Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Want a young child to 'help' or 'be a helper'? Choice of words matters

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/sfri-way042314.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Apr-2014

Contact: Hannah Klein
Society for Research in Child Development
Want a young child to 'help' or 'be a helper'? Choice of words matters

How do you get a preschooler to help with chores and other household tasks? A new study suggests that adults' word choice can make a big difference.

The study, by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the University of Washington, and Stanford University, appears in the journal Child Development.

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Children who heard the noun wording (helper) helped significantly more than children who heard the verb wording (help). When the experimenter talked to youngsters about helping, using verb wording, the children didn't help any more than when the experimenter never brought up helping at all.

"These findings suggest that parents and teachers can encourage young children to be more helpful by using nouns like helper instead of verbs like helping when making a request of a child," says Christopher J. Bryan, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, who worked on the study. "Using the noun helper may send a signal that helping implies something positive about one's identity, which may in turn motivate children to help more."

Professional musicians run almost fourfold risk of noise induced deafness

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/bmj-pmr042814.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Apr-2014

Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
Professional musicians run almost fourfold risk of noise induced deafness

And they are 57 percent more likely to have tinnitus than general public

Professional musicians are almost four times as likely to develop noise induced hearing loss as the general public, reveals research published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.

And they are 57% more likely to develop tinnitus - incessant ringing in the ears - as a result of their job, the findings show.

Noise induced hearing loss can be caused by sudden very loud noise, such as an explosion or gunfire, but it may also develop gradually as a result of repeated exposure to loud noise, suggest the study authors.

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Hearing loss becomes more common with age, but after adjusting for this and other influential factors, such as sex and population density, professional musicians were still more likely to have noise induced hearing loss than the general public.

They were almost four times as likely to have some level of deafness and 57% more likely to have tinnitus.

The authors point out that repeated long term exposure to industrial noise has been clearly linked to hearing damage, including an inability to hear the full range of sound. But published evidence suggests that long term exposure to music has the opposite effect and increases hearing sensitivity.

"Our data suggest that in professional musicians the risks of music induced hearing loss outweigh the potential benefits for hearing ability, as reported by [other researchers]," write the authors.

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Professional musicians should be given protective in-ear devices, whether they are playing in rock bands or orchestras, and whenever sound amplifiers are used, in a bid to reduce the risk, they suggest. Sound shields should also be installed between different sections of an orchestra.

Neanderthals were not inferior to modern humans, says CU-Boulder study

As they say, history is written by the winners. We want to think our species is superior. I note that these researchers, although they are willing to recognize that humans did not displace Neanderthals because of cognitive superiority, are still unwilling it might have been due to humans being more vicious and destructive.



PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Apr-2014
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Contact: Paola Villa
Paola.Villa@Colorado.edu
303-492-4513
University of Colorado at Boulder
Neanderthals were not inferior to modern humans, says CU-Boulder study

The embargo has been lifted for the article, 'Neandertal Demise: An Archaeological Analysis of the Modern Human Superiority Complex.'

If you think Neanderthals were stupid and primitive, it's time to think again.

The widely held notion that Neanderthals were dimwitted and that their inferior intelligence allowed them to be driven to extinction by the much brighter ancestors of modern humans is not supported by scientific evidence, according to a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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"The evidence for cognitive inferiority is simply not there," said Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. "What we are saying is that the conventional view of Neanderthals is not true."

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Villa and Roebroeks say that the past misrepresentation of Neanderthals' cognitive ability may be linked to the tendency of researchers to compare Neanderthals, who lived in the Middle Paleolithic, to modern humans living during the more recent Upper Paleolithic period, when leaps in technology were being made.

"Researchers were comparing Neanderthals not to their contemporaries on other continents but to their successors," Villa said. "It would be like comparing the performance of Model T Fords, widely used in America and Europe in the early part of the last century, to the performance of a modern-day Ferrari and conclude that Henry Ford was cognitively inferior to Enzo Ferrari."

Although many still search for a simple explanation and like to attribute the Neanderthal demise to a single factor, such as cognitive or technological inferiority, archaeology shows that there is no support for such interpretations, the authors said.

But if Neanderthals were not technologically and cognitively disadvantaged, why didn't they survive?

The researchers argue that the real reason for Neanderthal extinction is likely complex, but they say some clues may be found in recent analyses of the Neanderthal genome over the last several years. These genomic studies suggest that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals likely interbred and that the resulting male children may have had reduced fertility. Recent genomic studies also suggest that Neanderthals lived in small groups. All of these factors could have contributed to the decline of the Neanderthals, who were eventually swamped and assimilated by the increasing numbers of modern immigrants.

Watch out: Children more prone to looking but not seeing

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/ucl-woc043014.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Apr-2014

Contact: Harry Dayantis
University College London
Watch out: Children more prone to looking but not seeing

Children under 14 are more likely than adults to be 'blinded' to their surroundings when focusing on simple things, finds a new UCL study

Children under 14 are more likely than adults to be 'blinded' to their surroundings when focusing on simple things, finds a new UCL study. It explains a somewhat frustrating experience familiar to many parents and carers: young children fail to notice their carer trying to get their attention because they have little capacity to spot things outside their area of focus.

The findings suggest that even something simple like looking at a loose thread on a jumper or an advert on the side of a bus might be enough to make children 'blind' to oncoming traffic and other dangers when walking down the street.

The research, published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, could also explain why children engrossed in a book, game or television programme appear to ignore parents or teachers.

"That children have much less peripheral awareness than adults has important implications for child safety," says Professor Nilli Lavie of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, who led the research. "Parents and carers should know that even focusing on something simple will make children less aware of their surroundings, compared to adults. For example, a child trying to zip up their coat while crossing the road may not be able to notice oncoming traffic, whereas a developed adult mind would have no problem with this. The capacity for awareness outside the focus of attention develops with age, so the younger children are at higher risk of 'inattentional blindness'.

"For the same reason, if you can't get your child's attention when they're engaged in something then it might be wrong to assume that they are intentionally ignoring you. If they don't respond when you ask them to stop playing a game or point to a potential hazard and it may be that their brain simply never registered it."

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Study: Women leaders perceived as effective as male counterparts

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/apa-swl043014.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Apr-2014

Contact: Kim Mills
American Psychological Association
Study: Women leaders perceived as effective as male counterparts

Stereotypes waning as workplace values new paradigms

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to being perceived as effective leaders, women are rated as highly as men, and sometimes higher - a finding that speaks to society's changing gender roles and the need for a different management style in today's globalized workplace, according to a meta-analysis published by the American Psychological Association.

"When all leadership contexts are considered, men and women do not differ in perceived leadership effectiveness," said lead researcher Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl, PhD, of Florida International University. "As more women have entered into and succeeded in leadership positions, it is likely that people's stereotypes associating leadership with masculinity have been dissolving slowly over time."

While men tend to rate themselves as significantly more effective than women rate themselves, when ratings by others were examined, women came out ahead on perceptions of effectiveness, according to the study, published in APA's Journal of Applied Psychology.

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"These findings are surprising given that men on average continue to be paid more and advance into higher managerial levels than women," said Paustian-Underdahl. "Future research needs to examine why women are seen as equally (or more) effective leaders than men, yet are not being rewarded in the same ways."

Light Activity Every Day Keeps Disability at Bay

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2014/04/light-activity-keeps-disability-at-bay.html

April 30, 2014 | by Erin White

Pushing a shopping cart or a vacuum doesn’t take a lot of effort, but enough of this sort of light physical activity every day can help people with or at risk of knee arthritis avoid developing disabilities as they age, according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study.

It is known that the more time people spend in moderate or vigorous activities, the less likely they are to develop disability, but this is the first study to show that spending more time in light activities can help prevent disability, too.

“Our findings provide encouragement for adults who may not be candidates to increase physical activity intensity due to health limitations,” said Dorothy Dunlop, professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “Even among those who did almost no moderate activity, the more light activity they did, the less likely they were to develop disability.”

Results of the study were published April 29 in the British Medical Journal.

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Frozen meal eaters get more vegetables but with lower total calories vs. fast food restaurant eaters

I mostly cook from scratch.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/kny-fm043014.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Apr-2014
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Contact: Roz OHearn
Roz.OHearn@us.nestle.com
440-264-5170

Allison Szeliga
Allison.Szeliga@interfusecomms.com
646-935-4161

Nestlé USA
Frozen meal eaters get more vegetables including greens, beans and whole grains but with lower total calories vs. fast food restaurant eaters

Data unveiled at 2014 Experimental Biology Conference in San Diego, April 26-30

SAN DIEGO (April 30, 2014) – New analysis of data from the 2003-2010 What We Eat In America (WWEIA) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicates that consumers of frozen meals (1) compared to consumers of quick service restaurant (QSR) meals (2) had lower calorie intakes and better Healthy Eating Index (HEI) score. In fact, the analysis revealed that those who consumed frozen meals consumed 253 fewer calories than those who consumed a quick service restaurant meal.

Researchers find brain reserve and cognitive reserve have long-term protective effect against cognitive decline in MS

http://kesslerfoundation.org/media/displaynews.php?id=496

2014-04-30

West Orange, NJ. April 30, 2014. Multiple sclerosis researchers have found that brain reserve and cognitive reserve confer a long-term protective effect against cognitive decline: Sumowski JF, Rocca MA, Leavitt VM, Dackovic J, Mesaros S, Drulovic J, Deluca J, Filippi M. Brain reserve and cognitive reserve protect against cognitive decline over 4.5 years in MS. Neurology. 2014 Apr 18. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000000433 [Epub ahead of print]. James Sumowski, PhD, lead author of the article, and John DeLuca, PhD, are at Kessler Foundation. Co-authors are from the Manhattan Memory Center, New York, NY, the San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, and the University of Belgrade, Serbia. Neurology is the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Dr. Sumowski presented these findings at the AAN 2014 confernece in Philadelphia.

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In this study, memory, cognitive efficiency, vocabulary (a measure of intellectual enrichment/cognitive reserve), brain volume (a measure of brain reserve), and disease progression on MRI, were evaluated in 40 patients with MS at baseline and at 4.5-year followup. After controlling for disease progression, scientists looked at the impact of brain volume and intellectual enrichment on cognitive decline.
Results supported the protective effects of brain reserve and cognitive reserve,” noted Dr. Sumowski. “Patients with greater intellectual enrichment experienced lesser degrees of cognitive decline. Those with greater brain reserve showed a protective effect for cognitive efficiency. This study not only confirms these protective effects of brain and cognitive reserve, it shows that these beneficial effects persist for years.”

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U.S. Should Significantly Reduce Rate of Incarceration

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=18613

April 30, 2014

Given the minimal impact of long prison sentences on crime prevention and the negative social consequences and burdensome financial costs of U.S. incarceration rates, which have more than quadrupled in the last four decades, the nation should revise current criminal justice policies to significantly reduce imprisonment rates, says a new report from the National Research Council.

A comprehensive review of data led the committee that wrote the report to conclude that the costs of the current rate of incarceration outweigh the benefits. The committee recommended that federal and state policymakers re-examine policies requiring mandatory and long sentences, as well as take steps to improve prison conditions and to reduce unnecessary harm to the families and communities of those incarcerated. In addition, it recommended a reconsideration of drug crime policy, given the apparently low effectiveness of a heightened enforcement strategy that resulted in a tenfold increase in the incarceration rate for drug offenses from 1980 to 2010 — twice the rate for other crimes.

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The committee evaluated scientific evidence on the effects of high incarceration rates on public safety and U.S. society, as well as their effects on those in prison, their families, and the communities from which prisoners originate and to which they return. The following data illustrate the magnitude of incarceration rates, the racial disparities of incarceration, and societal impacts:

· With the inclusion of local jails, the U.S. penal population totals 2.2 million adults, the largest in the world; the U.S. has nearly one-quarter of the world’s prisoners, but only 5 percent of its population.

· Nearly 1 in 100 adults is in prison or jail, which is 5 to 10 times higher than rates in Western Europe and other democracies.

· Of those incarcerated in 2011, about 60 percent were black or Hispanic.

· Black men under age 35 who did not finish high school are more likely to be behind bars than employed in the labor market.

· In 2009, 62 percent of black children 17 or younger whose parents had not completed high school had experienced a parent being sent to prison, compared with 17 percent for Hispanic children and 15 percent for white children with similarly educated parents.

Another major consequence of high rates of incarceration is their considerable fiscal burden on society, the report says. Allocations for corrections have outpaced budget increases for nearly all other key government services, including education, transportation, and public assistance. State spending on corrections is the third highest category of general fund expenditures in most states today, ranked only behind Medicaid and education.

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Unemployment common after breast cancer treatment

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uomh-uca042314.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Apr-2014

Contact: Nicole Fawcett
University of Michigan Health System
Unemployment common after breast cancer treatment

Women who had chemotherapy less likely to be employed 4 years later

Nearly one-third of breast cancer survivors who were working when they began treatment were unemployed four years later. Women who received chemotherapy were most affected, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Researchers surveyed woman in Detroit and Los Angeles who had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. They narrowed their sample to the 746 women who reported working at the time they were diagnosed. Participants were surveyed about nine months after diagnosis, and then given a follow-up survey about four years later.

Overall, 30 percent of these working women said they were no longer working at the time of the four-year follow-up survey. Women who received chemotherapy were more likely to report that they were not working four years later.

Many of these women reported that they want to work: 55 percent of those not working said it was important for them to work and 39 percent said they were actively looking for work. Those who were not working were significantly more likely to report they were worse off financially. Results of the study appear in the journal Cancer.

"Many doctors believe that even though patients may miss work during treatment, they will 'bounce back' in the longer term. The results of this study suggest otherwise. Loss of employment is a possible long-term negative consequence of chemotherapy that may not have been fully appreciated to date," says lead study author Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

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Success really does breed success, unique online experiments find

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/ucl-srd042514.php


PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Apr-2014

Contact: Cher Thornhill
University College London
Success really does breed success, unique online experiments find

Success really does breed success – up to a point - found researchers from UCL and Stony Brook University, following a series of unique on-line experiments.

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They found that success was more likely to follow initial assistance, with crowd-funders on kickstarter.com arbitrarily given an initial donation being about twice as likely to receive further contributions as others who only received funding through standard routes. In the ideological arena, the granting of a dozen signatures to a randomly selected petition on change.org led to the project attracting another endorsement more often than petitions that did not receive the orchestrated support. However, the magnitude of the support offered had little effect on the outcome.

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However, when the research team carried out a second study to investigate whether success increases in proportion to the help given, they found that, for example, giving twice as much funding does not provide twice as much success.

Dr Soong Moon Kang (UCL Management Science & Innovation, UK) said: "Our research has implications for the success of initiatives to counter inequality and create a more meritocratic society. It also suggests that these don't need to be big or costly to help: it's the initial boost that matters. We also find that interventions have much more effect on those coming from very little."

22 Technicolor Dreamscapes You Won't Believe Are Real, Actual Places In Nature

Beautiful, but in some cases not entirely natural. Like fields of planted crops.
See the link for the pictures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/planet-earth-is-prettier-than-me-and-everything_n_5134068.html

The Huffington Post | by Kate Bratskeir
Posted: 04/17/2014 9:53 am EDT Updated: 04/19/2014 1:59 pm EDT

Some CEOs Are Still Cashing In at Our Expense

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/08/28/Some-CEOs-Are-Still-Cashing-In-at-Our-Expense

Aug. 28, 2013
BY JOSH BOAK, The Fiscal Times

Many of the highest paid CEOs are profiting at the expense of their stockholders – and at the expense of American taxpayers, according to a study released Wednesday morning by the progressive Institute for Policy Studies.

A surprising 38 percent of these corporate titans were either fired involuntary, led companies that were penalized for fraud, or received a taxpayer bailout after the 2008 financial crash.

“This report should put an end to any remaining sense that we have ‘pay for performance’ in corporate America,” said Sarah Anderson, a co-author of the report and a director at the Washington-based think tank.

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The analysis examined compensation for each of the 25 highest paid CEOs over the past 20 years. Of that group, 22 percent of the executives led companies that received taxpayer assistance during the financial crisis – including Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs.

Another 8 percent were fired, but escaped with golden parachutes that averaged $48 million. The next 8 percent led companies that paid fines and settlements that were related to anti-trust violations, accounting fraud, Medicaid kickbacks, and insider trading.

Congress enabled the CEO bonanzas with a 1993 law that placed a $1 million cap on deducting the expense of executive pay. But the cap does not apply to stock options – so compensation was skewed toward this supposedly performance-based incentive.

Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxes estimated that removing the performance-based exception would generate another $50 billion in tax revenues over the next decade. This month Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the “Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act” to close this loophole.

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How Companies Lard their CEOs' Pay Packages

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/30/How-Pork-Giant-Smithfield-Foods-Larded-Its-CEO-s-Pay-Package

April 30, 2014
BY ELLIOT BLAIR SMITH,
The Fiscal Times

The second in a four-part series on how CEO pay became a national controversy.

Smithfield Foods CEO Larry Pope stands to take home $46.4 million from the sale of the world’s largest pork producer to Chinese interests last September. Once the deal was announced, the fine print revealed the board had authorized more than $18 million in accelerated stock-based payments to the chief executive, including millions of dollars in previously undisclosed incentives.

In January, Wal-Mart Stores CEO Michael Duke retired after five years at the helm, as the world’s largest retailer was about to report lower earnings. Duke relinquished unearned performance shares potentially worth millions, but the board had awarded him $2 million in 2010 for “achieving at least 2.5 percent revenue growth” when unadjusted revenues grew by just 1 percent.

This March, Alcoa disclosed that its board piled new cash bonuses and stock incentives onto CEO Klaus Kleinfeld ...

Three big U.S. companies. Three boards. One pay consultant: Ira Kay.

The Smithfield, Wal-Mart and Alcoa examples demonstrate that how CEOs are paid is as meaningful, and perhaps more so, than how much. That’s where consultants such as Kay, managing director of Pay Governance LLC, come in. Executive-pay specialists and the boards that hire them preside over bulging CEO pay through alternative compensation-accounting methods, amorphous performance targets, opaque disclosures and equity grants that reward longevity rather than results.

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On Dec. 5, 2007, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), then chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called a hearing to examine the “inherent conflict” posed by consultants who “are being asked to evaluate the worth of the executives who hire them and pay them millions of dollars.” Congressional investigators had found that, for 2006, only 33 of 113 Fortune 250 companies that hired compensation consultants with conflicts of interest disclosed the relationships to investors. On average, the companies paid the consultants almost 11 times more for other services, averaging $2.3 million, than the $220,000 for executive-compensation advice, according to the report.

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Usha Haley, a management professor at West Virginia University, frames the payments to management in geopolitical rather than performance terms, telling the Senate they produced short-term benefits to Smithfield executives and long-term benefits to China by making the United States “an exporter of the commodity of pork to China and an importer of higher value-added processed foods.”

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First part of the series

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/29/Man-Pushing-CEO-Pay-Stratosphere

The Man Pushing CEO Pay to the Stratosphere
The first in a four-part series on how CEO pay became a national controversy.

April 29, 2014
BY ELLIOT BLAIR SMITH,
The Fiscal Times

Tiny ice crystals blew sideways, stinging the January air, as the bald man with a scowl made his way from his mid-Manhattan apartment to a debate a few blocks away. Ira Kay was on a mission to defend rising executive compensation against the outrage of dissatisfied shareholders, governance activists and anyone else who might cross his path. He faced a headwind of popular resentment.

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In the 3-1/2 years since the economy began recovering from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the wealthiest Americans had watched their incomes grow by nearly one-third while the rest nursed 0.4 percent gains

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Considered by many clients and competitors to be the top CEO-compensation consultant in the business, the 63-year-old Kay — square-shouldered with small, round eyeglasses — is a managing director of New York-based Pay Governance LLC, which represents board compensation committees at one out of every 10 Standard & Poor’s 500 corporations.

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Kay is an unabashed proponent of blockbuster pay for management, citing the stock market as an independent arbiter of performance, true to shareholders, boards and executives alike, he told me during the course of several interviews before the 2014 shareholder proxy season.

“One of the reasons the U.S. economy has outperformed Japan and Europe is because of our executive pay model,” Kay says. “Companies are setting reasonably challenging goals, they’re beating them and their stock prices are going up. I don’t know what else somebody would want.”

["The U.S. economy" should be defined as how everybody is doing, not just the richest 0.1%]

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By selectively quoting the market, Kay and other executive-compensation specialists are little-known architects of pay-bracket bulge for the 1 percent.

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“Pay awarded to chief executives is becoming profoundly detached from not just the pay of the average worker, but also from the companies they run,” Elson argues.

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- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/29/Man-Pushing-CEO-Pay-Stratosphere?page=0%2C1#sthash.RvZXcFuu.dpuf - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/29/Man-Pushing-CEO-Pay-Stratosphere#sthash.QxCTfAIS.dpuf

Pollution Report Paints Gloomy Picture of Smoggiest U.S. Cities

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/pollution-report-paints-gloomy-picture-smoggiest-us-cities/story?id=23532002

April 30, 2014
By LIZ NEPORENT

More than half of Americans breathe in unhealthy air, according to a new American Lung Association’s “State of the Air 2014” report.

The Association found that air pollution throughout the nation has gotten a little worse since last year’s report. In particular, ozone levels rose in the three year period from 2010 to 2012, possibly because of climate change.

“We’re making progress but some of that could be reversed with rising ozone levels,” said Janice Nolen, the Lung Association’s vice president of national policy. “A changing climate is going to make it harder to protect human health.”

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Air filled with filthy particles can be harmful even if in inhaled over just a few hours or days, and even if the year-round averages are low, the Lung Association warned.

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Particle pollution increases the risk of heart disease, lung cancer and asthma attacks. People with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, really struggle to breathe dirty air, and it’s especially dangerous for children with developing lungs and seniors with weakened lungs.

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Nolen said that Maine used to be “America’s tailpipe,” with industrial pollution blowing in from other states. But thanks to tighter government and industry regulations, not to mention some fortunate weather patterns, it’s enjoying much cleaner air in recent years.

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Tart cherry juice increases sleep time in adults with insomnia

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/wsw-st042814.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Apr-2014

Contact: Mary Wendel
Weber Shandwick Worldwide
Study: Tart cherry juice increases sleep time in adults with insomnia

SAN DIEGO, Calif. April 28, 2014 – A morning and evening ritual of tart cherry juice may help you sleep better at night, suggests a new study presented today at the Experimental Biology 2014 meeting. Researchers from Louisiana State University found that drinking Montmorency tart cherry juice twice a day for two weeks helped increase sleep time by nearly 90 minutes among older adults with insomnia.

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Simply being called 'fat' makes young girls more likely to become obese



PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Apr-2014

Contact: Stuart Wolpert
University of California - Los Angeles
Simply being called 'fat' makes young girls more likely to become obese
Trying to be thin is like trying to be tall, say UCLA psychologists

Girls who are told by a parent, sibling, friend, classmate or teacher that they are too fat at age 10 are more likely to be obese at age 19, a new study by UCLA psychologists shows.

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"Simply being labeled as too fat has a measurable effect almost a decade later. We nearly fell off our chairs when we discovered this," said A. Janet Tomiyama, an assistant professor of psychology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and the study's senior author. "Even after we statistically removed the effects of their actual weight, their income, their race and when they reached puberty, the effect remained.

"That means it's not just that heavier girls are called too fat and are still heavy years later; being labeled as too fat is creating an additional likelihood of being obese."

Co-author Jeffrey Hunger, a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, said that simply being called fat may lead to behaviors that later result in obesity.

"Being labeled as too fat may lead people to worry about personally experiencing the stigma and discrimination faced by overweight individuals, and recent research suggests that experiencing or anticipating weight stigma increases stress and can lead to overeating," he said.

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Higher calcium intake may reduce body fat, mitigating genetic risk for diabetes

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/asfb-hci042814.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Apr-2014

Contact: Nancy Lamontagne
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Higher calcium intake may reduce body fat, mitigating genetic risk for diabetes
Study shows calcium intake mitigates genetic risk for increased body fat in African-American children, a population with historically low calcium intake and high risk for diabetes

SAN DIEGO (April 29, 2014) – As the number of people with type 2 diabetes continues to rise and its toll increases, scientists are scrambling to unravel the complex genetic and lifestyle factors behind the disease. A new study finds that African American children with a genetic predisposition to diabetes may be able to reduce their risk by getting the USDA-recommended dose of calcium.

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Heart attack survivors who eat lots of fiber live longer

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/bmj-has042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 29-Apr-2014

Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
Heart attack survivors who eat lots of fiber live longer
Advising a higher intake of cereal fiber after a myocardial infarction may improve long-term survival rates

People who survive heart attacks have a greater chance of living longer if they increase their dietary intake of fibre – and eating lots of cereal fibre is especially beneficial, finds research published today on bmj.com.

Those who ate most fibre had a 25% lower chance of dying in the nine years after their heart attack compared with those who ate least fibre, the researchers found. Every 10g per day increase in fibre intake was associated with a 15% lower risk of dying over the nine-year follow-up period.

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Simple tests of physical capability in midlife linked with survival

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/bmj-sto042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 29-Apr-2014

Contact: Stephanie Burns
BMJ-British Medical Journal
Simple tests of physical capability in midlife linked with survival
And more time spent in light intensity physical activity may ward off disability

Low levels of physical capability (in particular weak grip strength, slow chair rise speed and poor standing balance performance) in midlife can indicate poorer chances of survival over the next 13 years, while greater time spent in light intensity physical activity each day is linked to a reduced risk of developing disability in adults with or at risk of developing knee osteoarthritis, suggest two papers published on bmj.com today.

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Vitamin D may raise survival rates among cancer patients

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/tes-vdm042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 29-Apr-2014

Contact: Jenni Glenn Gingery
The Endocrine Society
Vitamin D may raise survival rates among cancer patients
Analysis finds strongest evidence of benefit in breast, colorectal cancers

Washington, DC—Cancer patients who have higher levels of vitamin D when they are diagnosed tend to have better survival rates and remain in remission longer than patients who are vitamin D-deficient, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

The body naturally produces vitamin D after exposure to sunlight and absorbs it from certain foods. In addition to helping the body absorb the calcium and phosphorus needed for healthy bones, vitamin D affects a variety of biological processes by binding to a protein called a vitamin D receptor. This receptor is present in nearly every cell in the body.

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Researchers found the strongest link between vitamin D levels and survival in breast cancer, lymphoma and colorectal cancer. There was less evidence of a connection in people with lung cancer, gastric cancer, prostate cancer, leukemia, melanoma or Merkel cell carcinoma, but the available data were positive.

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Urban river pollutants suppress wild bird development

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/cu-urp042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 29-Apr-2014

Contact: Steve Ormerod
Cardiff University
Urban river pollutants suppress wild bird development

New research indicates that hormone disrupting pollutants are affecting the health and development of wild birds nesting along the urban rivers of South Wales.

Findings published today in the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry journal reveal that chicks of the Eurasian Dipper – a river bird that feeds exclusively on insects and fish in upland streams – are underweight compared to their rural counterparts. Also of concern is that birds nesting in urban rivers have altered hormone levels, and are hatching fewer female chicks than those nesting along rural rivers, which could have negative implications for the population's breeding and survival.

Data obtained by a team of scientists from Cardiff University, working in collaboration with the Universities of Saskatchewan and Exeter, and the Natural Environment Research Council, suggest that urban contaminants such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and PBDE flame-retardant chemicals (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) acquired through their food are to blame. Results showed a strong correlation between contamination by PBDEs and PCBs with depressed thyroid hormone levels in chicks – one thyroid hormone was 43% lower in chicks from urban rivers than those rural rivers.

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Mother's diet affects the 'silencing' of her child's genes

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/lsoh-mda042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 29-Apr-2014

Contact: Joel Winston
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Mother's diet affects the 'silencing' of her child's genes
A mother's diet before conception can permanently affect how her child's genes function, according to a study published in Nature Communications

A mother's diet before conception can permanently affect how her child's genes function, according to a study published in Nature Communications.

The first such evidence of the effect in humans opens up the possibility that a mother's diet before pregnancy could permanently affect many aspects of her children's lifelong health.

Researchers from the MRC International Nutrition Group, based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and MRC Unit, The Gambia, utilised a unique 'experiment of nature' in rural Gambia, where the population's dependence on own grown foods and a markedly seasonal climate impose a large difference in people's dietary patterns between rainy and dry seasons.

Through a selection process involving over 2,000 women, the researchers enrolled pregnant women who conceived at the peak of the rainy season (84 women) and the peak of the dry season (83 women). By measuring the concentrations of nutrients in their blood, and later analysing blood and hair follicle samples from their 2-8 month old infants, they found that a mother's diet before conception had a significant effect on the properties of her child's DNA.

While a child's genes are inherited directly from their parents, how these genes are expressed is controlled through 'epigenetic' modifications to the DNA. One such modification involves tagging gene regions with chemical compounds called methyl groups and results in silencing the genes. The addition of these compounds requires key nutrients including folate, vitamins B2, B6 and B12, choline and methionine.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Stress research in therapy dogs reveals animals’ needs

http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/infoservice/presseinformation/press-releases-2014/press-release-04-29-2014-stress-research-in-therapy-dogs-reveals-animals-needs/

04-29-2014 - Animals exert positive effects on humans. This fact has been proven scientifically and is used increasingly often for specific therapeutic purposes. Scientists at the Vetmeduni Vienna investigated how therapy dogs feel in a therapy setting and how one can create a largely stress-free situation for the animals. The current study shows that, during group therapy, dogs are not subjected to greater stress than they are during their leisure time. Prerequisites for this purpose are the voluntary involvement and self-determinism of the dogs. The results were published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior.

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Anti-bullying policy must focus on all of society

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/anti-bullying_policy_must_focus_on_all_of_society2

Policy to reduce bullying in the schoolyard needs to span all levels of society, say researchers from the University of Warwick, who warn that socioeconomic status is not a reliable indicator of whether a child is likely to become a bully.

Up to one third of children are involved in bullying, and a growing body of evidence has shown that bullying is a significant public health concern, which can cause long lasting health and social problems.

The new review, published in the American Journal of Public Health, advises that policy makers should be wary of assuming that bullies are more likely to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In analysing 28 studies that reported an association between socioeconomic status and bullying, and adjusting for bias, the review showed that bullies were not more likely to come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and were only marginally less likely to come from the highest socioeconomic levels (2% less likely).

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Professor Wolke explained, “Bullying is about gaining access to resources and can be used to achieve elevated status within social groups. They are often the ring leaders that are not always detected by teachers .

Bullies are considered to reap social benefits from their actions due to the hierarchical nature of the schoolyard, where the most adept bullies become popular figures amongst their peers.

Neil Tippett, lead author of the review, added, “This hierarchy is familiar to us all from our own school days. In my view, so long as the rewards exist for bullies in the form of social status, it is difficult to make bullies to change their behaviours as there is little incentive for them to do so.”

“We need to think of ways to channel the abilities of bullies into prosocial activities where they can use their popularity and leadership qualities to benefit themselves and others ”

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Male Researchers Stress Out Rodents

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/male-researchers-stress-out-rodents/

Apr 28, 2014 |By Alla Katsnelson

Male, but not female, experimenters induce intense stress in rodents that can dampen pain responses, according to a paper published today in Nature Methods. Such reactions affect the rodents’ behaviour and potentially confound the results of animal studies, the study suggests.

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It wasn’t just men who caused the stress spike in the rodents, but any nearby male animal, including guinea pigs, rats, cats and dogs. Male cage-mates of the animal being tested were the only exception, and produced no changes in stress hormone levels.

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More than just a curiosity, this stress response can throw a curveball into study results. On reanalysing data from the group’s past studies, such as on pain sensitivity to hot water, the researchers found that mice tested by men showed lower baseline pain sensitivity than mice tested by women.The work indirectly demonstrates potential effects on nearly any kind of medical research, says Joseph Garner, who studies mouse behavior and well-being at Stanford University in California.

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Animal researchers, says Garner, will have to embrace statistical methods that compensate for a greater range of variability. “We need to think about animals as more like human subjects,” he says, “than as controllable reagents.”

Welfare Mentality of the Rich

Of course, companies don't do anything. It's the people who own and run the companies who do things like trying to blackmail others to buy land for them.

http://www.ajc.com/news/business/docs-ncr-eyes-incentives-for-midtown-campus/nfbsS/

April 16, 2014
By Greg Bluestein and J. Scott Trubey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

NCR eyes incentives for Midtown campus

Financial technology giant NCR considered asking Georgia Tech’s foundation to spend as much as $30 million to buy land for a new corporate campus near the school that would house as many as 4,000 employees, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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The AJC first reported last month that the maker of ATMs and mobile transactions technologies was working with state, Atlanta and Georgia Tech officials to locate a site for a corporate campus near the state’s top technology university, and could add 1,000 jobs as part of the process.

NCR has about 30,000 employees worldwide and about 4,600 in Georgia.

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No, the Internet Explorer Bug Isn't Fixed, Despite Reports

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/no-internet-explorer-bug-isnt-fixed-despite-reports-n92426

By Julianne Pepitone
April 29, 2014

Incorrect reports are swirling that a major flaw in Internet Explorer has been fixed through a security update from Adobe on Monday.

But Adobe's update fixes a completely different issue -- which means Internet Explorer users are still at risk as they await a patch from Microsoft.

An Adobe spokesman confirmed to NBCNews: "The Microsoft advisory issued on April 26 is a separate issue from the Adobe bulletin issued April 28."

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In reality, Adobe's update fixes a serious but separate problem: a Flash bug that is actively being used to attack visitors of a Syrian government website. Security firm Kaspersky Labs posted about that issue on Monday, and Adobe credited Kaspersky in its security update for the alert.

That Flash bug is significant, and users should download Adobe's update. But it's entirely separate from the wider Internet Explorer problem.

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Meanwhile, Microsoft is working to fix that wider Internet Explorer bug. Until then users should exercise caution, and take steps like running alternative web browsers and downloading a Microsoft "toolkit" to help guard against attacks.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Stop using Microsoft's IE browser until bug is fixed

The internet's been slow & flaky today. I wonder if this bug is to blame, or the bad weather in some parts of the U.S.? Maybe a combination.

http://www.cnet.com/news/stop-using-ie-until-bug-is-fixed-says-us/

by Seth Rosenblatt
April 28, 2014

It's not often that the US government weighs in on the browser wars, but a new Internet Explorer vulnerability that affects all major versions of the browser from the past decade has forced it to raise an alarm: Stop using IE.

This zero-day exploit is an unpatched flaw in the Microsoft browser that allows attackers to run malicious code remotely. Security firm FireEye said that it is currently being used to attack financial and defense organizations in the US via Internet Explorer 9, 10, and 11. Those versions of the browser run on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8, although the exploit is present in Internet Explorer 6 and above.

While the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team regularly issues browser advisories, this is one of the few times that the CERT team has recommended that people avoid using a specific browser.

FireEye recommends that if you can't switch browsers, that you disable Internet Explorer's Flash plug-in. You can also use IE with Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit security app, but that will not be as secure as simply switching browsers.

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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Searching for Happiness? Here's How to Find It

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/searching-happiness-find/story?id=23486216

April 27, 2014
COLUMN By LEE DYE via World News

It may be that the easiest way to kill happiness is to pursue happiness. A desperate search for happiness will likely put too much emphasis on self, and that could backfire.

Instead, scores of research projects suggest, it's better to put the emphasis on others, which psychologists call prosocial behavior. Concentrate on making someone else happy, and chances are you'll feel pretty good too.

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Psychologists led by Yale University concluded three years ago that happiness has a "dark side" because trying too hard to find it can lead to "disappointment and decreased happiness." Just try to make someone smile instead, the Stanford researchers would say.

Story behind the story

This article, like others, and those going around Facebook, with headlines such as "Driver sues boy she struck and killed".

I have had enough experience not to jump to the expected reaction of "How horrible". I wondered if she was suing in return for being sued, which is indeed what appears to be happening. I first checked Snopes, to make sure it wasn't just another urban myth. Then I did a search, and found several stories about it. The Daily Mail is known for its sensationlism, which is evident in the headlines and the beginning of the article, but they do eventually report on some other aspects of the situation.

I wasn't there and don't know the facts.

I do know that bicyclists are hard to see at night, and even if they have reflectors, they are visible from far enough away.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2613923/She-trying-profit-grief-Family-teenager-killed-riding-bike-sued-driver-ran-him.html

Family of teenager killed while riding his bike are being SUED for $1.35MILLION by the driver who ran into him

Sharlene Simon is seeking $1.35 million from estate of Brandon Majewski and the two 16-year-olds she injured

She claims she suffered emotional trauma after hitting Brandon and two of his friends as they cycled down a road
42-year-old did not face charges over the collision

ByJessica Jerreat
Published: 13:41 EST, 26 April 2014 | Updated: 08:21 EST, 27 April 2014

A Canadian family whose 17-year-old son was knocked off his bike and killed in 2012 were shocked to discover the driver who hit him plans to sue for $1.35 million.

Brandon Majewski had been cycling along a road near his Alcona home with two friends when Sharlene Simon hit them with her SUV, injuring two of them and killing Brandon.

Now the 42-year-old is suing Brandon's estate and the 16-year-olds she injured over claims she has suffered emotional trauma, and alleging that the friends were negligent.

The mother-of-three ran into the back of the friends at about 1.30am on October 28, 2012, as they returning home from a coffee shop.

She is seeking damages from Brandon's parents, Derek Majewski and Venetta Mlynczyk, as well as from Richard McLean, who broke his pelvis after being hit by her car, and Jake Roberts, who was also knocked from his bike.

According to the lawsuit filed at an Ontario court in December, Ms Simon 'sustained and will sustain great pain and suffering her enjoyment of life has been and will be lessened'.

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She alleged that the friends had been negligent, claiming: 'They did not apply their brakes properly. They were incompetent bicyclists.'

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'Unfortunately, the cyclists were not riding in a careful and prudent manner. They were riding in the middle of an unlit road at 1:30am,' Mr Ellis said.

'Their bicycles were not properly illuminated, nor did they have the proper reflectors. An independent accident reconstruction completed by law enforcement officials found that there was nothing Ms Simon could have done to avoid the collision.'

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He [Brandon's father] added that the bikes all were fitted with reflectors that would have been visible.

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Family lawyer Mr Cameron has made a routine lawsuit against Ms Simon to recoup medical and funeral costs on behalf of the victims and their families.

He alleges Simon was speeding and may have been intoxicated and talking on her cellphone. A police report showed she was going at 90km per hour in an 80 zone.

'Sharlene Simon failed to take reasonable care to avoid a collision which she saw or should have seen was likely to occur,' his claim states. 'She operated the motor vehicle while she was intoxicated.'

None of the allegations have been tested in court. Ms Simon was not breathalyzed at the scene.

Former Ga. technician falsified mammogram reports

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20140427/DADEHKUO1.html

April 27, 2014
By KATE BRUMBACK

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The lead radiological technologist at Perry Hospital in Perry, a small community about 100 miles south of Atlanta, had for about 18 months been signing off on mammograms and spitting out reports showing nearly 1,300 women were clear of any signs of breast cancer or abnormalities.

Except that she was wrong. Holmes and nine other women were later shown to have lumps or cancerous tumors growing inside them.

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The tech, Rachael Rapraeger, pleaded guilty earlier this month to 10 misdemeanor charges of reckless conduct and one felony charge of computer forgery. She was sentenced to serve up to six months in a detention center, to serve 10 years on probation during which she can't work in the health care field and to pay a $12,500 fine.

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The Shadowy World of ‘Dark Money’ Campaign Spending

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/26/Shadowy-World-Dark-Money-Campaign-Spending

By Kim Barker and Theodore Meyer,ProPublica
April 26, 2014

To see how easy it is for a dark money group to ignore the Internal Revenue Service, look no further than the loftily named Government Integrity Fund.

The Fund, an Ohio nonprofit, spent more than $1 million in 2012 on TV ads attacking Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and praising his Republican opponent, Josh Mandel. Now the Fund's tax return, which ProPublica obtained from the IRS this week, indicates that the group spent most of its money on politics — even though IRS rules say nonprofits like the Fund aren't allowed to do that.

The Government Integrity Fund was founded in May 2011 and applied later that year for IRS recognition of its tax-exempt status, swearing under penalty of perjury that it would not engage in politics but would instead "promote the social welfare of the citizens of Ohio." Within two months, the IRS had recognized the group.

It then devoted much of its resources to backing Mandel's unsuccessful bid to unseat Brown. As previously detailed by ProPublica, the Fund was linked to a former top Mandel staffer.

The Fund's return highlights the ways such nonprofits, known as dark money groups because they are not required to disclose their donors, can skirt IRS rules designed to limit their political activities. Such groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in elections, spending more than $256 million on election activity in 2012.

Dark money groups can spend money on politics as long as they can persuade the IRS that their primary purpose is social welfare. This can lead to quite creative accounting on tax forms, with groups describing ads that should qualify as political under IRS rules as "education" or "issue advocacy."

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The ads stopped short of telling people how to vote, but three nonprofit experts who reviewed them for ProPublica said they all qualified as election ads under IRS rules. "There's no question," said Brian Galle, a Boston College associate professor of law who has written about political activity by nonprofits. "It's not even close. They're blatantly political advertisements."

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Unraveling what the Government Integrity Fund spent in 2012 wasn't possible until recently because the group didn't file its tax return until January of this year, when it was two months overdue. The long wait highlights one of the major problems with regulating dark money groups and their spending: The IRS typically doesn't look at these groups until a tax return is filed, often more than a year after an election has been decided.

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The agency has revoked the nonprofit status of only one social welfare nonprofit, a liberal group, and its affiliates since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010 paved the way for dark money groups to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into outside election ads.

Experts on nonprofits say the IRS has taken an even more hands-off approach since top officials admitted the agency had targeted applications from conservative groups for extra scrutiny, sparking a scandal and investigations. [As usual in reporting on this, the fact that liberal groups were also targeted is totally ignored.]

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Saturday, April 26, 2014

Wall Street’s secret pension swindle

Note that state and local pay levels are usually below those in the private sectors. One of the ways they get employees to fill these positions has been by promising secure pensions. But now many public pensions are being cut.

So we have Republican state governments giving the running of the pension funds to their contributors from Wall Street, who rob the pensions, leading to shortfalls in funding, which is then used by the Republicans to reduce the pensions.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/24/wall_streets_secret_pension_swindle_partner/

Apr 24, 2014
David Sirota

In the national debate over what to do about public pension shortfalls, here’s something you may not know: The texts of the agreements signed between those pension funds and financial firms are almost always secret. Yes, that’s right. Although they are public pensions that taxpayers contribute to and that public officials oversee, the exact terms of the financial deals being engineered in the public’s name and with public money are typically not available to you, the taxpayer.

To understand why that should be cause for concern, ponder some possibilities as they relate to pension deals with hedge funds, private equity partnerships and other so-called “alternative investments.” For example, it is possible that the secret terms of such agreements could allow other private individuals in the same investments to negotiate preferential terms for themselves, meaning public employees’ pension money enriches those private investors. It is also possible that the secret terms of the agreements create the heads-Wall-Street-wins, tails-pensions-lose effect — the one whereby retirees’ money is subjected to huge risks, yet financial firms’ profits are guaranteed regardless of returns.

North Carolina exemplifies the latter problem. In a new report for the union representing that state’s public employees, former Securities and Exchange Commission investigator Ted Siedle documents how secrecy is allowing financial firms to bilk the Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement System, which is the seventh largest public pension fund in America.

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According to Siedle’s report, this huge pension system now is authorized to invest up to 35 percent — or $30 billion — of its assets in alternatives. Consider, too, that Siedle’s report shows that with such a large allocation in these risky alternatives, the fund “has underperformed the average public plan by $6.8 billion.”

So what is happening to retirees’ money? As Siedle documents, more and more of it is going to pay the exorbitant fees charged by the Wall Street firms managing the pension money.

“Fees have skyrocketed over 1,000 percent since 2000 and have almost doubled since (2008) from $217 million to $416 million,” he writes, adding that “annual fees and expenses will amount to approximately $1 billion in the near future.”

The details get worse from there, which makes Siedle’s report a genuine must-read for anyone who wants to understand the larger story of public pensions. After all, North Carolina is not an isolated incident. In state after state, the financial industry is citing modest public pension shortfalls to justify pushing those pensions to invest more money in riskier and riskier high-fee investments — and to do so in secret.

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Friday, April 25, 2014

How To Avoid Fraud With Herbal Supplements

See the link below on where to get information to improve your chances of getting what you think you are buying.

http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/health-health-care/herbal-supplements-not-all-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/nD6Z/

Friday, April 11, 2014
Clark Howard

Do you take herbal supplements? The sad news is you might not be getting what you pay for.

In a study published in the journal BMC Medicine, Canadian researchers tested 44 bottles of herbal supplements bought in Canada and the United States. A full one-third of the samples tested were adulterated; they did not have any of the key ingredients they promised.

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Here's are some quick highlights of the study's findings:


•Bottles of echinacea supplements contained ground bitter weed, a plant linked to rashes, nausea, and flatulence.
•One bottle of St. John's wort was wholly made of ground rice, while another contained a known laxative called Alexandrian senna. Neither of the 2 bottles tested contained the common active ingredient in St. John's wort called Hypericum perforatum.
•Gingko biloba supplements contained fillers and black walnut, the latter of which could be a potential threat to anyone with a tree nut allergy.

Twenty years ago Congress made a stupid decision to stop overseeing the herbal supplement industry. So now it's essentially the Wild West. You have supposedly legit companies spending heavy marketing dollars and putting garbage in their products.

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New data finds 1 in 5 liver injuries that show up in hospitals have been from dietary supplements, according to The New York Times. This is triple what it was 10 years ago. Some people recover, some do not.

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Quantum entaglement?


It is claimed that if two electrons are born together, measuring one appears to instantaneously alter the state of the other. Doesn't this interpretation depend on the assumption that the electrons do not have a particular state until measured? If they have related states when born, then it would not be surprising that measuring one will give us information on the state of the other at the same point in time.

‘Horsing around’ reduces stress hormones in youth

https://news.wsu.edu/2014/04/24/horsing-around-reduces-stress-hormones-in-youth/

April 24, 2014
By Rachel Webber, College of Agricultural, Human & Natural Resource Sciences

New research from Washington State University reveals how youth who work with horses experience a substantial reduction in stress – and the evidence lies in kids’ saliva.

The results are published in the American Psychological Association’s Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin this month.

“We were coming at this from a prevention perspective,” said Patricia Pendry, a developmental psychologist at WSU who studies how stress “gets under the skin” and the effects of prevention programs on human development. “We are especially interested in optimizing healthy stress hormone production in young adolescents, because we know from other research that healthy stress hormone patterns may protect against the development of physical and mental health problems.”

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Marital stress linked to depression

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uow-ina042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 25-Apr-2014

Contact: Leo Dreyfuss
University of Wisconsin-Madison

It's not all wedded bliss: Marital stress linked to depression

MADISON, Wis. – Marital stress may make people more vulnerable to depression, according to a recent study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and their colleagues.

The long-term study, published in the April 2014 Journal of Psychophysiology, shows that people who experience chronic marital stress are less able to savor positive experiences, a hallmark of depression. They are also more likely to report other depressive symptoms.

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Study finds almost half of homeless men had traumatic brain injury in their life

This is probably an under-estimate, because some people will have had such an injury, and not know it or remember it.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/smh-sfa042514.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 25-Apr-2014

Contact: Leslie Shepherd
St. Michael's Hospital

Study finds almost half of homeless men had traumatic brain injury in their life

TORONTO, April 25, 2014—Almost half of all homeless men who took part in a study by St. Michael's Hospital had suffered at least one traumatic brain injury in their life and 87 per cent of those injuries occurred before the men lost their homes.

While assaults were a major cause of those traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, (60 per cent) many were caused by potentially non-violent mechanisms such as sports and recreation (44 per cent) and motor vehicle collisions and falls (42 per cent).

The study, led by Dr. Jane Topolovec-Vranic, a clinical researcher in the hospital's Neuroscience Research Program, was published today in the journal CMAJ Open.

Dr. Topolovec-Vranic said it's important for health care providers and others who work with homeless people to be aware of any history of TBI because of the links between such injuries and mental health issues, substance abuse, seizures and general poorer physical health.

The fact that so many homeless men suffered a TBI before losing their home suggests such injuries could be a risk factor for becoming homeless, she said. That makes it even more important to monitor young people who suffer TBIs such as concussions for health and behavioural changes, she said.

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Separately, a recent study by Dr. Stephen Hwang of the hospital's Centre for Research on Inner City Health, found the number of people who are homeless or vulnerably housed and who have also suffered a TBI may be as high as 61 per cent—seven times higher than the general population.

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Tech CEO Who Allegedly Hit His Girlfriend 117 Times Avoids Jail

http://www.businessinsider.com/radiumone-ceo-chahal-avoids-jail-time-2014-4

April 23, 2014
Alyson Shontell

RadiumOne’s founder, Chairman and CEO Gurbaksh “G” Chahal, appears to be the perfect tech entrepreneur.

His first startup sold for $40 million to ValueClick. His next startup, BlueLithium, was acquired by Yahoo for $300 million in cash. Oprah once gushed that the good-looking entrepreneur was single. Now, his ad-tech company is reportedly planning to raise $100 million in an initial public offering.

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On Aug. 5, 2013, security footage allegedly surfaced of Chahal "hitting and assaulting" his girlfriend, Juliet Kakish. The Examiner's Mike Aldax says Chahal attacked her "117 times over a half-hour period" in his San Francisco home.

The complaint against Chahal filed last August, obtained by Business Insider, listed 45 felony counts and two misdemeanors that accused Chahal of the following actions:

•Hitting Kakish repeatedly in the head

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•Dragging her from the bed to the floor
•Covering her mouth with his hand to obstruct her breathing
•Hitting her in the lower body approximately 15 times
•Hitting her in the head while holding his other hand over her mouth
•Threatening to kill her

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Chahal was arrested but was able to post the $1 million bail. He also hired an attorney.

For most people, video footage of this sort of alleged attack could mean serious jail time and possibly even the end of their careers. Instead, Chahal has managed to avoid jail altogether.

Last week, Chahal pleaded guilty to just the two misdemeanors, and he won’t have to do any jail time. Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku reports his sentence: He'll be put on probation for the next three years. He's also agreed to do many hours of community service and to enroll in a domestic violence program for roughly one year.

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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Increasing daily coffee consumption may reduce type 2 diabetes risk

I can't stand coffee, so I'll just have to depend on a healthy diet & weight.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/hsop-idc042214.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Apr-2014

Contact: Marge Dwyer
Harvard School of Public Health

Increasing daily coffee consumption may reduce type 2 diabetes risk

Boston, MA — People who increased the amount of coffee they drank each day by more than one cup over a four-year period had a 11% lower risk for type 2 diabetes than those who made no changes to their coffee consumption, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. In addition, the study found that those who decreased their coffee consumption by more than a cup per day increased their type 2 diabetes risk by 17%.

"Our findings confirm those of previous studies that showed that higher coffee consumption was associated with lower type 2 diabetes risk," said Shilpa Bhupathiraju, lead author and research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH. "Most importantly, they provide new evidence that changes in coffee consumption habit can affect type 2 diabetes risk in a relatively short period of time."

The study appears online Thursday, April 24, 2014 in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes).

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Results showed that participants who increased their coffee consumption by more than one cup per day (median change=1.69 cups/day) over a four-year period had a 11% lower risk of type 2 diabetes in the subsequent four years compared to those who made no changes in consumption. (A cup of coffee was defined as eight ounces, black, or with a small amount of milk and/or sugar.) Those who lowered their daily coffee consumption by more than one cup (median change=2 cups/day) had a 17% higher risk for diabetes. Changes in decaffeinated coffee consumption and caffeinated tea consumption were not associated with changes in risk for type 2 diabetes.

"These findings further demonstrate that, for most people, coffee may have health benefits," said Frank Hu, senior author and professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH. "But coffee is only one of many factors that influence diabetes risk. More importantly, individuals should watch their weight and be physically active."

Children living with a lone parent are as happy as those with 2

A previous study I read found that children who are very happy in childhood tend to be less happy than others in adulthood. I guess because they didn't learn to cope with challenges.

Of course, too much unhappiness is definitely harmful.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/bsa-clw042414.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Apr-2014

Contact: Tony Trueman
British Sociological Association

Children living with a lone parent are as happy as those with 2

Children living with a step-parent or a lone parent are as happy as those living with two biological parents, the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Leeds heard today [Thursday 24 April].

In a major UK study on wellbeing, researchers from NatCen Social Research analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study on 12,877 children aged seven in 2008 and found no significant difference in happiness.

Whether the children lived with two biological parents, a step-parent and biological parent, or in a single parent family, made no difference to how they rated their happiness: 64% said they were happy 'sometimes or never', and 36% said they were 'happy all the time'.

Even when the researchers statistically removed the effects of other factors such as parental social class so that the effects of family type were isolated, the results showed no significant differences.

Jenny Chanfreau, Senior Researcher at NatCen, told the conference that, in contrast, relationships with parents and other children were strongly linked with how likely the seven-year-olds were to be happy. For instance, factors such as getting on well with siblings and not being bullied at school were associated with being happy all the time.

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Ms Chanfreau told the conference: "We found that the family type had no significant effect on the happiness of the seven-year-olds or the 11-15 year olds.

"It's the quality of the relationships in the home that matters – not the family composition. Getting on well with siblings, having fun with the family at weekends, and having a parent who reported rarely or never shouting when the child was naughty, were all linked with a higher likelihood of being happy all the time among seven-year olds.

"Pupil relations at school are also important – being bullied at school or being 'horrible' to others was strongly associated with lower happiness in the seven-year-olds, for instance."

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Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds

I have done a lot of my song-writing while hiking in the woods. On the other hand, I have also done a fair amount on long commutes, when I had a car whose radio didn't work.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/apa-taw042414.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Apr-2014

Contact: Lisa Bowen
American Psychological Association

Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds

Free-flowing thought more likely while walking indoors or outdoors, research reveals

WASHINGTON -- When the task at hand requires some imagination, taking a walk may lead to more creative thinking than sitting, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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While at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education, Oppezzo and colleague Daniel L. Schwartz, PhD, conducted studies involving 176 people, mostly college students. They found that those who walked instead of sitting or being pushed in a wheelchair consistently gave more creative responses on tests commonly used to measure creative thinking, such as thinking of alternate uses for common objects and coming up with original analogies to capture complex ideas. When asked to solve problems with a single answer, however, the walkers fell slightly behind those who responded while sitting, according to the study published in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

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To see if walking was the source of creative inspiration rather than being outdoors, another experiment with 40 participants compared responses of students walking outside or inside on a treadmill with the responses of students being pushed in a wheelchair outside and sitting inside. Again, the students who walked, whether indoors or outside, came up with more creative responses than those either sitting inside or being pushed in a wheelchair outdoors. "While being outdoors has many cognitive benefits, walking appears to have a very specific benefit of improving creativity," said Oppezzo.

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Altruistic adolescents less likely to become depressed

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uoia-saa042414.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Apr-2014

Contact: Diana Yates
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Study: Altruistic adolescents less likely to become depressed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It is better to give than to receive – at least if you're an adolescent and you enjoy giving, a new study suggests.

The study found that 15- and 16-year-olds who find pleasure in pro-social activities, such as giving their money to family members, are less likely to become depressed than those who get a bigger thrill from taking risks or keeping the money for themselves.

The researchers detail their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study focused on the ventral striatum, a brain region that regulates feelings of pleasure in response to rewards. Previous research has shown that ventral striatum activity tends to be more pronounced in adolescence, suggesting that people at this age experience the pleasure of rewards more intensely than younger children or adults.

Adolescence also is a time of heightened risk-taking, which may be related to young people's increased sensitivity to rewards, said University of Illinois psychology professor Eva Telzer, who led the research.

"There's this trend where from childhood to adolescence, morbidity and mortality rates increase 200 to 300 percent, and it's almost entirely due to these preventable risk-taking behaviors," she said.

Depressive symptoms also tend to increase during this time, she said.

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The researchers found that activity in the ventral striatum in response to different rewards predicted whether the subjects' depressive symptoms would worsen – or lessen – over time.

"If they show higher levels of reward activation in the ventral striatum in the context of the risk-taking task, they show increases in depressive symptoms over time," said Telzer, who also is a professor in the Beckman Institute at Illinois. "And if they show higher reward activation in the pro-social context, they show declines in depression.

"This study suggests that if we can somehow redirect adolescents away from risk-taking or self-centered rewards and toward engaging in these more pro-social behaviors, then perhaps that can have a positive impact on their well-being over time," she said.

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Study finds accelerated soil carbon loss, increasing the rate of climate change

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/nau-sfa042414.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Apr-2014

Contact: Bruce Hungate
Northern Arizona University

Study finds accelerated soil carbon loss, increasing the rate of climate change

Research published in Science today found that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause soil microbes to produce more carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change.

Two Northern Arizona University researchers led the study, which challenges previous understanding about how carbon accumulates in soil. Increased levels of CO2 accelerate plant growth, which causes more absorption of CO2 through photosynthesis.

Until now, the accepted belief was that carbon is then stored in wood and soil for a long time, slowing climate change. Yet this new research suggests that the extra carbon provides fuel to microorganisms in the soil whose byproducts (such as CO2) are released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

"Our findings mean that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought," said Kees Jan van Groenigen, research fellow at the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at NAU and lead author of the study. "By overlooking this effect of increased CO2 on soil microbes, models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have overestimated the potential of soil to store carbon and mitigate the greenhouse effect."

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Oregon Panel Recommends Switch to Federal Health Exchange

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/us/politics/oregon-considers-handing-troubled-insurance-exchange-to-us.html?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&_r=0

By ROBERT PEAR and KIRK JOHNSONAPRIL 24, 2014

With encouragement from the Obama administration, an Oregon panel recommended Thursday that the state scrap the website for its beleaguered health insurance exchange and use the federal marketplace instead.

State officials concluded that it would be much less expensive to use the federal site, HealthCare.gov, than to repair the one built specially for the state, Cover Oregon. The first option would cost $4 million to $6 million, while the second would cost $78 million, state officials said.

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Taxpayers Hit Twice by Fast-Food Pay Practices

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/04/22/Taxpayers-Hit-Twice-Fast-Food-Restaurant-Pay-Practices-Report

April 22, 2014
By Suzanne McGee,The Fiscal Times

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In a scathing analysis, the progressive Institute for Policy Studies has calculated that a law allowing corporations to deduct executives’ stock options and other so-called “performance pay” from their income taxes, without limits, costs taxpayers some $232 million in the last two years — based on just 20 large companies in the restaurant industry.

At the same time, the new report notes, large restaurant chains often pay their low-level workers "so little that many of them must rely on Medicaid and other taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs." The Institute for Policy Studies says the 20 companies in its report are all members of the National Restaurant Association, which is fighting efforts to raise the minimum wage.

What the Institute for Policy Studies calls a “loophole” actually stems from changes to the tax code dating back to 1993. Congress, seeking to rein in executive pay, capped tax deductibility of cash payments at $1 million — but allowed for unlimited deductions for performance-based pay. That's opened the door to the explosion in use of stock option grants as the main source of executive compensation in the 1990s.

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Starbucks and CEO Howard Schultz benefited far more, though. Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz received $236 million in exercised stock options and other kinds of performance pay in the two-year period that the Institute for Policy Studies surveyed. That enabled Starbucks to cut its IRS bill by $82 million — "enough to raise the pay for 30,507 baristas to $10.10 per hour for a year of full-time work," the report says.

How Income Inequality Can Hurt the Economy

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/22/How-Income-Inequality-Can-Hurt-Economy

April 22, 2014
By Rob Garver,The Fiscal Times

Given that the adjectives most used in describing the economy’s recovery from the great recession include “sluggish” and “disappointing” it may come as a surprise to some that average household income in the U.S. is higher, in nominal terms, than it was in 2008.

Not only that, it passed the 2008 average as long ago as 2012. So, if income has recovered, the stock market is at record highs, and corporate earnings are way up, how come it doesn’t feel like there’s been much of a recovery?

An analysis released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a useful illustration of at least one thing that is unquestionably holding our economy back: income inequality.

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The key here, though, is to remember that the study measured “average” household income when it found a return to pre-recession levels. The headline number on the day the story was released was that 82 percent of the income gains went to the top 20 percent of households measured by income. That top quintile saw its nominal income increase on average by $8,358 per year, while the bottom quintile saw income decline by $275 in the same time period.

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What many people don’t grasp is that when high income households see their income increase, they generally don’t spend it. Cobet found that the top quintile increased spending by only $2,365 per year, meaning they spent about 29 percent of the extra income they received.

The next quintile down, which saw an annual increase in income of $1,862, spent an extra $1,348, or about 72 percent of the additional income.

But it’s in the three lowest quintiles where the story really gets interesting. For the second and third-lowest quintiles, total household spending increased by far more than income.

Households in the middle quintile earned only $69 more per year, but spent an additional $345, meaning that they increased their spending by 500 percent of their income gain. The next lowest quintile saw income increase by $143, but increased spending by $881 – 616 percent of their income gain.

Cobet, the study’s author and a senior economist at BLS said that there is no way of explaining the spending patterns except to assume that families “are using either savings and some version of credit card and other debt.”

For the first quintile, for whom income fell by $275, spending actually decreased. But the decrease -- $150 -- was not enough to offset the decline in income, meaning that they, too spent savings or borrowed.

What this means is that in total, household income in 2012 was, on average, $10,157 higher than in 2008. But average spending only increased by $4,789 – and even getting spending to that level required households in the bottom three quintiles to go into debt.

To economists, this shows the damage that income inequality can do to the economy as a whole. If the three lowest quartiles in income distribution had shared more equally in the increase in average income, they most certainly would have spent most or all of that increase. But as it is, $5,993 of the average increase of $10,157 – more than half – went into the savings of the highest quartile instead of being used for the purchase of goods and services, which boosts economic growth.

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The concentration of income growth at the top, he said, “has surely hurt consumption. Interestingly, it hasn’t helped investment much either, despite the higher savings rates of those at the top of the scale, since investment capital’s largely been hanging out on the sidelines given weak demand.”
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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

States with the Most Federal Disaster Aid Sent Climate-Science Deniers to Congress

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2013/09/12/73895/states-of-denial-states-with-the-most-federal-disaster-aid-sent-climate-science-deniers-to-congress-2/

By Daniel J. Weiss, Jackie Weidman, and Stephanie Pinkalla | September 12, 2013

The United States suffered from numerous extreme weather events in 2011 and 2012. In fact, there were 25 severe storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires that each caused more than $1 billion in economic damages, with a total price tag of $188 billion. To help communities recover from these violent weather events, the federal government spent nearly $62 billion for disaster relief in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. These federal funds only cover a portion of recovery costs; private insurance and individuals harmed by the events also spent billions of dollars.

There is recent evidence that climate change played a role in the extreme weather events of 2012.

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Interestingly, many of the states that received the most federal recovery aid to cope with climate-linked extreme weather have federal legislators who are climate-science deniers. The 10 states that received the most federal recovery aid in FY 2011 and 2012 elected 47 climate-science deniers to the Senate and the House. Nearly two-thirds of the senators from these top 10 recipient states voted against granting federal emergency aid to New Jersey and New York after Superstorm Sandy.

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As the following map shows, the 10 states that received the most federal disaster relief are primarily farm states in the plains and the Midwest. These states suffered billions of dollars of crop losses due to prolonged drought in 2011 and 2012. This necessitated an estimated $28 billion in crop insurance expenditures in FY 2011 and 2012, which comprised a majority of the spending for disaster programs where we could identify state-by-state expenditures.

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Two Colorado fourth graders busted for selling marijuana

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/04/colorado-fourth-graders-busted-for-selling-pot/

April 23, 2014
By Clayton Sandell

Two Colorado fourth graders were busted for selling marijuana at their elementary school, prompting officials today to urge adults to keep their weed locked away from kids.

School officials said a 10-year-old fourth grade boy brought a small quantity of leafy marijuana to Monfort Elementary School in Greeley, Colorado, on Monday.

“He sold it to three other fourth graders on the school playground, which resulted in a profit to the young man of $11,” John Gates, director of safety and security for the Greeley-Evans School District, told ABC News.

The next day, Gates said one of the three young buyers brought a marijuana edible to school and gave it to the boy who sold the pot on Monday. That boy took a bite, but did not suffer any ill effects, Gates said.

Both boys apparently got the weed from relatives, according to Gates.

“Both of these kids took the marijuana without the consent of their grandparents,” said Gates.

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Adults 21 and older have been able to buy recreational marijuana legally in Colorado since Jan. 1.

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The side effects of edible marijuana – which can be far more potent than smoking a joint – have been raising new concerns after two recent deaths in Colorado. In one, a 19-year old college student died when he jumped off a hotel balcony after eating a marijuana-laced cookie. In the second, Richard Kirk, 47, was charged with shooting and killing his wife while she called 9-1-1, telling police her husband had consumed pot-infused candy.

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Midlife occupational and leisure-time physical activity limits mobility in old age

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/aof-moa042314.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 23-Apr-2014

Contact: Professor Taina Rantanen
Academy of Finland

Midlife occupational and leisure-time physical activity limits mobility in old age

Inverse Effects of Midlife Occupational and Leisure Time Physical Activity on Mobility Limitation in Old Age

Strenuous occupational physical activity in midlife increases the risk of mobility limitation in old age, whereas leisure-time physical activity decreases the risk. This is found in a study which followed up 5,200 public sector employees for 28 years. The study was conducted at the Gerontology Research Center in Finland and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.

Heavy physical labor is often repetitive, wears the body and lasts for several hours a day. On the contrast, leisure-time physical activity is designed to improve fitness and provide recreation and a typical exercise session lasts for one or two hours. Even though both are based on muscle activity and result in energy expenditure, their long-term consequences are different.

"A person doing heavy manual work may compensate for its detrimental effects by participating in brisk leisure-time physical activity," says professor Taina Rantanen, the leader of the research group.

"Mobility limitation is an important determinant of a person's possibilities to participate in the society and to utilize community amenities. Current policy emphasizes the importance of promoting independent living among older people," Rantanen adds.

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In long follow-up studies of older people it is necessary to take into account that some of the participants may die before the study ends. Only the healthiest and strongest participants are available for the follow-up assessments, which may lead to the underestimation of the age-related changes," says Professor Rantanen.

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