Business

Recent data collected by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) now shows that the U.S. is spending more on healthcare coverage than any other developed country, despite the fact that American citizens still have the highest obesity percentage worldwide (28.6%) and the 8th lowest life expectancy worldwide (78.7 years). The report states that the U.S. spent about $8,745 in healthcare costs per capita in 2012, which is approximately $2,500 more than Norway, which grabbed second place in healthcare expenditure in 2012. Although ideally a higher healthcare expenditure should mean that citizens generally experience better health, it appears that many developed nations still struggle with basic healthcare problems. Luca Lorenzoni, a health economist who is familiar ...

Employment safety standards in Canada are being called into question in the aftermath of a tragic workplace accident. Chris Lawrence -- a 15 year old who was two days away from his 16th birthday -- died when he was caught in a conveyor belt owned by the gravel crushing company the minor worked for. Work has been halted at the site while Occupational Health and Safety investigate the incident. Alberta's Employment Standards branch is also conducting its own investigation to determine whether Arjon Construction, the company that employed Lawrence, was complying with existing labor laws. According to Lauren Welsh, an OHS spokesperson, the investigation was made "given the young age of the worker." In Alberta, people between the ages of 15 and 17, who are classified as "young workers," c...

There are worse things to worry about than sparkly teenage bloodsucking vampires, such as bloodsucking bed bugs found within said books.A rogue bed bug was recently found in a Las Vegas-Clark County library center. Luckily, the finder was able to capture the pest using a piece of tape, but questions arose as to how many more were nestled away within the nearly 18,000 books that circulate through the service center. Instead of asking how many there are left, a few University of Nevada Las Vegas students believe they have the answer to the bigger problem of how to get rid of them: Solar-powered book drop. Undergraduate engineering students Jack Cheney, Nicole Ramos, and Vachara Maneeraj created this brilliant piece of technology that is capable of roasting bed bugs to death. It is well...

A year after one of the worst railway disasters in North American history, the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec is still struggling to rebuild what they lost. Last July, a Maine-owned oil train derailed in Lac-Megantic killing 47 people and setting off a chain of explosions that devastated the town overnight. The accident occurred when the crew and engineer left the train to sleep for the night, failing to set sufficient brakes and allowing the train to roll into the town and derail. Construction equipment is still scattered throughout the town, digging out oil-seeped pavement and soil where the public library, post office and restaurants once stood. The fenced-off disaster area still has a long way to go before new roads and buildings will be opened up, and the environmental cleanup of the...

A mechanical engineering grad student at Syracuse University has invented a safer way to navigate a bike. 23-year-old Jeremy Mingtao Wu received his undergraduate degree in automotive technology in China and is currently studying at the L.C. Smith College of Engineering. After studying automotive safety history in his undergraduate program, he realized that advances in bike safety were negligible compared to seat belts, air bags and impact-absorbing bumpers for cars. In fact, in the last century, Wu says that the only device developed to make bikers safer was the helmet. Wu's hoping to change that with a new app for smartphones called Bikerules. Bikerules will link user smartphones to a blinker system on their bicycle's handlebars. Cyclists enter their destination into the navi...

Restaurants and businesses that use Revel Systems' iPad point-of-sale (POS) platform will now be able to tell what their customers really think. According to a July 2 Wall Street Journal MarketWatch article, Revel Systems recently added a Yelp and Foursquare dashboard to its iPad POS interface that will notify the merchant whenever a customer "checks in" via Foursquare or Facebook or writes a review on Yelp. The article says these push notifications will allow small businesses and local restaurants to better gauge customers' experiences and provide feedback and improvements in real-time. And because it's easy for small business owners to overlook what is said about their business on social media, the Yelp dashboard will help them see reviews as soon as they are poste...

You know how people like to share photos of their vacations to wherever on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? According to a new report from USA Today, they might not be doing that to show off and make you feel like your life is terrible. A recent program aimed at generating free press on social media platforms among multiple hotels could be to blame. Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants has launched a new program, the Kimpton Karma Rewards program, to reward their guests and potential customers for sharing positive news relating to their business on the world's most popular social media platforms. Social media statuses, reviews, tweets and pictures of their hotel rooms -- any of these actions will earn customers points towards discounts, complimentary stays and meals, and more. Kimpton joins ...

Your next trip to the dentist could feature some of today's latest gadgets and technologies hitting the dental industry. A July 10 TechRepublic.com describes just some of these innovations that are cropping up in dental practices across America as these new technologies become more popular. "What I found more impressive was how that technology was integrated into the practice, not bolted on to show that this office 'gets' it, or introduced in an effort to modernize that creates friction, not efficiency," the writer of the TechRepublic article stated. Some of the new dental technologies described in the article included an iPad at reception for filling out new patient information, digital X-rays and radiography, intraoral digital cameras and more. Devices like the iPad have been...

Is OSHA doing the job they're supposed to do? According to data provided by OSHA itself, there's no way for OSHA to effectively do its job based on current budget constraints. This has resulted in many otherwise preventable accidental deaths. Last year, Tim Taylor was killed while working at Central Ready Mix LLC in Middletown, Ohio. Taylor was working with a cone-bottom silo and attempted to break up clumps of fly ash by climbing into the silo without a harness. After several hours of doing this, he became engulfed in the fly ash and asphyxiated, and his death was ruled accidental by the Butler County Coroner's Office. OSHA noted 10 serious violations within the facility, and OSHA area director Bill Wilkerson said in regards to the accident that "employers are responsible for identi...