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In Sharonville, Ohio, police are looking for a sham home improvement business operator. Instead of providing elderly individuals with upgrades to their homes, Brice Ryan and his accomplices would take their money and run, often scamming them out of hundreds or thousands of dollars.The most recent scam victim was an elderly woman. She says that a group of workers came to her home and told her that her chimney needed repairs. After telling her it would be $25, five guys came and gave her a bill for $1,700. Luckily, her family was able to stop the payment before it went through. "It's really bad when people have to do that to the elderly," said the woman's son, Mark Conry. "She's worked so hard her whole life to save up this amount and get a retirement." Police have linked that case to the...

May is National Home Remodeling Month -- and as temperatures finally begin to warm up after a rough winter, now is the best time to think about remodeling or renovating your home. According to a NorthJersey.com article, 2014 is expected to be a solid year for home renovations across the country. The National Association of Home Builders projected that homeowners will spend about $122.8 billion on home improvement and renovation projects this year, a 3.1% increase from 2013. Kitchens will continue to be a popular remodeling subject this season, according to a National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) study; about 82% of NARI members identify kitchens as their primary service offering. "In addition to replacing counter tops or cabinets, a terrazzo floor is also a great ...

Carthay Elementary School, located in Los Angeles, is one of 17 schools to receive a $10,000 grant from Seeds of Change, an organic seed and farming supply company. The grant will go toward the school's Garden of Possibilities, a community garden run by elementary school students and faculty. With the receipt of the funds, the school plans to open up the community garden to area locals, offering workshops on locavore culture, organic farming, cooking, and the benefits of buying and eating locally grown produce. The Project Aims to Improve Access to Nutritious Foods By opening the garden to the public, Carthay Elementary hopes to give increased access to people who have little chance to buy and consume more nutritious food. An estimated 23-million Americans live in so-called "food deser...

A growing number of the Chinese population is finding itself without access to clean, drinkable water, new data shows. According to an April 23 Times of India article, 60% of China's officially-monitored groundwater is too polluted to drink. The clean water shortage is another indicator of China's continuing environmental problems. The Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources, which monitors water quality at 4,778 locations in 203 cities, reported that 43.9% of the country's groundwater was of “relatively poor” quality, and requires treatment before it can be consumed by humans. The Ministry of Land and Resources rated the other 15.7% of monitored groundwater “very poor,” meaning the water is unfit for consumption even after treatment, according to a upi.com article. The decades-lon...

Personal injury lawyers are perhaps one of the busiest in the field, as personal injury claims are one of the most common filings in the U.S. This includes several different types of torts, including worker's compensation, auto accidents, and product liability issues. But medical malpractice has often garnered more coverage because it typically involves major surgical and treatment blunders that could effect anyone. Recently, Alaska's Legislature made headlines when it passed House Bill 250, a law that rejects the use of an official apology as admissible in court during medical malpractice cases. Often called the "I'm Sorry" bill, this legislature is aimed at stopping lawyers from using the admission of a mistake as evidence against a defendant. The bill also prohibits lawyers from ente...

On Monday, May 12, the U.S. government filed an objection to Detroit's debt restructuring plan for dealing with its $18 billion of debt and exiting the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, according to a May 13 Reuters article. According to the article, the federal government's filing addressed several different disputes, both regulatory and monetary, regarding the Michigan metropolis' adjustment plan. For example, while the Environmental Protection Agency sought assurance that Detroit would adhere to its regulations in its plan, the city had failed to specifically state it would in its adjustment plan. The federal government joins several other governmental entities that have filed objections to Detroit's plan, including neighboring Oakland, Wayne and Macomb counties, which...

Moz.com, the website for an SEO and search marketing firm, recently conducted a survey of over 3,700 internet marketing consultants and specialists from across the globe to compare salaries for 2014. One of the most startling findings of this survey revealed a great disparity between the salaries of men and women who work in online marketing, and the breakdown of earnings may point to a disturbing trend when it comes to gender inequality among internet marketers.Moz's survey results stated that the average earnings for anyone working in the internet marketing industry was $65,766, based on their 3,700 respondents. However, men, who had an average salary of $68,785.11, earned significantly more than women, who brought in $57,438.14 annually.This wasn't the only startling fact when it came t...

One of the first surgeries treating scoliosis using the Magnetic Expansion Control device has been performed at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital earlier this week byJeffrey Sawyer, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon with Campbell Clinic. This was only the tenth surgery of its kind in the entire country since the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approved the Magnetic Expansion Control device (MAGEC). Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine usually occurring during the growth spurt before puberty. The cause of the most common type of scoliosis is still unknown, though many medical experts believe there are hereditary factors involved. Its symptoms include an uneven waist, uneven shoulders, one hip being higher than the other,and one shoulder blade appearing more prominently. Though it's typica...

Twitter announced Monday that it was adding a new feature, aptly titled 'Mute,' to the popular social media platform. 'Mute,' as the name implies, allows Twitter's 643 million active users to simply turn off tweets from friends, family, and celebs they're following. The benefit? Well, we've all had that awkward experience where we unfriend or unfollow someone on social media, only to cause them to have hurt feelings in the real world. 'Mute' allows you to shut off the annoying political rants and infinite stream of baby photos without alerting and hurting your friends. Is Twitter Creatively Bankrupt? For the most part, news of the update has landed with more of a thud than a splash! Over the last six months, the little-bluebird-that-could has released a number of updates to their servi...

There may never come a time when people stop looking for anti-aging treatments. From Botox, to collagen, to facial fillers, people are continuously searching for a way to reverse the aging process. A new study shows that young mice could hold the key to the fountain of youth. A few days ago, scientists from Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California, San Francisco, published findings that found pumping older mice with the blood of younger mice reversed the aging process in the older mice. Research showed that four weeks after the older mice had been injected with the young blood, they were able to stay on the treadmill for a longer period of time, and latent blood vessels in their brains were activated, adding strength to their hearts and muscles. The stem...