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Clear Your Mind and the Cash Will Flow

Businesses are betting on meditation for employee health and corporate profits

You live a crowded life. We all do. You probably looked at your smartphone before you rolled out of bed. You immediately checked your email, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Maybe you glanced at your phone on your morning commute. Your job demands multitasking, so at work your computer has 25 open tabs — Outlook, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and on and on and on.  As you read this article, the odds are good that you’re also kind of doing something else.

Oct 27, 2015 Jeff Wilser
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You Can’t Work Your Way Through College Anymore

Working to pay for college doesn’t work. Despite the fact that 40 percent of undergraduates work at least 30 hours per week while in college, tuition is too high for those hours to make much of a difference, a new report shows.

Oct 30, 2015 Sarah Grant
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Prosperity Is Good for Marriage, and Vice Versa

A new report from AEI and the Institute of Family Studies shows that the share of married adults, and especially married parents, are associated with higher per-capita gross domestic product and lower levels of violent crime.

Oct 29, 2015 Megan McArdle
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Biomass Energy Produces Clean Energy and Improves Forest Health

There is growing momentum to build a strong, sustainable biomass energy infrastructure in California — great news for our environment and our forests. But in the meantime, many facilities are struggling to survive, and changes are needed to guarantee a stable future for this important green energy industry.

Oct 26, 2015 David Bischel
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Dirty Water

Wastewater injection in the San Joaquin Valley threatens farmland

Tom Frantz has the sierra mountains to thank for his livelihood, since the snowmelt that runs off the peaks eventually sinks into the ground and, over time, descends into the natural underground reservoirs of the Central Valley. In drier years, Frantz gets most of his water from wells that tap into this aquifer.  But the water, Frantz says, is being poisoned.

Oct 22, 2015 Alastair Bland
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Age Discrimination Is Widespread in U.S. Job Market, Study Finds

Discrimination, rather than lack of skills, may help to explain why older workers have longer periods of unemployment duration. Long periods of unemployment — six months or longer — have been one of the lasting problems in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession, the biggest downturn since the 1930s. What’s more, the bias worsens when gender is considered.”

Oct 27, 2015 Steve Matthews
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California Shows How Paid Leave Law Affects Businesses: Not Much

As presidential candidates debate government-mandated paid family leave, the U.S. has a 39 million-person test lab. California enacted the nation’s first such program in 2004 and it hasn’t been the death blow to businesses that opponents warned of, according to studies over the past decade.

Oct 23, 2015 Esmé E. Deprez