GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCIV) -- Rashard Alston now more than ever has a true grip on reality.?
"I'm so excited about starting my career at Newberry College. I get to go to school for free and do the thing I love most, which is play football," said Alston.?
It's never been easy for Alston. He backed up Goose Creek great Virgil Smalls before breaking into the starting lineup and breaking out his senior season.
But his season ended with his team being booted from the playoffs rather than at Williams-Brice Stadium.
He'll bring strength, toughness and a nose for the end zone to his next chapter at Newberry.?
"Anyone wants to go and start but even if I don't start, I just want to help the team," said Alston.?
Things and perspective changed for Alston earlier this month. After leaving IHOP in North Charleston with a group of friends and heading towards his grandmother's home off of Dorchester Road on a rainy night, his life changed.?
"Two or three miles down the road, it was raining and I felt the car hydroplane a bit. I slowed down to 35 miles an hour; the right back tire blew on me. I tried to brake but the back axle broke. The car twisted facing the other direction; I saw the wall in the middle of the interstate and I couldn't do anything," said Alston.?
It was a moment, an instant, where football was the furthest thing from his mind. ?
"The car flipped, hit the side, the top, the other side. The glass shattered and it landed on the wheels. I was sitting and feeling myself. I had a white shirt on but it was covered with blood. I didn't know where it was coming from," he said.?
Alston says his faith got him through the crash. His strength on the field was nothing compared to the strength that helped him on I-26 that night.?
"I sat there for 5 or 10 minutes crying before I called my Mom, Dad or the police. I'm thankful that I'm still alive," he said.
Aside from scrapes and bruises, Alston walked away unscathed.?
"You feel relief that you are still alive, not dead. Usually, you hear about someone and their car flipping, you hear about them dying or seriously injured."?
That was two weeks from his first college football camp. Rashard Alston truly understands the saying "live to play."?
Rwanda doesn't do many things better than the US, but in some ways it protects its teenage girls better. It is more than twice as successful as the US at vaccinating girls against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer.
"Our vaccination rate is stuck at one-third of our teen girls, yet Rwanda has vaccinated more than 80 per cent of its target population," says Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has released new figures on the US vaccination rate.
In 2012, only 33 per cent of eligible girls had all three doses needed for maximum protection, well short of the 80 per cent target. The CDC warns that unless uptake improves, there will be 1400 unnecessary deaths from cervical cancer each year.
Frieden said that a continuing worry among parents is that the jab will tempt their daughters to engage in risky sex. "HPV vaccine does not open the door to sex," he said. "It closes the door to cancer."
Questionnaires to parents and doctors as part of a survey of 19,000 girls showed that parents often misunderstand that to be fully effective, the jab is necessary in girls aged only 11 or 12, before they're sexually active.
And doctors are not proactively offering the jab, even though they have opportunities to do so when girls visit for other routine vaccinations.
Despite this, Frieden said the vaccine is already working. In June, the CDC released results of another study showing that rates of infection with the virus had halved from 11 to 5 per cent since introduction of the vaccine.
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BARRON, Wis. ? Chuck Kirkwood thought he was in trouble when he was called into the Barron High School office about 70 years ago.
Instead, he was asked to play taps for a military funeral. He accepted, and calculations are that he's performed at about 3,500 funerals and counting, the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram reported.
"I was never in the service, but I feel so indebted to those who serve," Kirkwood, 84, said. "I feel I don't deserve a lot of credit for what I do. Those who have served and are serving should always be getting the honor ? not me."
It was 1943 when he was sent to the principal's office, recalling high school band director Francis White recommended Kirkwood play taps at military ceremonies when the person who normally performed was not available.
"I've been playing at military funerals ever since," Kirkwood said. "I've played for Veterans Day, Memorial Day, flag-raising ceremonies and a number of other events in Barron and many other communities around here. I enjoy it, but I have to say, I remember being a bit nervous that first time in high school."
Kirkwood in recent years has kept a log of military services in which he's performed. Based on an average of slightly more than 50 a year, he estimated he's played in more than 3,500 such services.
Kirkwood started playing the trumpet in an effort to help his breathing.
"I had asthma real bad as a kid, and my dad (Charles) was a pharmacist in Barron. A doctor friend suggested that I play a horn to help my breathing," Kirkwood said. "I started playing and haven't quit."
Kirkwood managed to play at military funerals even while doing mechanical work for 44 years for the Barron County Highway Department.
"When I first started doing it, I would take a couple hours of vacation, but then one of the other fellas I worked with talked to the Highway Committee and said Legionnaires weren't getting docked when they went, so then I didn't either," Kirkwood said. "I would take my suit to my mother's house, change clothes, play, change back and go back to work. I made up the time missed by working longer those days."
It was his mother, Harriet, who persuaded Kirkwood to start keeping track of his military service performances.
Kirkwood also has played in several groups, beginning with the 720 Blues Orchestra while he was in high school. Other groups included the Barron VFW band, Bob Post Orchestra and 37 years with the 4-Aces. In 1993, he started performing at area nursing homes and became a regular fixture under the title Chuck Kirkwood and Friends.
One recent day, Kirkwood performed at the start of the Barron County Fair and was joined in the afternoon at Monroe Manor in Barron by pianist Lenore Berg of Barron, tuba player Ed Thompson and coronet player John Kirk. Berg has been playing for more than 60 years, while Kirk and Thompson are retired music instructors.
"We just have fun doing this," Thompson said.
Kirkwood estimates he and others routinely play at about 25 area nursing homes.
"We're supposed to be lifting their spirits, but they lift ours," Kirkwood said, recalling when a woman at a Rice Lake nursing home hadn't spoken for about three months but then started naming the songs the group was playing.
"It's so nice to hear things like that."
Shauna Otto, who handles activities at Monroe Manor, said Kirkwood and others who perform "are very important to the residents here. They enjoy their kind of music and look forward to it. They do such a good job too."
Former Barron Mayor and Barron County Supervisor Bard Kittleson expressed his thoughts of Kirkwood, saying: "I know of no one who has given as much of his time and talent to the benefit of mankind than Chuck Kirkwood."
Kirkwood isn't sure how long he'll continue to perform.
"I said I will keep going until I miss more notes than I hit," he said. "I feel good, and I enjoy doing it."
NASA's Chandra sees eclipsing planet in X-rays for first timePublic release date: 29-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Watzke mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu 617-496-7998 Chandra X-ray Center
For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.
An advantageous alignment of a planet and its parent star in the system HD 189733, which is 63 light-years from Earth, enabled NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM Newton Observatory to observe a dip in X-ray intensity as the planet transited the star.
"Thousands of planet candidates have been seen to transit in only optical light," said Katja Poppenhaeger of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., who led a new study to be published in the Aug. 10 edition of the Astrophysical Journal. "Finally being able to study one in X-rays is important because it reveals new information about the properties of an exoplanet."
The team used Chandra to observe six transits and data from XMM Newton observations of one.
The planet, known as HD 189733b, is a hot Jupiter, meaning it is similar in size to Jupiter in our solar system but in very close orbit around its star. HD 189733b is more than 30 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. It orbits the star once every 2.2 days.
HD 189733b is the closest hot Jupiter to Earth, which makes it a prime target for astronomers who want to learn more about this type of exoplanet and the atmosphere around it. They have used NASA's Kepler space telescope to study it at optical wavelengths, and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to confirm it is blue in color as a result of the preferential scattering of blue light by silicate particles in its atmosphere.
The study with Chandra and XMM Newton has revealed clues to the size of the planet's atmosphere. The spacecraft saw light decreasing during the transits. The decrease in X-ray light was three times greater than the corresponding decrease in optical light.
"The X-ray data suggest there are extended layers of the planet's atmosphere that are transparent to optical light but opaque to X-rays," said co-author Jurgen Schmitt of Hamburger Sternwarte in Hamburg, Germany. "However, we need more data to confirm this idea."
The researchers also are learning about how the planet and the star can affect one another.
Astronomers have known for about a decade ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from the main star in HD 189733 are evaporating the atmosphere of HD 189733b over time. The authors estimate it is losing 100 million to 600 million kilograms of mass per second. HD 189733b's atmosphere appears to be thinning 25 percent to 65 percent faster than it would be if the planet's atmosphere were smaller.
"The extended atmosphere of this planet makes it a bigger target for high-energy radiation from its star, so more evaporation occurs," said co-author Scott Wolk, also of CfA.
The main star in HD 189733 also has a faint red companion, detected for the first time in X-rays with Chandra. The stars likely formed at the same time, but the main star appears to be 3 billion to 3 1/2 billion years younger than its companion star because it rotates faster, displays higher levels of magnetic activity and is about 30 times brighter in X-rays than its companion.
"This star is not acting its age, and having a big planet as a companion may be the explanation," said Poppenhaeger. "It's possible this hot Jupiter is keeping the star's rotation and magnetic activity high because of tidal forces, making it behave in some ways like a much younger star."
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NASA's Chandra sees eclipsing planet in X-rays for first timePublic release date: 29-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Watzke mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu 617-496-7998 Chandra X-ray Center
For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.
An advantageous alignment of a planet and its parent star in the system HD 189733, which is 63 light-years from Earth, enabled NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM Newton Observatory to observe a dip in X-ray intensity as the planet transited the star.
"Thousands of planet candidates have been seen to transit in only optical light," said Katja Poppenhaeger of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., who led a new study to be published in the Aug. 10 edition of the Astrophysical Journal. "Finally being able to study one in X-rays is important because it reveals new information about the properties of an exoplanet."
The team used Chandra to observe six transits and data from XMM Newton observations of one.
The planet, known as HD 189733b, is a hot Jupiter, meaning it is similar in size to Jupiter in our solar system but in very close orbit around its star. HD 189733b is more than 30 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. It orbits the star once every 2.2 days.
HD 189733b is the closest hot Jupiter to Earth, which makes it a prime target for astronomers who want to learn more about this type of exoplanet and the atmosphere around it. They have used NASA's Kepler space telescope to study it at optical wavelengths, and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to confirm it is blue in color as a result of the preferential scattering of blue light by silicate particles in its atmosphere.
The study with Chandra and XMM Newton has revealed clues to the size of the planet's atmosphere. The spacecraft saw light decreasing during the transits. The decrease in X-ray light was three times greater than the corresponding decrease in optical light.
"The X-ray data suggest there are extended layers of the planet's atmosphere that are transparent to optical light but opaque to X-rays," said co-author Jurgen Schmitt of Hamburger Sternwarte in Hamburg, Germany. "However, we need more data to confirm this idea."
The researchers also are learning about how the planet and the star can affect one another.
Astronomers have known for about a decade ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from the main star in HD 189733 are evaporating the atmosphere of HD 189733b over time. The authors estimate it is losing 100 million to 600 million kilograms of mass per second. HD 189733b's atmosphere appears to be thinning 25 percent to 65 percent faster than it would be if the planet's atmosphere were smaller.
"The extended atmosphere of this planet makes it a bigger target for high-energy radiation from its star, so more evaporation occurs," said co-author Scott Wolk, also of CfA.
The main star in HD 189733 also has a faint red companion, detected for the first time in X-rays with Chandra. The stars likely formed at the same time, but the main star appears to be 3 billion to 3 1/2 billion years younger than its companion star because it rotates faster, displays higher levels of magnetic activity and is about 30 times brighter in X-rays than its companion.
"This star is not acting its age, and having a big planet as a companion may be the explanation," said Poppenhaeger. "It's possible this hot Jupiter is keeping the star's rotation and magnetic activity high because of tidal forces, making it behave in some ways like a much younger star."
###
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?
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.
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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - After 13 years in the NFL, the time has come to say goodbye for S-U alum and former Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb, who officially retired from the NFL Monday.
Some college basketball players score lots of points, but they have to take a ton of shots to accomplish that.
There are other players who get things done on a minimal amount of shots.
They shoot a good percentage from the field. They also might knock down their fair share from beyond the arc. Or, they get to the line and convert foul shots into easy points.?
In this list, we will look at the 10 most efficient college basketball players in 2013-14 using last season?s stats as our benchmark.
Basic shooting percentages are a good place to start, but we?ll have to dig deeper.?Another stat that we will consider is free-throw rate (free-throw attempts/field-goal attempts)
Midwestsportsfans.com?s Andy Bottoms says this about?free-throw rate:
It [free-throw rate] sheds light on where players tend to take their shots.? Low ratios are indicative of spot-up shooters who are less apt to attack the basket, while high ratios are typically associated with inside players or those who aggressively drive the lane.
One more stat that addresses efficiency is points per shot (total points/field-goal attempts). The more points that a player scores compared to his number of FG attempts, the more productive he is.
Some of these players are well known All-American candidates. Others are unfamiliar gamers who may become breakout stars in the coming season.
All of these players deserve props for their economy on the court.
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Public release date: 29-Jul-2013
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