Category: Featured

Once upon a time, having just one visible tattoo could make or break your chances at getting hired by a respectable company. Millions of people would refrain from getting tattoos or even have their existing tattoos removed due to the social stigma of showing one’s ink in the workplace.

As the Millennial generation — those born in the years between the early 1980s and the early 2000s — has gradually come of age, however, these old stigmas are disappearing.

According to USA Today, 73% of ink enthusiasts get their first tattoo between the ages of 18 and 20; these days, 40% of Millennials have one or more tattoos.

Even more telling? A recent CareerBuilder.com survey found that a mere 31% of human resource managers said that visible tattoos could harm one’s chances at getting hired.

“For centuries, most businesses have vigorously defended their traditional right to set and enforce dress and appearance standards for employees,” Joseph O’Grady, professor of business at Burlington, VT’s Champlain College, said. “But the 21st century has brought lots of changes in social norms.”

One in five adults in the U.S. has at least one tattoo. Even Jill Abramson, journalist and former New York Times executive editor, proudly displays her body art — in 2012, Forbes named Abramson the fifth most powerful woman. It’s clear that expressing your individuality and building a prestigious career are no longer mutually exclusive.

However, universal workplace acceptance is still a fairly far-off concept — some employers still have rules against visible tattoos, requiring employees to conceal them while on the job, and other professions frown upon employee tattoos without having explicit rules against them. Some businesses, fearing the branding effects associated with employing people with tattoos, are still very much concerned with hiring people whose body art is visible.

With tattoos becoming ever more popular, however, it likely won’t be long before having a visible tattoo no longer means you’re not a capable worker.

A major reduction in alcohol-fueled car accidents over the past several decades has had positive effects for the economy as well as for public safety, according to a new study.

In 2010, alcohol was a factor in 12% of car accidents, only half what that figure was in 1984-86.

In order to estimate the impact of this reduction on the U.S. economy, researchers calculated economic gains resulting from the fall of drunk-driving crashes since the mid-1980s, as well as direct monetary impacts on employers and consumers. That included categories such as medical costs, property damage, emergency response services, crash investigation, legal services and productivity changes.

The report estimates that each of the 25.5 billion miles Americans collectively drove while under the influence in 2010 reduced national economic output by 80 cents, reduced the Gross Domestic Product by 40 cents and cut 12 jobs.

But the drop from the mid-80s increased national economic output by around $20 billion, increased national income by around $6.5 billion, raised the GDP by $10 billion and added around 215,000 jobs to the economy.

Of course, not all accidents are avoidable, and more than three million people are injured in car accidents across the country each year, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But further reductions in drunk-driving rates — ideally to zero — would produce even greater gains, the researchers say.

A combination of legislation and better safety features implemented over the past three decades have helped to ameliorate the toll alcohol-related accidents take. The study recommends that ignition interlocks (devices which require the driver to blow into a breathalyzer before the car will start) be made mandatory for all drivers with previous DUI convictions, a measure that is currently in place in 10 states. It also suggests that parents voluntarily install such devices in cars driven by teens.

“Alcohol-involved crashes drag down the U.S. economy,” the researchers conclude, but “those losses are preventable.”

The full study has been published in the journal Injury Prevention.

There are a number of different causes of back pain — from poor posture, to medical conditions like arthritis, to living too sedentary a lifestyle — but researchers have found a new indicator that some people may be predisposed to back pain, because they have spines like chimpanzees.

A research team comprised of scientists from Canada, Scotland, and Iceland sought to learn more about the relationship between the shape of bones in the spine, spine health, and upright movement by analyzing the skeletons of ancient humans, orangutans, and chimpanzees, BBC News reports.

Researcher Mark Collard of the University of Aberdeen and Simon Fraser University in Canada says that their findings reveal that people who have disc problems have spines most similar to those of the chimpanzee.

“Our findings show that the vertebrae of humans with disc problems are closer in shape to those of our closest ape relatives, the chimpanzee, than are the vertebrae of humans without disc problems,” Collard explained.

Simply put, some spines have evolved better than others for walking upright on two legs.

The study’s findings could shed light on ways to start preventative care and treatment measures for people who have spine shapes that predispose them to back pain. As it is, back pain is one of the most common health complaints in America. Furthermore, experts estimate that Americans spend more than $50 billion each year on back pain, and that only includes the most easily identified costs.

The study’s findings were released just after researchers found that one of the most commonly used medications for back pain, acetaminophen, is not effective on some types of back pain.

CBS News reported last month that a team of researchers led by Gustavo Machado of The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney in Australia reviewed data from 13 different pain studies before concluding that the drug is mostly ineffective for treating back pain caused by osteoarthritis.

In an attempt to fend off would-be intruders, the National Park Service plans to install temporary steel spikes on top of the fencing surrounding the White House.

CBS News reports that in conjunction with the Secret Service, the National Park Service intends to install half-inch “pencil points” to prevent people from climbing over the fence. A temporary measure, the agency labeled the spikes a “removable anti-climb mechanism.”

The spikes will be installed on the tips of the fence at a five-degree angle. The installation proposal was approved on April 16th by another agency, the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.

“The interim solution enhances security without affecting the visitor’s experience,” the National Park Service said in a statement. “A timeline for installation is not yet available, but we are working expeditiously on this improvement.”

The proposed installations come after a series of high-profile break-ins in the White House. Last September, Omar Gonzalez climbed over the fence, ran past the north lawn and managed to enter the Executive Mansion before being caught by the Secret Service. This March, two men were apprehended by security after attempting to unlawfully enter the White House, according to The Daily Beast.

People aren’t the only intruders the White House has had to content with. In January, a man who lived a few blocks away from the White House unintentionally landed his friend’s 2′ x 2′ personal drone (or “quadcopter”) on the White House lawn, according to the New York Times. The man, who was inebriated at the time, was not charged with a crime.

The spikes will have to be approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, which is set to meet on Thursday. Assuming they are approved, installation will begin shortly.

The White House is also considering permanent security measures, including overhauls in pedestrian areas, parking lots and access points, and of course the fence. The National Park service claims that the permanent installations, if approved, will have to be “climb delay and blast” resistant. Also in need of approval by the US Commission on Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, the installations could begin as soon as the summer of next year.

The temporary and permanent fence installations come at an opportune time, since the U.S. fencing industry is expected to grow 7% annually. By 2018, the industry is expected to earn $9 billion by installing more than 875 million feet of fencing.

Most of the time, homeowners consider work done on the garage to be an asset to the main house (with about 71% of homeowners who recently replaced garage doors believing it improved the value of their property). Not many people see an upgraded garage as a replacement for a home, however.

But that’s exactly the trend in Portland, OR, where a growing number of garages are being upgraded into legal “accessory dwelling units.” Homeowners can rent these out or use them as semi-independent living spaces for senior parents or grown children, but some are choosing to live in their own garages and rent out their main houses, instead.

“Portland residential properties have nice-sized lots,” Holly Huntley told Oregon Live, the online version of The Oregonian, April 28. Huntley owns Environs, a company that specializes in both designing and building small but complete homes. “A new ADU [accessory dwelling unit] uses only a small portion of the lot and a garage conversion doesn’t need any more ground room,” she said, explaining the appeal.

According to Kareen Perkins, the city’s building permitting services manager, applications for such conversions have more than tripled since 2009.

That’s not necessarily because conversions are inexpensive. In fact, the cost per square foot in a garage conversion project can range from $100 to $300, which is more than one would expect to pay if building a detached house.

But Portlanders seem to like the idea regardless. Later this month, there will even be a tour offered of 25 ADUs so interested parties can learn more about the process and get a better idea of how these tiny houses turn out.

The second annual “Build Small, Live Large” tour will take place May 29 through 31, and will also include workshops, presentations, and a party featuring local beer and s’mores. Tickets start at $35, and discounts are being offered until May 23.

Matthew Kohr, a lieutenant with the Raleigh Police Department’s special operations division, had stopped into a Starbucks on Peace Street back in January 2012 to pick up a cup of free coffee. But what he came away with left him unable to return to the department for several months afterward.

Kohr has alleged in a lawsuit that he was served a coffee in a faulty cup that folded in on itself, which led to several third degree burns and blisters on his skin.

The spill also set off Kohr’s Crohn’s disease in a way it hadn’t acted up before. He alleges that the burns caused him to need surgery to remove a portion of his intestine.

Thanks to changes in health care reform, inflammatory diseases like Crohn’s aren’t necessarily considered pre-existing conditions for insurance purposes. As a result, health insurance rates aren’t determined like those for auto policies, which may charge drivers more if they are under 25 or over 70.

But Kohr doesn’t just have medical bills to contend with. He says that the event took two years out of his life as he struggled to get back to work.

“I had a lot of anxiety, a lot of unsteadiness and nervousness,” Kohr said. He told the jury that he wasn’t comfortable with being in the police car, which affected his role as a supervisor.

“You know, as a supervisor, in my experience as a police supervisor, you have to lead people and be confident,” he said. “And I didn’t feel those same feelings I had in the past.”

Kohr and his wife Melanie are seeking $750,000 in compensation from the coffee chain, but he says that the loss of time at work is worth much more than that.

Because his lawsuit is a civil one, he is only allowed to seek damages of up to $750,000. But he told the jury that the months of recovery and trauma are worth far more to him than that.

“We said, ‘Well, what’s our life worth? What’s a year and a half or two years of your life worth?'” Kohr said during his testimony on May 6. “I thought it was worth $10 million.”

Attorneys for Starbucks, meanwhile, claim that the onus is on Kohr, especially considering that getting free coffee while on the job was routine for the officer.

“How does someone who knows their coffee is hot, who has had 50 cups of free coffee in the last two months, how does that person spill their coffee?” defense attorney Tricia Derr asked the court on May 5.

At any given moment, as many as 85% of all vehicles will need some kind of repair or maintenance.

But good luck getting the car repairs you need if you’re openly gay and live in Grandville, MI.

According to CNN, Brian Klawiter, owner of Dieseltec, recently made a statement on his company’s Facebook page encouraging gun owners to bring their cars to his shop — even offering a discount for those who do.

He also declared that openly gay customers are not welcome at his business, and that he has no problem turning them away at the door, citing his religious freedom.

“I am a Christian. My company will be run in a way that reflects that. Dishonesty, thievery, immoral behavior, etc. will not be welcomed,” he wrote. “I would not hesitate to refuse service to an openly gay person or persons. Homosexuality is wrong, period.”

His post emphasized that conservative American voices are being drowned out, hence his reasoning behind making the post — explaining that “free speech isn’t just for liberals.”

Since taking to Facebook to write a mini-manifesto of his views, Klawiter told a CNN affiliate he has had to contact local police to remove protesters from his property. He’s also received hundreds of calls from across the country, as well as multiple death threats.

While acknowledging that his words could be interpreted as offensive, Klawiter explained he doesn’t regret making the post.

Currently, discrimination based on sexual orientation is not prohibited in the state of Michigan — and while some municipalities have passed laws banning discrimination of LGBT people, Grandville isn’t one of them.

According to WOOD TV, Grandville Mayor Steve Maas has said he’d be open to pursuing nondiscrimination laws that would protect LGBT people, but that the citizens of his town would need to ask for such legislation first. Yvonne Siferd, director of victim services for LGBT advocacy group Equality Michigan, made a statement urging Maas to pursue legislation protecting the LGBT community.

Shortly after Klawiter’s post, GoFundMe page was created to raise money in support of Dieseltec; it was removed from the crowd-funding site shortly after.

In one of the medical industry’s biggest breakthroughs this century, three baby boys have been saved from a life-threatening breathing disorder by an unlikely combination of dedicated doctors, medical researchers, and a 3-D printer.

According to reports from LiveScience and IndustryWeek, researchers developed implants made of porous biomaterial, which can change shape and grow as the patients grow, making it possible for surgeons to use these implants on children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Not only do these implants change over a period of years, but they are custom-designed for each patient within a matter of days and are subsequently printed out on a 3-D printer, making them incredibly affordable.

The three boys, who all suffer from a severe case of a breathing disease called tracheobronchomalacia, were the first three patients to receive pediatric biomaterial implants for a severe respiratory illness. All three boys underwent surgery — successfully — at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

Tracheobronchomalacia is condition that affects about one in every 2,000 children globally and — before the creation of the implant — was considered incurable. It is a respiratory condition which causes the windpipe to collapse; even with the help of ventilators and heavy sedatives to keep them from moving, children with this disease typically have life expectancies of a few days to a few weeks after birth.

In the rare cases where children were kept alive beyond this point with ventilators and sedatives, their lungs began strengthening by age two or three; another major benefit of the 3-D printed implants, according to LiveScience, is that they will dissolve over time as the children’s breathing passages get stronger.

3-D printing has been used in the medical industry for a variety of other medical needs, such as hearing aids and dental implants, and these creations have been very successful.

Dental implants, for example, already have a 98% success rate according to the data collected from multiple studies, but many patients are hesitant to seek out implants because they tend to be very expensive. By using a 3-D printer to create the implants, cosmetic dentists can lower the cost and the wait time for each patient exponentially. Dentists can create custom implants within a few days, and they can also print out duplicates of the same implants with very little manual labor.

The same notion applies to the three respiratory implants which have just been created, although with the added benefit of biomaterial, doctors were able to implant the devices without worrying about straining the children’s air passages.

The latest reports state that all three boys are at home with their families — something which doctors never predicted would happen — and are breathing normally without any sedatives, paralytics, or ventilators.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there are some 13.7 million parents who have custody of 21.8 million children under the age of 21 while the other parent lives elsewhere. According to the latest available data, only about one out of every six custodial parents were fathers. The majority of these are either divorced or separated (56.2%), while 24.5% are currently married or widowed, and 20.3% have never been married.

Lyle Jeffs, however, is an even rarer case. Not only is he a custodial father, he also falls into two of the three possible statistical demographics. He is simultaneously divorced, and married — not re-married. Lyle Jeffs is a polygamist.

Jeffs’s brother Warren is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and has been in prison since 2006 for sexually molesting two members of the congregation. His former followers say Lyle runs the church in his stead.

The FLDS, under the leadership of the Jeffs brothers, have taught that non-believers and people who break off from the church are unrighteous persona non grata. Parents who leave the church often have to go through laborious court battles against spouses just to even be able to visit their children.

All this considered, many were shocked when Jeffs recently agreed to allow his estranged wife to have some custody over their 17-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. Judge Michael Leavitt approved the agreement on April 29, which gives parents joint custody of the children, but specifies that they live with their mother. Every other weekend, and for a stretch of the summer, they’ll visit Jeffs. Additionally, Jeffs must provide $1,000 a month in child support, be responsible for the children’s health care and education, provide his son with a vehicle that will be used to drive him and his sister between their parents’ homes, and pay his wife two-thirds of her housing costs, not to exceed $2,000 a month.

When he signed his agreement, he wrote below his signature “RESPONDENT SIGNS UNDER PROTEST OF MOTHER BEING CUSTODIAL PARENT.”

Ron Rohbock, one of the Jeffses’ former followers, has six juvenile daughters, whom he hasn’t seen in years. He worries for them, and hopes that the new agreement could be the first of many, potential reunions, telling the Salt Lake Tribune, “This is a great beginning, but it’s just a beginning.”