Who's Hiring? Norfolk Southern, Johnson & Johnson, 48 Others

Links to new job listings posted on May 30, 2013
 
By Jonathan Allen 

May 30, 2013

The following job listings were posted on Indeed.com on May 30, 2013.

They are all listed as being within 15 miles of Charleston.

See a full list of Who's Hiring in the Charleston area.

Just click on a link below to learn more.

ADMISSIONS COORDINATOR — Southeastern Institute - Charleston, SC

Cashier — The Home Depot 4,385 reviews - Charleston, SC

MD Receptionist — Roper St. Francis Healthcare 2 reviews - Charleston, SC

Wildlife Biologist I (2 POSITIONS) — State of South Carolina 8 reviews - Charleston County, SC

FT Driver — Homewood Suites 33 reviews - Charleston, SC

MORE at:

http://mountpleasant-sc.patch.com/articles/who-s-hiring-norfolk-southern-johnson-johnson-48-others

Hurricane Season Begins — Do You Know Your Zone?

 

 

Conway, South Carolina - June 1 marks the beginning of the 2013 hurricane season, but are most people prepared? Are you prepared?

The Horry County Emergency Management Department wants residents to get their family’s emergency plan in place and put their emergency supply kit together prior to a storm.

Now is the time to get ready, and it’s easy with the help of the Horry County Hurricane Guide. The public can go http://emd.horrycounty.org  and click on the Know Your Zone link to download, print and share various preparation tips on how to protect yourself, your family and your property during this hurricane season.

“Horry County Government is always preparing for a storm and working with other local and state agencies to do so, but everyone has an individual responsibility to get prepared and make sure their family has a plan,” said Randy Webster, Horry County Emergency Management Director.

In anticipation of an evacuation order, which can only be given by the governor, Webster also reminds the public that they should plan to leave town if at all possible, and everyone along the coast is strongly encouraged to make travel arrangements well in advance.

“Because of the low-lying areas in our county, we will never have enough safe shelter space for all of Horry County’s residents and its visitors,” said Randy Webster. “Therefore, we encourage everyone who has the means to leave town to do so and to consider shelters only as a last resort when they have nowhere else to go.”

Also, those who have the ability to leave should do so as early as possible.

“You don’t have to wait until an evacuation order is issued,” Webster added. “If you can, leave as early as possible to make your trip easier and to help relieve the traffic congestion on our roads.”

Horry County Emergency Management has developed the Know Your Zone Guide which contains important information regarding hurricane preparedness. The guide includes:


    Hurricane preparation tips
    Local evacuation routes & tips
    Shelter information
    Know Your Zone map
    Resources for pets
    Local re-entry information

 Know Your Zone is a public education campaign to inform the citizens and visitors of Horry County of the new hurricane evacuation zones and their vulnerability to storm surge. The Know Your Zone campaign was developed as a result of the information contained in the South Carolina Hurricane Evacuation Study (HES) for the Northern Conglomerate that was released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in 2012.  The campaign also reflects the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) decision to separate the association of storm surge inundation from the category of storm. “Again, it’s not so much the category of storm or even if we are in the error cone, but rather the impact the storm can have on our community and the impact it will have on your home,” stated Webster.

For more information on hurricane preparedness, please contact Horry County Emergency Management at 915-5150.

5 Reasons Cold Fusion is Bunk

by Jesse Emspak
 
May 28, 2013

Fusion, the same process that powers stars including the sun, would be a relatively clean, safe and near-limitless source of power. Unlike the fission of nuclear reactors that splits atoms to make energy, fusion fuses atoms. In nature, a star's immense gravity works to do the job of crushing hydrogen nuclei, protons, to create the reaction. But on Earth, crushing hydrogen atoms is no easy matter. It typically requires a machine that generates plasma -- atoms stripped of their electrons -- and runs at ultra-high temperatures in the millions of degrees Fahrenheit range. In short, more energy gets put in than what comes out, and that is not efficient.

But some scientists are trying to figure out how to get a fusion reaction to occur at room temperature. If successful, a so-called "cold fusion" machine would require little energy to run, but conversely produce a tremendous amount. In 1989, two scientists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, said they managed to achieve cold fusion, but after some initial excitement, the general consensus was that they didn't achieve cold fusion and in fact probably never would.

In the last couple of years, Italian inventor and entrepreneur, Andrea Rossi, claims he has achieved cold fusion with his "Energy Catalyzer," or "E-Cat" machine. The latest news is a supposedly independent test that validates his claims of a machine that somehow emits more energy (as heat) than it gets from the electrical outlets it is plugged into. A paper describing the test was posted on the ArXiv, a site where scientists post research before it goes for full peer-review.

Continued at:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/5-reasons-cold-fusion-bunk-130528.htm

Best deals on real estate

Money magazine's Best Deals on Everything: Your guide to the latest bargains in renting, buying or remodeling your home.
    

Buying a home 1 of 8: best deals home.  Housing prices, on average, have risen over the past year.

The asking price per square foot in the 38 metro areas tracked by brokerage Movoto increased an average 12% in the 12 months through March. That's just an average, though; eight of the markets are cheaper now.

Calculator: How much house can you afford?

The three below are also forecast to have gains over the next year above the 4% national average projected by Fiserv.

Greatest decline in listing price per square foot

Chicago: Declined 15% last year, forecast to increase 6% next year
Charleston, S.C.: Declined 4% last year, forecast to increase 5% next year
New Orleans: Declined 3% last year, forecast to increase 7% next year

Continue at:

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/real_estate/2013/05/21/best-deals-home.moneymag/?google_editors_picks=true

 

How Teens Are Really Using Facebook

It's a 'Social Burden,' Pew Study Finds

by Bianca Bosker

05/21/2013


The Facebook generation is fed up with Facebook.

That's according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 802 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 last September to produce a 107-page report on their online habits.

Pew's findings suggest teens' enthusiasm for Facebook is waning, lending credence to concerns, raised by the company's investors and others that the social network may be losing a crucial demographic that has long fueled its success.

Facebook has become a "social burden" for teens, write the authors of the Pew report. "While Facebook is still deeply integrated in teens’ everyday lives, it is sometimes seen as a utility and an obligation rather than an exciting new platform that teens can claim as their own."

Teen's aren't abandoning Facebook -- deactivating their accounts would mean missing out on the crucial social intrigues that transpire online -- and 94 percent of teenage social media users still have profiles on the site, Pew's report notes. But they're simultaneously migrating to Twitter and Instagram, which teens say offer a parent-free place where they can better express themselves. Eleven percent of teens surveyed had Instagram accounts, while the number of teen Twitter users climbed from 16 percent in 2011 to 24 percent in 2012. Five percent of teens have accounts on Tumblr, which was just purchased by Yahoo for $1.1 billion, while 7 percent have accounts on Myspace.

Continued at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/teens-facebook-pew-study_n_3313812.html

Line Between Social Welfare, Politics Plays Into Confusion on Tax-Exemption Law

AIR DATE: May 22, 2013

 Controversy over the additional scrutiny the IRS paid to conservative organizations has raised attention about the regulations governing tax-exemption criteria.


Transcript:

Excerpt:

Jeffrey Brown: Today's hearing came to an end after six hours, but there's no end in sight to the three congressional investigations under way. More hearings are expected after the Memorial Day recess.

Even as these hearings unfold to find out exactly what happened at the IRS, there's continuing confusion about the tax laws and regulations at the heart of the matter: who qualifies for tax-exempt status, how is that determined, and other questions we will try to get at now with Duke University law professor Richard Schmalbeck. He's a former tax attorney. And Kim Barker, she's a reporter with ProPublica.

Well, Kim Barker, you have been looking at the history. So take us back. How did it come to be that groups can seek tax-exempt status in the first place?

KIM BARKER, ProPublica: It's a very good question, and nobody is entirely sure even how social welfare nonprofits came about in the first place.

All we know is that as part of the Revenue Act of 1913, Congress created the idea of social welfare nonprofits. Eventually, they were defined as being formed exclusively to promote social welfare. And then over the years, that was -- that exclusively was defined to mean that you should have a primary purpose as being a social welfare nonprofit.

So there's this big debate over exclusively vs. primary. In the '80s, it came about that these groups -- these groups started to interpret primary to mean that they could actually spend money on politics. And the IRS has agreed with that.

The real argument here is over whether they should have to disclose the donors for the money that they're spending on politics and on these political ads that are then reported to the FEC.

Continue at:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/jan-june13/irs_05-22.html

How Apple scores its lower tax bill

By Jeanne Sahadi
 @CNNMoney

May 22, 2013

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Apple is one of America's most profitable companies. And it pays a substantial income tax bill to the U.S. government -- by its own account, $6 billion in 2012 and an estimated $7 billion this year.

But many tax experts and lawmakers say Apple's tax bill should be bigger. A lot bigger.

The concern is that Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), while complying with U.S. laws, is nevertheless taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code to shift a substantial amount of income to offshore subsidiaries in low-tax countries. The result is billions of dollars in profits every year that go untaxed.

Apple is hardly the only American company to minimize its offshore tax bite. But it has become a poster child for it.

In Apple's case, the focal point is its subsidiaries in Ireland, where the company faces a maximum tax rate of just 2%. That's well below the 35% top rate in the United States and even well below Ireland's top statutory rate of 12.5%.

Continue at:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/22/news/economy/apple-taxes/

Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

The High Plains Aquifer is giving out.
 
By MICHAEL WINES

May 19, 2013

HASKELL COUNTY, Kan. — Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

Last year, Mr. Yost was coaxing just 300 gallons from the earth, and pumping up sand in order to do it. By harvest time, the grit had robbed him of $20,000 worth of pumps and any hope of returning to the bumper harvests of years past.

“That’s prime land,” he said not long ago, gesturing from his pickup at the stubby remains of last year’s crop. “I’ve raised 294 bushels of corn an acre there before, with water and the Lord’s help.” Now, he said, “it’s over.”

The land, known as Section 35, sits atop the High Plains Aquifer, a waterlogged jumble of sand, clay and gravel that begins beneath Wyoming and South Dakota and stretches clear to the Texas Panhandle. The aquifer’s northern reaches still hold enough water in many places to last hundreds of years. But as one heads south, it is increasingly tapped out, drained by ever more intensive farming and, lately, by drought.

Continue at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/us/high-plains-aquifer-dwindles-hurting-farmers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

How the IRS spun out of control

Little guidance from Washington and a flood of

new nonprofits left the Cincinnati office overwhelmed.
 
By Joseph Tanfani, Matea Gold and Melanie Mason

 May 18, 2013|

    Ousted IRS acting Commissioner Steven Miller knew trouble was brewing as early as March 2012. Election season was well underway when tea party groups started to complain of IRS harassment over their requests for tax-exempt status.


WASHINGTON — Steven Miller, the top enforcement official at the Internal Revenue Service, thought he might have trouble on his hands.

Election season was well underway in March 2012 when tea party organizations started to complain angrily of IRS harassment over their requests for tax-exempt status. The media was looking into it. Congress had picked up the scent.
Miller dispatched an advisor to Cincinnati, where a field office handles applications from nonprofits, to figure out what was up. What he learned would blow up into a crisis that would damage the agency's reputation and lead to his ouster last week.

With little oversight from Washington, agents in Ohio had been singling out some conservative groups for extra scrutiny, seeking to make sure they were not too heavily involved in politics to qualify as tax-exempt.

Worse yet, the agents had sent the organizations letters with numerous intrusive questions, including the groups' positions on political issues and the names of their donors.

Miller failed to tell Congress what he knew for more than a year, despite repeated queries from House committees. On Friday, at times chagrined and combative as he spoke to House members, Miller called the IRS' focus on conservative groups "obnoxious" and described what happened as "horrible customer service."

Continue at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/18/nation/la-na-irs-conservatives-20130519

The Health Toll of Immigration

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

May 18, 2013


BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — Becoming an American can be bad for your health.
A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the parents.

The pattern goes against any notion that moving to America improves every aspect of life. It also demonstrates that at least in terms of health, worries about assimilation for the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants are mistaken. In fact, it is happening all too quickly.

Continued at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/health/the-health-toll-of-immigration.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Google Weaves Larry Page's Social Strategy Into Maps, Search

Nearly two years ago, CEO promised social would transform users' experience with Google. Here it comes.

By Sharon Gaudin
Thu, May 16, 2013


Computerworld — SAN FRANCISCO -- It became clear at Google I/O this week that Google is quietly but assuredly implementing CEO Larry Page's strategy to use Google+ to transform the entire Google experience.

Without fanfare and with barely a mention of making products more social, one Google executive after another took the stage during the four-hour keynote at the Google I/O developers conference Wednesday and talked about changes coming to major products like Google Maps and Google Search.

But many of those changes announced the conference focused on making the products more personal and more social. And that means more integration with Google +, the company's nearly two-year-old social network, to weave all things social into them.

"They said it again and again. It's not about the technology. It's about the people," said Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner Inc. "They can't make it about the people unless they have a social graph to know their people. Google is not about social networking. Google is about apps and services. But they need that social element in them."

That line of thinking follows perfectly with how Page described his social strategy long before the company trotted out its social Maps and Search products at this year's Google I/O.

Continue at:

http://www.cio.com/article/733534/Google_Weaves_Larry_Page_s_Social_Strategy_Into_Maps_Search?google_editors_picks=true

 

Soon to Become Irrelevant Technologies

Slideshow: Glad to Know You! Soon to Become Irrelevant Technologies
 
By Frank J. Ohlhorst 

March 7, 2013


Introduction

Technology, like most anything else, comes and goes. Today, IT pros have come to rely on certain technologies, which were once major innovations, yet are destined for the scrap heap in the not too distant future. Let’s take a look at the technologies whose days are numbered and are destined to become nostalgic memories of how we used to do things.


http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/desktops-IT_management-crt-32-bit_OS,5-59.html?utm_source=paid.outbrain.com&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=may2013&#xtor=SEC-1000

Toms IT Pro

How Google slurps in Street View data -- not just from streets

At its Google I/O conference, the company showed off the equipment it uses to gather its 360-degree panoramic imagery of the world.

by Stephen Shankland
 

May 16, 2013
 

SAN FRANCISCO -- By now Street View is a routine part of online mapping. But people might not be so familiar with how Google actually gets the data for its 360-degree panoramic views of the world.

Street View imagery launched in 2007 with photos taken by cameras perched on cars. That's still the mainstay of the project, but there's much more to it now, and Google was showing off its methods at its Google I/O 2013 developer show here this week.
How Google gets all that Street View data (photos)

Continue at:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57584936-93/how-google-slurps-in-street-view-data-not-just-from-streets/

Exhibits included not just a car, but also a snowmobile.

CNET.com

Some of My Best Friends Are Germs

By MICHAEL POLLAN

May 15, 2013

I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a laboratory located at the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder. As part of a new citizen-science initiative called the American Gut project, the lab sequenced my microbiome — that is, the genes not of “me,” exactly, but of the several hundred microbial species with whom I share this body. These bacteria, which number around 100 trillion, are living (and dying) right now on the surface of my skin, on my tongue and deep in the coils of my intestines, where the largest contingent of them will be found, a pound or two of microbes together forming a vast, largely uncharted interior wilderness that scientists are just beginning to map.

I clicked open a file called Taxa Tables, and a colorful bar chart popped up on my screen. Each bar represented a sample taken (with a swab) from my skin, mouth and feces. For purposes of comparison, these were juxtaposed with bars representing the microbiomes of about 100 “average” Americans previously sequenced.

Continue at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

A frugal way to lay(away) at the beach

By JENNIFER WATERS — MarketWatch

May 13, 2013

That dream vacation that seems financially unreachable can now be had through an age-old payment method: layaway.

For as little as $100, you can book and start a payment plan for trips almost anywhere in the world.

“Layaway gives people flexibility and the ability to afford a vacation when everyone is watching their pennies,” said Laurie Bowden, vice president of strategic accounts at SearsVacations.com, a division of Sears Holding, which offers payment plans for vacations all along South Carolina’s coast as well as some inland destinations.

The pay-before-you-buy method has been around since the Depression, another time when credit was tight and jobs were scarce. Retailers have resuscitated the practice since the recession started, as a means to encourage consumer spending. Consumers have used it not only to purchase big-ticket items and vacations, but also as a money-management tool.

Continue at:

http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/13/2769994/a-frugal-way-to-layaway-at-the.html

Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream

By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

May 12, 2013
 

 A CERTAIN drama has become familiar in the United States (and some other advanced industrialized countries): Bankers encourage people to borrow beyond their means, preying especially on those who are financially unsophisticated. They use their political influence to get favorable treatment of one form or another. Debts mount. Journalists record the human toll. Then comes bewilderment: How could we let this happen again? Officials promise to fix things. Something is done about the most egregious abuses. People move on, reassured that the crisis has abated, but suspecting that it will recur soon.

The crisis that is about to break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down — some to a point even lower than where they began.

This new crisis is emerging even before the last one has been resolved, and the two are becoming intertwined. In the decades after World War II, homeownership and higher education became signs of success in America.

Continued at:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/student-debt-and-the-crushing-of-the-american-dream/

The One Safe Investment and Why You Never Hear About It

By: Zvi Bodie



Economist Zvi Bodie, perhaps the country's foremost expert on pension finance, insists that every American at least consider an investment that financial advisors almost never mention.

Zvi Bodie: Recently, Paul Sullivan wrote in his Wealth Matters column about financial advisors' increasing interest in technology. He raises two questions about expanded use of technology: Will it help advisers do their job better? And will it be better for clients or confuse and frustrate them? A friend asked me how I would answer those questions. I thought Making Sense readers might be interested too.

Remember the old saw about computer forecasting models? GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out. Technology can make good advice more accessible and less costly, but it cannot turn bad advice into good advice. If the technology is designed to pitch some investment service that is not in the best interest of clients, employing sophisticated technology and interactive software will only serve to deceive the client more efficiently. Fancy software is not a substitute for trustworthiness and good science.

Let me give an example to make clear what I mean.

Continued at:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/the-one-safe-investment-and-why-you-never-hear-about-it-from-financial-advisors.html

Disconnected: My year without the Internet

Writer Paul Miller comes back online after a year without the Internet

by Heather Kelly, CNN
 
May 10, 2013

(CNN) -- We are using the Internet wrong. Smartphones turn people into horrible listeners. And cat videos aren't as riveting as we think they are.

These are just some of the revelations writer Paul Miller had during a year of self-imposed exile from the Internet.

Miller came back online May 1 after giving up the Internet for a year and documenting his experiences for tech site The Verge. After a nerve-wracking start (including finding 22,000 e-mails in his inbox), Miller is settling comfortably back into the Web's black hole of information and nonstop chatter.

We talked to Miller about what he learned on the other side, what's changed online in the past year, and how his dream of being a cyborg won't involve Google Glass.

Continue at:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/10/tech/web/paul-miller-internet-year/

Internet Loan Scam Costs Man Hundreds

Man pays hundreds of dollars, and forced to run all over town, to secure a bogus personal loan.

By Hal Millard

May 11, 2013
   

Mauldin, SC  -  A local man seeking to secure a loan over the Internet was forced to run all over town and pay hundreds of dollars to secure the loan before realizing he had been scammed, a Mauldin Police report said.

The 33-year-old victom said he had applied over the Internet to what he believed was a legitimate Cash Advance USA personal loan. After filling out the online application, the man was told he was approved, but things quickly went south from there, the report said.

Continue at:

http://mauldin.patch.com/articles/mauldin-police-internet-loan-scam-costs-man-hundredsMauldin Patch

Carbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared Milestone

By JUSTIN GILLIS

May 10, 2013 Comment

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Continue at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Spontaneity for Hire: Flash Mobs Go Corporate

Companies Hire Dancers to Break Out in Public;

Shimmying for Shoes, Chicken

By LINDA FREUND

May 9, 2013

Trade-show goers roaming the floor at a natural-products expo in Anaheim, Calif., this spring suddenly faced dancers who materialized out of nowhere and erupted in a gyrating routine. Attendees glanced up from their swag bags to see dozens of shaking behinds rendering the Electric Slide to Kool & the Gang's "Celebration."

It seemed like just another "flash mob," one of those sudden gatherings of people in public places made popular a decade ago by participants who often coordinated the events via email. Hewing to flash-mob convention, the mob erupted unexpectedly, and participants later slapped videos of it on YouTube to spread through social media.

There was one difference: This mob was paid for.

Continue at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323798104578453172650031706.html?google_editors_picks=true

Flight of the RoboBee: Tiny hovering robot creates buzz

The successful controlled flight of the tiny RoboBee – designed by a team at Harvard – represents a key step in the development of insect-size drones with a range of potential uses.

By Pete Spotts

May 2, 2013

Five individual robotic flies of identical design are shown alongside a US penny for scale, demonstrating that the manufacturing process facilitates repeatability and mass production.

A robotic fly with a body not much taller than a penny standing on edge has taken to the air, passing its tests with flying colors. The RoboBee, as it's called, is the smallest artificial insect yet flown, according to the team that built it.

It lifts off the table, hovers, and flies in different directions. At this point in its evolution, the bug is still tethered by thin wires that allow its designers to power and guide it. And landing remains an issue. The robot ends its sorties with all the grace of a mosquito nailed with a burst of Raid.

Still, the tiny craft's success – the team that designed it said it was the first such object to fly in a controlled manner – represents a key step in developing insect-size drones that designers say could one day search collapsed buildings for survivors after a disaster, sample an environment for hazardous chemicals before humans are sent in, or pinpoint enemy soldiers or terrorists holed up in urban areas.

Continue at:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0502/Flight-of-the-RoboBee-Tiny-hovering-robot-creates-buzz?cmpid=editorpicks&google_editors_picks=true

New CDC Report Finds Stunning Suicide Increases Among Middle-Aged Americans

AIR DATE: May 3, 2013

SUMMARY
More people in the U.S. die from suicide than car accidents. That's according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control, which also found that the suicide rate among adults age 35 and 64 has risen 28 percent. Ray Suarez talks with CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden about contributing risks and measures for prevention.

Transcript

JUDY WOODRUFF: There's been a stunning increase in the suicide rate among middle-aged Americans. The finding is part of a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that spells out how much suicide is a growing public health concern in the U.S.

Ray Suarez has more.

RAY SUAREZ: The analysis looked at data compiled over a little more than a decade, a period ending in 2010 that included the financial crisis and the great recession. In 2010, there were more suicides in the U.S., 38,000-plus, than there were fatal motor vehicle accidents.

Most disturbing, that spike among the middle-aged, a 28 percent rise overall, a 40 percent jump among white Americans, and among men in their 50s, suicides increased by more than 48 percent. Guns remained the leading method used in all suicides, followed by poisoning, overdoses and suffocation.

Some perspective on all this from Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC.

And, Dr. Frieden, the Morbidity and Mortality Report is a pretty technical document. But, from reading it, can you tease out what stressors might explain this tremendous spike in the number of people taking their own lives?

Continue at:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june13/suicide_05-03.html

Wright Brothers Flight Legacy Hits New Turbulence

Aviation periodical proclaims Gustave Whitehead flew the first airplane.

by Jarret Liotta

Published May 3, 2013

An iconic piece of American history took a nosedive when the 100th-anniversary issue of an annual aviation bible known as Jane's All the World's Aircraft displaced the Wright brothers as the first fathers of flight.

The new name in town is Gustave Whitehead, a German-born inventor many have long believed took to the air more than two years before Orville and Wilbur even left the ground at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.

But while new research from an Australian aviation expert convinced Jane's editors it was time to update the books, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.—home to the original Wright Flyer—remains skeptical about Whitehead's work, which it views as mostly myth. The Aeronautics Division's senior curator—author and Wright expert Dr. Tom Crouch—believes Jane's was "hoodwinked."

Still, longtime Whitehead supporters are elated about the latest development. Many think the Smithsonian's indebtedness to the Wrights' legacy—which it even holds in contract with the brothers' heirs—prevents the institution from acknowledging the indisputable facts of Whitehead's pioneering work.

Continue at:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130503-wright-brothers-first-flight-gustave-whitehead-aviation-smithsonian-institution-adventure-world/

Attention-Deficit Drugs Face New Campus Rules

Lisa Beach said it took months before Fresno State’s health service would give her an A.D.H.D. diagnosis. She had to sign a contract for medications.

By ALAN SCHWARZ
April 30, 2013

FRESNO, Calif. — Lisa Beach endured two months of testing and paperwork before the student health office at her college approved a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Then, to get a prescription for Vyvanse, a standard treatment for A.D.H.D., she had to sign a formal contract — promising to submit to drug testing, to see a mental health professional every month and to not share the pills.

Fresno State is one of dozens of colleges tightening the rules on the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. and the subsequent prescription of amphetamine-based medications like Vyvanse and Adderall. Some schools are reconsidering how their student health offices handle A.D.H.D., and even if they should at all.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/us/colleges-tackle-illicit-use-of-adhd-pills.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0