth - over the past several decades, and reveals the "financial tightrope" most families are walking.
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The Most Common Job In Every State
University of Minnesota | READ STORY
Researchers from the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota have gathered information relating the most common held occupation in each state from 1978 to 2014.
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Lower oil prices may temper 2015 food price inflation
USDA | READ STORY
Despite lower oil prices, Economic Research Service (ERS) currently predicts overall food prices to rise between 2 and 3 percent in 2015, closely in line with 2014 food price inflation. Information on ERS's food price forecasts can be found in ERS's Food Price Outlook data product.
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New map shows America's quietest places
AAAS | READ STORY
Based on 1.5 million hours of acoustical monitoring from places as remote as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and as urban as New York City, scientists have created a map of noise levels across the country on an average summer day. After feeding acoustic data into a computer algorithm, the researchers modeled sound levels across the country including variables such as air and street traffic.
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U.S. students improving - slowly - in math and science, but still lagging internationally
PEW Research Center | READ STORY
In a new Pew Research Center report, only 29% of Americans rated their country's K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world. While U.S. students are scoring higher on national math assessments than they did two decades ago, they still rank around the middle of the pack in international comparisons, and behind many other advanced industrial nations.
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This is How the World Ends: Twelve Risks That Threaten Human Existence
Oxford University | READ STORY
A new report from researchers at Oxford University urges readers to consider a new category of global risks - low-probability, high-impact scenarios that hover at the extreme end of the spectrum. The report looks only at events that could trigger a civilization's collapse - "defined as a drastic decrease in human population size and political/economic/social complexity, globally for an extended time."
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Our MACDEP / Community Development Update will be Dec. 2-3 at Chico Hot Springs, MT. We are very fortunate to have Prof. Greg Wise from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Extension joining us to discuss their state-wide programming. More details to follow but please save the dates!
Last, I'd like to offer an interesting quote from a recent excerpt in Alternet by Bill McKibben from his 2010 book, EARTH: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet: "Community may suffer from overuse more sorely than any word in the dictionary...we need to rescue it; we need to make sure that community will become, on this tougher planet, one of the most prosaic terms in the lexicon...it heartens me that around the world people are starting to purposefully rebuild communities as functioning economic entities."
-Paul Lachapelle
MACDEP President
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Global Community Partnerships Conference
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March 4-6, 2015
Durham, North Carolina
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Community Development Academy
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March 23-27, 2015
St. Louis, Missouri
Sponsor: University of Missouri Extension
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Reinventing Older Communities: Bridging Growth & Opportunity
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May 12-14, 2015
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Sponsor: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
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Community Development Society 2015 Conference
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July 19-22, 2015
Lexington, Kentucky
Sponsor: Community Development Society
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Community Economic Development Projects
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Deadline: Apr 24, 2015
Funder: Administration for Children and Families
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Community Building Grants
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Deadline: Open
Funder: Singing for Change
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Let's Play Imagination Playground Grant
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Deadline: Open
Funder: KaBOOM!
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U.S. Rural Infrastructure Opportunity Fund
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Deadline: Open
Funder: CoBank, Capitol Peak Asset Management, and USDA
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Water in the Western US, free course offered
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Mountain West News; Jan 26
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A 'megadrought' will grip U.S. in the coming decades, NASA researchers say
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Microsoft data center on outskirts of Cheyenne to undergo $200M expansion, double employees
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Hospital groups pour millions into western Treasure Valley
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Montana's recreational, ag land sales trend up in 2014
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Starting Up from Scratch: A conversation with Montana's high-tech ambassador Greg Gianforte
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Magnetic Montana aims to bring recreation and community together
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Montana reaction to Keystone veto mixed
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Great Falls Tribune; Feb 24
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