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For some BYU-Hawaii students, their phones or computers do not turn off until seconds before they drift off to sleep. Doctors have confirmed bright screens are disrupting people’s sleeping patterns, reports WebMD, and both tired and well-rested BYUH students and Laie community members alike agreed with the medical professionals conclusions. “Every night I turn the TV off and any other electronic at least one hour before my kids’ bed time,” said Laie community member Rebecca Miller. She continued, “Not every night am I able to get the electronics off right before bed, and on those nights the kids wake up cranky.” Miller also said due to implementing a no electronics rule before bedtime, she and her husband have also followed the rule and have noticed an improvement in the quality of their sleep as well. The National Sleep Foundation advises people should turn off bright screens at least 45 minutes before going to bed to be able to fall asleep quicker and sleep more soundly. Trinity Waddell, a biology junior from Texas, said, “Even if I did turn off my laptop and phone an hour before I went to bed, I still couldn’t avoid the bright screens from my roommates.”Published this year in the BMJ journal, a 2012 study done by a team of doctors in western Norway did an investigation of 10,000 teenagers from age 16-19 and found out using an electronic device in the hour before bedtime badly affects both onset of sleep and its duration. Yahoo reported Mari Hysing, a researcher who is part of the study, said teenagers are going to bed later because screen time eats into sleep time.Researchers found, “In particular, teens who used a computer or mobile phone in the last hour were 52% and 48% likelier to take more than 60 minutes to fall asleep. They were also 53% and 35% likelier to lose out on two or more hours of sleep.“Somewhat smaller risks of delayed or shortened sleep were observed among youngsters who used an MP3 player, tablet, game console or TV in the final hour before bedtime,” says study results published in The Guardian.In 2011, the Nation Sleep Foundation reported, “Artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed at night suppresses release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, enhances alertness and shifts circadian rhythms to a later hour – making it more difficult to fall asleep,” says Charles Czeisler, PhD., Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who was a part of the National Sleep Foundation. “This study reveals that light-emitting screens are in heavy use within the pivotal hour before sleep. Invasion of such alerting technologies into the bedroom may contribute to the high proportion of respondents who reported that they routinely get less sleep than they need.” Nobu Suzuki, an operations and supply chain junior from Japan, said, “Every night it depends what I am doing on how long it is from when I have no electronics on to going to sleep. If I have homework, I go right to bed after I turn of my computer.” However, Suzuki added if turning of electronics an hour before going to bed improved his grades in school, he would do it. Business Insider reported from Gigaom Research that the blue light--which is full light on the spectrum that people are exposed to every day in the sun--from electronics has been linked to physical and mental problems. At night, the exposure to blue light damages your vision and suppresses the production of the melatonin hormone. This throws off the natural sleeping cues from the body. Business Insider says when melatonin levels and sleep cycles are disrupted, there is a higher risk of getting health problems like depression or even cancer.

The 2015 BYU at Provo football recruiting class made national news Feb. 4, but not for signing a big name 5-star recruit. Instead the recruit that caught national attention has not even played a real game of football yet. Motekiai Langi, from Liahona High School in Liahona, Tonga, has caught the college football world by storm because of his massive size. Langi comes in measuring 6-foot-7 and weighing 410-pounds. “This is an exciting new recruit,” said Trinity Waddell, a junior bio-medical major from Dayton, Texas. “No doubt he’ll be fun to watch crushing people.”But do not let his size fool you. Langi, who grew up playing rugby, has surprisingly quick feet along with his impressive size. “It’s not a fat 410 pounds,” said BYU head football coach Bronco Mendenhall during a press conference on signing day. “He is a solid, healthy-looking giant man. I think if I’m any kind of coach at all and our staff is, there’s got to be something we can teach that guy to do.”The coaching staff first learned of Langi two years ago when coaching assistantSteve Kaufusi saw Langi playing a pickup basketball game while on the island of Tonga. Kaufusi was impressed not only with Langi’s size but his speed and quick feet as well. “Kaufusi thought he was light on his feet and could play football,” said Mendenhall.Though not having the intention to offer Langi a scholarship, Mendenhall quickly had a change of heart after just a short 15 minute meeting with Langi, and offered the recruit a football scholarship.Unfortunately, BYU fans are going to have to wait a couple years before having a chance to see Langi play his first football game. Langi currently is in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah preparing to serve an LDS Church mission to Arizona.This will not be the first time Mendenhall and the BYU football team has attempted to teach the game of football to someone who has never played it. A few years ago, an unknown walk-on from Ghana, Ezekiel Ansah, who had never played football, joined the football team. After learning the game and having a successful college career, Ansah was drafted No. 5 overall by the Detroit Lions.Uploaded March 2, 2015

United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, said the U.S. is open to talk to Iran about the state of their nation and invite them to help fight against Islamic terrorist groups in Syria in a multi-nation conference in Paris last week. The news came as a surprise, as Kerry said previously in a conference in Baghdad, "The United States does not cooperate, militarily or otherwise, nor does it have any intention in this process of doing so, with Iran.”“The meeting of foreign ministers from Asia, the Middle East and the West was a first step toward deciding who does what in a multilayered offensive against the Islamic State group,” the Associated Press reported. The plan would include intensifying airstrikes, cutting off financing, and helping Baghdad with humanitarian aid to further reconstruction, according to AP. The plan will not include combat troops on the ground. "We are asking for airborne operations to be continued regularly against terrorist sites. We must not allow them to set up sanctuaries. We must pursue them wherever they are," Iraqi President, Fouad Massoum, said with an apparent reference to neighboring Syria, according to AP."We're not coordinating with Iran, but as I said, we're open to have a conversation at some point in time if there's a way to find something constructive," Kerry said during the conference. "I'm never going to shut the door to something that could solve a problem if there's a way to do it.”“I think the whole situation with Syria is a little tricky,” Carson Booher, an undeclared freshman from Arizona, said. “The US needs to take action, but not rush into things, or else we can cause more damage than necessary.”According to AP, the US has led airstrikes over Iraq since August, and planned on “going to the aid of Iraqi security forces near Baghdad who were being attacked by enemy fighters.” “The strikes represent the newly broadened mission authorized by President Barack Obama to go on the offensive against the Islamic State group wherever it is,” AP said."We must bring them to justice and we must stop the fighters in neighboring countries from joining them," Massoum said at the conference in Paris."There will be no success in Iraq without cooperation with Iran," said Francois Gere of the French Institute of Strategic Analysis added.

The United States government has been shutdown for almost two weeks as the debate between Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the White House continues to rage. Logan Anderson, a junior in business from West Jordan, Utah, said, “It’s too complicated and confusing to understand with all the social media rumors and false accusations to even care.” Here is what is happening:According to the Constitution, every year Congress must pass a budget, outlining the spending and income of the Government for that year. The last time the government actually made a budget was in 1997. Since that time, they have merely just been passing “resolutions.” Resolutions give the government the freedom to continue spending money for a predetermined time limit, Business Professor Cary Wasden explained.Why the shutdown now? Neither Republicans or Democrats can come to a mutual agreement regarding budget and spending. Republicans are in control of the House of Representative and the Democrats are in charge of the Senate and the White House. The Democrats are hoping to continue the current trend by passing a resolution and increasing the debt ceiling, or the amount of debt the country can have, so that they can fund all the government programs. Such programs include the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as it is more commonly known. Republicans have no desire to fund Obamacare allowing President Obama to continue spending more money, according to Wasden.What does this mean? The Republicans in the House of Representatives are not willing to pass a resolution that includes funding for Obamacare, and the Democrats in the Senate and White House aren’t willing to approve any resolution that doesn’t fund Obamacare and raising the debt ceiling. With both sides being very reluctant to negotiate, the government has had to shutdown. Wasden said, “You are not getting the true story from either side and neither party comes out of this looking good. It shows us just how absolutely dysfunctional our government is right now. It’s a complicated issue with a simple solution. Just pass a budget.”What happens with a government shutdown? With the government shutdown, many government-funded programs have been shutdown as well. For example, all national parks, museums, and zoos have been closed. Most federal employees are temporarily out of work. Obtaining a passport or gun permit will also be unavailable until the debate is resolved. Surprisingly enough, this isn’t the first time that this has happened. In 1996, a similar government shutdown lasted 21 days. Conner Dunlap, a sophomore studying marine biology from Sitka, Alaska, said, “I think the government just needs to learn how to work together and not in opposition. They are just not getting the job done.” Recently, there have been signs of progress but no real signs of a resolution. If Congress does not reach an agreement by Oct. 17, it will have the possibility of defaulting on the national debt. If that were to happen, the national credit score would be worsened and would cause some long-term problems. “There is no way that a budget gets passed when there is so much animosity between the two parties. They will just pass another resolution,” said Wasden.Source: CNN

In a meeting with student-athletes and coaches held on March 28, BYU-Hawaii President Steven C. Wheelwright announced the university’s plans to phase out all intercollegiate athletic programs over the next three years. All of the school’s 11 athletic programs will be disbanded including; men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, women’s softball, men’s and women’s cross-country, men’s golf, and men’s and women’s tennis. In an official statement from the university, President Wheelwright publicly announced the reasoning behind the decision. “In recent years, trends have emerged in collegiate athletics that are continuing in a direction that will be challenging for an institution the size of BYU–Hawaii.” But the main factor for discontinuing athletics is rooted in finances. “The money being spent on athletics programs will be used to provide educational opportunities for the increasing number of students from around the world who can be served by the university,” says the official statement. The statement continues, “Plans to increase enrollment to 3,200 students are already in progress with the construction of new on-campus housing facilities. The university administration feels that the top priority is to serve more students, especially those from the Pacific and Asia.” The decision to phase out athletics was made by the Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, and university administration.The phase out comes as a surprise to student athletes and coaches. “I am disappointed in the way the message was delivered and the fact we are losing athletics,” said Landon Southwick, captain of the men’s soccer team and a senior business major from Kaysville, Utah. “I have loved my two years of being a student-athlete; I owe a lot to the athletics programs here.” Athletics at BYUH have built a tradition of success winning 24 national championships. Eleven of those have come from men’s and women’s tennis. In the past three years, both the men’s basketball and women’s volleyball team have competed in the National Championship games of their respective sports.Inquires regarding the phase out can be sent to communications@byuh.edu.