taking

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SELF, WORK

Taking Care Of Kids Makes Balancing Work And Life Harder — Particularly For Moms, Poll Finds

At 4 a.m. each day, Pamela Hines wakes up to pack lunches for her two older sons, who are 9 and 7, and make sure their homework is in their backpacks. She gets breakfast for them and her youngest son, 2, as well as her husband. Kids in tow, she drives her husband to his workplace in Pennsylvania, 30 minutes from their home in Morgantown, W.Va., then takes the two older kids to school. Her husband lost his job at the start of the pandemic and is thrilled to be back at work now. He works from 5:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. each day, installing drainage systems and doing other manual work. After dropping the kids off, Hines cares for her 2-year-old while running the nonprofit she started to connect Americans who have extra travel miles with Ukrainian mothers and children who want to leave the countr...

How Women Are Taking Over The Labor Movement ‘This Is Our Time’

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

How Women Are Taking Over The Labor Movement ‘This Is Our Time’

As she considered striking at the grocery store where she had worked for a decade, the dozens of moments that had pushed Ashley Manning to that point flooded back. She vividly recalled the indignities she endured throughout the pandemic, starting with child care. When schools shut down, no one could watch her 12-year-old daughter. She wouldn’t allow her elderly grandmother, Ruby, to do it, fearing she would get sick. And her store, a Ralphs in San Pedro, California, where she is the manager of the floral department, refused to work with her schedule, she said. No one can cover you, she said they told her. Your contract is for six days a week, we need you six days a week. Unable to work and care for her daughter, she burned through three months of unpaid leave at the end of 2020 as she w...

Borrowing Parents Taking Out A Student Loan For Their Child Worry More About Finances

17Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Borrowing Parents Taking Out A Student Loan For Their Child Worry More About Finances

When people take out student loans for themselves, certain risks are involved. The debt can negatively affect a person’s mental, emotional and even physical well-being. It can also harm a person’s financial well-being. But when taking out a student loan for one’s child, the risk is even higher that the loan could be associated with lower financial well-being. This is what economics scholar Charlene Kalenkoski and I found published in the Journal of Personal Finance. The study – which used a nationally representative federal dataset on household economics and decision-making – involved nearly 12,500 American adults ages 18 and over, with an average age of 48. It is not known whether the parents had taken out private or government loans for their children. By lower financial well-being, w...

Taking A Bite Out Of Its Food Insecurity In The US – Here’s One Way To Scrap The Problem Altogether

19Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Taking A Bite Out Of Its Food Insecurity In The US – Here’s One Way To Scrap The Problem Altogether

HEALTH Craig Gundersen, Baylor University The U.S. Department of Agriculture is set to permanently increase the value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits by 25% above pre-pandemic levels in October 2021. It’s the biggest change since 1979 to this anti-hunger program, commonly known as SNAP, which currently helps over 40 million Americans. I’m a scholar who analyzes the causes and consequences of food insecurity, the technical term for when people can’t obtain the food they need for a balanced diet. I believe ramping up SNAP is sure to reduce the number of Americans experiencing food insecurity– a projected 45 million in 2020. Previous research I conducted with other experts suggests that the planned increase, from US$121 to $157 per person for a family of four, could...

Nursing Home Aides Aren’t Taking Sick Leave After Exposure To COVID-19 – Why?

25Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, IN OTHER NEWS

Nursing Home Aides Aren’t Taking Sick Leave After Exposure To COVID-19 – Why?

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated America’s nursing homes, but the reasons aren’t as simple as people might think. To understand how nursing homes became the source of over one-third of U.S. COVID-19 deaths, you have to look beyond just the vulnerability of the residents and examine how nursing homes pay and manage their employees. The average nursing aide earns just $14.25 an hour, less than $30,000 a year. Many are women who work at multiple nursing homes to make ends meet. Partly as a result of that, the typical nursing home has staff connections to 15 other facilities – each an opportunity for the coronavirus to spread. That risk is magnified by a reluctance among many nursing aides to take sick days when they are ill, even though federal law currently requires employers to provid...

Chess is taking over the online video game world – and both are changing from this unlikely pairing

4Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

GAMING

Chess is taking over the online video game world – and both are changing from this unlikely pairing

As a global pandemic continues to determine a new normal, tens of thousands of viewers have been tuning in to watch people play chess on a livestreaming website called Twitch.tv. An American chess grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, along with a number of celebrities of the video game world, is leading a renaissance in the ancient game. While viewers eagerly await Nakamura’s streams to begin, they are treated to a slideshow of memes involving Nakamura’s face superimposed into scenes from pop culture. First a reference to a well-known Japanese animation, next a famous upside-down kiss with Spiderman and finally, Nakamura’s characteristic grin is edited onto the Mona Lisa herself. From Aug. 21 to Sept. 6, Twitch and Chess.com are hosting a tournament, called Pogchamps, where some of the most pop...

Sketchy darknet websites are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic – buyer beware

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, TECHNOLOGY

Sketchy darknet websites are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic – buyer beware

Underground markets that sell illegal commodities like drugs, counterfeit currency and fake documentation tend to flourish in times of crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. The online underground economy has responded to the current crisis by exploiting demand for COVID-19-related commodities. Today, some of the most vibrant underground economies exist in darknet markets. These are internet websites that look like ordinary e-commerce websites but are accessible only using special browsers or authorization codes. Vendors of illegal commodities have also formed dedicated group-chats and channels on encrypted instant messaging services like WhatsApp, Telegram and ICQ. The Darknet Analysis project at the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group here at Georgia State Universit...

5 reasons students should consider taking a gap year now

20May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

5 reasons students should consider taking a gap year now

With many colleges and universities still deciding when to re-open their campuses after they were shuttered due to COVID-19, many high school seniors are thinking about taking a gap year. Putting off college during the pandemic might enable them to get the on-campus experience they desire in 2021 instead of going to school remotely this fall. Traditionally, a gap year is a semester or year of learning through experience. It is typically taken after high school and before college or starting a career. However, some college students choose to take a gap year while they’re still in college or before going to graduate school. As the coordinator of a research group that examines the impact of taking a gap year, here are five ways that students will benefit from the gap year experience. 1. Avo...

More than 1 in 5 Americans are taking care of their elderly, ill and disabled relatives and friends

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIETY

More than 1 in 5 Americans are taking care of their elderly, ill and disabled relatives and friends

I’m studying how the COVID-19 pandemic is changing caregiving. Immunocompromised people, seniors with dementia and anyone with a chronic disease are more likely to experience the most severe COVID-19 symptoms. Caregivers face new worries due to the coronavirus, including whether they can they still assist their vulnerable relatives and friends and what they should do if they themselves or someone they live with gets sick. This quandary affects about 21.3% of Americans. The total number of Americans doing this unpaid work has reached an estimated 53 million in 2019, according to the latest data collected by the National Alliance for Caregiving, an advocacy and research organization, and AARP. That number, which excludes people caring for children without disabilities, is up from 43.5 mill...

Social media companies are taking steps to tamp down coronavirus misinformation – but they can do more

30Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media companies are taking steps to tamp down coronavirus misinformation – but they can do more

As we practice social distancing, our embrace of social media gets only tighter. The major social media platforms have emerged as the critical information purveyors for influencing the choices people make during the expanding pandemic. There’s also reason for worry: the World Health Organization is concerned about an “infodemic,” a glut of accurate and inaccurate information about COVID-19. The social media companies have been pilloried in recent years for practicing “surveillance capitalism” and being a societal menace. The pandemic could be their moment of redemption. How are they rising to this challenge? Surprisingly, Facebook, which had earned the reputation of being the least trusted tech company in recent years, has led with the strongest, most consistent actions during the unfold...