What's New

A new book about John Singer Sargent and the women he painted: "Like characters in an Edith Wharton novel, these women challenged society’s restrictions, risking public shame and ostracism. All had forbidden love affairs; Lucia bravely supported her family despite illness, while Elsie explored Spiritualism, defying her overbearing father. Finally, the headstrong Isabella outmaneuvered the richest plutocrats on the planet to create her own magnificent art museum." more »

Because of the reforms that strengthened our financial system, and with support from monetary and other policies, credit is available on good terms, and lending has advanced broadly in line with economic activity in recent years, contributing to today's strong economy. At the same time, reforms have boosted the resilience of the financial system. Banks are safer. The risk of runs owing to maturity transformation is reduced. Efforts to enhance the resolvability of systemic firms have promoted market discipline and reduced the problem of too-big-to-fail. And a system is in place to more effectively monitor and address risks that arise outside the regulatory perimeter. Nonetheless, the scope and complexity of financial regulatory reforms demand that policymakers and researchers remain alert to both areas for improvement and unexpected side effects. more »

Julia Sneden wrote: A couple of the teachers dragooned some of the mothers to bring their sewing machines to school, to sew up "dinosaur pillows" which were patterned from the children's huge drawings on unfolded newspaper. For the most part, the teachers scorned published educational programs and workbooks that made boring the process of learning, and taught their students directly, thrillingly, energetically and in partnership – which also describes the way the children learned. more »

Websites for online classified ads selling sex are widely used by human traffickers, but law enforcement efforts to trace and disband human trafficking rings are hindered by the pseudonymous nature of adult ads, the tendency of ring leaders to employ multiple phone numbers and email addresses to avoid detection and the difficulty in determining which online ads reflect willing participants in the sex trade and which reflect victims forced into prostitution. The study is a first step toward developing a suite of freely available tools to help police and non-profit institutions overcome these challenges and identify victims of sexual exploitation on websites such as Backpage and Craigslist.   more »