Archive for the ‘Goodnight’ Category

Mayor Goodnight to speak at job creation and retention conference

Friday, March 19th, 2010

On Thursday, March 18, mayor Greg Goodnight will be one of thefeatured speakers at the “Job Creation and Retention: Strategiesthat are working in Indiana today” conference inIndianapolis.

Goodnight will be joined by mayor Greg Ballard, Indianapolis, mayorJames Fleck, Columbia City, and Kevin Brinegar, president, IndianaChamber of Commerce, as well as other economic development leadersas they relate best practices strategies and learn and network withnational, economic development experts.

In the audience will be Indiana economic development leadersincluding elected officials, chamber representatives and regionaleconomic leaders.

The keynote speaker will be C. Robert Sawyer, who directs theEconomic Development Administration’s (EDA) six-state Chicagoregional office which is responsible for annually awarding grantstotaling approximately $34 million.

The one-day conference is conducted by the High PerformanceGovernment Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated todesigning, developing and deploying high performance accountablepublic services. The Network assists local government chief electedofficials develop quality improvements by using data to identifyservice delivery weaknesses and to establish working models forimmediate and on-going improvements.

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UH baseball opens season with 6-0 loss to Texas State

Friday, February 26th, 2010

James Nielsen Chronicle

UH’s Matt Creel, right, is tagged out at home plate by Texas State’s Jordan Kopycinski in the fourth inning of Friday’s season opener.

The Houston Cougars grudgingly acquainted themselves with the fine line between a good night, a great night and a grit-the-teeth-and-bear-it night.

UH pitcher Michael Goodnight was on his way from the mound to the dugout, convinced he’d snapped off just the breaking ball to get him out of a fifth-inning jam. Home-plate umpire Jesse Moreno didn’t see it that way, prolonging an inning that sent UH into a 6-0 season-opening spiral against the Texas State Bobcats on Friday night at Cougar Field.

Instead of getting the strikeout that would have ended the inning with a scoreless tie, Goodnight turned a bases-loaded jam over to the bullpen. Two bases-loaded walks by lefthander William Kankel pushed across two more runs than UH coach Rayner Noble’s lineup could muster.

“That call could have went either way,” Noble said. “I can’t say that was the ballgame right there, but the inning really started with that pitch.”

Scuffling from the get-go

The Cougars never got much of anything started against Texas State righthander Michael Russo, who combined with Carson Smith on a six-hitter. a crowd of 1,538 saw the Cougars get shut out for the first time since an 8-0 loss to San Diego State on March 28, 2008. Russo tantalized the Cougars with off-speed stuff the first six innings, allowing four hits and two walks while striking out four.

“The two guys they pitched against us are two of the better arms we’ll see all season,” Noble said. “When you see that kind of pitching, it’s difficult on your offense.”

Goodnight was plenty difficult on the Bobcats, retiring 12 consecutive hitters before Kyle Kubitza led off the fifth with single. Unaccustomed to working out of the stretch, Goodnight balked Kubitza to second. Goodnight struck out Daniel Neumann and Kyle Livingstone before keeping the inning going by hitting Laurn Randall with a breaking pitch.

“I had most of my pitches working, putting them where I wanted to,” Goodnight said. “The fifth inning, it just kind of got away. I felt good, but all of a sudden my pitches weren’t going where I wanted them to go.”

Clearly laboring, Goodnight froze Jordan Kopycinski with a 3-2 breaking ball that handcuffed catcher Chris Wallace. Goodnight stared in disbelief when Kopycinski started jogging to first base with a walk.

“I dropped the ball,” Wallace said. “That’s on me. If I catch the ball, I think he gets the strike.”

Exit Goodnight after 79 pitches. Exit Kankel after nine pitches to pinch-hitter Andrew Lacombe and leadoff man Tyler Sibley later.

“I thought (the pitch) was there,” Goodnight said. “You just have to on and play the game. It’s bad luck, but it’s part of baseball.”

Finding middle ground

UH righthander Codey Morehouse restored order without any more damage in the fifth, only to create more disorder in the sixth by serving up a two-run homer by Livingstone that made the score 4-0. Two walks and an error by Morehouse led to another Texas State run in the seventh that pushed the lead to 5-0.

Russo, meanwhile, allowed only two Cougars as far as second base during his six innings. Blake Kelso led off the first with a double to left-center and got stranded there. Matt Creel got thrown out trying to score on Austin Gracey’s two-out-single to left in the fourth. the Cougars wound up with only two more hits than errors.

“We were pulling off the ball fierce,” Noble said. “We’ve got to keep our shoulder in there and drive the ball back the middle. We’re trying to hit the ball to McDonald’s (out beyond left field) a little too much.”

steve.campbell@chron.com

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Goodnight, moon. Good morning, sun.

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Teenagers, like everyone else, need bright lights in the morning, particularly in the blue wavelengths, to synchronize their inner, circadian rhythms with nature’s cycles of day and night.

If they are deprived of blue light during the morning, they go to sleep an average of six minutes later each night, until their bodies are completely out of synch with the school day, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported last week in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.

The finding was made by fitting a group of students with goggles that blocked blue light and discovering that their circadian rhythms were significantly affected.

“These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly underperforming on standardized tests,” said lead author Mariana G. Figueiro, a sleep researcher at RPI’s Lighting Research Center. “We are starting to call this the ‘teenage night owl syndrome.’ “

“This is a nice little preliminary study” that definitely needs to be replicated, said sleep researcher Mary Carskadon of Brown University, who was not involved in the research. “I think the big take-home message probably is that better lighting in the schools is a good idea.” Parents and teachers have been complaining in recent years that teens stay up too late at night, then fall asleep in class the next morning and do poorly. The new findings provide a possible explanation for the problem.

At the root of sleep research is the circadian rhythm, the body’s natural sleep and waking cycle. Even though the Earth makes a full rotation in 24 hours, the body’s circadian cycle is about 24 hours and six minutes long. The cycle is mediated by a chemical called melatonin. The body starts to produce it about two hours before it is time to fall asleep and, in the absence of light, melatonin is released about six minutes later each day.

As a result, people in dark rooms, caves or other locations with no external time cues will fall asleep about six minutes later each day, so that their sleep-wake cycles slowly drift in and out of phase with the outside world.

In the study, Figueiro and Mark Rea, director of the Lighting Research Center, studied 11 students at Smith Middle School in Chapel Hill, N.C., which is designed so that a lot of sunlight reaches classrooms.

On a Friday night, the researchers measured what time the 11 students’ bodies began releasing melatonin. on Monday morning, the students were sent to school with orange goggles that blocked most blue light from their eyes to mimic the conditions found in many, if not most, schools.

“This is our first field study,” Figueiro said. “We would like to replicate it in larger studies, also for longer periods of time. We would also like to determine if you can see an impact on performance.” If the findings are replicated, a variety of solutions are available. Ideally, new schools would be built to allow more natural sunlight into the classrooms. Students could also be exposed to more sunlight outside.

Incandescent lights should never be used in classrooms because “they are heavy on yellow and red, and the circadian system is not tuned to those colors,” Figueiro said. “You want incandescent light sources in the evening.” some fluorescent lights are also not very good. most that are currently used produce orange or reddish light, but it is now possible to purchase bulbs that emit more blue.

– Los Angeles Times

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