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It's been yet another busy Hurricane season across the southeast and communities are left focusing on damage control and cleanup. This year's storms may not have been as physically devastating as many of the 2017's hurricanes, but the flooding issues have been out of control. According to JDN News, a North Carolina school district could have to shell out millions of dollars in order to address serious molding concerns. Pender County Schools are hoping North Carolina's insurance policies will be able to assist with the majority of the mold cleanup for its school buildings, but the state is unlikely to cover it. Farmers Insurance reports that over the past decade, there has been a 1,100 increase in mold-related insurance claims. Thanks to all the flooding caused by major storms, that...

Thrift shopping for clothes and housewares is a great way to save money, explore vintage fashion, and give your money to a charitable cause. However, as with any store, if you don't shop smart you could end up wasting your time and not making any useful purchases. Use these tips to become a thrifting pro: Know What You Need (and What You Don't): Thrift stores can be worlds of temptation. Finding lots of well-priced and interesting items can lead any shopper to spend more than they should for things that they don't necessarily need. Before hitting the stores, have an idea of what you're shopping for. Are you looking for funky wall art? Do you need a new coat? Creating a shopping list and a budget can keep you from getting carried away, so you don't end up donating back unnecessary p...

While moving can be an exciting step, the process of buying a home can be stressful and downright exhausting. For first-time home buyers, who make up 34% of all house shoppers, finding potential properties, figuring out a budget, and making offers is an especially nerve-wracking process. Many new buyers become so stressed that they either delay the process or make hasty and unsatisfactory decisions. Follow these tips to stay cool and calm when buying your first home, so that you can find a place you'll love for years to come. Remember that You are In Charge. Some inexperienced home buyers feel overwhelmed throughout the process, especially when dealing with professional agents, lenders, and sellers. Working with experts who are incentivized to sell you something can feel as though ...

Everyone has, at some point in their lives, experienced stress to a degree. The spectrum of its consequences varies greatly because the level of stress one can experience varies greatly: whether you've forgotten to buy an ingredient necessary for the dinner party, or have greatly miscalculated the time it would take you to complete a Very Important Project and are not able to get it done on time, you'll go through a range of reactions and repercussions: not being able to sleep, lack of appetite, jitteriness/restlessness, and exhaustion to name a few. Most Americans (82%) find one extra hour of sleep at night somewhat or extremely valuable The extreme end of the spectrum can completely disrupt day-to-day life. Some people begin picking and pulling at their hair due to a disorder cal...

When you think of life-saving elements used in medicine, you probably don't immediately think of molybdenum-99. Molybdenum-99 is a radioactive isotope (also known as a radioisotope), making it extremely valuable and useful in medical imaging. Radioisotopes circulate through the body's systems easily and leave trace amounts of radiation in their wake, allowing doctors to examine blood flow to specific organs and assess organ function or bone growth. They are incredibly beneficial in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer: "In radiation therapy for cancer, the patient’s tumor is bombarded with ionizing radiation, typically in the form of beams of subatomic particles, such as protons, neutrons, or alpha or beta particles, which directly disrupt the atomic or molecular structure of th...

Roughly 60% of consumers reported that a lack of signage deterred them from entering a business. But what about entering a state? People don't often think about the importance of quality signage, but without signs, there would be all kinds of issues and confusion. Signs promote businesses, services, communities, and so much more. According to a recent study, over 40% of survey respondents stated that they had first learned about a local political candidate from a sign. Without signage to influence those people, two out of five people may have voted in a different manner simply because there was no name recognition for a particular political candidate. Though not everybody is fully aware of the importance of an individual sign, some signage campaigns, like New York's "I Love N.Y." campai...

In a recent news article, one New York county Supervisor board’s openly questioned how grant money should be used to manage illegal drug use. According to the Star Post, John Haff was joined by fellow Washington County supervisors Sara Idleman and Evera Sue Clary in criticizing the county’s plan to spend $6,000 federal dollars on flyovers searching for marijuana plants. Couldn’t the money be better spent, Haff argued, on stopping opiods? Clary pointed out that marijuana prevention methods seemed especially pointless when, just over the town line, the substance is legal under Vermont State law. Haff was vocal about a variety of other drug-prevention uses the money could be put towards. He said that $6,000 could buy 200 naloxone doses, which are injections used to revers...

Across North Carolina officials are worried about potential dam failures as floodwaters from Hurricane Florence continue to rise. According to data from the National Inventory of Dams earlier this year, North Carolina already had 1,445 dams rated as high hazards out of 5,700 dams total before Hurricane Florence made landfall in early September. The high hazard classification indicates that any failure in the dams is likely to cause the loss of one or more human lives. Out of those hazardous dams, 185 had poor or unsatisfactory conditions as rated during recent inspections. This survey of dams included large, federally-owned ones as well as small, private ones. Many are in areas that are now inundated with water. The last decade has seen over a third of all the dam failures or near-fa...

If you've ever taken a drivers ed course, you've probably spent time watching the horror stories of the consequences of drunk driving. It truly is an epidemic in our country: roughly 29 people die every day in car accidents that involve a drunk driver. However, evidence has emerged that the introduction of ride sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, have reduced the number of drunk driving incidents -- including those that don't get into accidents or arrested. A closer look at a few American cities reveal the subtleties of this impact: Miami's police department reported a 31% decrease in DUI arrests over the past four years, adding that only 594 people had been arrested for DUIs last year compared to the over 1,500 that had been arrested each year from 2013 to 2015. In Portland,...