There's nothing in the contract that requires dangling cat-character earrings or kooky bow ties. The right look can command respect while earning a little street cred.

Celebrity stylist Cristina Ehrlich, a style adviser to Coldwater Creek, remembers her first "cool teacher" in elementary school and Ehrlich says she never worked harder than she did for that Lauren Hutton lookalike, who wore pleated slacks, V-neck silk blouses, a thin little belt and gold hoop earrings. "Maybe it's that I wanted to impress her, or maybe she just knows how to grab your attention, but she left a lasting impression," she says.

These days, that teacher might be wearing brightly colored skinny jeans and a boyfriend sweater, or trouser jeans and a crisp button-down in a cheerful color, Ehrlich muses.

"Young kids like a little eye candy. It draws their attention," Ehrlich says. "You want authority but not stuffy."

Maybe that same second-grade teacher would even try a pair of tuxedo-inspired jeans with a black stripe down the leg and a more fitted, cropped blazer, she adds.

That might be an outfit similar to what high schoolers are wearing and that's OK, says Emilia Fabricant, executive vice president of the Aeropostale brand.

Teachers can use their clothes to help bridge communication gaps with their students, she says. "The cool factor gives power."

Fabricant gives the caveat, though, that teachers might wear individual pieces differently so they're "appropriately styled": short skirts worn over leggings, tunics over tanks, and skinny jeans paired with the high front-low back cardigans that give an update to the classic silhouette.

Maybe there's a life lesson here for teens: A modern look can co-exist with a respectful one.

Amazon.com fashion editor Sara Dooley imagines teachers of younger grades experimenting with prints. Florals are enjoying a fashion moment, she says, and animal prints leopard spots and the like have a little bit of edge but have been tapped for classic silhouettes. There are even some literal animal prints, such as birds, butterflies, turtles and armadillos, that have been elevated from kitsch to cool.

Prints are good conversation starters, and they can camouflage a multitude of sins, especially of the paint-glue-leftover-snack variety.

Many closet-to-classroom items are basic pieces, including a pencil skirt, fit-and-flare dress, collared shirts, blazers, jeans and sweaters, so they can make the transition between seasons and between school years. They can all be dressed up or down, and adapted to look "new" with the right belt, shoe or jewelry.

"With little time during the school year to shop, teachers can maximize style all year long by buying key items that will update pieces they already own," says Sofia Wacksman, vice president of trend for Kohl's Department Stores.

Ehrlich suggests layers, as long as the overall look is relaxed without being sloppy. On the flip side, tailored is good, but too buttoned-up is not. If you're thinking of a bow-neck blouse, for example, make sure it has a soft touch.

For a more bohemian style, a dolman sleeve top in a watercolor print will give the effect of a fluttery, full, feminine look without a bell sleeve, which seems an invitation for snags or stains.

Funkier accessories can be for anyone. Teachers need a stylish case for gadgets, and that's a neutral zone for experimentation.

So are ballet-flat shoes, which have more options than the periodic table.

Picking popular colors, including flashes of the almost neon brights, also is an easy "in," says Fabricant, and the broad choices in denim and knits should make it easier to find trend-right items.

Teachers could be facing a tough crowd, after all.

"For a middle school teacher, you want some safe bets. You are on a stage in front of the kids all day. You want to be comfortable, you want to feel confident. Too much risk puts you out there for ridicule behind your back. You know those middle schoolers," Dooley says with a laugh.

Teachers can be hard on their clothes: They have long days, sometimes in rooms without air-conditioning, and come in contact with a lot of people. They might be on the floor cutting construction paper one minute and get called into a meeting with administrators and parents the next.

Wacksman would also like to think that teachers have somewhere fun to go in their extracurricular life, and want their daytime outfits to take them there.

Her pick? A printed shift dress with a colorful belt and cardigan for the classroom. Switch from flats to heels at the end of the day, and if social plans call for it, swap out the sweater for a motocross jacket.

Another option is a printed maxi dress, which often is made of a wrinkle-free jersey. That with a short beaded necklace and flats can stand up to a lot, she says.

"When the bell rings, many teachers need an outfit that can transition from their classroom to a night out," says Wacksman.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nearly 50 years after writing the conceptual art book "Grapefruit," writer, artist and peace activist Yoko Ono has released a sequel that she hopes will inspire people and get them thinking and reading.

"Acorn," a book of 100 "instructional poems" and drawings that will be published on July 15, goes back in time, according to the widow of Beatle John Lennon, because it is something she originally created for the Internet in the 1990s.

Each day, for 100 days, she communicated a different idea for people to explore. She has now compiled them in a book.

"I like the idea because many people are not reading books anymore. They are just going to the computer," Ono, who turned 80 earlier this year, said in an interview.

"I'm going back this way because I really believe reading a book is a totally different experience from just going to the Internet and the way it goes into you - the information, the communication."

Each instruction is accompanied by a dot drawing that gives readers "further brainwork," Ono said. The instructions and the illustrations challenge readers to look at the world around them in a different way.

Sky Piece VIII

Sit under a blue sky.

Keep your head open

and empty.

Let ideas come into you.

Cherish them.

Like "Grapefruit," which was published in 1964, Ono's newest book is divided into sections such as Sky Piece, Work Piece, Watch Piece and Cleaning Piece. She described each instruction as "poetry in action."

Although she was initially worried that "Acorn" would not be as good as its predecessor, she thinks it may be even better.

"I think that on an organic level, this is a more refined piece," she said.

In addition to her literary pursuits, Ono, who famously staged "bed-ins" for peace with Lennon in Amsterdam and Montreal in 1969, is still campaigning for causes she believes in.

Earlier this year, she tweeted against gun violence and posted a photograph of the blood-stained glasses that apparently were worn by Lennon when he was shot to death in New York in December 1980.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

Whales depend on vocalizations to communicate with other individuals in their species over long distances. But sonar blips that the U.S. military uses in underwater navigation, object-detection and communication are feared to mask whale calls, deter thefrom their habitats and damage the animals' hearing, researchers say.

Mid-frequency sonar signals (between 1 kHz and 10 kHz) have been blamed for mass strandings of deep-diving beaked whales before. There are fewer cases of sonar-linked strandings of baleen whales, those that have plates for filtering food rather than teeth, like blue whales. []

To test howfeeding off the coast of Southern California might be affected by mid-frequency sonar, a team of scientists exposed a group of the creatures to sonar sounds between 3.5 and 4 kHz that were not as loud as the kind the military uses. The whales were tagged with suction cups that recorded acoustic data and movements as the animals were exposed to the controlled sounds.

Though not all of the whales responded in the same way, some of the mammals avoided their feeding grounds and fled from the source of the noise, the researchers found.

"Whales clearly respond in some conditions by modifying diving behavior and temporarily avoiding areas where sounds were produced," study author Jeremy Goldbogen, of the nonprofit Cascadia Research Collective, said in a statement from Duke. "But overall the responses are complex and depend on a number of interacting factors."

There are only 5,000-12,000 blue whales remaining today, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The new study suggests sonar may be a threat to thespecies.

"Our results suggest that frequent exposures to mid-frequency anthropogenic sounds may pose significant risks to the recovery rates of endangered blue whale populations, which unlike other baleen whale populations (i.e. humpback, grey and fin whales), have not shown signs of recovery off the western coast of North America in the last 20 years," the researchers wrote.

Thewas detailed in the journal Biology Letters on July 3.

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More than 2,000 demonstrators filled the Capitol building in Austin to voice their opposition to the bill, including six protesters who were dragged out of the Senate chamber by state troopers for trying to disrupt the debate. The Republican majority passed the bill unchanged late Friday just before midnight with all but one Democrat voting against it.

"Today the Texas Legislature took its final step in our historic effort to protect life," said Gov. Rick Perry, who will sign the bill into law in the next few days. "This legislation builds on the strong and unwavering commitment we have made to defend life and protect women's health."

Democrats promised a legal challenge to the measure, which will ban abortions after 20 weeks, require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and require all abortions to take place in surgical centers. Only five of Texas' 42 existing abortion clinics meet the requirements to be a surgical center, and clinic owners say they cannot afford to upgrade or relocate.

"There will be a lawsuit. I promise you," Dallas Sen. Royce West said on the Senate floor, raising his right hand as if taking an oath.

Perry said Saturday afternoon that the bill would withstand court challenges.

"We wouldn't have passed it if we didn't think it was constitutional," the Republican governor said.

Democrats proposed 20 amendments to the bill, including making exceptions in cases of rape and incest and allowing doctors more leeway in prescribing abortion-inducing drugs. But Republicans would have none of it.

The bill is one of many championed in Republican-led states this year by anti-abortion groups set on challenging the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a woman's right to get an abortion until the point in which a fetus could viably survive outside the womb. A fetus is generally considered viable at 22 to 24 weeks.

Texas falls under the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has shown a willingness to accept more stringent limits on abortions.

By passing the new restrictions, Republicans pleased the Christian conservatives who make up the majority of primary voters. But they inspired abortion-rights supporters to protest at the state Capitol in numbers not seen in Texas in at least 20 years.

Demonstrators packed normally boring committee hearings to voice their anger over the abortion bill and managed to disrupt key votes. They finished a lengthy filibuster by Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis, of Fort Worth, by jeering for the last 15 minutes of the first special legislative session, effectively killing the bill.

That's when Perry called lawmakers back for round two. But opponents said the fight is far from over and used the popular anger to register and organize Democratic voters.

"Let's make sure that tonight is not an ending point, it's a beginning point for our future, our collective futures, as we work to take this state back," Davis told 2,000 adoring supporters after the bill passed.

The Texas Republican Party, meanwhile, celebrated what they consider to be a major victory that makes Texas "a nationwide leader in pro-life legislation."

"As Democrats continue to talk about their dreams of turning Texas blue, passage of (the bill) is proof that Texans are conservative and organized and we look forward to working with our amazing Republican leadership in the Texas Legislature as they finish the special session strong," a party statement said.

Friday's debate took place before a packed gallery of demonstrators, with anti-abortion activists wearing blue and abortion-rights supporters wearing orange. Security was tight, and state troopers reported confiscating bottles of urine and feces as they worked to prevent another attempt to stop the Republican majority from passing the proposal.

Those arrested or removed from the chamber included four women who tried to chain themselves to a railing in the gallery while singing, "All we are saying is give choice a chance." One of the women was successful in chaining herself, leading to a 10-minute recess.

Sen. Glen Hegar of Katy, the bill's Republican author, argued that all abortions, including those induced with medications, should take place in an ambulatory surgical center in case of complications.

Democrats pointed out that childbirth is more dangerous than an abortion and there have been no serious problems with women taking abortion drugs at home.

Cecile Richards, the daughter of former Gov. Anne Richards and president of Planned Parenthood, said Texas Republicans and abortion opponents won this political round but it could cost them down the road.

"All they have done is built a committed group of people across this state who are outraged about the treatment of women and the lengths to which this Legislature will go to take women's health care away," she said.

The dedication of those activists will be tested during the 2014 elections. Democrats have not won a statewide seat in Texas since 1994, the longest such losing streak in the nation.

___

Associated Press writer David Warren contributed to this report from West.

___

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cltomlinson

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. needs "highly accommodative monetary policy" or low interest rates "for the foreseeable future." That reassured investors who were dismayed by Bernanke's comments last month that the Fed would likely slow its bond purchases later this year and end them around mid-2014 if the economy strengthens. Critics said the Fed bungled its communications strategy.

The Fed has been buying $85 billion of financial assets a month to keep interest rates low and encourage borrowing and spending. That stimulus has driven global stocks higher, so the prospect of reducing it caused market volatility in recent weeks.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index was up 0.2 percent at 14,506.25 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.7 percent to 21,278.22. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.2 percent at 4,973.20.

Benchmarks in China, South Korea and Singapore fell while Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia gained.

A rise in U.S. jobless claims figures by 16,000 to a total of 360,000 didn't affect markets much. The level is consistent with steady hiring, though the increase suggests the recovery is still not as fast as hoped.

Bernanke's comments boosted Wall Street to record highs Thursday.

The S&P 500 index jumped 22.40 points, or 1.4 percent, to 1,675.02, surpassing its previous record close of 1,669 from May 21. The index rose for a sixth straight day, its longest streak in four months.

The Dow rose 169.26 points, or 1.1 percent, to 15,460.92, above its own all-time closing high of 15,409 set May 28.

The Nasdaq composite rose 57.55 points, or 1.4 percent, to 3,578.30, its highest level in nearly 13 years.

In energy trading, benchmark oil for August delivery was down 28 cents at $104.63 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell $1.61 to close at $104.91 in New York on Thursday.

The euro fell to $1.3070 from $1.3095 late Thursday in New York. The dollar rose to 99.04 yen from 98.96 yen.

Dow Jones Industrial futures are down 9 points at 15,213. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 futures are down 3 points at 1,643. Nasdaq futures are down 4 points at 2,971.

A decline Wednesday would break a four-day winning streak for the market.

Later Wednesday, investors will study the minutes from June's meeting of the Federal Reserve board of governors, along with a speech by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Encouraging U.S. economic news has sparked gains in some markets this week. But Wednesday's report that Chinese exports and imports each fell in June compared with last year raised questions about whether China's era of breakneck economic growth is over.

Research is growing with high-tech gadgets that promise new safety nets for seniors determined to live on their own for as long as possible.

"It's insurance in case something should happen," is how Bob Harrison, 85, describes the unobtrusive monitors being tested in his apartment at the TigerPlace retirement community in Columbia, Mo.

Living at home specialists call it aging in place is what most people want for their later years. Americans 40 and older are just as worried about losing their independence later in life as they are about losing their memory, according to a recent survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Common-sense interventions like grab bars in bathrooms and taping down rugs to prevent tripping can make homes safer as seniors deal with chronic illnesses. Technology is the next frontier, and a far cry from those emergency-call buttons seniors sometimes wear to summon help.

Already, some companies are offering monitoring packages that place motion sensors on the front door, a favorite chair, even the refrigerator, and then send an alert to a family member if there's too little activity over a certain period of time. Other gadgets can make pill bottles buzz when it's time for a dose and text a caregiver if it's not taken, or promise to switch off a stove burner that's left on too long.

Researchers at the University of Missouri aim to go further: Their experiments show that certain automatic monitoring can spot changes such as restlessness in bed or a drop in daytime activity that occur 10 days to two weeks before a fall or a trip to the doctor or hospital.

"We were blown away that we could actually detect this," said nursing professor Marilyn Rantz, an aging-in-place specialist who is leading the research. She compares it to "a vital sign of my physical function."

Why would the gadgets work? That monitor under the mattress can measure pulse and respiratory patterns to see if heart failure is worsening before someone realizes he or she is becoming short of breath. More nighttime bathroom trips can indicate a brewing urinary tract infection.

A change in gait, such as starting to take shorter or slower steps, can signal increased risk for a fall. Basic motion sensors can't detect that. So Rantz's team adapted the Microsoft Kinect 3-D camera, developed for video games, to measure subtle changes in walking. (Yes, it can distinguish visitors.)

The researchers installed the sensor package in apartments at the university-affiliated TigerPlace community and in a Cedar Falls, Iowa, senior complex. On-site nurses received automatic emails about significant changes in residents' activity. One study found that after a year, residents who agreed to be monitored were functioning better than an unmonitored control group, presumably because nurses intervened sooner at signs of trouble, Rantz said.

The bigger question is whether simply alerting a loved one, not a nurse, might also help. Now, with a new grant from the National Institutes of Health, Rantz will begin expanding the research to see how this monitoring works in different senior housing and this time, participants can decide if they'd like a family member or friend to get those alerts, in addition to a nurse.

Rantz says embedding sensors in the home is important because too many older adults forget or don't want to wear those older emergency-call buttons including Rantz's own mother, who lay helpless on her floor for eight hours after tripping and badly breaking a shoulder. Rantz said her mother never fully recovered, and six months later died.

"When we started this team, I said we are not going to make anybody wear anything or push any buttons, because my mother refused and I don't think she's any different than a lot of other people in this world," Rantz said.

Monitoring raises important privacy questions, about just what is tracked and who has access to it, cautioned Jeff Makowka of AARP.

To work, the high-tech approach has to be "less about, 'We're watching you, Grandma,' but 'Hey, Grandma, how come you didn't make coffee this morning?'" he said.

Sensor prices are another hurdle, although Makowka said they're dropping. Various kinds already on the market can run from about $70 to several hundred, plus monthly service plans.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Black and Hispanic children are half as likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as their white peers, according to a new study that followed U.S. kindergarteners through middle school.

"We're seeing that the disparities occur as early as kindergarten and then remain and continue until the end of eighth grade," said Paul Morgan, who led the study at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

"It's a consistent pattern of what we're interpreting as comparative underdiagnosis for minority populations," he told Reuters Health.

That's a concern, Morgan said, because it means some kids who could benefit from treatment - including medication or talk therapy - and extra help in the classroom may be missing out.

The researchers also found that compared to white children with the condition, minority kids who were diagnosed with ADHD were less likely to be prescribed medications, which include the stimulants Vyvanse, Ritalin and Concerta.

They tracked 15,100 kids from the kindergarten class of 1998-1999 using regular parent surveys.

At each survey point - kindergarten and first, third, fifth and eighth grades - white children were most likely to have ADHD. All races followed a similar trend over time, with new diagnoses peaking around third grade.

By the spring of eighth grade, 7 percent of white kids had received an ADHD diagnosis, their parents reported. In comparison, 3 percent of black kids and just over 4 percent of Hispanic children had been diagnosed.

Factors such as a mother's age at birth and family income didn't explain those differences, nor did teacher reports of each child's behavior and learning, Morgan's team wrote on Monday in Pediatrics. Their study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"There just seems to be more wariness and concern in African American groups," both about being diagnosed with ADHD and the medications used to treat the condition, said Dr. Tanya Froehlich, an ADHD researcher at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

"A lot of people are very concerned about their child being labeled and their child being stigmatized both in the school and socially," Froehlich, who wasn't involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

Morgan noted that children with ADHD are allowed certain adaptations and extra help in the classroom.

"If you've got certain groups of kids with a disorder who are not being picked up they might not be accessing treatment that can help in terms of their school-based functioning," he said. That, in turn, can lead to poor self-esteem and acting out.

Untreated ADHD has also been linked to substance abuse, anxiety and depression as children grow older.

Talk therapy and parent training are options for families that don't want to use medication, Morgan said.

"For someone who truly has ADHD, there's so much that can be done to help that child and to help prevent some of these negative consequences," Froehlich said.

Morgan said evidence suggests minority children are exposed to more of the risk factors for ADHD, such as being born small. So if anything, researchers would expect them to be diagnosed with the disorder more often.

The new study can't prove the findings represent underdiagnosis of minorities, rather than overdiagnosis of white children, according to Froehlich. But if kids are having problems at school or at home and aren't seeing a doctor, that's a concern, she added.

"It's really important if parents feel their child might have a problem to get them evaluated by a trained medical professional," she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online June 24, 2013.

The iconic version of the Guy Fawkes mask owes its popularity to the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta, which centers on a vigilante's efforts to destroy an authoritarian government in a dystopian future United Kingdom. Although he didn't predict the mask's role in popular protest, David Lloyd, the artist who illustrated the comic, , "It's a great symbol of protest for anyone who sees tyranny."

Before V for Vendetta (which was published in serial form throughout the 1980s before being made into a 2005 film), Guy Fawkes costumes and effigies were only popular in the U.K. on Halloween and , a November 5 celebration that, by the 20th century, had been largely divorced from Fawkes' violent plot.

But as you've likely noticed, over the past few years the stylized mask has evolved into a global symbol of dissent, employed by everyone from shadowy computer hackers to Turkish airline workers. And although the masks are often used in anti-establishment demonstrations, one of the largest media corporations in the country gains the most from the masks' rising popularity. Time Warner , and at over 100,000 masks a year, it is by far the company's best-selling facial costume.

Here, a brief history of the mask's unlikely rise:

AnonymousThe hacktivist collective Anonymous popularized these masks in 2008 when it launched , a movement targeting the Church of Scientology after the church tried to censor an interview with Tom Cruise on the web. Members of the collective agreed to come out from behind their computer screens , but needed a way to conceal their identities. The Guy Fawkes mask was their chosen disguise. Although the collective has never officially stated the reasoning behind this choice, it's likely an homage to an eerie scene in V for Vendetta in which a group of masked protesters marches on the British Parliament. When asked why the mask was selected, one protester , "I can't say, not having contact with the inner circle — wherever they are, but I can say the image of people marching towards Parliament in the spirit of protest, that wall of masks, had a certain resonance amongst those who held negative feelings about organizations such as Scientology but also towards the government." The project grew into a national movement with demonstrations in Florida, Michigan, Boston, and Los Angeles. Since then, the masks have become a go-to symbol of the collective and anti-establishment movements worldwide.

After Anonymous' first major political demonstration in 2008, the collective began cleverly aligning itself with a variety of anti-establishment movements fromIt is, in part, due to these loose affiliations that the adopted emblem of one movement evolved into a global symbol of resistance.

It's logical that OWS would appropriate the disguise of the faceless anti-establishment crusader from Lloyd's franchise. Still, the mask doesn't carry such weight for everyone who dons it. Sid Hiltunen, an unemployed stockbroker who joined the OWS movement, , "If you want to show your support but are afraid you'll lose your job, just wear a mask — any mask."

Protesters around the world were spotted wearing the anti-authoritarian vigilante's trademark disguise. Even Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, wore one to an Occupy rally in London.

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NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Fullscreen, the second largest YouTube network in the United States, has launched a new service offering the thousands of artists in its network several tools to build their audience and make more money from the world's largest online video site.

The Creator Platform, as Fullscreen has named it, offers a series of apps that enable artists to plan when their videos will post to YouTube hours in advance, profit from talking up products or covering songs and push videos out on social networks like Facebook.

It will also offer a rash of data to inform artists like violinist Lindsey Stirling and singer Sam Tsui, who can now see when is the best time to publish their videos and just how much.

"If you believe the future of video is on the internet and creation is happening all around us, those creators need tools to let them grow their audience and help them make more money," Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos told TheWrap. "The Fullscreen Creators Platform will be the hub where all that takes place."

Strompolos, who helped create YouTube's partner program before founding Fullscreen in 2011, described his platform as the "culmination of everything we've learned over the last few years." In that time, Fullscreen has grown to a network with more than 15,000 channels that boast more than 200 million subscribers.

Many prominent YouTube networks have complained in recent months that they have not been able to make enough money off of YouTube, but Fullscreen has been absent from that conversation. The artists in his network had privately expressed a need for various tools to help them.

This platform is its answer.

For example, artists in transit want to be able to time one of their videos to post in six hours - when they will be on a plane. And when the video posts, they want to be able to post it on Facebook with the click of a button. They can now do that with apps on the platform, which is also available as an app for owners of Apple devices.

The platform is also available to Fullscreen's brand partners, which include Fox, NBC, McDonald's and Ryan Seacrest Productions.

The Creator Platform launches with 15 apps and is available only to artists who belong to Fullscreen's network.

Strompolos argued that such the platform was vital because artists now have an opportunity to become their own media companies. That is a "tremendous opportunity" that remains very difficult.

"We see it as our job to be their partner in creating a media company, whether around a personal brand or show or character they play," Strompolos said. "A media company needs to be operated and managed somewhere."