Good Morning All,
Happy Mother's Day! In honor of Mother's day, I have picked one article about some outstanding moms, who juggle dreams and children, successfully. I was really impressed with this article, which tells of several women who are moms, who want to be in the Olympics, and who find time for being mommies, while also finding time to pursue their dreams. GO Ladies!
Anyway, today is a short day, but there are still several good articles. Please feel free to comment me below (at the end of the last article there is a space for comments). I hope you enjoy the posts! I have enjoyed finding them for you, as always. :)
Today's Top 5:
1. Olympics Moms Juggle Training, Kids, Beijing Dreams (Seattle Times)
2. U.S. Planes Emit Less Greenhouse Gases, Despite Flying More (Honolulu Advertiser)
3. Ohio River Rescue Pulls Five from Water (The Courier-Journal)
4. Once Shunned by Academics, Wikipedia Now a Teaching Tool (Physorg.com)
5. Key al Qaeda Member Killed in Afghanistan (Yahoo News)
Honorable Mention:
1. Missing Link Found in German Rock - Fossil Record Fixed (Earth Times)
Today's Top 5:
1. Olympics Moms Juggle Training, Kids, Beijing Dreams
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/olympics/2004406033_olynotes11.html
By Meri-Jo Borzilleri
Tina Ellertson whispers through the telephone line, but her lowered voice can't contain the joy.
It's bursting through the line. Mya, just 4 days old, naps nearby. In 15 minutes, she'll be awake, ready for another feeding. Ellertson sounds so happy, it's not long before she drops the whisper. She's got two girls now, including 7-year-old MacKenzie.
She also has a dream.
The former University of Washington soccer player, known as Tina Frimpong when she led the Huskies in career scoring with 43 goals, wants to regain her spot on the women's national team in time for the Beijing Olympics in August.
That means not only healing from last Sunday's childbirth, but getting back in shape fast enough to play with the best soccer talent in the world. It means learning a new system under a new coach after not having played at an elite level since October. A comeback in two months? Ellertson knows this sounds impossible, but she's going to try anyway.
Motherhood and Olympic aspirations are no longer mutually exclusive. Olympic moms are everywhere these days, balancing workouts one minute, a kid on their hip the next.
Swimmer Dara Torres. Local weightlifter Melanie Roach, who competes in the Olympic trials starting Friday in Atlanta. Soccer players Kate Markgraf and Christie Rampone. Basketball players Lisa Leslie and Tina Thompson. Softball's Jennie Finch. All moms. All world-class athletes near or at the top of their game.
It's causing a shift in how we think about and train our Olympic athletes. For the first time, the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs is adding living space for families in its athlete residences.
But Ellertson's is no ordinary comeback attempt for a mom. Her name is not even on the 27-player national team pool this year from which the Olympic team will be chosen.
For her quest, Ellertson finds inspiration on the national team, where Markgraf calls regularly with advice on post-delivery workouts. Other teammates also have kept in touch.
She also finds inspiration in her own household. Her husband, Brad, was scheduled to graduate from WSU Vancouver this weekend. There's Mya. Especially, there's MacKenzie, "the coolest kid you'll ever meet," who has watched her mom practice and play with the national team.
"What's cool is she's always been around a group of girls, of strong women," said Ellertson, from Vancouver, Wash. "She gets to see women not hearing 'No' for an answer, pushing themselves to the highest they can do."
Like Ellertson, Seattle's Aretha (Hill) Thurmond feels the pull of the Olympic rings. She chose to give up a promising career to seek her third trip to the Olympics, her first as a mom. Her son, 11-month-old Devon, is a regular at UW's Dempsey fieldhouse, where his mother throws the discus. She parks his stroller on the sideline. If he gets squirmy, any one of a number of athletes interrupts their training to take him for a spin around the track.
About a year ago, Thurmond landed a career job as the director of the athlete alumni club at UW. But the former star at Renton High School and the UW had to choose between discus and her job when Devon came along. Juggling all three was too much. She quit the job this March.
Thurmond, 31, is in the mix to qualify for Beijing when the trials begin in June in Eugene, Ore.
"It's something he can be a part of as well," said Thurmond, whose husband, Reedus, is UW's throwing coach and will be competing in discus at the trials, too. "Kids can't really be part of a career job. I wanted to be fair to him. I also wanted to be fair to myself. I thought maybe I might be done, but I'm not. I'm not. The Olympic flame is still burning inside me. Why not give it my all? You only have a small window to be an athlete."
Ellertson is one of the swiftest defenders in U.S. team history. Her place on the national team roster was solid. So was a berth on the 2008 Olympic team. Then came Mya.
She knows the odds aren't in her favor to return in time for Beijing. She pushed the limits, continuing to work out until a scare six months into her pregnancy, when vigorous training triggered early contractions. Ellertson cut back her workouts and intensity, slowing to a walk the last three weeks before delivering.
Last week, Ellertson, 25, got the OK from her doctor to start running for the first time, five days after Mya's birth. Her plan is to work up to scrimmages with men's teams. She has had a few conversations with new women's coach Pia Sundhage during her pregnancy. Sundhage has been "awesome" and supportive, Ellertson said.
"I look at my daughter Mya and said, 'OK, she's amazing and beautiful.' Playing in the Olympics is something I will do, whether it's in August or four years from now. I feel like I'm pretty lucky."
Today, Thurmond will spend her first Mother's Day halfway around the world from Devon. She'll be at a track meet in Osaka, Japan, while her mother cares for her son.
Ellertson will spend Mother's Day at home with her two kids, celebrating Brad's graduation as her U.S. teammates recover from Saturday night's scheduled exhibition against Canada in Washington, D.C.
Both feel the tug from somewhere else. But neither would trade where they are right now.
Crew heats up
The run-up to Beijing gets serious for area rowers at the Olympic trials starting Tuesday in West Windsor, N.J.
Lake Stevens' Bjorn Larsen teams with Richard Montgomery of Batavia, Ill., in the lightweight men's double sculls. Michelle Trannel of East Dubuque, Ill., and Liz Patterson of Davis, Calif., will represent Seattle's Pocock Rowing Center in the lightweight women's double sculls.
All are vying for a berth on the U.S. Olympic team in the five-day trials. But it's a little more complicated than just winning there. Because the United States failed to qualify for Olympic berths in the lightweight men's and women's double sculls at last year's world championships, they have to fight through another layer of competition to earn a trip to Beijing.
First, the teams must win at next week's Olympic trials. That means Larsen and Montgomery have to top a nine-crew field that includes Californians Michael Aller of Santa Barbara and Gavin Frase of Orinda, who won April's national-selection regatta. Trannel and Patterson have to beat five other teams in the women's event.
First-place boats then travel to Posnan, Poland, June 15-18, where each must finish in the top two of the international field to qualify for the Olympics.
Notes
• Brush Prairie's Seth Kelsey is bound for Beijing, making his second Olympic team in fencing. Kelsey, a 2003 U.S. Air Force Academy graduate who trains in Colorado Springs, is the lone U.S. entry in epee since the U.S. failed to qualify a team in that event. The 12-member U.S. team will be represented in all individual disciplines and will compete in three of the four team disciplines — women's sabre, men's sabre and women's foil.
• A new book has relevance in the midst of Olympic torch protests and vows by world leaders to skip Beijing's opening ceremony to decry China's abysmal human-rights history. "Boycott: Stolen Dreams of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games," by Jerry and Tom Caraccioli, includes a forward written by Walter Mondale apologizing to athletes for the Jimmy Carter-led boycott by the U.S. Olympic team in 1980. The book focuses on the stories of 18 athletes, most of whom you've never heard of, who were denied their dream of competing in the Olympics because of politics. The most recognized names? Basketball players Isiah Thomas and Carol Blazejowski.
2. U.S. Planes Emit Less Greenhouse Gases, Despite Flying More
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/BUSINESS03/805110341/-1/RSS04
By Thomas Frank
USA Today
WASHINGTON — The U.S. aviation industry has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent since 2000, even as the amount of flying has reached record levels, government data show.
The decline was among the steepest of any sector measured by the Environmental Protection Agency and came as total U.S. emissions of gases that warm the Earth remained level between 2000 and 2006. Greenhouse gases from cars and trucks rose 6 percent in that period, according to an EPA report in April.
Aviation has faced pressure to improve efficiency as fuel prices began soaring in 2003. More recently, elected officials and environmentalists have called for stricter controls on aircraft emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, the most prominent greenhouse gas.
Airlines cut fuel consumption from a record 20.4 billion gallons in 2000 to 19.6 billion in 2006, Department of Transportation figures show. In that period, their planes flew 18 percent more miles on domestic and international routes. That marks the first extended period in which airlines have cut fuel use while flying more miles, DOT data show.
"The airlines have historically done a much better job than the auto companies at increasing efficiency," said Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "They feel fuel prices much more than your average consumer feels changes in fuel costs at the pump."
Airlines have taken many steps to curb fuel use, such as adding navigation equipment so planes can fly more direct routes, modifying wings to improve aerodynamics and shaving weight from jets by installing lighter seats. Older jets are being replaced with newer, more fuel-efficient models.
Plane efficiency — the amount of fuel consumed per mile flown — improved by 23 percent from 2000 to 2006, DOT figures show. Auto efficiency rose by 2 percent in that time. Commercial planes account for 2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry officials warn that aviation's improvement may be hard to continue.
"There's so little left you can do other than renewing the fleet or flying less," said John Heimlich, chief economist of the Air Transport Association.
3. Ohio River Rescue Pulls Five from Water
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/NEWS01/80511002/-1/rss
The Courier-Journal • May 11, 2008
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Five adults were rescued early this morning after their boat lost power on the Ohio River and was pulled through the gates at the McAlpine Locks and Dam.
Two people were taken to area hospitals with injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening, according to Lt. Col. Tom Carroll of Louisville Fire & Rescue.
Maj. Brian Lewis of the Clarksville (Ind.) fire and rescue said three of the adults were wearing life jackets when they were pulled from the water; two others were clinging to flotation devices.
The rescue occurred after 2 a.m. The initial call about a stranded boat came into MetroSafe dispatch 12:53 a.m., according to supervisor Wendy Martin, but did not include an exact location for the boat. She said Louisville Fire & Rescue was dispatched.
Carroll said the boat was trapped against the locks near the dam. A fire boat attempted to extend a line and pull the boat free, but instead the strong river current sucked the boat and its passengers through the gates of the dam.
Lewis said the boat was against the gate near the middle of the river.
Clarksville officials had already put a boat into the river at the Harrison Avenue boat ramp and had stationed it below the dam, preparing for a "worst-case scenario," Lewis said. He said rescue personnel were able to locate the boat's occupants below the Falls of the Ohio Interpretative Center and above the boat ramp after hearing their calls for help. He said three of the people were rescued together and the two others were found separately.
"It's a miracle no one was killed," Lewis said.
The passengers, all of them from the Louisville area, said they had let the boat drift in the river and didn't realize until too late that they were moving close to the dam, Carroll said. They were unable to restart the boat, however, and the current pushed them further toward the gate.
"It ended better than I wildly could have imagined," Carroll said.
No other information was immediately available.
4. Once Shunned by Academics, Wikipedia Now a Teaching Tool
http://www.physorg.com/news129701404.html
Published: 4 hours ago, 05:10 EST, May 11, 2008
Wikipedia, the upstart Internet encyclopedia that most universities forbid students to use, has suddenly become a teaching tool for professors.
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Recently, university teachers have swapped student term papers for assignments to write entries for the free online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is an "open-source" web site, which means that entries can be started or edited by anyone in the world with an Internet connection.
Writing for Wikipedia "seems like a much larger stage, more of a challenge," than a term paper, said professor Jon Beasley-Murray, who teaches Latin American literature at the University of British Columbia in this western Canadian city.
"The vast majority of Wikipedia entries aren't very good," said Beasley-Murray, but said the site aims to be academically sound.
To reach its goal of academic standards, said Wikipedia's web site, it set up an assessment scale on its English-language site. The best encyclopedia entries are ranked as "Featured Articles," and run each day on the home page at http://www.wikipedia.com.
To be ranked as a "Featured Article," Wikipedia said an entry must "provide thorough, well-written coverage of their topic, supported by many references to peer-reviewed publications."
Of more than 10 million articles in 253 languages, only about 2,000 have reached "Featured Article" status, it said.
As an experiment, last January Beasley-Murray promised his students a rare A+ grade if they got their projects for his literature course, called "Murder, Madness and Mayhem," accepted as a Wikipedia Featured Article."
In May, three entries created by nine students in the course became the first student works to reach Wikipedia's top rank.
Their articles, about the book "El Señor Presidente" by Nobel prize-winning Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias, ran May 5 on Wikipedia's home page.
Wikipedia has also designated, but not yet published, a student's biography on Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, and an entry on Gabriel García Márquez's book, "the General in his Labyrinth."
Beasley-Murray said the projects took the students four months, and one entry was revised 1,000 times.
Typically, thousands or millions of people visit a Wikipedia entry, and each visitor is able to edit entries, or even flag an article considered unworthy to have it removed.
Working online with anyone watching or editing "was really hard to get into," said Eva Shiu, a third-year student who worked on the Marquez entry. "But it was really exciting, and I feel like I've accomplished something," she told AFP.
"I got addicted to it ... I was up nights until three or four a.m. in the morning working on it."
Monica Freudenreich, who worked on the Asturias entry, said she liked the fact her contribution will survive online. Usually term papers "end up in a binder than eventually sits under my bed," she wrote on Wikipedia.
The University of British Columbia entries are among some 70 academic projects now registered at Wikipedia, by institutions from Yale University to the University of Tartu, Estonia.
Wikipedia itself invites professors "to use Wikipedia in your class to demonstrate how an open content website works (or doesn't)."
But the experiment has had controversies, including student work that was instantly deleted as not "notable."
"Sometimes it's a disaster," said Beasley-Murray. "But in some ways it's good news ... this was a great learning experience for students."
5. Key al Qaeda Member Killed in Afghanistan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080511/ts_nm/afghan_qaeda_dc
web 1 hour, 18 minutes ago
KABUL (Reuters) - A prominent member of al Qaeda was killed in fighting with U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, the group said in a statement posted on an Islamist website on Sunday.
Abu Suleiman al-Otaibi, formerly one of the group's leaders in Iraq, was killed in a "fierce battle with the worshipers of the cross" in Paktia, it said without giving the date of the battle.
Another al Qaeda member, identified as Abu Dejana al-Qahtani, also died in the fighting, it added.
Afghan officials said they had no information on the report. But the government earlier said in a statement that "five opposition" fighters were killed on Saturday in Paktia during an operation involving Afghan and U.S.-led troops.
The leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said Qahtani left Iraq about six months ago without giving further details.
Otaibi was the head of the judiciary at the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, a group started by al Qaeda and fellow Sunni militant groups.
Violence has been at its worst level in Afghanistan since 2006, the bloodiest period since the removal of the al Qaeda-backed Taliban in 2001.
U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001 after its leaders refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and his top aides to the United States for trial for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.
(Reporting by Inal Ersan in Dubai and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul; editing by Sami Aboudi)
Honorable Mention:
Missing Link Found in German Rock - Fossil Record Fixed
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/204387,missing-link-found-in-german-rock--fossil-record-fixed.html
Posted : Fri, 09 May 2008 12:26:01 GMT
Author : DPA
Category : Science (Technology)
Wuppertal, Germany - A fossil which was hailed Friday as the missing link in a worldwide evolutionary mystery has been discovered by a rock hunter poking around after a building demolition in Germany. The carpoid, which lived 360 million years ago, is an ancestor of today's sea urchins and starfish. It closes a 70-million-year gap in the evolutionary record of a group of creatures known as the echinoderms which live on the sea bottom and have protective spikes.
Some evolutionary theorists have suggested that vertebrate creatures including mankind are cousins of the echinoderms.
Till its discovery in Wuppertal, Germany, no carpoid had been known between 390 million and 320 million years ago, geologist Hans Martin Weber of the Rhineland local authority said in Cologne on Friday.
The amateur palaeontologist found several fragments up to 1.2 centimetres in size of the creature's shell and fore end in some rock exposed after a kindergarten had been ripped down. He took them to Weber to identify.
Geologist Weber said the rock had once been silt at the bottom of a tropical sea.
Other fossils found in the rock were the first of their types in Germany. Weber said the site had been well known to fossil hunters for 100 years and it was amazing no one had seen the echinoderm before.
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