With Black Friday just a week away, what do shoppers need to know about holiday sales? Richard Lancioni of Temple's Fox School of Business urges consumers to do their research. "The best way to know is to be aware," Lancioni said. "In other words, to know your prices and to be able to compare that to what the list price is. If you know your prices and you can look at the discounts that are being offered by the store, then you’ll know it’s not a scam, that it's real. So buyer beware!"

The number of non-regular (contract or part time) workers in Japan increased from 15 to 33 percent between 1984 and last year. Jeff Kingston of Temple University, Japan Campus, said the expansion in non-regular workers is a product of two decades of corporate cost cutting, coupled with ageing baby boomers who are becoming increasingly expensive because of Japan's seniority wage system. "I believe they felt they owed these people. But they needed to fund that and it came at the cost of young workers," he said.

It's an Internet rumor that is spreading like wildfire: Wi-Fi signals can make trees and other plants sick. Wi-Fi signals wirelessly connect computers and other devices to the Internet. The radio signals are similar to that employed by other, decades-old technologies such as television and cell phones, said Marvin Ziskin, a professor of radiology and medical physics at Temple. "Scientifically there's no evidence to support that these signals are a cause for concern."