Previously, developers who wanted to improve the performance and reliability of their dynamic content had limited options, as the solutions offered by traditional CDNs are expensive, hard to configure and difficult to manage. This often requires custom code on their websites, and configuration can take days or weeks. Now, developers running web applications with both dynamic and static content can accelerate their entire website in minutes using only the AWS Management Console, without adding undue cost or complexity to their architecture. Amazon CloudFront has implemented several performance optimizations such as maintaining persistent connections with the origin web servers and other network path optimizations to speed up the delivery of dynamic content. When dynamic content delivery is used with origin web servers running in Amazon EC2, customers get an even better experience as AWS monitors and streamlines the network paths from each Amazon CloudFront edge location to the various AWS Regions for improved latency and reliability. All of these features are available at the same low prices that Amazon CloudFront already offers to its customers.

“With this release, we are continuing on the same path we started when we launched CloudFront: iterating based on customer feedback and making premium and innovative content delivery features that other CDNs sell at high prices much less expensive and much easier to use,” said Tal Saraf, AWS’s General Manager for Amazon CloudFront. “In 2008, CloudFront showed customers that they didn’t need to pay premium prices and sign long term contracts to get great performance and reliability for static content. In 2009, we did the same for video on demand, offering RTMP streaming at the same low prices we were already charging for static object delivery. In 2011, we did the same for live events. Now, with this release, customers can use CloudFront to accelerate their dynamic content, and again, customers don’t have to pay any more than our already low rates. No up-front fees, no requirement to make a long term commitment, no monthly platform fees, no need to hire expensive consultants to help with configuration, no more being over-charged by traditional CDNs that used to be the only ones who could provide this important feature for customers.”

Earth Networks gathers and analyzes environmental observations from around the world to help promote a better understanding of the planet and its atmosphere. “We use Amazon CloudFront to deliver static content and are excited to take advantage of the new capabilities that Amazon CloudFront has added to deliver dynamic content generated by our application servers running in the AWS cloud. With these new features, we can be sure that our customers get the accurate and personalized weather updates they need to plan their day and stay safe from severe weather as quickly as possible,” said Andy Rosenbaum, Development Manager at Earth Networks. “With Amazon CloudFront’s strong performance, ease of use and flexibility, our team can use the API or the Management Console to quickly make changes to our CDN configuration and see the updates within minutes. And with the low cost of delivering dynamic content using Amazon CloudFront, we expect to see significant cost savings as well.”

“We use Amazon CloudFront to deliver over 5 billion requests and 250TB of bandwidth per month to our international user base,” said Steve Corona, CTO of Twitpic. “The reliability of Amazon CloudFront allows our small team to focus on our core products instead of scaling servers and network resources. Support for dynamic content is a natural extension of Amazon CloudFront and is something we’re eager to provide our customers to give them a better user experience at Twitpic.”

With this new feature, requests for dynamic, static and streaming content are all routed through Amazon CloudFront’s full worldwide network of edge locations, giving customers improved performance and reliability through network and route optimizations that accelerate the delivery of content from the origin to the end user. There are no additional costs beyond Amazon CloudFront’s existing low prices for data transfer and requests, and no long-term commitments for use. You can get started at http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console.

Patrick Milano Becomes Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer of McGraw-Hill Education
David Stafford Becomes General Counsel of McGraw-Hill Education
Business Unit Management Team Confirmed to Lead the New Company
The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP) today announced further steps to establish the new, independent company, McGraw-Hill Education, by the end of this year. The process of creating this new entity requires multiple changes across operating and support functions to both separate the education segment from The McGraw-Hill Companies and to stand up McGraw-Hill Education as an independent, digital learning and education services organization. These moves will also facilitate the process of onboarding a new Chief Executive Officer of McGraw-Hill Education as the search enters its final phase.

To continue the process of building a world-class team to lead the new education company, the Corporation is appointing Patrick Milano, currently Executive Vice President and Director of the Program Management Office of the Corporation’s Growth and Value Plan, to the new position of Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer of McGraw-Hill Education. Mr. Milano, a multi-year veteran of McGraw-Hill, including in the education segment, has successfully led the separation phase of the Growth and Value Plan since last year. In this new role, he will be responsible for Finance, Manufacturing, Distribution and IT, reporting to Jack Callahan, Chief Financial Officer of The McGraw-Hill Companies, until the new Chief Executive Officer of McGraw-Hill Education is appointed. Joe Micallef, currently Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations, will work closely with Mr. Milano on standing up McGraw-Hill Education before retiring following a very successful career at the company.

Concurrent with these moves, Robert Bahash, the President of McGraw-Hill Education, will retire after 37 years of distinguished service with The McGraw-Hill Companies, as previously anticipated.

David Stafford, currently Vice President and Associate General Counsel of The McGraw-Hill Companies, will become General Counsel of McGraw-Hill Education and will also play a key role building a public company legal team and preparing for the spin-off.

Maryellen Valaitis, currently Head of Human Resources in the education segment, will become Vice President of Human Resources of the new company, thus providing important continuity in ensuring McGraw-Hill Education has the best possible talent in the education sector.

Vineet Madan, currently Senior Vice President of Strategic Services, will continue to lead strategic planning as McGraw-Hill Education enhances its leadership of digital and personal learning innovation.

Bruce Marcus, currently Chief Digital and Information Officer of McGraw-Hill Education, will continue to lead the IT team and the higher education digital product development unit.

The business unit management team of McGraw-Hill Education will be led by the following talented presidents: Brian Kibby, President, Higher Education; Dan Caton, President, School Education Group; Philip Ruppel, President, Professional; Ellen Haley, President, CTB/McGraw-Hill; and Talia Griep, President, International. All will report to Harold McGraw III, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of The McGraw-Hill Companies, until the new Chief Executive Officer of McGraw-Hill Education is appointed.

These moves underscore the progress already announced regarding the Growth and Value Plan, including the ruling received from the Internal Revenue Service agreeing to the tax-free status for the spin-off of McGraw-Hill Education, and the ongoing preparations to file the Form 10.

“These are important steps as we continue the process of creating the new McGraw-Hill Education Company,” said Mr. McGraw. “This team has an exceptional record of leadership, substantial international credentials, significant experience in new technologies and strong operating skills, which, combined with their steadfast commitment to improving education performance, makes them highly qualified to lead McGraw-Hill Education in the new era of global digital learning. It is because of their creativity and dedication that McGraw-Hill Education is an outstanding leader in the new adaptive and personalized digital platforms that are increasingly engaging and exciting students to deliver better educational outcomes.

“In addition, Pat Milano has been successfully leading the separation and stand up process for McGraw-Hill Education under the Growth and Value Plan. In his new role as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer of McGraw-Hill Education, Pat will ensure close alignment and effective allocation of resources as we establish two powerful new companies, McGraw-Hill Education and McGraw-Hill Financial, later this year.”

“I want to extend my thanks to Bob Bahash for his dedication and considerable contributions to McGraw-Hill,” Mr. McGraw added. “He has been a very valuable member of the management team for so many years and his recent leadership of McGraw-Hill Education has been very important as it transitions to becoming an independent company.” Mr. Bahash was previously the Corporation’s Chief Financial Officer, worked as Senior Vice President of Finance and Manufacturing, and served in other leadership positions at McGraw-Hill.

“I also want to thank Joe Micallef for his wise counsel, commitment and professional service to McGraw-Hill over the years.”

CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Wolters Kluwer Nancy McKinstry has said that “the sale of our pharma-related business is part of our strategy to focus on our core health markets and accelerate growth by providing innovative solutions to clinicians globally.”

“After conducting a thorough process, the sale to STG is a perfect fit for Healthcare Analytics, its customers and employees,” said Bob Becker, CEO and President of Wolters Kluwer Health. “STG and its portfolio companies bring deep expertise in technology and analytics as well as a strong commitment to the pharmaceutical industry.”
Healthcare Analytics is a leader in comprehensive patient and physician-level prescription and usage data to the pharmaceutical industry. STG’s portfolio companies capture high value data around physicians’ treatment decisions in response to pharmaceutical promotion.

This sale is part of the divestiture program of Wolters Kluwer’s pharma-related assets, originally announced in July 2011. The Healthcare Analytics unit was reported as part of discontinued business in Wolters Kluwer’s 2011 results. While terms of the sale were not disclosed, Wolters Kluwer will retain a minority interest in a newly created STG entity going forward as part of the agreement.

Springer INdAM Series will publish textbooks, multi-author books, theses and monographs which result from workshops, conferences, courses, seminars and research activities carried out at INdAM. The books in the series will discuss recent results and analyze new trends in mathematics and its applications. Springer will hold exclusive distribution rights and will be responsible for sales and marketing. All books in the series will be available as eBooks on Springer’s online platform www.springerlink.com, and in print-to-order (PTO) format.

Dr. Francesca Bonadei, Executive Editor Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering at Springer, said, “The role of INdAM is crucial in supporting the development of Italian mathematical research by working with the most distinguished Italian mathematicians, and also in fostering links to the international community. Springer is honored to work with this respected society and proud to introduce this book series to the international scientific community.”

The Italian National Institute for Higher Mathematics / Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica was founded in 1939. It promotes the development of mathematical research and supports mathematical culture in Italy, with the most important activities carried out at an international level. INdAM also organizes advanced courses for the most outstanding young students and researchers in mathematics.

As part of the agreement, the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, one of Emerald’s leading publications in its Innovation and Enterprise collection, will become the official journal of the ISBE. Emerald will also provide information, services and support to ISBE members through complimentary access to online journal content, the creation of an online publishing resource centre and content repository and support of the annual ISBE conference and exhibition.

Rebecca Marsh, Publishing Director at Emerald, comments, “Emerald aims to be as supportive as possible of the research communities it serves, and a key way in which Emerald can do this is by providing and sharing our expert publishing knowledge and advice.”

Professor Lynn Martin, President of ISBE, adds, “This is a very good and relevant partnership for ISBE and is part of a range of developments to benefit our membership.  ISBE is committed to high standards in research and to establishing the application of research with professional groups and other practitioners. The International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research offers us an excellent opportunity to showcase some of the best of our research in a leading publication with an international readership, through the normal peer review process.”

Emerald is a leading independent publisher of international research with impact in business, society, public policy, and education. Its Innovation and Enterprise portfolio covers established areas of research alongside such emerging topics as social enterprise, gender and entrepreneurship and Chinese entrepreneurship.

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research (IJEBR) is primarily concerned with the publication of original papers related to entrepreneurship and the management of smaller organizations. The Journal publishes conceptual papers and empirical studies which bring together issues of interest to academics, policy-makers and practitioners.

For more information about Emerald’s partnership with the ISBE, contact Mark Moreau, Publisher, at mmoreau@emeraldinsight.com

The Integrated Risk Governance Project (IRG-Project) is supported by both Chinese and international funding, in large part from the prizewinning Chinese research project “Global Change, Environmental Risk & Its Adaptation Paradigms.” The IRG-Project will study global change and the mechanism of environmental risk, the evolution process of environmental risk and its integrated assessment, regionalization of Chinese and global environmental risk, and global and Chinese adaptation paradigms for environmental risk.

The aim of the IHDP-Integrated Risk Governance Project Series is to provide a forum for collaboration between academics and practitioners in integrated risk governance from various disciplines and sectors. The books focus on the identification, evaluation and management of emerging global large-scale risks. The first title Integrated Risk Governance – Science Plan and Case Study of Large-scale Disasters will be published in September 2012. The works presented in the series are based on projects undertaken and conducted by the IHDP-IRG groups (International Human Dimensions Programme). Books published in the series will be of interest to policymakers around the world working in government, industry and society at large, as well as to academics and students working in this field

The book series also includes the following titles: Risk Modeling and Integrated Models; Understanding Socio-Ecological System from the Perspective of Integrated Risk Governance; Entry and Exit Transitions of Large-scale Disaster Risks; Early Warning System and Implementation for Large-scale Disasters; International Comparative Case Study and Integrated Governance of Large-scale Disasters; and Large-scale Disaster Governance and Paradigm.

The IRG-Project is one of the IHDP’s latest core projects. IHDP is an international, interdisciplinary science programme dedicated to promoting, catalyzing and coordinating research, capacity development and networking on the human dimensions of global environmental change. It takes a social science perspective on global change and works on the interface between science and practice.

Today’s scientific research is increasingly interdisciplinary, making conferences an important venue for collaboration and networking. With more and more researchers from different fields using conferences as a forum to cross-pollinate their ideas, the resulting proceedings volumes play a critical role in disseminating their work to the broader scientific community.

QScience Proceedings publishes papers from meetings of the world’s most prestigious conferences, delivering in-depth coverage of leading-edge research that is often unavailable anywhere else. Published online rapidly after contributors present their findings, the journal offers the scientific community first access to breakthrough results.

Arend Kuster, Managing Director of QScience, said “QScience Proceedings fulfills a major mission of QScience; to document, disseminate and bring world-class conferences from Qatar and beyond to the international scholarly community. By making the abstracts free to read, researchers from all over the world will be able to connect with workshops and conferences in the region, which will help to highlight the research achievements and discussions to a wide audience.”

This new service adds to the already existing features on QScience of article-level metrics, measuring downloads and citations, and the personalization and mobile features of the site, allowing browsing of content and access to search alerts with Blackberry, iPhone and Android handsets.

QScience.com also hosts twelve academic research journals covering diverse subject areas such as information & library studies, sustainable energy, education, medicine and bioscience, Middle Eastern healthcare, law, design and Islamic studies. Many other journals are scheduled to be added in 2012.

“We are delighted that so many of our LWW published journals have been honored by such a prestigious organization for their quality, excellence, and impact,” said Karen Abramson, President and CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health Medical Research. “This year was our finest year ever, with 12 of our publications receiving 21 awards. We are proud of our editorial, design, and publishing teams and we congratulate all of the individual members of our staff who have worked hard to drive excellence in these LWW publications.

This year, LWW received 7 gold awards: both Emergency Medicine News and Neurology Now won two each, andMCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, AJN: American Journal of Nursing, and Nursing2011 Careeach received one. In addition, LWW Journals swept all three awards in two categories: Best New Department and Best Regular Column. See below for the complete list of 2012 ASHPE awards received by LWW journals:

Best New Department:

• Gold: Emergency Medicine News - Diagnosis Deconstructed (April, May, November)
• Silver: Nursing2011 - Transitions: Issues in Palliative and End-of-Life Care  (November)
• Bronze: Nursing Management - Risk Management (January, March, July)

Best Regular Department:

• Gold: Emergency Medicine News – InFocus (March, May, July)

Best Regular Column:

• Gold: MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing - 2^nd Opinion (May/June, July/August, September/October)
• Silver: Emergency Medicine News - Second Opinion, (February, April, December)

Best Signed Editorial:

• Silver: Emergency Medicine News - Raiders of the Lost Admit (August)
• Bronze: Nursing Management - Check your ego at the door (November)

Best Feature Article:

• Gold: Neurology Now -  Buzz Kill: How does alcohol affect the teenage brain? (December)

Best Profile:

• Gold: Neurology Now - Larger Than Life: Chuck Close (August/September)

Best Custom Publication:

• Silver: Neurology Now (August/September, October/November, December)

Best Single News Article:

• Silver: OR Nurse 2011 - Remembering 9-11 (September)
• Bronze: Neurology Today - For Medicaid Patients, Particularly Children, the Neurologist May Not Be In (July 21)

Best Peer-Reviewed Journal:

• Silver: Nursing2011 (July, August, September)

Best How-to Article:

• Bronze: Nursing2011 - Beyond Mainstream: Making the Case for Fecal Bacteriotherapy (December)

Best Legislative/Government Article:

• Silver: Nephrology Times - Proposed Donor-Derived Infection Guideline Has Transplant Community Speaking Out (October)
• Bronze: The Nurse Practitioner - The 23^rd Annual Legislative Update (January)

Best Case History:

• Bronze: Nephrology Times - Come Together (February)

Best Feature Article Series:

• Gold: AJN: American Journal of Nursing - Supporting Family Caregivers (October, November, December)

Best Cover: Photo:

• Gold: Nursing2011 Critical Care - Oxygen, (May 2011)

Best Blog:

• Bronze: Oncology Times - Fresh Science for Clinicians

HDI titles are used by undergraduates in four- and two-year institutions.  More students around the world will have access to them as a result of Wiley’s extensive sales and marketing operations and strong relationships across the US and internationally. Wiley’s digital innovation and expertise will also provide the opportunity to offer HDI’s high quality content to a more diverse and wider market online.

“Harlan Davidson’s audience and focus is a perfect complement to our own.  We already have relationships with a significant proportion of HDI’s authors and feel that this is a natural extension of our work in the field of history to date,” said Steve D. Smith, VP & Books Publishing Director, Social Sciences & Humanities, Wiley-Blackwell. “As a larger business with founding family involvement, we will be well placed to continue to offer HDI authors the highly personalized service to which they are accustomed, but at the same time expose their books to the broader and digital markets to which we have access.”

Andrew Davidson, who will be joining Wiley,  commented, “My family and I are extremely pleased to know that the titles on which we have worked so hard over the years will find a good home at Wiley. On a personal note, I am thrilled to have the opportunity both to continue my relationships with the authors I have come to know but also work alongside the talented editorial staff at Wiley to develop new and innovative products to help students and instructors of history alike.”

HDI was founded in the 1970s by the late Harlan Davidson, Sr., and is under the editorial oversight of his son, Andrew Davidson.  HDI’s extensive backlist encompasses ten series, including those in American, European, and world history, political science, and literature, including the “Crofts Classics,” previously acquired from Appleton-Century-Crofts. HDI, under Andrew Davidson’s direction, currently has 20 new titles under development for the next three years, as well as ten revisions.

Additionally, more than 80% of UK students reported that their awareness of digital resources is good to excellent, compared to less than 69% of global participants. Only 6% of UK students indicated they did not know their libraries offered e-books compared to 38% of global respondents.

“ebrary was surprised to see such a variation of results in the UK,” said Kevin Sayar, President and General Manager of ebrary. “One explanation may be that UK students know when they are using digital books, whereas other students may mistake e-books for online journals or other formats. It is also possible that UK librarians are doing more in terms of e-book training and promotion. We are excited to work with participating libraries, both in the UK and abroad, to dive deeply into this data and develop and share insights and best practices.”