A high-school teacher in the Northwest Territories of Canada has developed a version of the board game Scrabble to help students learn the Chipewyan language. One key difference with Paul Boucher's game of Scramble is that students can use resources such as a dictionary as they learn words.
The online survey company Qualtrics, based in Provo, Utah, has grown to 1,200 employees and a valuation in excess of $1 billion. CEO Ryan Smith and his executive assistant rigorously tracks the time he spends on work and with his family, and that pursuit of balance extends to paying health premiums for employees and their families.
The trend of colleges and universities opening new campus housing to attract international and wealthier students may be causing a growing gap between students based on income and race. Research has shown that students, no matter where they live on campus, tend to build groups of friends with similar backgrounds.
9/27/2016 ⋅ The New York Times (free-article access for SmartBrief readers)⋅The Wall Street Journal (tiered subscription model)
American Express can prohibit merchants from encouraging customers to use other cards with lower fees, an appeals court has ruled. The decision reverses a lower court's finding that American Express violated antitrust laws with its policy.
Whole Foods Market has opened an upscale restaurant and bar called the 2ND at its store in El Segundo, Calif., with a seasonal menu that includes vegetarian takes on crab cakes and nachos. The 2ND also offers 36 beers on tap and 12 wines by the glass.
The ONC has released an EHR contract guide and a health IT playbook to help health care providers with acquiring and using EHRs and other health IT tools. The "EHR Contracts Untangled" guide aims to assist decision-makers and health care professionals with negotiating EHR acquisitions, while the online Health IT Playbook provides information on implementing and using health IT tools to advance care.
Live Nation is selling Ariana Grande concert tickets on Snapchat, using an ad campaign that lets users swipe up to visit a Ticketmaster sales page.
Jason Goldberger, Target's chief digital officer, has left the company as it embarks on an effort to bring greater focus to promotions and low prices. Former Nordstrom executive Mark Tritton, who joined Target in June, and Chief Information Officer Mike McNamara will share Goldberger's duties.
Amazon is gaining more ground in online retail, with 55% of shoppers reporting that they check Amazon prices first when hunting for a product, up from 44% last year, data from a BloomReach survey indicate. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo slid from 34% of shoppers turning to these sites at the beginning of their shopping searches to 28%, the survey shows.
Janssen's Stelara, or ustekinumab, has been approved by the FDA as a treatment for moderately to severely active Crohn's disease after assessment of data from three pivotal late-stage studies. The drug is indicated for adults with the condition who previously failed to respond or are intolerant to tumor necrosis factor inhibitors, or those who are intolerant or did not respond to immunomodulators or corticosteroids but have never failed treatment with a TNF inhibitor.
TNT has ordered a pilot of drama series "Hinges," which is based on Janine Sherman Barrois' short story, "The Boom." The drama, which is centered around a scandal in the suburbs, will be directed by Anthony Hemingway, who will also serve as executive producer, alongside John Wells, Mark Taylor and Sherman Barrois.
Spending on the US interstate system has declined 50% since the 1950s, even as the need for a vast network of highways has increased. Former secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros and Suzanne Shank, CEO of investment-banking firm Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co., want to see a renewed effort to improve the country's interstate system, and they argue that public-private partnerships could help.
Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman pledged support for the Clean Power Plan on Monday, adding that the agency has done its best to develop a legally sound and flexible plan for states to curb carbon emissions. "It offers states extraordinary flexibility in how they comply with their obligations -- as much flexibility as I have ever seen EPA allow," she said.
Transportation Security Administration officers screening passengers at Georgia's Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport discovered 126 guns in the first eight months of this year; 144 guns were found at the airport in all of 2015.
The rapid growth of home-sharing competitors such as Airbnb is a factor in Moody's Investor Service's new forecast of a slowdown in hotel expansion next year. The impact is expected to be less in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco that have a smaller overall percentage of short-term rentals than New York and Miami.