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NEWS
Smartest Cities By BEN GEISBERG
apachepowwow.com
Instagrammaholic or Vine Loyalist?
By ROY ZHANG
Staff Writer Staff Writer
There are many cities known for many things: San Francisco for its fog, Denver for its altitude, Chicago for its wind, and Seattle for its rain. But now, several cities, all of them small college towns, may have something else to add to their list of accomplishments: smartest cities in America. There have been lists like these out before, with cities such as Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco topping the lists. However, this new study, conducted by the training site Lumos Labs, which runs Luminosity.com, tests citiizens of these towns with assessments that test speed, attention, flexibility, memory, and problem solving. So, without further ado, here are the 10 smartest cities in America: #1: Princeton, New Jersey #2: Storrs-Manfield, Connecticut #3: Evanston, Illinois #4: Cambridge, Massachusetts #5: La Jolla, California #6: Amherst, Massachusetts #7: West Lafayette, Indiana #8: Ithaca, New York #9: Davis, California Although the tests may seem simple, the methodology used to determine these rankings based on test scores is much more complex. First, participants must participate in at least one of the aforementioned five assessments, which gave the research an initial pool of 3,385,648 people between the ages of 15 to 85 years old. Once the tests were conducted, the scores were normalized and compiled into percentiles for men and women as well as percentiles that compensated the effects of age. Compensating for age eliminated bias for different cities based on age effectively leveled out the playing field for “young” and “old” cities. In addition to all of this, there was work done to determine the geographical areas of the different participants in the study, as well as the averages for different age groups and cities. In the end, Lumos Labs came out with lists for different metropolitan areas and cities, based on the average scores of participants, which can be divided up and viewed based on age group and how well participants did in the tests. Californian cities sat in rankings all over the place, but the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area sits in the 309th place for smartest metropolitan area.
bgeisberg@apachepowwow.com
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Mock Issue 2013
The launch of Instagram’s brand new video functionality—laced with image stabilization and their renowned filters—brought up an obvious question: “What’s going to happen
to Vine?” Several people speculated that with Instagram’s already vast 130 million user base, Vine would slowly wither away and become nothing more than a fading memory. This was where the arguments began to rise. Because Instagram’s current user base towers over Vine’s 13 million, the potential audience is great, but, undeniably, some people don’t bother playing the new videos. Vine is more quick-fire, with auto-play and video looping. At a glance, Instagram’s video function and Vine seem like parallels of each other—a simple way to share short videos. But with further inspection the differences become clear: comparing Instagram to Vine is like comparing apples to oranges.
The time you are given for each app has a striking difference: 6 seconds versus 15 seconds. “Vine’s users have utilized video looping to make 6 seconds of video into something much more amazing than one could imagine possible,” said social media expert Gary Vaynerchuck. Instagram’s 15 seconds allows users to convey a story in a very simple way, and this is where Instagram and Vine truly become apples to oranges. These apps both share short videos, but in very different ways. “Vine requires one to carefully plan their stories out, with each video precisely scripted and articulated,” described Amit Lavi, the marketing director at Slidely. Instagram, however, is more spontaneous—you see something you want to share a video of, and you do it.
The bottom line is that both apps are capable of flourishing because they offer very different actions and meet different needs. Certain people will pop up and be successful in one or the other; it’s the same concept as how some people are good at Facebook statuses while others are better on Twitter posts. Of course there are some who can be good at both Facebook and Twitter, or Instagram and Vine, which brings up the idea that user base is not the only thing that determines the app’s success. Twitter has a great fondness of bolstering its ad platform, since it is a major source of revenue, which says a lot about Vine since it is owned by Twitter. Instagram will most likely follow suit. There is no doubt that it will
crave the same marketing success that Vine has achieved. With its recent adoption of hash-tags and integration with its parent website (Facebook), it’s a tough bet against this eventuality. So in this regard, Vine and Instagram are no doubt competitors. Although user base plays a much more important role in each app’s success, ad revenue could also contribute to their success. Vine has satisfied all the video-sharing addicts, feeding their craving of snackable videosharing before apps like Instagram could give it to them. With that being said, Instagram will no doubt slow Vine’s growth to an extent. It has the ability to glamorize videos with filters and even lends a helping hand to stabilize the videos. The result of this social media battle can only be told with time, so as we wait, just grab a bucket of popcorn. There are plenty of Instagram and Vine videos to wade through.
rzhang@apachepowwow.com
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Dangerously Serious Teen Dramas education. The goal of bystander intervention is to teach students how to spot and prevent relationship violence. It could be as simple as encouraging a friend to talk face-to-face with his or her partner instead of avoiding the problem. “Bystander intervention gives everyone a role to play in preventing relationship violence,”
“Safe Date” education have reported significantly less physical and sexual dating violence. “It Staff Writer takes more than classroom education to change Nathaniel Fujita was not pleased about cultural norms,” Professor Banyard noted. breaking up with his long-term girlfriend, Lau“It starts first by acknowledging that datren Astley, especially when they were both a ing violence is a community problem, [and then] few weeks away from graduating Wayland High analyzing risk factors and talking about them,” School in Massachusetts. He became resaid Professor Emily Rothman, an associclusive, antisocial, and shied away from ate of Boston University’s School of Pubhis friends at school. However, Lauren, lic Health. “Research shows that parents who was known for being caring, disare less likely to talk to children about datcussed the situation with her friends ing abuse than school, drugs, alcohol, the and decided that she should reach out to economy, even dating and sex in general... him. After a couple of weeks, Nathandespite the fact that it’s just as prevalent iel finally agreed to meet her on July 3, as frequent cigarette smoking and driving 2011. while drunk. That needs to change.” The next day, Lauren’s corpse was “The problem is [that] we look at discovered in a marsh five miles from incidents like these as random acts of craWayland. Nathaniel had strangled her ziness instead of as dating violence.” she with a bungee cord, repeatedly stabbed said of Lauren’s death. To the public eye, her and sliced her throat. Lauren’s body this was a case of obvious dating violence. was disposed at a nature preserve he had However, Nathaniel’s parents did not see it learned about in science class. that way. To them, their son was afflicted Nathaniel was accused of firstwith mental illness and that he killed Laudegree murder in March of the follow- TEEN DRAMAS When tensions between teens rise, the ren during a panicky “crisis”. ing year and was sentenced to life in consequences can sometimes be deadly. Because of this tragedy, high schools prison. This event shocked the U.S., as Wayland said University of New Hampshire psychology in Massachusetts have stepped up their dating was known to be a serene American community professor Victoria Banyard. “Chances are, you abuse programs. where “things like this aren’t supposed to hap- have a friend, brother, sister or neighbor who “Schools can’t afford to wait until the pen.” Town members were left pondering what will be affected by relationship violence. [But] next tragedy,” Patrick Tutweiler, the principal they could have done to prevent it. the question is, how good of a friend, brother, at Wayland High, said. “All schools should be Similar questions about what could have sister or neighbor are you going to be?” doing this. It’s an important part of students’ been done differently arose from similar cases in Since the incident, many schools across the education.” Steubenville, Ohio, and in Torrington, Connecti- country have upped their programs that teach mhuang@apachepowwow.com cut. The Steubenville case especially stimulated about substance abuse, sex, and dating violence. discussion around the importance of bystander Statistics show that adolescents receiving the Photo courtesy of JSON.ORG
By MICHELLE HUANG