In the early 1900s, when women made up less than 20 percent of the total industrial workforce, one-third of the workers in shoe factories were women. Women became active in trade unions like the Daughters of St. Crispin, named after the patron saint of shoemakers, and the International Boot & Shoe Workers Union, participating in strikes to protest low wages and poor treatment. Considered radical for its time, by 1904 the Boot & Shoe Workers Union constitution called for “uniform wages for the same class of work, regardless of sex.” An intricately beaded shoe (c. 1915), stamped with the union seal, shows off the quality of American shoemaking.

The change is from regulating internet providers as “public utilities” to regulating them as most other businesses in the economy. We have had a long experience with public utility regulations where companies and municipalities have provided telephone, electricity and water services across the country. Tight regulation is great for such services that do not experience a lot of change – when was the last innovation in municipal water delivery, for example? With a rapidly changing product such as internet access, it is much tougher to have regulations that benefit consumers both in terms of price and innovation.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - In response to reports that the Trump administration is preparing the release of a rule restricting Title X funding for organizations providing vital women's health services, such as Planned Parenthood, California Insurance Commissi…

From 2017, any organisation that has 250 or more employees must publish and report specific figures about their gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women, expressed relative to men’s earnings. For example, ‘women earn 15% less than men per hour'. Employers must both: publish their gender pay gap data and a written statement on their public-facing website report their data to government online - using the gender pay gap reporting service. If your organisation has fewer than 250 employees, it can publish and report voluntarily but is not obliged to do so.

In a new study, Dr. Lisa Mosconi from Weill Cornell Medicine and her colleagues measured changes in brains over time. They performed baseline brain imaging in 34 people who ate a Mediterranean diet and 36 people who ate a Western diet. The volunteers ranged in age from 30 to 60 and showed no symptoms of dementia when the study began. The researchers then repeated the scans at least two years later. The study was supported by NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA). Results were published online in Neurology on April 13, 2018. 

Secret Cities examines the cities as case studies in modern urban planning and building technology, while revealing the distinct way of life that emerged at each site. The exhibition also explores the architectural and planning legacy of the Manhattan Project, including its role in the emergence of multidisciplinary corporate architecture and engineering firms. The exhibition concludes with an overview of the postwar development of the three cities, which remain important centers of scientific research today.

This is a developing story, so please keep checking the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Kīlaueastatus website for daily activity updates. In addition to status updates, public-domain current photos, videos, and maps are also available. You can also visit the USGS home page, the USGS Facebook page, and the USGS Twitter feed as updates become available. Eruption of lava continues from the northeast end of the active fissure system. Residents in lower Puna should remain informed and heed Hawaii County Civil Defense closures, warnings, and messages (http://www.hawaiicounty.gov/active-alerts).

She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as "Authors' Ridge". Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Her childhood home Orchard House is now a museum that pays homage to Louisa May Alcott and her family that focuses on education. In addition, Harriet Reisen wrote Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind "Little Women" which later became a film that was directed by Nancy Porter and aired on PBS television.

"Abstinence-only programs violate adolescents’ rights, ignore their needs and do not work. Adolescents have a basic human right to complete and accurate information about their sexual and reproductive health. The abstinence-only-until-marriage approach withholds comprehensive information on effective ways to reduce the risks of unintended pregnancy, HIV and other STIs, which violates adolescents’ right to information and also requires educators to disregard basic ethical standards by providing incomplete and potentially harmful information to students." The Guttmacher Institute

A new art for a new, improved society. That is what many artists and designers were looking for around 1900. After a century of styles that literally quoted the past, new forms language emerged, based on asymmetry, curved lines and organic decorative motifs. The Netherlands played its own unique role in this artistic quest. The Gemeentemuseum is showcasing the finest decorative arts in a broad context, making the dynamics of the age (1884-1914) visible, tangible and recognizable in this age where authenticity and craftsmanship are once more highly prized.

So she studied up on CIA, typed up a letter on her college manual typewriter, and sent it off. On the outside of the envelope she wrote simply, "CIA, Washington, D.C." "I wanted to be part of something bigger than just me," she says. "I think with my dad's service in the military, I saw that as a natural affinity. I wanted an overseas adventure where I could put my love of foreign languages to use. CIA delivered." Gina’s first overseas assignment was as a case officer in Africa. "It was right out of a spy novel. It really didn't get any better than that."

About 15 states debated bills to regulate the short-term rental industry this year. Only one, Indiana’s, was signed into law. Nebraska’s governor vetoed a bill approved by that state’s Legislature. A bill to regulate the industry also died in Hawaii. Home-owners and hotels have different business models, different perspectives and different agendas. These competing constituencies help account for the difficulty states have had in regulating and taxing the short-term rental industry, even as some cities have taken action to regulate short-term rentals.

Ferida Wolff writes: The rabbit blended in so well I had trouble seeing it at first. Its coat picked up the gray of the broken branches, the brown of the fallen leaves and the white of the small stones scattered throughout the patch. Seeing the rabbits made me think of how we all adapt to our environments. We learn to accept some things we are given and change others. We can shift our perspective to create a safer space and blend in when necessary. We and the rabbits are fast learners. It helps us to live and to thrive.

"The American criminal justice system is compromised by racial disparities and unreliability that is influenced by a presumption of guilt and dangerousness that is often assigned to people of color. For more than a decade, EJI has been conducting extensive research into the history of racial injustice and the narratives that have sustained injustice across generations. Our new museum is the physical manifestation of that research."

To find out what lies people tell, David Markowitz, who worked in the Stanford Social Media Lab, and Jeffrey Hancock, a professor of communication in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, recruited more than 200 people who use mobile apps for dating. They examined over 3,000 messages users sent during the discovery phase – the conversation period after a profile match but before meeting face-to-face. Markowitz and Hancock then asked participants to rate the level of deceptiveness in messages.

While food safety measures like washing produce and cooking meat and eggs all the way through can remove or kill bacteria and mitigate some of the risk of foodborne illness, these methods aren’t foolproof. A study published in 2017 in Food Science & Nutrition looked at whether washing ready-to-eat mixed salad greens and romaine lettuce inoculated with E. coli got rid of potentially harmful bacteria. They found that “only washing in a high flow rate (8 L/min) resulted in statistically significant reductions.” Another study points out the heightened risk that prepared salads pose, given the contamination potential of leafy vegetables, along with the added intermingled proteins which introduce the risk of cross-contamination and provide “an excellent substrate for bacterial growth.”

Over the centuries, many powerful monarchs, eccentric aristocrats and fabulously wealthy burghers have commissioned portraits of themselves, arrayed in all their finery, from the best painters in the world. Preferably standing, life-size and full-length. The young Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit are the only couple that Rembrandt ever painted life-size, standing and full-length (1634). This prestigious format was primarily reserved for monarchs and members of the aristocracy. It was not until some time later that it was used for high society in general.

"I strongly oppose the proposed rule, Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance (proposed Rule), because it further erodes the protections provided under the ACA, poses significant risk to health insurance markets in California and the nation, and offers consumers skimpy health insurance policies that cannot be relied upon to cover necessary health services when they need them most." SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Today Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Med…

A bill to require a study of federal agencies to determine which federal agencies have the greatest impact on women’s participation in the workforce; A bill to require that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for children be calculated with reference to the cost of the low-cost food plan, as determined by the Secretary of Agriculture; A hearing included testimony from a panel of experts who are working to prevent robocall scams throughout the United States. Also from last week: "The Improving Oversight of Women Veterans’ Care Act of 2017 requires VA to practice oversight not only on its VA facilities, but also on the community care providers it contracts with in order to provide gender-specific health care to women when its facilities do not have the equipment or specialist necessary to care for these veterans. We need to do a better job tracking the quality of care provided to women veterans and conduct effective oversight to ensure they are well served no matter where they get their care. I am also excited to lend my support for Congressman Coffman’s legislation to require VA to ensure that the veterans peer counseling program includes enough peer counselors for women veterans."

The trend is part of what drove the overall slight growth of the rural population in the United States from 2016 to 2017, for the first time since 2010, according to a Stateline analysis of census data. (Rural counties are those defined by the US Office of Management and Budget as outside cities and their suburbs.) The population in rural counties grew by only about 33,000 during that time, to about 46 million. While counties with large mining and farming industries shrank, counties with large recreation industries grew the most, by about 42,000, to about 6.3 million.

In high school, after reading novels by C. P. Snow describing academic life at Cambridge University in England, I decided that I wanted to be a professor (little did I know that this vision of academic life was nothing like reality, at least in the US). In sophomore year, my inner-city high school biology teacher taught us about the experiments of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644) showing that a piece of soiled cloth mixed with wheat yielded mouse pups after a 21-day incubation. This sealed the deal — I wanted to be a biologist.

Joan L. Cannon wrote: "Most people are uncomfortable in the presence of what they see as authority. That’s the way most patients see their doctors. Subtleties like the relative position of the authority figure who sits on a stool a little below the level of the patient’s chair help to alleviate this artificial distance, but a common understanding of human behavior based on a lot more than one person can acquire through direct experience can be the biggest help of all. Once in practice, few doctors will have time for artistic or literary excursions, so it probably would be a good idea to give them as much of that experience as possible as early as possible."

Bills Introduced: The importance of reducing the rate of maternal mortality and morbidity among Black women; A bill to address the use of opioids and substance use disorders with respect to pregnant women and babies; A bill to prohibit the pricing of consumer products and services that are substantially similar if such products or services are priced differently based on the gender of the individuals for whose use the products are intended or marketed or for whom the services are performed or offered; a bill to require the secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide child care assistance to veterans receiving certain training or vocational rehabilitation.