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The federal government helped finance the creation of a so-called “diet choker” that monitors the eating habits of the wearer.WearSens, created by engineers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), is a necklace that can automatically detect when a person is eating or smoking, and can send alerts to a smart phone telling the user to stop.The invention received a $148,379 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2013 to create a sensory necklace to “fill the need of automatically detecting swallows and eating patterns.”Researchers at UCLA, led by Majid Sarrafzadeh, the director of the Embedded and Reconfigurable...

In obscure, blue-collar towns across Appalachia -- places that most Americans have never seen -- generations of coal miners have toiled away at back-breaking labor to power American homes and industry. Now, as many as 200,000 of them who dig, process, transport and burn America's most abundant fuel are threatened by EPA's latest coal rule. It imposes a standard for emissions that is all but impossible for many plants to meet. It requires coal-fired plants to release no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. The only means for many older plants to attain that standard is...

Police are trying to defuse a bomb strapped around the neck of a terrified teenage girl at a multimillion pound mansion in Sydney, Australia. Cops raced to the Mosman home of the 18-year-old victim, who is part of one of Sydney's wealthiest families, after she raised the alarm. A senior police officer has described the device as a 'collar bomb' and it's believed a ransom note has been attached to the girl's neck.

Vicars told not to wear dog collars in public as it makes them a target for muggersBy CHRIS BROOKE - More by this author » Last updated at 15:25pm on 7th October 2007  Warning: Vicars advised not to wear their dog collars in public because they are more likely to be attacked   Vicars are being advised to take off their dog collars when they go out while off duty to reduce the risk of being attacked by yobs. New advice states that even the Archbishop of Canterbury should remove his dog collar outside church. Priests should also seek...

My husband jokes that I should have been an electrician. In this age of outsourcing and job insecurity, the trades seem to us to be the best professions of the future. To be sure, most aren't glamorous and are often physically demanding. But a number seem to have financial security and stability, and their job portability doesn't hurt, either. Many of us white-collar employees don't get to choose where we will live; we must go wherever our employer requires us. Many folks in the trades can command a good income, choose their own hours, and put down roots in a...

A relative of mine, immediately after graduating from college, went to work for a bank. Even though he had a university degree, he was assigned the job of repossessing cars. We kidded him a lot about that. He eventually ended up a vice president, but his entry into the banking industry was about as low as you can get, and we never let him forget it. In similar fashion, the Enterprise car-rental firm goes to college campuses to recruit management trainees, but among the first jobs these trainees handle is washing and cleaning cars coming off rental. When I moved...

The word "reinvent" is a dumb term, having an overtone of redundancy. After all, when you have invented something, it exists. You can revise it or change it, but you can't "reinvent" it after you have already invented it. I never heard the term when I first entered the workforce. But somewhere in the 1970s or so, corporate executives-began using the word, and using it a lot. Then as now, the nation had its usual economic ups and downs, but suddenly after one downturn, our nation was heavily laden with companies that had reinvented themselves. What happened is that after...

SALISBURY - Rowan County officials paid private investigators more than $23,000 over the past five years to search for the writer of anonymous letters criticizing county spending. According to the private eyes, that person turned out to be one of the county's own. The Board of Commissioners never discussed or approved spending for the investigation at any formal meeting. Only County Manager Tim Russell, his assistants and possibly two commissioners' chairmen knew of the investigation, The Salisbury Post reported. Russell said he hired the agency because of the letters' threatening tone. The investigation was revealed after Kiker Investigations issued a...

The Coming Revenge of the "New Londoners" Could a little known telecom class action case point the way to justice for homeowners caught up in confiscatory redevelopment projects? "A man's home is...somebody else's piggybank." -- Glenn Reynolds Perhaps it is appropriate that the name of the City in the recent U.S. Supreme Court eminent domain case is New London, Connecticut. Over 200 years ago in "Old London" and in the Old World of Europe all land was owned by the "sovereign." The sovereign ruler leased his land only to land barons. There was no such thing as private property. However,...

Judge critical of Bush, Congress One of the appeals court judges rebuked the White House and lawmakers Wednesday for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.” “Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” wrote Judge Stanley Birch Jr., appointed by President Bush’s father.

He's not wrapped too tightly, but Larry the Cable Guy knows comedy Larry the Cable Guy doesn't care who you are, he's going to make you laugh. Proud-to-be-a-redneck funny man Larry is bringing his latest joke-telling tour to Wachovia Arena Thursday, Jan. 27 for a night of political incorrectness. He checked in with the Weekender recently, just a few days after the tour kicked off in Houston. Tracing back to his livestock-raising roots in southern Nebraska, Larry and his cohorts had just stopped off at a cattle auction. He admitted spending a good part of the day explaining to the...

The ACLU's "constitutional" lawsuit with this Tuesday's Presidential Inauguration is a three-way taxpayer hit: 1. By act of Congress, the ACLU is allowed to bill (likely at the highest rate possible) the government/taxpayers for the costs of bringing the suit, and automatically is paid, regardless of the suits' outcome. 2. By operation, the cost of defending against the suit is charged to the taxpayers, again, likely at the highest rate. 3. By function, the cost of hearing and adjudicating the suit is at taxpayer expense. Of course, it was members of the legal industry, Congress's largest and only functional built-in...

Play the office politics gameBy Cynthia Broderick • Bankrate.com Let's play Office Politics! All you need are two people and the game begins.Playing the game of office politics is inevitable. Oh, perhaps you believe that you're above such foolishness, but that's really just one more way to play the game. Office politics is simply human nature in the workplace. If you work with humans -- even if they only resemble humans -- then you are dealing with politics. "If there's more than one person, you've got office politics," explains Rob Sarmiento, a Houston psychologist, also known as the CyberPsychologist....

The FBI is trying to find two men to question in connection with the bombing death of pizza deliveryman Brian Wells on Aug. 28. Officials released composite sketches of the pair -- one a muscular black man and the other a white man with straight hair -- at a 30-minute news conference today. The FBI has not called the men suspects, but said agents want to question them because they were seen running in the area around Peach Street and Interchange Road at the time of Wells' death. The FBI today also said that Wells carried a multipage note that...

By Ed Palattella ed.palattella@timesnews.com and Kevin Flowers kevin.flowers@timesnews.com The FBI on Friday zeroed in on a 46-year-old Erie man who described himself as "a person of interest" in the bombing death of pizza deliveryman Brian Wells. The man said he had nothing to do with the Wells case, and said he had never spoken to Wells. The man's live-in girlfriend said she is Wells' cousin. "I will be 47 in December, and I have never known this man in my existence," the man told the Erie Times-News in an interview at his apartment at East Fourth and Ash streets. The...

‘This Is an Emergency’ 911 Tapes Reveal Final Hour of Bomb-Wearing Pizza Man Bank Robber ‘This Is an Emergency’ 911 Tapes Reveal Final Hour of Bomb-Wearing Pizza Man Bank Robber Click Below for 911 information.... http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/US/pizza_deaths030905.html Sept. 5— Tapes of 911 calls obtained exclusively by ABCNEWS detail the final hour of the life of a quiet pizza delivery man who was killed when a bomb locked around his neck exploded following a bank robbery.

Wells demanded $250,000 Carrying canelike gun, robber waited his turn in line at PNC Bank Brian Wells, an unassuming, 46-year-old deliveryman who authorities say robbed a bank before a bomb clasped to his chest by a locking metal collar exploded, killing him last Thursday afternoon. (Associated Press) By Ed Palattella ed.palattella@timesnews.com and KARA RHODES kara.rhodes@timesnews.com Brian Wells wanted $250,000 from the bank. He was willing to wait. He was also prepared to come back. Wells, with a live bomb locked around his neck and a canelike gun in his hands, walked into the PNC Bank branch on upper Peach Street...

Posted on Thu, Sep. 04, 2003 Man with bomb also had odd weapon ERIE, Pa. - The mystery of the pizza deliveryman turned bank robber who was killed by a bomb around his neck deepened Wednesday as investigators said the man had a gunlike weapon in his possession before he died. Authorities described the weapon as "unusual" and "unique," saying it appeared to have been homemade or custom-made in a machine shop. One official said it was shaped like a walking cane. Investigators also said that the locking metal collar used to attach the bomb to the neck of the...