(Carol Lindsay | The Salt Lake Tribune) Devin Smith and Miriam Wilson play Ingenious during an after-school board games club at Layton Junior High.
After-school club ? Teacher Stephen Olson loves sharing his passion for board games.
Layton ? Growing up, Stephen Olson loved board games ? all kinds of board games.
He played them with his family and friends. When he went to college at the University of Utah, he started a board game club with fellow students.
Eventually Olson?s friends gave up board games for girlfriends, wives, children and other activities, and the club died out. But Olson?s love for games never diminished.
Fast forward to 2012, and Olson is a math teacher at North Layton Junior High. It?s his first year on the job, and he discovered there is no math club, so he volunteered to supervise one. He then discovers there is no chess club. It?s one of the few board games he doesn?t love, so he asked his administration if he could have a combination chess and board game club.
They consented.
On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the board game club meets after school from three to five. Olsen is a happy teacher?he gets the chance to play board games and share his knowledge and love of the game with students.
Olsen visited his parents? home and retrieved an assortment of his favorite games from youth including Ingenious, Small World and Tsuro. Other students play trading card games and still others play chess.
"I can?t resist playing games," Olson said. "I play while I?m correcting papers."
The games help students with reassigning skills and logic. Small World teaches them about combination and how things can synergize or work against one another. Olson said the students also have to learn to put on their poker faces when playing.
While the majority of game playing is friendly, tension can break out.
story continues below
"Small World gets a little heated," Olson said.
Seventh-grader Alex Chipman loves the structure of board games.
"I have Asperger?s so this is one of the few times I can open up and enjoy myself," said Alex, who flits around the room checking out all the games. "I don?t like it when people don?t follow the rules. Here I don?t have to worry about people going against the rules because if they don?t follow them, the game won?t work."
Alex?s father, David Chipman, is a resource teacher at North Layton Junior High. He enjoys having Alex participate in the club. "It keeps him occupied and forces him to interact socially," he said. "I think it gives the kids a way of expressing their own personality without having to be afraid of what anybody else thinks about it because they all have a shared interest in the games. If you are passive or aggressive in your play it?s OK, it?s a game, and no one gets hurt."
Eighth-grader Miriam Wilson has always loved board games, and she has not missed a single day of club. At home she played Monopoly and Sorry. The club has introduced her to new games.
"I like playing with other people," Miriam said. "After I?ve played with them for a while, I know what they are thinking and what their next move is going to be."
At another table sit the trading-card gamers. Two brothers, Braden and Cameron Putnam, are in the club. They enjoy playing games with each other and their brother, but they joined the game club to play against new people.
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Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Occupy the drive-thru: Fast-food workers in New York City staged a walkout on Thursday to demand better pay and the right to unionize?in another recent example of labor stretching muscles made moribund by disuse.
Organizers?of the Fast Food Forward movement said they expected hundreds of workers would walk out or not show up for work at dozens of McDonald?s, Burger King and other fast-food chains.?
Late Thursday, Fast Food Forward, one of the organizations behind the effort, released a statement saying about 200 people had participated in the strike.
At one early?morning demonstration, roughly 75 percent of shift workers were outside protesting, leaving managers to staff the registers and preparation equipment, said Jonathan Westin, organizing director with New York Communities for Change, one of the groups coordinating the walkouts.
?Workers are sick and tired of making poverty wages,? despite working for multibillion-dollar corporations, he said. ?I don?t think this is a short-term fight.?
Joshua Williams, 28, works at?a Wendy's restaurant in Brooklyn and?told Reuters he planned to participate in the walkout. He said?he still earned minimum wage, despite working 30 to 40 hours a week for more than a year.
In seeking a $15 hourly wage and the right to unionize, the movement joined a growing conversation about the financial challenges faced by the working poor.
?During the recession there was the assumption that people should just get a job, any job... I think you see the movement towards unionization as a demand-side response, in a sense,? said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute. ?Employees are saying, ?No, we want better jobs.??
The Fast Food Forward action, which is supported by the Service Employees International Union along with civil rights and community groups, comes less than a week after a union-backed effort to draw attention to wages and working conditions at Wal-Mart led to protests at stores across the country on Black Friday.?
Organization United for Respect at Walmart called on the nation?s largest retailer to pay a minimum $13 hourly wage. Sales associates there currently make an average of $8.81 an hour, according to third-party research cited by workers? rights groups.
Earlier this week, the National Domestic Workers Alliance released a report that found nearly a quarter of nannies, housekeepers and caregivers earn less than the state minimum wage, and 70 percent make less than $13 an hour.
?We must create a more equitable economic environment for all low-wage workers,? the?report said. ?It is difficult to advocate for the rights of domestic workers in an economic and political environment in which the rights of low-wage workers more broadly are so badly frayed.?
Advocates for higher wages say the focus on minimum and low-wage workers is important because there are more people earning less today. The National Employment Law Project found that about 20 percent of?jobs lost during the recession were?low-paying positions, but nearly 60 percent of the jobs?added since then.
?In my mind, if we?re going to reduce inequality in the United States, it?s going to have to address the low wages and lack of benefits in the restaurants and retail sectors,? said Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director at NELP. ?There?s a profound larger question being posed, which is how the American labor market is going to look in the 21st century.?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 60 percent of workers who earned minimum wage or less last year worked in ?service occupations,? primarily food preparation and serving.
At more than double the current national?minimum wage of $7.25, the $15 sought by Fast Food Forward might seem like a pie-in-the-sky goal, but others are pushing to increase New York state's?minimum wage to $8.50 next year. According to the National Women?s Law Center, if the minimum wage rose at the pace of inflation, it currently would be $10.60.
The National Restaurant Association opposes this and other legislation to raise minimum wages. The position statement on its website says, ?Wage mandates are an ineffective way to reduce poverty and cause restaurant operators to make very difficult decisions to eliminate jobs, cut staff hours or increase prices.?
Richard Adams, a McDonald's franchise adviser, told Reuters $15 an hour would be an "insane increase" that would add as much as $2 to the price of menu items.
"The majority of McDonald's restaurants are owned and operated by independent business men and women who offer pay and benefits competitive within the quick service restaurant industry," the company said in a statement.
David Neumark, a professor of economics at University of California, Irvine, said campaigns to increase wages for minimum and low-wage workers miss the mark.
?A lot of the fast-food workers aren?t in poor families ? they?re just kids,? he said. ?Targeting low-income families through what they?re trying to accomplish is a really scattershot way to do it. Why should an owner... have to pay more to the kids of middle-class families??
Galinsky said higher wages are important, but companies also need to explore other ways to improve the experience of low-wage workers, since the jobs they are filling make up an increasing percentage of labor market demand.
?Traditionally, people who work in jobs like fast food or retail? have been seen as expendable, particularly in a time of economic insecurity,? she said. The institute?s research found that access to training and advancement opportunities, flexible schedules and supportive managers help to improve productivity and reduce turnover at companies that employ low-wage workers.
?There are things that employers can do, most of which don?t cost money, that could benefit employees and that could benefit their own organization,? she said. ?It?s a mindset change.?
Information from Reuters was included in this report.
Everyone understands how hard it is to get a long distance commitment because it lacks some aspects like touch in intimacy, that are undoubtedly vital for creating a strong in durable commitment. However, even in the event making long distance ex love work requires a significant effort, there is a learn that says that type of commitment has the similar potential of working out as proximal Corporate Relationship Issues. So, persistence in perseverance are a couple of of the major things you want to make your long distance affair work. Now, if you are not aware of those things to try to do wearing a long distance commitment to make it previous, then here they are:
To begin with, one of the great things to do wearing a long distance commitment to make it previous will be create a certain guideline if your wanting to in your boyfriend role ways. Its vital for both person to speak exactly what you can in cannot do while the two of you are apart.
Aside from this, you and your partner might also want to decide on which type of commitment you ought to have. How to plan a perfect date ? tips? Or do you rather be exclusive? Is it okay for each person up to now other individuals while you?re aware from one another?
In addition for this, you in your boyfriend could possibly speak about just what two of you will do inside the future. Will you consistently have this type of relationship? Or will considered one of you move nearer to the different inside the future? Should you decide are aiming to move in together, who ought to be the one to move then?
Now, these are only a few concerns you really need to agree upon. However, you have to Interesting facts about online relationships in speak about such things in order to understand everything you in your boyfriend can expect from your commitment in what your limits are. Also, in recent studies conducted of the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationship, 70# of partners involved in LDR, who don?t establish an contract in who don?t plan for the long run, end up dropping apart.
Also, organizing a particular time for they person to communicate is going to be vital for your commitment to work. Studies or work are a couple of of the common causes why partners are exposed to long distance ex love considerations. Therefore, it is a because you in your boyfriend will likely to be busy working or studying much of the time.
Scientists studying tree rings found a sharp increase in the amount of radioactive carbon-14 recorded in the rings of ancient Japanese cedar trees between 774 and 775. Carbon-14 can be created by cosmic ray particles arriving from space, but what causes such cosmic ray increases?
At first, experts were at a loss to explain the event, and the team that unearthed the tree ring data earlier this year dismissed the sun as a possible explanation.
Now a new team of scientists argues that a solar flare is the most likely culprit.
Blast from the sun
The sun could have released a huge and powerful blast of plasma into space called a coronal mass ejection, which, when it hit Earth, could have sparked the creation of carbon-14, suggest astrophysicists Adrian Melott of the University of Kansas and Brian Thomas of Washburn University, also in Kansas, in a paper published the Nov. 29 issue of the journal Nature.
Carbon-14 is a variant of the normal form of carbon (carbon-12) that is common on Earth and throughout the universe. When cosmic ray particles hit Earth's atmosphere, they can produce showers of particles such as neutrons. Some of these neutrons, in turn, hit the nitrogen nuclei that are rife in the atmosphere, and a chemical reaction occurs that transforms the nitrogen into carbon-14.
This carbon variant is unstable and decays with a half-life of about 5,730?years (meaning half of any amount of carbon-14 will be gone in that time). For this reason, it's a useful date marker: A tree, for example, will stop absorbing carbon once it dies, so the amount of carbon-14 left in it is a reliable indicator of how old it is.
It had been widely known that a jump in carbon-14 occurred in the eighth century, but researchers first pinpointed this rise and fall on a year-to-year basis by looking at tree rings in a paper by Fusa Miyake of Japan's Nagoya University and colleagues, published in the June 14 issue of Nature.
"They found that whatever made that carbon-14 bump happened really fast, and took less than one year, which called out for some really major, powerful event," Melott told SPACE.com.
The Japanese researchers considered that it might be a solar flare, but calculated that it would have had to have been thousands of times more powerful than the greatest one ever known, which made such a scenario unlikely.
Now, in a new calculation, Melott and Thomas say a solar flare is a reasonable explanation.
"Their mistake was, they assumed that the energy shot out by the sun in one of these coronal mass ejections goes out in all directions, like the light from a light bulb, but in fact it's kind of shot out in blobs," Melott said.
That adjustment meant that a solar flare need have been only about 10 or 20 times more powerful than the greatest flare on record, the so-called Carrington event of 1859. [The Sun's Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History]
Other possibilities
Still, the scientists can't completely rule out other explanations, such as the possibility of a supernova star explosion, or a special type of supernova called a gamma-ray burst. Both could have created a strong wave of cosmic rays as well.
However, a nearby supernova would have been extremely bright, and likely noticed by the residents of Earth at the time, who largely noted nothing unusual. A gamma-ray burst, which condenses much of the radiation released from a supernova into two strong beams, could conceivably have packed the punch necessary for the carbon-14 spike, but Melott says this scenario is still less likely than a strong solar flare.
Miyake did not respond to a request for comment, but Melott said the Japanese team "didn't argue" with the new calculation.
Interestingly, while a strong sun flare would have had little effect on people in 774, a similar event could wreak significant havoc today. That's because our modern technology, including satellites, radio transmissions and power grids, could be seriously hampered by the particles sweeping in from a coronal mass ejection.
"We're not prepared for this sort of thing," Melott said. "It needs a lot more work to really check it out. And we need better warning if something like this is on the way."
Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter?@ClaraMoskowitz?or SPACE.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook?&?Google+.
Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
They've technically been around for centuries, but a small group of Cossacks recently returned to officially patrol the streets of Moscow. We're like Chuck Norris!" Cossack patrol leader Igor Gulichev said, comparing his colleagues to the role made famous by Norris in the 1990's television sitcom "Walker, Texas Ranger." According to the Russian 2010 census, [...]
U.S. patent chief David Kappos, who will step down in January, is leaving his successor a couple of gifts: an overhauled patent code and a somewhat smaller application backlog.
Mr. Kappos, 51 years old, took over as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August 2009. He will leave around the end of January, according to an email to employees Monday. He is widely credited for making the federal agency more efficient during his 3? year tenure and for helping put into place some of the biggest changes in decades to the system of granting patents.
The agency?s backlog of patent applications has fallen to about 605,000 from 750,000 at the end of 2008?despite the fact that applications are increasing by about 5% every year.
Mr. Kappos hasn?t announced any plans, a PTO spokesman said. Earlier, he worked at International Business Machines Corp. for 25 years, including as top patent attorney.
Teresa Stanek Rea, the patent office?s deputy director, will be its acting director until a permanent appointment is made. Before joining the agency as deputy director in 2011, Ms. Rea was a partner in law firm Crowell & Moring LLP?s Washington, D.C., office.
The America Invents Act of 2011, which Mr. Kappos helped guide through Congress, fundamentally changed how inventors and companies receive patents. The law has largely brought the U.S. in line with European and Asian countries, which award patents on a ?first to file? basis. Historically, the U.S. has awarded patents on a ?first to invent? basis, and the law was designed, in part, to eliminate costly legal disputes over who invented something.
Mr. Kappos was responsible for crafting a variety of rules to implement the act. He also hired dozens of new patent examiners at the patent office, based in Alexandria, Va., and helped set up the PTO?s first satellite offices, in Detroit, Denver, Dallas and San Jose, Calif., which are set to open next year.
The PTO is still often criticized for issuing too many patents, especially on software innovations. Critics say that too often such patents don?t break new ground and clog the courts with unnecessary lawsuits.
In a recent address at the Center for American Progress, Mr. Kappos pointed to provisions in the America Invents Act that he said would better enable patent examiners to reject unworthy software patents. He encouraged critics to give the new law a chance to work.
Mr. Kappos ?and his team have set the PTO on course to implement the key provisions of the Act, which will improve the patent system for decades to come,? said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D. Vt.), one of the bill?s co-sponsors.
In a statement Monday, Mr. Kappos, said: ?I believe we have made great progress in reducing the patent backlog, increasing operational efficiency, and exerting leadership in [intellectual property] policy domestically and internationally,? he said.
Potentially toxic flame retardants found in many US couchesPublic release date: 28-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tim Lucas tdlucas@duke.edu 919-613-8084 Duke University
DURHAM, N.C. -- More than half of all couches tested in a Duke University-led study contained potentially toxic or untested chemical flame retardants that may pose risks to human health.
Among the chemicals detected was "Tris," a chlorinated flame retardant that is considered a probable human carcinogen based on animal studies.
"Tris was phased out from use in baby pajamas back in 1977 because of its health risks, but it still showed up in 41 percent of the couch foam samples we tested," said Heather Stapleton, associate professor of environmental chemistry at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
More manufacturers in recent years are treating their couches' foam padding with chemical flame retardants to adhere to California Technical Bulletin 117 (TB 117), she said. TB 177 requires all residential furniture sold in California to withstand a 12-second exposure to a small open flame without igniting, to help reduce deaths and injuries from accidental home fires. Over the years, the statewide standard essentially has become a de facto national standard, due to the economic importance of the California market.
In many cases, the manufacturer may not know what chemicals have been used. Most manufacturers buy their foam padding from a vendor who, in turn, buys the chemicals used to treat it from another vendor. The identity of the chemical flame retardants often gets lost along the way, or is protected under law as proprietary.
Stapleton and her colleagues analyzed 102 polyurethane foam samples from couches purchased for home use in the United States between 1985 and 2010. They published their findings in a peer-reviewed study released Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
In addition to finding Tris, the tests revealed that 17 percent of the foam samples contained the flame-retardant pentaBDE, which is banned in 172 countries and 12 U.S. states and was voluntarily phased out by U.S manufacturers in 2005.
PentaBDEs are long-lasting chemicals that over time migrate into the environment and accumulate in living organisms. Studies show they can disrupt endocrine activity and affect thyroid regulation and brain development. Early exposure to them has been linked to low birth weight, lowered IQ and impaired motor and behavioral development in children.
PentaBDE and Tris were the only flame retardants found in couches purchased before 2005. After 2005, Tris was the most common flame retardant found. In addition, Stapleton and her colleagues identified two new flame-retardant chemical mixtures in more recently purchases couches for which there is little or no health data available.
"Overall, we detected flame-retardant chemicals in 85 percent of the couches we tested and in 94 percent of those purchased after 2005," Stapleton said. "More than half of all samples, regardless of the age of the couch, contained flame retardants that are potentially toxic or have undergone little or no independent testing for human health risks."
"If a couch has a California TB 117 label, you can all but guarantee it contains chemical flame retardants," Stapleton said. "But this is where labeling requirements get confusing: the lack of a TB 117 label on a couch does not guarantee the absence of chemical flame retardants. It's not that cut-and-dried."
Stapleton said that so many new proprietary chemical flame retardants have been introduced in recent years that it has become very difficult for scientists to identify them all or determine their presence consumer products.
###
Co-authors of the study were Smitri Sharma, Gordon Getzinger and P. Lee Ferguson of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment; Thomas Webster of Boston University School of Public Health; and Michelle Gabriel and Arlene Blum of the Green Science Policy Institute and the University of California-Berkeley.
Funding for the study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a private donation to the Nicholas School from Fred and Alice Stanback.
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Potentially toxic flame retardants found in many US couchesPublic release date: 28-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tim Lucas tdlucas@duke.edu 919-613-8084 Duke University
DURHAM, N.C. -- More than half of all couches tested in a Duke University-led study contained potentially toxic or untested chemical flame retardants that may pose risks to human health.
Among the chemicals detected was "Tris," a chlorinated flame retardant that is considered a probable human carcinogen based on animal studies.
"Tris was phased out from use in baby pajamas back in 1977 because of its health risks, but it still showed up in 41 percent of the couch foam samples we tested," said Heather Stapleton, associate professor of environmental chemistry at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
More manufacturers in recent years are treating their couches' foam padding with chemical flame retardants to adhere to California Technical Bulletin 117 (TB 117), she said. TB 177 requires all residential furniture sold in California to withstand a 12-second exposure to a small open flame without igniting, to help reduce deaths and injuries from accidental home fires. Over the years, the statewide standard essentially has become a de facto national standard, due to the economic importance of the California market.
In many cases, the manufacturer may not know what chemicals have been used. Most manufacturers buy their foam padding from a vendor who, in turn, buys the chemicals used to treat it from another vendor. The identity of the chemical flame retardants often gets lost along the way, or is protected under law as proprietary.
Stapleton and her colleagues analyzed 102 polyurethane foam samples from couches purchased for home use in the United States between 1985 and 2010. They published their findings in a peer-reviewed study released Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
In addition to finding Tris, the tests revealed that 17 percent of the foam samples contained the flame-retardant pentaBDE, which is banned in 172 countries and 12 U.S. states and was voluntarily phased out by U.S manufacturers in 2005.
PentaBDEs are long-lasting chemicals that over time migrate into the environment and accumulate in living organisms. Studies show they can disrupt endocrine activity and affect thyroid regulation and brain development. Early exposure to them has been linked to low birth weight, lowered IQ and impaired motor and behavioral development in children.
PentaBDE and Tris were the only flame retardants found in couches purchased before 2005. After 2005, Tris was the most common flame retardant found. In addition, Stapleton and her colleagues identified two new flame-retardant chemical mixtures in more recently purchases couches for which there is little or no health data available.
"Overall, we detected flame-retardant chemicals in 85 percent of the couches we tested and in 94 percent of those purchased after 2005," Stapleton said. "More than half of all samples, regardless of the age of the couch, contained flame retardants that are potentially toxic or have undergone little or no independent testing for human health risks."
"If a couch has a California TB 117 label, you can all but guarantee it contains chemical flame retardants," Stapleton said. "But this is where labeling requirements get confusing: the lack of a TB 117 label on a couch does not guarantee the absence of chemical flame retardants. It's not that cut-and-dried."
Stapleton said that so many new proprietary chemical flame retardants have been introduced in recent years that it has become very difficult for scientists to identify them all or determine their presence consumer products.
###
Co-authors of the study were Smitri Sharma, Gordon Getzinger and P. Lee Ferguson of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment; Thomas Webster of Boston University School of Public Health; and Michelle Gabriel and Arlene Blum of the Green Science Policy Institute and the University of California-Berkeley.
Funding for the study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a private donation to the Nicholas School from Fred and Alice Stanback.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 28-Nov-2012
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