TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Shares of Trovagene Inc. jumped Wednesday after the maker of molecular disease-detecting tests launched its new urine-based test for a common, sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer, some other cancer types and genital warts.
Trovagene said the HPV High Risk test looks for 15 different strains of human papilloma virus most likely to cause disease. It involves sophisticated genetic testing of a urine sample to detect snippets of DNA from those 15 strains, all of which can cause cervical cancer, but not genital warts.
The virus, called HPV for short, is the most common sexually transmitted one in the country. About 14 million people are infected each year, and 80 percent of all women are exposed to HPV at some point. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HPV lurks in an estimated 79 million American women and men, most of whom don't know it.
That's because there is no general HPV test, there's none approved for some of the diseases it can cause and most women getting a routine Pap smear don't get a separate test for HPV at the same time.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, aiming to increase awareness and limit spread of HPV, last year recommended that DNA testing for HPV infection be a mandatory part of women's screenings for cervical cancer.
Both those tests involve an uncomfortable procedure in which a metal instrument is inserted in the vagina to collect cells from the cervix. With a Pap smear, the cells are analyzed for the presence of cancer or pre-cancerous changes, while the HPV test looks for the virus itself.
San Diego-based Trovagene said its product might help overcome roadblocks to widespread testing for HPV, namely the cost, inconvenience and resistance of some patients to the invasive collection of cells from the cervix.
There are at least a few dozen types of HPV. Different types can cause cancer of the cervix, genital warts, warts growing in the throat and, less commonly, cancers of the throat, vagina, vulva, penis and anus.
About 90 percent of HPV infections go away on their own within a couple of years, knocked out by the body's immune system. Patients diagnosed with an HPV infection typically get follow-up tests every six to 12 months to see whether the infection has cleared up or persisted long enough to require treatment.
The Trovagene test, soon to be available through health care providers, would make follow-up tests after diagnosis easier.
Chances of HPV infection can be reduced by use of condoms, limiting number of sexual partners and immunization against most disease-causing types. Two vaccines are recommended for adolescent boys and girls and for men and women through age 26: Merck & Co.'s Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline PLC's Cervarix.
Trovagene shares rose 35 cents, or 6.1 percent, to $6.10 in regular trading Wednesday, then climbed another 65 cents, or 10.7 percent, to $6.75 in after-hours trading. Shares have traded in a range of $1.86 to $8.96 over the past 52 weeks.
___
Follow Linda A. Johnson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma
A presentation at GDC 2013 gave a list of weightings purportedly used by Metacritic to determine how much a publication?s review scores affect a title?s average rating, but the site has vehemently denied the report.
The list does not come from Metacritic itself, but was produced by a team of researchers led by Adams Greenwood-Ericksen of Full Sail University. During a a talk titled ?A Scientific Assessment of the Validity and Value of Metacritic?, Greenwood-Ericksen said Metacritic has confirmed it applies different weightings to various critics.
Looking at existing averages, the team or researchers created a hypothetical model of how Metacritic applies this weighting, and than checked it against the next six months of results, finding it ?almost entirely accurate?, according to Gamasutra.
The list of weightings has been published in full and you can check it out below, but Metacritic has responded by saying the information is ?wildly, wholly inaccurate?.
?They are simply their best guesses based on research. And here?s the most important thing: their guesses are wildly, wholly inaccurate,? a representative for the site wrote on its Facebook page.
?We use far fewer tiers than listed in the article. The disparity between tiers listed in the article is far more extreme than what we actually use on Metacritic; our publication weights are much closer together and have much less of an impact on the score calculation. Our placement of publications in each tier differs from what is displayed in the article. The article overvalues some publications and undervalues others. In addition, our weights are periodically adjusted as needed if, over time, a publication demonstrates an increase or decrease in overall quality.?
The last of the three human leads for "Transformers 4" has been cast. After a lengthy screen testing process, "Bates Motel" and "The Last Airbender" star Nicola Peltz will play Mark Wahlberg's daughter in the next battle between the Autobots and Decepticons. Peltz's name was one of several that appeared on a shortlist for the [...]
SEOUL (Reuters) - Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at "any moment", it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.
The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to "hostile" military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.
The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.
"Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.
"There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the north and the south."
The Pentagon condemned the latest escalation in North Korean rhetoric, with spokesman George Little calling Pyongyang's declaration "yet another provocative and unconstructive step."
The U.S. military announced on March 15 it was bolstering missile defenses in response to threats from the North, including a threat to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States.
Despite the shrill rhetoric, few believe North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), will risk starting a full-out war.
North and South Korea are still technically at war anyway after their 1950-53 civil conflict ended with an armistice, not a treaty, which the North says it has since torn to pieces.
The "dialogue channel" is used on a daily basis to process South Koreans who work in the Kaesong industrial project where 123 South Korean firms employ more than 50,000 North Koreans to make household goods.
About 120 South Koreans are stationed at Kaesong at any one time on average.
It is the last remaining joint project in operation between the two Koreas after South Korea cut off most aid and trade in response to Pyongyang's shooting of a South Korean tourist and the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel blamed on the North.
Kaesong is one of North Korea's few hard currency earners, producing $2 billion a year in trade with the South, and Pyongyang is unlikely to close it except as a last resort.
South Korean conservative activists burn cutout pictures of North Korean national founder the late Kim Il Sung, right, and late leader Kim Jong Il during a rally to mark the third anniversary of the ... more? South Korean conservative activists burn cutout pictures of North Korean national founder the late Kim Il Sung, right, and late leader Kim Jong Il during a rally to mark the third anniversary of the sinking of South Korean naval ship "Cheonan" which killed 46 South Korean sailors, in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. An explosion ripped apart the 1,200-ton warship, killing 46 sailors near the maritime border with North Korea in 2010. A banner reads: "Bomb at statue of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) less? The North's military spokesman representing its "supreme command" did not mention Kaesong, which has suffered temporary shutdowns before.
The South's government said it would take steps to ensure the safety of the workers at Kaesong. It did not elaborate.
(Reporting by Jack Kim; additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington; editing by Nick Macfie and Jackie Frank)
Having not seen every single all-in-one PC that's ever been released, we'll stop short of saying the InFocus BigTouch is the largest AiO ever to grace the Earth. That said, it's pretty damn enormous. What we have here is a 55-inch Windows 8 machine -- far larger than you probably have room for on your desk -- and it's intended specifically for classrooms, conference spaces and office lobbies. Basically, any scenario where lots of people will need to see or use the computer at once. Given that, its connectivity options are perhaps more extensive than what you'll find on a regular consumer desktop: six USB ports, two HDMI sockets and two Ethernet jacks (highly unusual, that last bit).
Other than that, this isn't a machine for spec hunters: it will initially ship with a Core i5 Sandy Bridge processor (that's what was available when the product was being developed) and the screen resolution tops out at 1080p, which is fairly low considering those pixels will be distributed over a 55-inch panel. The 120GB SSD, at least, should do just fine for the above uses cases -- we don't imagine folks will need to store more than that. Additionally, the BigTouch is designed to be easily serviceable, and the processor is part of Intel's vPro family, so the system might meet IT requirements anyway. With a price of $4,999, though, we hope your company doesn't have too many conference rooms to furnish.
?Booby traps?? ?Oh, yes. But I found the clues that will safely take us through, in the Chronicles of St. Anselm.? ?But what are they? Can?t you remember?? ?I wrote them down in my Diary so that I wouldn?t have to remember.? Henry and Indiana Jones in ?Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?
A topic notebook with Circus Ponies Notebook.
The goal in science is not to read literature, it?s to do something with this literature, the works of others, to build on it (or re-build while being aware of it). To do so, you need to have the information you read available for your own works.
One interesting way to help you remember and work with the information you read (and create) is to use a topic notebook. It contains all the information you have read about a (series) of topics and your own thoughts about it.
To be useful, it must have the following functions:
clear structure ? You have to find quickly what you search for, this includes:
the overall structure (the ?notebook? itself), e.g., the way the topics and subtopics are ordered, and
the ?pages?, e.g., the information about each topic.
absolutely clear source information ? Note that plagiarism kills careers and that there is no excuse for sloppy research.
quick and easy to find, enter, edit, etc. ? You will use it a lot, working with it should be a breeze.
easy to create derivative works from it ? E.g., using it as the basis for a paper or a book (correctly cited!).
Another topic notebook, this one about conducting research. As each cell has retained the source information it?s easy to check where the information came from.
Personally, I highly recommend Circus Ponies Notebook for this purpose, as it fulfills these requirements perfectly (for me):
clear structure ? The notebook metaphor makes it easy to work with different topics, while the outliner pages make it very easy to deal with lots of information on little space. You can use multiple notebook or one notebook for different topics, create sections, and the like.
absolutely clear source information ? If you tag each outliner cell with the source information (select all and assign the source information, e.g., miller_1995, as keyword) you have the source information unobtrusively available at all times as it sticks to the information.
quick and easy to find, enter, edit, etc. ? In contrast to a wiki you can quickly type text into the cells, change the outline by drag and drop, etc.
easy to create derivative works from it ? You can copy and paste relevant outline cells to another notebook (careful which kind of copy & paste you use, use the one that preserves the keyword/source tag information), using the information as LEGO? building blocks for your own work (when writing, show the keywords (cmd + k) to know which works you need to cite).
However, this is only one solution and there are probably other programs with which you can do this as well. The concrete program is not that important ? the function it fulfills is.
You might want to keep the following things in mind if you decide to keep a topic notebook:
Take only what you need ? ? The goal of a topic notebook is not to become a verbatim copy of all the works you have read, but to collect the relevant information. Relevant for your work. So you have to set the focus and you have to select from what you are reading.
? but preserve the context ? When you select information, make sure that you preserve the context of that information. No matter how strongly you break up a text you read, make sure you know later what the information meant ? based on what you write down! Don?t assume you remember it five years in the future! The notebook should externalize your memory, so make sure it is correct. For example, if an author lists three major influences and you are only interested in one, copy the information about the one into your topic notebook, but also write down that the author saw this as one of three influences. Otherwise you might later cite this author wrongly (e.g., ?x also saw y as influence to ?? instead of ?x also saw y as one of three influences to ??). You are moving away from the actual source (the paper), you have to, but you also have to preserve the context! Otherwise you misrepresent the author ? something that not only hurts your career but also incurs (rightfully) negative reactions by the authors. Pat Thomson wrote an excellent posting on her blog: ?So the problem was the cherry-picking of something that was useful to the doctoral researcher, without due recognition of my overall argument. Anyone reading the doctoral thesis would conclude that my work supported the case made in the thesis. In reality of course, the doctoral research was diametrically opposed to my own. All it would have taken for me not to feel seriously misrepresented was for a simple caveat to be made in the text, or even a footnote, which said that my definition and empirical work had been used, although my actual argument was very different from what this thesis was suggesting.? (Thomson, 2013) And she concludes with: ?The lesson here goes to understanding that pieces of any academic work/text fit within an overall argument. It?s important to understand and acknowledge their place in the whole, as well as their utility as a part. I always suggest in workshops and writing courses that when doing literature work and when noting texts, one of the very first things to do is to summarise the argument. I think after writing this post I might add that it?s important to use this information about the argument later when choosing citations. It?s critical when using parts of texts to use the summary of the argument to avoid the situation where textual bits and pieces are used willy-nilly to misrepresent the writer?s overall intention.? (Thomson, 2013) Adhere to it. Sloppy research is a waste of time, money, and effort ? yours, your colleagues, the general public. And it hurts your career.
Part of the context is knowing the quality of the information you collect ? There are huge differences between, e.g., a blogger?s opinion and the results of a meta-analysis. When you collect information make sure you annotate it if it is an assertion (e.g., ?mobiles improve learning?). Be clear about it ? is it an opinion? A theoretical derivation? A study result? A result from a meta-analysis? You can get this information later when you look at the source information, but it?s easier and actually beneficial to do this early on. A large part of being a scientist is being critical ? do you trust this information to build your own works on? Would you use this brick to build a bridge? You are putting the weight of your career on it! Make sure it is strong enough.
Differentiate between your works and the works of others ? If you have each information unit (e.g., an argument from a paper you deem relevant for your work) tagged with the source information, this is fairly easy. But you can also use, e.g., italics (for verbatim quotes) or colors. While you can work with other people?s ideas/findings like you would with LEGO? bricks, make sure to add your own ideas. Write down your thoughts, ideas, questions. And always be clear what was your idea and what you have found in the literature!
Trim and reorder regularly ? Over time the topic notebook will grow, so make sure you are not swamped by the amount of information. Outliners are really helpful here, as you can write more general issues in the top level cells and use the child cells to add the detail information. The nice thing about digital collections is that you can quickly copy & paste/move information.
Avoid duplicating topics/issues within or between notebooks ? Copy & pasting digital information makes it easy to add the same information in different places. Sometimes this makes sense, e.g., an argument that applies to different topics you are interested in. However, be careful not to add the same topic/issue multiple times. For example, if you are interested in ?learning in museums? and ?learning with mobile media?, decide where you put ?mobile media in museums?. Do not add ?museums? as subtopic of ?mobiles? and ?mobile guides? as subtopic of ?museums?. This would become problematic the second you add new information ? you have to add it to them all, which takes time and is likely to produce errors and a disorganized notebook. Use ?see ?? and refer to the place where you put in this information. This is the disadvantage of hierarchical structures (and any notebook is hierarchical), but on the other hand, this hierarchical structure makes it possible to deal with large amounts of information. A network structure (e.g., a Wiki), links (supported in CPN), replicants (supported by some outliners) might avoid this problem, but a non-linear structure makes it very hard to be sure that you have fully scanned the information about a topic.
Use the appropriate level of detail ? You can go down into the details with tables of findings and exact values, you can also focus on the overall argument, you can do even both (the nice thing about outliners ? you can fold in the information not needed at the moment and keep information aggregated in the higher level cells). But make sure you operate on the right level of detail and/or be able to switch between different levels of detail when needed. Digital makes it easy to copy a lot and get lost in the details quickly. Regular restructuring, trimming and aggregating and summarizing information is needed.
Do something productive with the topic notebooks ? A topic notebook has no real value of its own. It ensures that you have the information you need for your work in one place, it externalizes your knowledge and allows you to deal with complex information and provides you with easy access to it. Use it regularly and do something with it that advances your career. Blog about it, design studies, conduct experiments, write and publish papers! Organizing should assist your creativity, don?t use your creativity to optimize your organization without getting concrete products from it.
The great thing about a topic notebook is that you have the information you have read available ? immediately and independent of your available cognitive resources. It?s fairly easy to use the topic notebook and copy and paste the relevant cells (mind the context!!!) to another notebook and create and article or book. However, make sure that you have an overall idea what you want to do with this information, e.g., a question to ask/answer in the scientific discussion, and that you add something meaningful to it. Otherwise it?s only ?a transference of bones from one graveyard to another? (to quote J. Frank Dobie regarding the average PhD thesis).
After all, the information you have is useless unless guided by a purpose, and damaging if not used correctly. But organized you can do things of astonishing power and complexity that you never thought you were capable of.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) ? Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Saturday that he will return to his homeland despite facing criminal charges and militant death threats.
Musharraf has been living in self-exile in London and Dubai for the last five years and is planning to return on Sunday to Pakistan. He risks possible arrest in connection with the killing of an ex-prime minister, while the Pakistani Taliban says they have an assassination team ready for him if he steps foot in the country.
He first declared his intention to go back earlier this year. On Saturday, he gave a news conference in Dubai confirming that he would be arriving in the port city of Karachi to take part in May 11 elections despite the "fear of the unknown." The former four-star general plans to travel there accompanied by journalists and supporters of his political party, All Pakistan Muslim League.
But just hours after the announcement, the Pakistan Taliban released a video threatening to unleash suicide bombers and snipers against Musharraf if he comes back. One of the two people speaking in the video was Adnan Rashid, a former Pakistani air force officer convicted in an attack against Musharraf. The Taliban broke Rashid, along with nearly 400 other detainees, out of Bannu prison last year.
"The mujahedeen of Islam have prepared a death squad to send Pervez Musharraf to hell," said Rashid in the video, speaking in front of a group of 20 militants holding rifles.
"We warn you to surrender yourself to us. Otherwise we will hit you from where you will never reckon," he said.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Musharraf came under intense pressure from the U.S. to back the Americans in the coming war and cut off ties with the Taliban, which he did. For that, militants as well as many other Pakistanis see him as carrying out the American agenda in Pakistan.
Militants tried to kill him twice in December 2003 in Rawalpindi, the sister city to Islamabad where the Pakistani military is headquartered. First they placed a bomb intended to go off when his convoy passed by. When that didn't work, suicide attackers tried to ram his motorcade with explosives-laden vehicles. The president was unhurt but 16 others died. Rashid was arrested in connection with that assassination attempt.
Musharraf took power in a 1999 coup. He faces charges of conspiring to assassinate ex-premier Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in 2007, as well as other accusations in other cases. But his legal team petitioned a court in Sindh province where Karachi is located to give him preemptive bail, which essentially means that he will not be arrested immediately upon arrival. According to the bail order, he has ten days to present himself to the court.
Musharraf has called the charges baseless.
__
Associated Press writer Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan contributed to this report.
Restoration and recommendations for flood-damaged bottomlandsPublic release date: 20-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Debra Levey Larson dlarson@illinois.edu 217-244-2880 University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
URBANA - Although the 2012 drought in the Midwest may have dimmed the memories for some of the 2011 Ohio and Mississippi River flood, engineers, landowners, conservationists, crop scientists and soil scientists haven't forgotten. They are working hard to repair levees and restore the flood damaged Birds Point-New Madrid floodway in preparation for the next big flood which will eventually happen.
"After the waters recede, people forget about the catastrophic flooding and damage to agricultural lands, road infrastructure, homes, and businesses and the ongoing restoration efforts" said University of Illinois researcher Ken Olson. Olson has studied the damage to property and farmland caused by the opening of the New Madrid Floodway in 2011.
The use of the 133,000 acres of Birds Point-New Madrid floodway resulted in partial 2011 crop loss when 25,000 acres (winter wheat drowned) and another 15,000 acres could not be reclaimed in time to plant soybeans in 2011 or were too wet for production. Permanent soil damages occurred as a result of land scouring, gully fields, crater lakes, gully fields, thick sand deposits on land, in waterways, in road ditches and drainage ditches.
Restoration has required substantive financial resources and collaborative efforts among public and private agencies. Congress appropriated funds though USDA Farm Services Agency's Emergency Conservation program to remove sediment in private drainage ways. USDA, Natural Resource Conservation Service made $3 million of Disaster relief funds available for local drainage district dredging the sediment from the 109 miles of drainage ditches within the floodway with 30 excavators. The work was completed in fall of 2012.
Olson calculated the extensive restoration efforts of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the USDA, Natural Resource Conservation, FEMA and other federal, state and local agencies to be over $51 million including levee repairs, crater lake and gully reclamation, crop loss, sediment removal from both road ditches and drainage ditches and home damages. In addition another $46 million of federal money was allocated in 2012 to strengthen the levee and floodwalls near Cairo, Illinois and Hickman, Kentucky and for dredging of the Ohio and Mississippi river shipping channels as a result of the 2012 drought.
Included in this floodplain region is the village of Pinhook, MO with its 30 residents who endure annual local flooding when the Mississippi River is high and drainage ditches back up though a gap between the frontline and setback floodway levees near New Madrid. Since 1954, there have been plans for a project to fill a 1,500-foot gap in the levee that serves as a drainage outlet. After a local appeal to Congress, work began to fill the gap at a cost of $7 million in 2005 only to be stopped in 2006 by legal action; and by 2007 the gap was restored at a cost of $10 million resulting in no change in the local flooding situation. During the flood of 2011 and before the opening of the floodway, the residents of Pinhook were safely evacuated.
However, their homes and community infrastructure were destroyed. After exploring several relocation and rebuilding options, a federal buyout was accepted by Pinhook home owners of 21 properties at a total cost of $1.17 million, according to the Bootheel Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission.
"If the opening of the floodway was to occur more frequently, the public and private costs to reclamation and restoration of agricultural lands and rural communities, such as Pinhook, will also increase," said Olson.
Olson and his colleague Lois Wright Morton from Iowa State University recommended that a revision to the comprehensive plan for this area should better integrate the levee engineering infrastructure with the ecological infrastructure to mitigate future flooding and strengthen the effectiveness of well-placed levee systems. One option might be the State of Missouri purchasing limited acreage of land adjacent to Big Oak Tree State at the southern end of the floodway. These low lying agricultural lands, which were severely damaged in the 1927, 1937 and 2011 floods, are likely to be severely damaged in future catastrophic floods and floodway use. Any levee realignment or the purchase of land for expanded wetlands and park lands should be assessed with input from farmers, land owners, local leaders and state and federal agencies.
Olson acknowledged that returning the entire floodway to its original status as a floodplain, which is not being proposed, would not be socially desirable or politically feasible or acceptable. But, Olson said, redesign of the floodway or a land use change for a limited area of low lying bottomland in the floodway could reduce taxpayer and private costs associated with more frequent future flooding events and provide more bottomland storage during major flooding events and lessen the need to reopen the floodway. The current levee, floodwall and floodway approach to managing catastrophic flooding near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers has worked well for almost 85 years.
However, this system requires massive tax payer funding and may not be sustainable if the frequency of catastrophic flooding were to increase as a result of climate change and greater frequency of weather extremes.
"Restoration of 2011 Flood Damaged Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway" and "Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway: Redesign, Reconstruction and Restoration" were published in 2013 issues of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. Lois Wright Morton co-authored the papers with Kenneth Olson.
Olson is a researcher in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
###
The complete papers can be accessed at http://www.jswconline.org/content/68/1/13A.full.pdf
and http://www.jswconline.org/content/68/2/35A.full.pdf.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Restoration and recommendations for flood-damaged bottomlandsPublic release date: 20-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Debra Levey Larson dlarson@illinois.edu 217-244-2880 University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
URBANA - Although the 2012 drought in the Midwest may have dimmed the memories for some of the 2011 Ohio and Mississippi River flood, engineers, landowners, conservationists, crop scientists and soil scientists haven't forgotten. They are working hard to repair levees and restore the flood damaged Birds Point-New Madrid floodway in preparation for the next big flood which will eventually happen.
"After the waters recede, people forget about the catastrophic flooding and damage to agricultural lands, road infrastructure, homes, and businesses and the ongoing restoration efforts" said University of Illinois researcher Ken Olson. Olson has studied the damage to property and farmland caused by the opening of the New Madrid Floodway in 2011.
The use of the 133,000 acres of Birds Point-New Madrid floodway resulted in partial 2011 crop loss when 25,000 acres (winter wheat drowned) and another 15,000 acres could not be reclaimed in time to plant soybeans in 2011 or were too wet for production. Permanent soil damages occurred as a result of land scouring, gully fields, crater lakes, gully fields, thick sand deposits on land, in waterways, in road ditches and drainage ditches.
Restoration has required substantive financial resources and collaborative efforts among public and private agencies. Congress appropriated funds though USDA Farm Services Agency's Emergency Conservation program to remove sediment in private drainage ways. USDA, Natural Resource Conservation Service made $3 million of Disaster relief funds available for local drainage district dredging the sediment from the 109 miles of drainage ditches within the floodway with 30 excavators. The work was completed in fall of 2012.
Olson calculated the extensive restoration efforts of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the USDA, Natural Resource Conservation, FEMA and other federal, state and local agencies to be over $51 million including levee repairs, crater lake and gully reclamation, crop loss, sediment removal from both road ditches and drainage ditches and home damages. In addition another $46 million of federal money was allocated in 2012 to strengthen the levee and floodwalls near Cairo, Illinois and Hickman, Kentucky and for dredging of the Ohio and Mississippi river shipping channels as a result of the 2012 drought.
Included in this floodplain region is the village of Pinhook, MO with its 30 residents who endure annual local flooding when the Mississippi River is high and drainage ditches back up though a gap between the frontline and setback floodway levees near New Madrid. Since 1954, there have been plans for a project to fill a 1,500-foot gap in the levee that serves as a drainage outlet. After a local appeal to Congress, work began to fill the gap at a cost of $7 million in 2005 only to be stopped in 2006 by legal action; and by 2007 the gap was restored at a cost of $10 million resulting in no change in the local flooding situation. During the flood of 2011 and before the opening of the floodway, the residents of Pinhook were safely evacuated.
However, their homes and community infrastructure were destroyed. After exploring several relocation and rebuilding options, a federal buyout was accepted by Pinhook home owners of 21 properties at a total cost of $1.17 million, according to the Bootheel Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission.
"If the opening of the floodway was to occur more frequently, the public and private costs to reclamation and restoration of agricultural lands and rural communities, such as Pinhook, will also increase," said Olson.
Olson and his colleague Lois Wright Morton from Iowa State University recommended that a revision to the comprehensive plan for this area should better integrate the levee engineering infrastructure with the ecological infrastructure to mitigate future flooding and strengthen the effectiveness of well-placed levee systems. One option might be the State of Missouri purchasing limited acreage of land adjacent to Big Oak Tree State at the southern end of the floodway. These low lying agricultural lands, which were severely damaged in the 1927, 1937 and 2011 floods, are likely to be severely damaged in future catastrophic floods and floodway use. Any levee realignment or the purchase of land for expanded wetlands and park lands should be assessed with input from farmers, land owners, local leaders and state and federal agencies.
Olson acknowledged that returning the entire floodway to its original status as a floodplain, which is not being proposed, would not be socially desirable or politically feasible or acceptable. But, Olson said, redesign of the floodway or a land use change for a limited area of low lying bottomland in the floodway could reduce taxpayer and private costs associated with more frequent future flooding events and provide more bottomland storage during major flooding events and lessen the need to reopen the floodway. The current levee, floodwall and floodway approach to managing catastrophic flooding near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers has worked well for almost 85 years.
However, this system requires massive tax payer funding and may not be sustainable if the frequency of catastrophic flooding were to increase as a result of climate change and greater frequency of weather extremes.
"Restoration of 2011 Flood Damaged Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway" and "Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway: Redesign, Reconstruction and Restoration" were published in 2013 issues of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. Lois Wright Morton co-authored the papers with Kenneth Olson.
Olson is a researcher in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
###
The complete papers can be accessed at http://www.jswconline.org/content/68/1/13A.full.pdf
and http://www.jswconline.org/content/68/2/35A.full.pdf.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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It's only March, but 2013's already proving to be quite the wild ride for music distribution trailblazer, eMusic. A month after eschewing its long time subscription-only model by adding direct music purchases, the site has merged with Ray Kurzweil-founded e-book distributor, K-NFB Reading Inc. The companies confirmed the move in a statement sent to record label partners, which highlights their plan to, "create a consumer-centric interface that makes discovering, interacting with, and purchasing all kinds of media content more accessible and seamless for consumers." The move also sees the exit of CEO Adam Klein. No tears there, however -- the exec (and recent Engadget interview subject) said that he's "very pleased with the significant repositioning of the company and its future direction."
I?ve recently written a couple of articles about the exorbitant cost of medical care in the US, which is incompatible with the poor health outcomes of Americans at large.
Americans pay the most for but reap the least amount of benefits from their health care, compared to other industrialized nations. Overcharging and over-treating are two factors contributing to this enormous problem.
Andrew Weil, author of You Can't Afford to Get Sick: Your Guide to Optimum Health and Health Care, recently jumped into the fray with an article on CNN1 and a full one-hour long CNN documentary. The documentary is called Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, which CNN premiered on March 10. Weil writes:
?The most insistent political question of the past four years has been: How can more Americans get access to medical care?
The federal response was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Better known as 'Obamacare,' it is a complex mix of insurance changes and tax credits. When the act takes effect on January 1, 2014, it will provide access to insurance to about 30 million people who currently don't have it.
Unfortunately, that was the wrong question. So the looming 'answer' is wrong as well. Here's the right question: How can we improve medical care so that it's worth extending it to more people? In other words, how can we create a health care system that helps people become and stay healthy??
Disease-Management versus Health Care
I could not agree more with Weil?s statement that the US does not have a health care system; we have a disease-management system.
It?s a system that is wholly dependent on expensive drugs and invasive surgeries, opposed to preventive measures and simpler, less expensive treatment alternatives. In short, it?s a system rooted in an ideal of maximized profits, opposed to helping people maintain or regain their health.
The majority of the diseases we?re trying to ?manage? in this manner are lifestyle-related, and if you don?t address this root cause, you?ll never get better. You?re just paying for overpriced band-aids that do absolutely nothing to fix the underlying cause.
As Weil states:
?Making this system more accessible by passing costs to taxpayers will simply spread its failures more broadly.?
Like myself, Weil promotes integrative medicine (IM) as a better alternative to the current system. IM offers a combination of conventional medical therapies and complementary or alternative therapies "for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness."
Placing greater emphasis on prevention, IM fosters long-term health, and when disease does set in, conventional drug and surgery approaches are used sparingly and/or as a last resort.
Our current system does the exact opposite. Drugs and surgery are employed FIRST, and then, when the patient has exhausted all conventional avenues, he or she will sometimes turn to alternative therapies or nutritional interventions out of sheer desperation, on their own (and at their own expense).
Frequently this is what ends up saving that person?s life... Unfortunately, many have been financially ruined by the time they?ve wound their way through the conventional system.
Escape Fire takes a deeper look at the problems inherent with our medical system; the cause of the problems and its devastating effects, and provides some hopeful solutions. Weil issued the following highlights from the film:
The torturous journey of Sgt. Robert Yates, an injured veteran wounded in Afghanistan. He was prescribed a shopping bag full of prescription medications that left him broken and miserable in body, mind and spirit. Watching Yates begin to regain his health through gentle, low-cost therapies, including meditation and acupuncture, is profoundly moving.
A look at the revolutionary Safeway Healthy Measures Program. It gives the supermarket chain's employees financial incentives for taking responsibility for their own health, decreasing Safeway's insurance costs significantly while improving participants' well-being.
The dramatic story of Dr. Erin Martin, an Oregon primary care physician fed up with being pushed to treat patients faster and faster to boost clinic profits. She enrolled in the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine's Fellowship Program to find a better way, explaining that "I'm not interested in getting my productivity up -- I'm interested in helping patients."
Why the Affordable Health Care Act is Unlikely to Benefit Your Health
Last fall, I gave a presentation at Harper College, in which I discussed the Affordable Health Care Act, and why it?s likely to make matters far worse rather than better. It?s important to understand that guaranteed health insurance does NOT equate to guaranteed health care.
A major part of the problem is that the Act does not include any strategies designed to actually prevent illness. It also does not contain any measures to rein in or reduce out-of-control health care costs related to overcharges. Instead it expands an already flawed model of ?care? that has been and continues to be a?leadingcause?of both death and bankruptcy in the US.
For example:
Americans spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other country in the world; in fact according to a series of studies by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia.
Despite that, we rank dead last in terms of quality of care among industrialized countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives than people in other nations
A review of U.S. healthcare expenses by the Institutes of Medicine2 last year revealed that 30 cents of every dollar spent on medical care is wasted, adding up to $750 billion annually. Exorbitant hospital costs are a leading cause of this overspending
According to a 2011 report by the global consulting firm Milliman, annual healthcare costs for the average American family of four, if covered by a preferred provider organization, is still a staggering $19,3933
As opposed to other countries, American laws prevent the government from restraining drug prices. Federal law even prevents the single largest drug buyer - Medicare - from negotiating drug prices
Overall, Americans pay 50 percent more than other countries for identical drugs. This year alone, the US will spend more than $280 billion on prescription drugs. If Americans paid the same prices other countries pay for the same products, we?d save about $94 billion a year
We Need a Whole New System of Medicine
When it comes to medical charges, you the buyer are completely separated from the seller or provider. There?s absolutely no market feedback to regulate and control the prices that are charged, whether they are related to medications or hospital/treatment charges. For the most part, drug makers and hospitals are allowed to charge as much as they want, which plays a large role on why these charges have gotten so outrageously out of control. This simply does not happen in countries outside of the US.
As a result, more than half, or approximately 60 percent, of all personal bankruptcies in the US are related to medical bills. Even more remarkably, the majority of those bankruptcies are among people WITH health insurance... Weil writes:
?The film [Escape Fire] takes its name from the practice of setting a small fire to clear out nearby brush, allowing a fast-advancing forest fire to pass by harmlessly. Will we be sufficiently clear-eyed and rational to take a similarly bold action to avoid disaster wrought by our dysfunctional health care system? I hope so. In the film, I say, 'The present system doesn't work, and it's going to take us down. We need a whole new kind of medicine.'"
This new system needs to address preventive strategies, and allow for less expensive, less invasive and more health-promoting alternatives as the first line of treatment. This automatically means reduced profits for the medical industry as a whole, but the pharmaceutical industry in particular would have to relinquish its grasp on its greatest cash cow, the American drug consumer.
When you consider how far Big Pharma has gone to manipulate the political system to its advantage, lobbying for laws to protect and bolster its profits even to the detriment of the country as a whole, this is not going to happen overnight. But you don?t have to wait for the system to change. You can take control of your own health in the meantime, and proactively work to protect not only your life but your pocketbook as well. At the end of this article, I will list a few of my top healthy lifestyle considerations, the most important of which is proper food choices.
Most of the Leading Causes of Death are Preventable
Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel because you CAN take control of your health - you don't have to listen to and abide by this system that makes and keeps you sick in order to make multinational corporations wealthy.
The majority of deaths are due to chronic, not acute, disease. And most chronic diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, are largely preventable with simple lifestyle changes. Even infectious diseases like the flu can often be warded off by a healthy way of life. Just imagine the lowered death toll, not to mention costs to the economy, if more people decided to take control of their health ? heart disease and cancer alone accounted for 47 percent of deaths in the United States in 2010, and there are many strategies you can implement to lower your risk of these diseases.
The added bonus to this is that the healthier you are, the less you will need to rely on conventional medical care, which is a leading cause of death. So what does a "healthy lifestyle" entail? The following is a short list of the basics expounded upon in my nutrition plan:
Proper Food Choices
For a comprehensive guide on which foods to eat and which to avoid, see my nutrition plan. It's available for free, and is perhaps one of the most comprehensive and all-inclusive guides on a healthy lifestyle out there. Generally speaking, you should be looking to focus your diet on whole, ideally organic, unprocessed foods that come from healthy, sustainable, ideally local, sources.
For the best nutrition and health benefits, you will want to eat a good portion of your food raw. Nearly as important as knowing which foods to eat more of is knowing which foods to avoid, and topping the list is fructose. Sugar, and fructose in particular, can act as a toxin in and of itself when consumed in excess, and as such drive multiple disease processes in your body, not the least of which is insulin resistance, a major cause of accelerated aging and virtually all chronic disease.
For most people (although there are clearly individual differences), a diet high in healthful fats (as high as 50-70 percent of the calories you eat), moderate amounts of high quality protein, which is far less than the average amount most people eat, with the bulk of carbohydrates coming from vegetables and very low or no carbohydrates from grains and sugars, will set you on the right track toward health.
Comprehensive Exercise Program, including High-Intensity Exercise
Even if you're eating the healthiest diet in the world, you still need to exercise to reach the highest levels of health, and you need to be exercising effectively, which means including not only core-strengthening exercises, strength training, and stretching but also high-intensity activities into your rotation. High-intensity interval-type training boosts human growth hormone (HGH) production, which is essential for optimal health, strength and vigor. I've discussed the importance of Peak Fitness for your health on numerous occasions, so for more information, please review this previous article.
Stress Reduction and Positive Thinking
You cannot be optimally healthy if you avoid addressing the emotional component of your health and longevity, as your emotional state plays a role in nearly every physical disease -- from heart disease and depression, to arthritis and cancer. Effective coping mechanisms are a major longevity-promoting factor in part because stress has a direct impact on inflammation, which in turn underlies many of the chronic diseases that kill people prematurely every day. Meditation, prayer, energy psychology tools such as the Emotional Freedom Technique, social support and exercise are all viable options that can help you maintain emotional and mental equilibrium.
Optimize Vitamin D with Proper Sun Exposure
We have long known that it is best to get your vitamin D from appropriate sun exposure during times when UVB rays are present. Vitamin D plays an important role in preventing numerous illnesses ranging from cancer to the flu.
The important factor when it comes to vitamin D is your serum level, which should ideally be between 50-70 ng/ml year-round. Sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is the preferred method for optimizing vitamin D levels, but a vitamin D3 supplement can be used when necessary. Most adults need about 8,000 IU's of vitamin D a day to achieve serum levels above 40 ng/ml, which is still just below the minimum recommended serum level of 50 ng/ml.
Be aware that if you take supplemental vitamin D, you also need to make sure you're getting enough vitamin K2, as these two nutrients work in tandem to ensure calcium is distributed into the proper areas in your body. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries.
While the ideal or optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be elucidated, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue, author of Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life, suggests that for every 1,000 IU's of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms of K2, and perhaps as much as 150-200 micrograms (mcg). ?
Fermented vegetables can be a great source of vitamin K if you ferment your own using the proper starter culture. We recently had samples of high-quality fermented organic vegetables made with our specific starter culture tested, and a two to three ounce serving contained about 500 mcg of vitamin K.
High Quality Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats
Animal-based omega-3 fat like krill oil is a strong factor in helping people live longer, and many experts believe that it is likely the predominant reason why the Japanese are the longest lived race on the planet.
Avoid as Many Chemicals, Toxins, and Pollutants as Possible
This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.
Historically, Microsoft has been fairly transparent about its plans to support older versions of Windows -- and it tends to give users a nice, long heads up, too. Until now, though, that hasn't always been true of Windows Phone -- remember how long it took Redmond to confirm you couldn't upgrade to WP8? In any case, Microsoft seems to be taking a more direct approach going forward: the company posted a brief table on its site, explaining when it will end support for Windows Phone 8 and 7.5. In short, each OS gets a total of 18 months of support, and that period has of course already begun, as both operating systems are shipping on various hardware. Support for WP8 will end first, on July 8th, 2014, while 7.5 "Mango" will hit the end of the road on September 9th of that year. Either way, if you purchased your device on a two-year contract, you might not mind the end to OS updates, as you'll probably be eligible for a new handset by then. And besides, those of you who took a chance on 7.8 surely did so with the understanding that it can't be upgraded to WP8 anyway.
Robert W. Philbrook passes out toothbrushes and toothpaste to Iraqi children in Baghdad in May 2005. Boy Scouts from the United States shipped him hundreds of kits to distribute in an act of goodwill. (Photo courtesy of Robert W. Philbrook)
Robert W. Philbrook grew up playing war.
As a boy, it seemed simple: In games of hide-and-seek, he and his friends sneaked between buildings, guarded their ?forts"?and shot the ?bad guys? before they shot back.
Years later, Philbrook enlisted with the California Army National Guard. He deployed to Iraq a few months after the Sept. 11 attacks and, shortly before he left, a question from his then-6-year-old son stripped bare the reality of war. In Philbrook?s words:
Sitting in the car that day, he looked at me and said, "Can I ask you a question, Daddy?"
I told my son, yes, he could ask me anything. After a moment, he said: "You said you might have to kill someone in the war, right?"
I nodded and said to him that is what soldiers sometimes have to do.
He looked at me with his big blue eyes and muttered, "Will any of them be a daddy like you?"
His question was devastating. I didn't know how to tell him that the answer could well be "yes." I thought for a moment and then reminded him about Mom and Dad's rule [that] he and his brothers shouldn't be mean to each other and that Daddy didn't like it when they fought over toys. I told him I was going to Iraq to try to keep the Iraqis from fighting and being mean to each other and doing bad things. That if they listened and got along, I could come home soon. But if they didn't, I was going to have to fight them until they stopped. This seemed to make some sense to him, but to this day his question haunts me.
While he was in Iraq, Philbrook said, his wife and three sons (ages 13, 6 and 4 in 2004, when he deployed) dominated his thoughts, so much so that he kept a detailed journal of his time in case he didn't return home.
?If I was to die overseas, I wanted them to know someday why their father left them to fight an often unpopular war and about my role and experiences during it,? Philbrook wrote in a first-person account for Yahoo News this week. ?I didn't want the media, the military, or anyone else, for that matter, speaking for me or writing my history of that conflict.?
He also prayed: "Don't let me get any of my fellow soldiers killed, don't let me kill anyone who doesn't have it coming and get me back home to my wife and children."
He said he was successful on the first two counts. ?God did his part on the last,? he said.
Philbrook?s story is one of dozens that Iraq War veterans and their families shared with Yahoo News this month, the 10-year anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The perspectives were diverse, ranging from baby-faced Army privates serving straight out of high school to veterans who re-enlisted because of 9/11. Many said they believe history will judge the United States justly for its role in shaping Iraq?s future; others offered a more fatalistic view and said the campaign was doomed from the start.
By the time the war ended on Dec. 15, 2011, 4,409 Americans were killed in Iraq and 31,926 more wounded in action. (The number of Iraqi deaths are estimated at 122,000 through today.) Behind those numbers lie personal stories of service members and their families. We?ve shared a few more of them below. If you served in Iraq, or have family who did, and are interested in writing your story, learn more here.
Frank Coots before a mission. (Photo courtesy of Frank Coots)
Making a difference, but paying a steep price
It took a while for the war to sink in for Frank Coots.
?Nothing can really prepare you mentally for being in a war zone,? the sergeant in the Indiana Army National Guard wrote in his account.
The Iraq War seemed harmless, Coots said, until bullets riddled his Humvee on his first convoy-security mission. Then came the IEDs. It was 2008, and insurgents were repeatedly using the roadside bombs to derail U.S. operations.
?It got real pretty fast,? he said.
Coots, who was a specialist, deployed to Mosul in northern Iraq and guarded convoys of food, supplies, mail, water and fuel. These missions, he said, showed him how far Iraq had transformed after Saddam Hussein?s fall. He watched the progress of the U.S. military training Iraqi army and police forces. He noted how Americans turned over the security of roadside checkpoints to Iraqis. He listened to his Kurdish interpreter, whose family was executed by Saddam?s troops, extol U.S. efforts at freeing his people from tyranny.
?It was a time when I really felt I was making a difference and doing a good thing for others,? he said.
But he paid a personal price.
?Coming home and returning to civilian life was a challenge, to say the least,? Coots said. ?It's hard to go from serving your country in a war zone to making $11.75 an hour in a Vincennes, Ind., auto parts store. It's hard to get used to not grabbing a rifle and pulling security every time you're startled by a loud noise. It's hard to understand why everything seems so different, even when you realize the concussions and head traumas caused by explosions has altered the way your brain works. It's hard to go in a restaurant or bar and not sit with your back in a corner and consider everyone a possible enemy.?
Coots, 32, who moved on to being a tractor mechanic at a John Deere dealership in Vincennes is engaged to a woman he described as ?wonderful, supportive, patient,? and who helps him through his post-traumatic stress disorder. With assistance from the Veterans Administration, he?s returning to what he calls ?normal life.?
But his thoughts still turn to Iraq. He wonders whether Iraqis are ready to govern. He worries insurgents will rise again. He fears American sacrifices may be moot if violence returns.
?I very much hope I'm proven wrong about this,? Coots said.
Brittney Linville in Iraq. (Photo courtesy of Brittney Linville)
?What doesn't kill you makes you walk with a limp?
If not for war?s most devastating and rewarding outcomes, said Brittney Linville, she wouldn?t be the same today.
Now a mom to a 6-year-old girl and wife to a fellow Army veteran, Linville entered basic training at 18 in January 2003 and quickly saw combat. She served in Baqouba, Iraq, as a military police soldier and found herself thrust into the worst parts of the war.
?While many don't think that females see combat, I have pulled security for more raids than I can count, have lived through countless mortar attacks on the base in which I lived, and faced the roads of Iraq never knowing if it might be the last one that I would travel down,? she wrote in her story. ?I have faced days without sleep, weeks without a shower, and months without knowing if I would ever see home again.?
But without that adversity, she said, she couldn?t measure what she?d gained. She described herself as being immature and selfish before she served, but said Iraq changed that. ?It was a time in my life when I quickly learned that I was more capable than I had imagined.?
She also met her husband, Matthew Linville, in Iraq. They married, and she transitioned out of the service. But Matthew was deployed again, and this time and IED blast sent shrapnel tunneling through his leg, lodging a hunk of metal behind his left knee.
?That day that he was injured was the worst day of our lives. We have faced our challenges since that day, but it made our bond stronger,? she said.
With a severed nerve, Matthew is permanently injured and needs a brace to walk. Brittney battles PTSD daily.
Still, she said, she chooses "to be stronger than PTSD and that serves as my motivation."
Her husband coined a phrase: "What doesn't kill you makes you walk with a limp.?
?Iraq might have been tough," Brittney added, ?and left its lingering effects, but it will not hold us back or prevent us from accomplishing anything.?
Read more veterans' accounts and perspectives about their service in Iraq.
MONTREAL ? The RDC Kings hopes of winning gold at the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association men?s basketball championships didn?t last long.
The Kings dropped an 87-75 decision to Vancouver Island University Mariners of Nanaimo in their opening game at John Abbott College Thursday.
?We ran into foul trouble early, especially to (Jacob) Cusumano and (Rob) Pierce, which seemed to take a little wind out of our sails? said Kings head coach Clayton Pottinger. ?Following that we had to be careful with their minutes. We were able to get them back in but they couldn?t be nearly as aggressive.?
The Kings jumped into an early eight point lead when they had everyone available, but the Mariners went on a 9-0 run to finish the first quarter and led 22-20 after 10 minutes. The Kings struggled in the second quarter, which proved to be the difference in the game as they managed just 10 points and trailed 43-30 at the break.
?We came out hard in the third quarter and narrowed the gap to four points before seeing them go on another run,? said Pottinger, whose team trailed 65-51 after three quarters.
Once again the Kings narrowed the gap to six points in the fourth and had a chance to narrow it to four, but Ashaunti Hogan missed a layup and the Mariners came right back to score against the Kings press to make the gap eight.
?That just about did it,? said Pottinger.
?We had to foul to try to get the ball back, plus tried to use a press, which gave them some easier shots.?
The Mariners won the game at the line as they hit 25 of 27 free throw attempts.
Mariners head coach Matt Kuzminski praised his defence for the victory.
?We had some jitters in the beginning, and that was normal,? he said in a press release. ?I knew our defence would be key, but it took until the second quarter when we held them to 10 points.?
Still Pottinger didn?t feel defence was the difference.
?We scored 75 points and that should have been right there, but the fouls gave them an edge,? he said. ?As well they were ranked sixth, and should have been in the top four. Still we have to take on all comers. We had to beat good teams to win it. Now we have to look at third place.?
Pierce led the Kings with 21 points while Lloyd Strickland added 17, Demaine Nelson 12 and Hogan 11.
The Kings play today at 11 a.m. (MDT) against Keyano College of Fort McMurray, who lost 84-75 to Sheridan College of Oakville, Ont.
In other opening round games Holland College of Ontario downed Champlain St-Laurent of Quebec 72-61 and top-seeded Langara College of Vancouver stopped John Abbott 90-63.
Broncos 77 Thunder 54
The Olds College Broncos rode CCAA player of the year, Jylisa Williams to an opening game 77-54 victory over the Algonquin Thunder of Nepean, Ont., in Truro, N.S.
Williams scored 14 of the team?s first 39 points as the Broncos grabbed a 39-27 lead at the half.
She ran into foul trouble in the third quarter and sat out much of the 10 minutes, which saw the Thunder narrow the gap to 50-43. However, with Williams back on the floor the Broncos outscored the Thunder 27-11 in the final quarter.
Williams finished with 24 points, seven rebounds and four assists.
Melanie Hogue added 12 points and 13 rebounds and Jerri-Lynn Chisholm had 12 boards, Angela Driscoll had 11 points and Laura Belisle nine.
The Broncos face top-ranked and defending champion Montmorency Normades of Laval, Que., in the semifinals today. The Normades downed Mount Saint Vincent University of Halifax 67-44.
In other games Dawson College Blues of Montreal downed Vancouver Island University 65 43 and St. Thomas University of Federicton. N.B. defeated Fanshaw College of Ontario 76-53.
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Public release date: 20-Mar-2013
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