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Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney appointed Ranch Kimball to serve as his new economic development secretary.

The Allegheny Conference on Community Development announced the following three staff appointments: Leigh McIntosh was named special projects director, Katherine Needham is a new senior vice president, and Roger Cranville will serve as senior vice president of business investment for the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

Nancy Stark has left the National Center for Small Communities to direct the new Rural Governance Initiative, a joint venture of the Rural Policy Research Institute and the Corporation for Enterprise Development.

Recognizing an immediate need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the adverse consequences of climate change, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have announced their intention to become partners and act aggressively to address climate change and promote energy diversity.

For many areas of the country, the first five years of the 21st century may well be remembered as a period of dramatic economic transformation, or the beginning of one as the rate of change continues at a fast clip. Having statistics for the five-year period of 2000-2005, however, provides the first opportunity for policymakers and academic researchers to look for meaning in the trends.

American K-12 students are becoming less and less interested in math, science and technology fields. Recent studies reveal that students are increasingly dropping science and math classes and pursuing careers in the arts and social services. Since national and regional competitiveness in high-tech fields depends on a skilled labor market, fueled by college graduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, many areas are attempting to generate more interest in these subjects.

A new report released in conjunction with the Fourth International Competitive Brazil Congress gives a positive assessment of the country's potential as a leader in life sciences and provides useful model for competitiveness assessments in other regions. The report, Mechanisms of Innovation and Competitiveness, was prepared by the Center for the Support of Technology Development at the University of Brasilia and coordinated by the five-year-old Competitive Brazil Movement (Movimento Brasil Competitivo, MBC).

One of the hottest political topics this year is the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to other countries. A Google search on "outsourcing" returns about 4.8 million pages. Reports from Gartner, Forrester Research, McKinsey & Company, AeA, and the Institute for International Economics, among others, have looked at the topic and fed the interest.

Supporters of NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) have weathered years of attempts by members of the House and the Bush Administration to eliminate the program, but this may be the biggest hurdle yet: The Senate Appropriations Committee approved language calling for the program's termination as part of the Department of Commerce fiscal year 2007 appropriations. The first of only two ATP-related sentences included in the Senate Committee report 109-580 accompanying H.R.

In a report released last week, a Toronto group says that creative industries may soon overtake ICT and business services as the fastest growing sector in the region's economy. In order to preserve this momentum and ensure that other industries benefit from the presence of a strong creative sector, the authors recommend enlisting regional leaders to create programs that support creative people, creative enterprises, affordable spaces for creative work, and a shared community vision.

"More than one-third of the nation's loss of manufacturing jobs between 2000-2005 occurred in seven Great Lakes states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin," write Howard Wial and Alec Friedhoff in a new paper from the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution.

Also released this week, and related to the negative change of U.S. manufacturing employment, is a new working paper by members of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Outsourcing Jobs? Multinationals and US Employment, by Ann Harrison and Margaret McMillan, examines the labor market decisions of U.S. multinationals at home and abroad for the years 1977 to 1999. Using firm level data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the authors econometric model reveals changes in the employment and operations of U.S.

Based on the two versions of the FY 2007 budget working their ways respectively through the House and Senate, the National Science Foundation (NSF) appears to be positioned to receive its first significant increase in funding in many years. Both chambers' versions of the NSF appropriations provide increases above the FY06 appropriations in excess of 7 percent, with the full House approving an increase of 7.9 percent in June.

Last week, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley signed the budget agreement passed by the state's General Assembly for fiscal years 2006-07. The budget contains many adjustments favoring K-12 and higher education and several allocations for technology-based growth initiatives.

It caught the attention of quite a few people when it was first proposed in early 2001, but Maine's investment in 2002 to provide every seventh and eighth grader with a new laptop - approximately 32,000 students and 4,000 teachers - continues to provide a useful example of the size and type of commitment and risk that elected leaders have to be willing to make to transform the outlook for a state or regional economy. It took strong leadership and determination from then-Gov.

The Department of Education's Committee on the Future of Higher Education has released a second draft of its report on the state of American colleges and universities. As reported in the July 10 issue of the Digest, the document originally released by the committee harshly criticized the U.S. higher education system for wasteful spending, lack of academic rigor, and failure to serve the needs of the national economy.

While much of the attention in the national dialogue on competitiveness and innovation has focused on federal R&D investments and science and tech education, a 62-year-old independent organization of business and education leaders says our attention should be much earlier in the education process. A new report by the Committee on Economic Development (CED) asserts economic development leaders should make quality preschools a top priority.

George Bald, Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development, has announced his resignation to become executive director of the Pease Development Authority.

George Bald, Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development, has announced his resignation to become executive director of the Pease Development Authority.

Janice Bourque, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, plans to step down once a replacement has been found.

Cynthia Helphingstine is the new vice president for business development for Inproteo (formerly the Indiana Proteomics Consortium).

Andrea Lohneiss, community development director for Riverhead, N.Y., is leaving to become Suffolk County's commissioner of economic development.

The Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism, in partnership with the University System of Georgia, has appointed Page Siplon and Michael Hale as directors of the Maritime Logistics Innovation Center and the Middle Georgia Innovation Center for Aircraft Lifecycle Support, respectively.

SSTI welcomes Rhiannon Mehring to its staff as a research associate.

Doros Platika is the new chief executive officer for the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse.