Do you lie awake at night wondering, “Is is my bank account safe from cyber thieves?” Well, for cybersecurity professionals fear of the unknown also keeps them tossing and turning. Top U.S. policymakers and leading experts discussed the challenges they face in protecting the U.S. from cyber attacks at the recently held 2013 Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington D.C.

Keith Alexander, the U.S. Army general who leads the National Security Agency, warned that “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” is underway through hacking and computer attacks. While Richard McFeely, a top FBI investigator, revealed efforts to engage banks in order to probe recent cyber attacks.   

Read more.

Here’s a quick check-in with our friends over at the (newly rebranded) Legal Solutions blog to see what’s been going on in the legal world this past week: (more…)

We recently announced the release of the 2011 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), the most influential resource for information on highly cited, peer-reviewed publications. The 2011 release, with separate editions for Science and Social Sciences, features the largest-ever JCR with 10,677 journal listings in 232 disciplines; 2,552 publishers from 82 countries are represented.

The JCR includes a combination of impact and influence metrics, and millions of cited and citing journal data points that comprise the complete journal citation network in our Web of Science’s Science and Social Science indexes, enabling customers to have an accurate view of each journal’s ranking in the world of scholarly literature. (more…)

Intellectual Property & Science released its new report affirming global submission rates for academic journals are at their highest level in six years.

The ScholarOne Manuscripts report, Global Publishing: Changes in submission trends and the impact on scholarly publishers, confirmed submission rates are not only rising overall, but are increasing significantly from emerging nations, bringing a new influx of content from a diverse research base.  Data suggested that traditionally strong submitters like the United States, Japan and Europe are being outpaced by nations like China and India.

Along with a growing global research base, higher overall submission rates present both a challenge and an opportunity for publishers to keep pace with growing amounts of content. To see two ways where we found success in meeting rising demands, read the press release.

To learn more about ScholarOne Manuscripts, the premier journal and peer review tool for scholarly publishers and societies, visit their website.  Also, don’t forget to check out the Global Submission Infographic

Contrary to Nintendo’s effort, video games won’t make your kids healthier, or at least that is what a recent study has shown.  Nintendo’s Wii video game system and its corresponding games have been marketed to children and parents alike as a way to get kids off the couch and exercising as the United States battles an obesity epidemic, plaguing adults and children alike.  In 2008, more than 1/3 of children and adolescents were overweight or obese and the Center for Disease Control estimates that childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past thirty years.

To get a clearer picture of how, or if,  the Wii system actually influenced the amount of exercise its child users get, the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas gave Wii consoles and games to 78 overweight children between the ages of 9 and 12 and then tracked their physical activity. Half of the children were given a choice of an active game like, Dance Dance Revolution, and the other half were given a choice of sedentary games like Super Mario. At the mid-point of the study, the children were offered a second game from the same category as the first-active or inactive.  Accelerometers were used to track the children’s physical activity levels for 13 weeks.  After the thirteen weeks of tracking, researchers found that the children playing active games got an average of 25 to 28 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity each day while children playing inactive games got an average of 26 to 29 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity each day, essentially disproving the theory that the Wii and its active games facilitate exercise.  According to the original Reuters article, Nintendo was unavailable for comment.

While this study may very well prove the old adage, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”, exercise scientist, Jacob Barkley, told Reuters Health, “Maybe the Wii isn’t going to increase physical activity a whole heck of a lot, but it might increase caloric expenditure a bit more than a traditional sedentary video game, and if you do that on a daily basis that could have a cumulative effect that might be beneficial.”

Do you think it’s possible to predict the winner of the Nobel Prize? That’s exactly what researchers at Thomson Reuters are trying to do in an interesting experiment called the Citation Laureate Nobel Prize Predictions.

Brian Wilson, vice president and chief architect for Thomson Reuters’ Healthcare and Science business, talked about this project at the Strata Conference on Thursday, February 3^rd in a presentation titled Research Evaluation in the Age of Global Digital Scholarship. Wilson opened by stating, “Predictive analysis is the holy grail of this whole data thing,” and posed the question: How do you predict the progress of science? “We have thousands of scientists around the world that are working to predict the future of science,” said Wilson “And, we have more than 40 years of experience in this. So we do something kind of fun – we try to predict who’s going to win the Nobel Prize.”

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Innovation levels, as measured by patent volume, shifted across 12 major technology areas from 2009 to 2010, according to the second annual analysis of world patent activity published by the IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters. The 2010 Innovation Report: Twelve Key Technology Areas and Their States of Innovation tracks patent activity in key technology areas using the Thomson Reuters Derwent World Patents Index^® (DWPI^SM) database, the world’s most trusted source of patent information.

Key findings between 2009 and 2010 innovation data include:

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Raymond Fabius, MD, Chief Medical Officer of our Healthcare & Science division, talks about our new white paper that proposes a prescription for reducing the amount of waste in healthcare – five strategies that are a healthy idea for taxpayers and healthcare consumers.

Dr. Raymond Fabius, Chief Medical Officer of our Healthcare & Science division, speaks about getting a deeper understanding of the plight of women and girls around the world here at the Festival and gaining an insight from Blue Man Group that when it comes to education we need to find the fuse that lights the rocket of a child’s potential.

Follow us at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival

The Aspen Ideas Festival is a conversation-packed exploration of some of the most important ideas and pressing issues society faces. Presented by The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic magazine, and underwritten by Thomson Reuters*, the Festival highlights the ideas of experts at the forefront of their fields and of leaders whose actions are changing the world.

Over the past five years some of the most inspiring and provocative writers, artists, scientists, business leaders, educators, economists, doctors, foreign policy experts and political leaders – drawn from myriad fields, from across the country and around the world – have gathered in Aspen to talk, teach, debate, question, and think out loud.

This year’s special emphasis on “IDEAS IN ACTION” spotlights cutting-edge, or timeless, thinking that has – or will – translate into actions that make a difference. Focus areas include Living Digitally, The Century of Biology, and The Next Economy: Innovation as Catalyst.

Over the coming week, our own participants in the Festival’s panel discussions, tutorials, seminars, and other events will contribute written and video segments on some very big ideas, direct to you from Aspen.  Our Blogger-in-Chief will be Stephen Adler, Editorial Director, Professional division.

Participants include David Craig, Chief Strategy Officer; Raymond Fabius, M.D, Chief Medical Officer of our Healthcare & Science business; Peter Jackson, Chief Scientist and Robert Rose, Global Head, Strategic Planning and Business Development of our Enterprise division. They will be panelists or moderators for topics such as Cyber-Power and Cyber-Security; Intelligence, Intuition, and Information: The Promise and Peril of Big Data; Feeding the Pipeline: How Can We Bring Drugs to Market? and On to Implementation: How Do We Ensure the Integrity of the Health Care Plan?

* In addition to Thomson Reuters, underwriters include Allstate; Altria; Applied Materials; Booz Allen Hamilton; Ernst & Young; Hewlett-Packard; Mercedes-Benz; Monsanto; Shell and U.S. Trust.