Business

Lincoln Electric Co., manufacturer of welding products and a subsidiary of Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc., announced on August 19 that it would be purchasing a group annuity contract in order to reduce the company's pension obligations for outstanding payments. The announcement stated that Lincoln Electric is purchasing the group annuity contract from Principal Financial Group in order to settle $425 million worth of outstanding U.S. pension payments to former employees. According to Crain's Cleveland Business and Pensions and Investments, Lincoln Electric currently owes about $900 million to 1,900 U.S. retirees and beneficiaries who retired on or before June 1, 2015. The company has already paid $375 million toward pension payments in the past 10 years, Lincoln Electric stated in a pres...

The average size of a farm in the U.S. is about 450 acres -- plenty of space to grow bountiful amounts of crops that can support the business. However, farms have been struggling for ages with low prices and rising costs. Luckily, a new way of doing business may just be the solution they're looking for. Over the past couple years, the farm-to-fork -- or locavore -- movement sweeping the nation is giving farms the boost they need. "You're just seeing that farms are having difficulty covering their costs of production," Sarah Lloyd of the Wisconsin Farmers' Union told NPR. "The prices that are being paid to them in the market is not enough to cover their costs. One bright spot is you see people venturing into direct markets, and that's a way where they can have more control over their pric...

Driverless cars have been a trending topic as of late. Many companies have been extremely transparent about their plans to launch driverless cars, and have even publicized testing initiatives. While Apple has confirmed their plans in the past, those plans have been shrouded in secrecy and rumor. Take, for example, Apple's "Project Titan," -- an ultra-secret driverless car plan that has been the subject of much speculation. The Guardian, however, recently obtained public records that revealed Apple's driverless car plans are indeed underway, as the company has set its sights on various testing locations across the country. According to The Verge, the report states that Apple engineers convened with GoMentum, the former San Francisco naval base, to discuss plans with representatives. Th...

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of pumping water, sand, and other chemicals under high pressure into the ground to break apart rock and release the natural gas contained. By 2013, there were over two million oil and gas wells that had been hydraulically fractured in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy (DOE). It's estimated that about 95% of all new wells are drilled under these conditions. According to British technology website The Register, new research from the University of Virginia led by Andres Clarens is looking at the possibility of replacing water with CO2 at fracking sites. The idea is that CO2 would act as a carbon sequestration, making fracking that much more efficient and sustainable. "We are working to develop a fundamental understanding of how...

In the past, buying a first house has often been a step that married couples take together. But a recent Zillow analysis has concluded that now, more than half of first-time homebuyers are single. According to data collected between 2010 and 2013, only 40% of homeowners were married when purchasing their first homes. That’s compared to 52% in the late ’80s. “The characteristics of typical first-time buyers have changed dramatically,” report author Cody Fuller, an economic analyst at Zillow, observed in his analysis, released Aug. 17. His conclusions dovetail with another recent study finding that single women, in particular, are increasingly getting into the real estate market; in fact, they’re buying homes at twice the rate of single men. First-time buyers are renting for longer befor...

As of Tuesday, August 11, Google has a new owner. According to Wired, Alphabet, the newly-introduced parent company of Google, is much more than a rebranding effort. Alphabet, run by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, will essentially act as the mothership for all of Google's various ventures. This includes Calico, the company's longevity program; Google X, its lab division; and Google itself, the search engine giant that controls 65 to 70% of the global search market. Alphabet and Google are two entities with entirely different corporate structures and entirely different purposes. By allowing an outside entity to control Google's various tech ventures, from self-driving cars to Google Glass, Google executives can focus their attention on the products and services that make the...

Chain-link fences are usually considered more of a security measure than an aesthetic choice. If you've ever had an intrusive fence or a window glare in your photographs, a recent report from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology will be welcome news. Researchers at MIT and Google are developing a new algorithm, one that can separate the foreground and background of your image and remove unwanted obstructions. The method works with a specific sequence of photos taken, similar to the panoramic feature on many smartphone cameras. The different angles provided by the multiple photos help to distinguish the foreground elements from the background elements, granting you the freedom to tweak them as needed. Motion parallax is a phenomenon in which closer objects appear to move faster than...

A new tech company is being called "an Uber for advertisers." Wrapify, which rolled out its product less than one month ago in San Diego and San Francisco, connects companies with drivers, wrapping their cars with branded, vinyl graphics and marketing messages. In other words, it acts as a vehicle advertising middleman. So far, Wrapify has nearly 10 brands on board and almost 2,000 drivers interested. Some of the brands already using Wrapify include Petco, Coldcock, Whisky, HomeHero, Captiv8.io, and Unreel.io. Thanks to its early successes, Wrapify is speeding up its plans to launch in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Atlanta by this Fall. The way it works is pretty simple. Wrapify's drivers download its mobile app, which only engages with their personal vehicles. GPS tracks the vehicle's...

When it comes to clutter, 80% of people think that it stops productivity right in its tracks --but what about clutter on your social networking sites? Anyone with a Facebook account knows how this story goes: You're scrolling down your newsfeed, looking for updates from friends and family, and suddenly you see a photo of a baby. You look to see which "friend" posted it and realize it's that girl you went to camp with for one week back when you were 12. Sure, it's cute, but you don't know this kid. It's downright irrelevant, and quite frankly, cluttering your Facebook newsfeed. According to the Journal Gazette there is, apparently, a reason to Facebook's seemingly senseless newsfeed rhyme; the social networking giant employs a software that compiles information based on a range of infor...

They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend. But what about $160,000 worth of stolen jewelry? On July 13th, Marie Anne Khanh Hodang, a JC Penney employee, was caught with $160,382 worth of jewelry from the store located in Jackson, Florida. Hodang stole the jewelry from the Avenue Mall department store over the period of a month, strategically paying for some items in-between with her employee discount. According to First Coast News, Jackson County Police Department was contacted after the store's loss prevention officer calculated that over $100,000 worth of merchandise had gone missing over the past month. Upon this realization, the store manager was alerted and kept an eyeful watch on his employees. The manager checked the security camera tapes and saw Hodang leaving the JC Penn...