Archives May 2015

Study Follows Evolution of Yoga and Yoga Marketing in U.S.

Yoga pose, Abstract color background
Researchers from Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics published a new study about the evolution of yoga in the American marketplace. They concluded that its rise has been largely associated with its perception as a fitness, rather than spiritual, practice.

“What we discovered was the U.S. yoga market delineated itself not only in the different types of yoga that emerged, but also in the logic behind why people do yoga,” Gokcen Coskuner-Balli, an assistant professor and co-author of the study, explained to Chapman University’s news service. The study shows that the changing meanings of yoga have had to do with the training of yoga gurus or instructors, as well as the distinct branding practices of the many players in the yoga market.

To gather data for the study, the research team dove into a wide variety of popular sources. They searched for all articles in the New York Times and Washington Post archives that were published between 1980 and 2012 and had the word “yoga” in the headline or first paragraph. They also examined published books containing the word yoga, interviewed founders of yoga brands and even participated in multiple types of yoga classes between 2009 and 2012.

This approach allowed the team to identify key moments that positioned yoga as a health and fitness regimen, such as when Berly Bender Birch’s Power Yoga became the best-selling book of 1999.

The full paper, with Burcak Ertimur listed as co-author, is published in the Journal of Marketing.
Yoga and Stress Management
The evolution of yoga into a popular American workout doesn’t mean that it has completely lost its meditative quality for participants however, as probably most of the busy moms who see it as their escape would explain.

According to a newly released study out of Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, mindfulness-based practices including yoga can help decrease overall stress levels and reduce the risk of burnout even in extremely demanding jobs.

“As a yoga practitioner, I have dabbled in various forms of yoga,” said Malek Neman, President of NUX Group, Inc. “While the fitness and flexibility benefits of yoga are difficult to dispute, there is a magical, and often unexpected, experience that brings most practitioners back to the mat. In the process of focusing on the yoga routine and breathing practices, the mind does slow down, and the practitioner experiences a meditative state. I often walk away from the mat with a deep sense of gratitude.”

The White House and Secret Service Have Responded To Multiple Fence Jumping Incidents By Installing Steel Spikes on the Fence

police
It’s no secret that the White House’s Secret Service guards have had some trouble preventing people from climbing and jumping over the fence that surrounds the Ellipse on Pennsylvania Ave.

The obvious solution, according to the U.S. Secret Service and the National Capitol Planning Commission, was to make a plan that involves steel spikes being placed on top of the current black iron fence.

Unlike the other 90% of new fence installations in the U.S. each year, this new addition isn’t intended to increase privacy for the Obamas.

CNN and the Huffington Post report that the U.S. Secret Service presented the proposal to the National Capitol Planning Commission. On Thursday, May 7, the plan was approved.

The new spikes will be slightly over seven inches tall and will have a steel “pencil point” at the top, which protrudes in multiple angular directions (much like layers of spikes) in order to deter people from climbing the fence. Poltico states that these “pencil points” will be placed in between the “decorative spear-shaped finials” that currently adorn the fence.

As explained by Tom Dougherty, the Chief Strategy officer of the Secret Service, “The current fence is a measure that was useful for a bygone era. It has been breached many times.”

Workers will start installing the spikes during July, and it’s estimated that the installation will take about four weeks.

The “pencil points” are a temporary solution, the Secret Service stated, and the U.S. National Park Service is designing a more permanent solution.

The security (or lack thereof) of the White House first came into question during September 2014 when a war veteran climbed the fence and ran into — and through — the White House with a knife. There have been multiple subsequent incidents since then, resulting in the resignation of Julia Pierson, then Secret Service director.

In addition to the spikes, three guard booths surrounding the White House will be rearranged and the current concrete barriers on Pennsylvania Ave. will be replaced with steel plate barriers.

More Canadian Kids and Teens Are Going to Hospital ERs for Mental Health Treatment, and Officials Are Worried

Entrance to emergency room at hospital
There has been a recent increase in the number of Canadian children and teens seeking treatment for mental health concerns, and they’re going to hospital emergency rooms for help.A recent report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found that ER visits for young Canadians (ages five to 24) seeking mental health treatments increased by 45% between 2006 and 2014. The number of inpatient hospitalizations for this same age group increased by 37% during the same time period, according to The Canadian Press and CBC News.

Although healthcare workers say that they’re glad to see the stigma of mental illness start to fade, they are still frustrated that teens feel their communities have no other resources for mental health treatment.

Many hospital workers note that mental health concerns require treatment over a long period of time, and hospitals don’t have the community resources necessary to ensure a full recovery.

For other healthcare workers, this trend makes it clear that communities have been failing to provide young citizens with the medical care that they need.

“It’s a pretty stark call to action,” said Dr. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatry professor at Dalhouse University. “”The kind of community-based, easily accessible treatments that we should be having are likely not there [in hospitals].”

Even though Canadians have free healthcare, it’s important to note that there are financial implications involved, too. When preventative care isn’t readily available, a medical problem may go unnoticed until it turns into a full-blown crisis.

This is actually the case where dental care is concerned, and the cost of providing reactive dental care, rather than preventative care, is partly why Canadians spend an estimated $12 billion annually on dental services. Because so many kids and young adults live in rural regions where dentists and dental technicians are scarce, the cost of a dental appointment doesn’t matter too much when it’s impossible to get to a dentist’s office in the first place.

In a similar way, mental health treatment options are affordable and acceptable, but in many regions of Canada, there simply aren’t enough facilities that can provide adequate treatment for pediatric mental health conditions.

Currently, the report states that about 8% of Canadian youth describes their mental health as “poor.”

Three Rugby Players in Argentina Received Dental Implants That Can Open Beer Bottles

Dental implant head and bridge
It’s estimated that about three million people in the U.S. currently have dental implants, but there could very well be a sudden interest in these dental devices, thanks to an Argentinian dentist who successfully installed tooth-beer opener hybrids in the mouths of three rugby players.

According to Fast Company and the Toronto Sun, Dr. Sebastian Juri partnered up with Salta, an Argentinian beer company, to create and install the implants “to reward [rugby] players who gave everything they’ve got on the field — including their teeth.”

Three Argentinian rugby players (Johnathan Batiga, Pablo Kwiczor, and Uriel Santiago) were each chosen to receive the new implants, rather than having their missing teeth replaced with traditional titanium implants.

Just one implant has the power to open a bottle of beer, with a unique curved edge to pry off a sealed metal top. The bottle opener implants, just like traditional dental implants, were installed directly into the gums of the rugby players in a surgical procedure (and allowed to heal before the first test run in a local pub).

Unlike normal implants, the bottle opener implant stands out in metallic stark contrast to the rest of the players’ teeth — but this aesthetic quality is a small price to pay for being That Guy at the party who laughs at the sight of a bottle opener.

It doesn’t appear that these dental implants are available to the general public just yet, unfortunately; Salta is well known for its impressive advertisements, particularly ones that emphasize the company’s involvement in rugby.

It’s reported that Molson is currently trying to fund a similar project for hockey players.

Iowa Chiropractor/Exorcist Loses License

Male Osteopath Treating Female Patient With Hip Problem
Each year, some 22 million Americans go see their local chiropractors. These physicians can help patients deal with chronic pain, auto accident injuries, muscle strains… and possession?

The Iowa Board of Chiropractic released documents last month revealing that Charles Manuel, a southern Iowa chiropractor, had surrendered his state license after he allegedly “bartered sex for services with some of these patients” and “performed exorcisms as part of his chiropractic treatment of patients.” He also allegedly told patients to stop taking medicines that had been prescribed to them, as well.

Dr. Bryan Nowlin, who once shared the office with Dr. Manuel, but now he practices by himself, told KCCI, “We didn’t notice any of that stuff while he was here.”

Although no reports have stated whether Manuel knew how to perform exorcisms or not, the fact that he used them as part of his chiropractic therapy suggests he didn’t. What’s interesting, though, is that exorcisms do require an extensive amount of training to perform. According to Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, there are only about 30 Catholic priests in the entire country who are qualified to perform the Rite of Exorcism. Father Thomas, pastor of the Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga, California and the inspiration for the movie The Rite, had to travel to Rome to complete a year-long training course under the tutelage of a master Italian exorcist to become certified. All of this suggests that it’s highly unlikely that Manuel knew how to do exorcisms.

According to the agreement, Manuel cannot apply for reinstatement for at least another 10 years. According to the documents, before he’d be able to resume practicing chiropractic therapy, he would have to prove, “the basis for revocation of his license no longer exists, and that it is in the public interest for the license to be reinstated.”

However, that also means that Manuel may still be able to get his license back someday.

Quarterly Reports Showcase Competition Between Amazon and Microsoft

Graphs of financial analysis - Isolated

With 35% of IT services today delivered totally, or partially, by cloud, it should come as no surprise that cloud computing is a huge industry. However, few people realized exactly how much this market was worth until Amazon and Microsoft released their quarterly earnings reports in late April. With both companies revealing figures in the billions solely for their cloud computing services, the only question that remains is who will take the lead as this field continues to grow.

On April 23, Amazon released the numbers for its cloud computing service as part of its quarterly report for the first time in the company’s history. Called Amazon Web Services, the division reportedly collected $1.56 billion in revenue in the first few months of 2015, collecting a profit of $256 million with a 17% margin. The company also boasted that its revenues had grown 49% between the first quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of the previous year. And that’s just for the first quarter: in the past year, Amazon Web Services has reportedly collected $5.16 billion in revenue, in comparison to the $4.64 billion it had generated in 2014.

The figures released in Amazon’s quarterly report fit with several other impressive statistics: for example, Amazon Web Services currently has over a million business customers, an increasing number that is driving an annual revenue growth of more than 40%. This is primarily due to the division’s Simple Storage Service, which is increasing 132% year over year, and Elastic Computer Cloud, which is growing 99%.

However, Microsoft’s data proves that Amazon isn’t without competition: while the company combines all of its cloud-related services into a single “cloud revenue” figure that includes the cloud computing platform Azure, Office 365, SaaS, and Dynamics CRM, this revenue is estimated to bring in $6.3 billion in 2015, a 106% increase for the year. Moreover, Microsoft’s earnings call slide deck indicated that customer usage of Azure has more than doubled, a vague description that nevertheless can’t be disregarded.

Amazon and Microsoft aren’t the only major parties in the industry, of course. Unfortunately, competitors Google and IBM do not release financial data about their cloud computing services. Google places this division into its “Other” category, which topped $1.75 billion for the quarter, a 23% increase year-over-year. Meanwhile, IBM announced that their service ended the quarter with a revenue of $3.8 billion, an increase of a billion and a half in the last year. While these figures are indeterminate, with little indication of how much revenue and growth came specifically from cloud computing services, one thing is clear: the competition between these major players won’t be easily resolved, and businesses will likely need to turn to cloud consultants and other services to help them choose and implement the right service.

Telecommuting Policies Shrink Carbon Footprints of Major Corporations

Home office and computer and chair with brown walls.

Telecommuting has a lot of benefits, and not just for employees. Nearly six out of 10 employers identify cost savings as a significant benefit to telecommuting. Aside from perks for both employees and employers, telecommuting offers several environmental benefits as well.

April 22 marked the 45th anniversary of Earth Day. Since its inception, Earth Day has continued to evolve and change, but its message remains the same. Instead of just a small number of environmentalists participating in Earth Day activities, large corporations are also jumping on the go-green bandwagon.

Companies such as Aetna, Dell, and Xerox are taking advantage of their unique position in order to help their employees make a bigger, long-term impact on the environment than any one individual would be able to accomplish on their own. Thanks to their telecommuting policies, these companies and their employees are making a big, green difference.

Aetna is far ahead in the telecommuting game, as they have had a remote work option for over two decades. Nearly 43% of its current workforce have telecommuting arrangements. Aetna’s company statistics reveal that their telecommuting policy reduced greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 46,700 metric tons in 2014 alone. In addition, last year the company was also able to reduce its employees’ commutes by 127 million miles, which saved 5.3 million gallons of gas.

In 2012, Dell created its “2020 Legacy of Good Plan” which vowed to make 50% of its entire workforce remote by 2020. As of now, 20% of Dell’s employees — nearly 20,000 people — telecommute, and it’s already making a positive environmental impact. In 2014, Dell’s telecommuting policy reduced its greenhouse gas emission by 6,700 metric tons, which is the equivalent of not driving 16 million miles.

As for Xerox, the company’s Virtual Workforce Program currently has 8,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, working from home full time. Because of this, Xerox was able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40,894 metric tons, and its telecommuting employees saved 4.6 million gallons of gas by not commuting. In fact, the program has been so successful Xerox added an addition 1,000 remote positions in 2014.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. uses a staggering 19 million barrels of oil every single day. However, if employees worked from home part-time, 1.75 million barrels — roughly 10% — could be completely eliminated.