2013年1月17日星期四

What Gets Blood Pumping When It’s Still Winter?

Four weeks from today, you can find me in Walmart. I’ll be loading my cart with hot chocolate mix and Toasti Toes to prepare for the bitter cold beginning of Razorback baseball.

I’ve already made my cooler, complete with the cartoon Diamond Hog about to hit a homer, but you don’t need ice cold Diet Coke when it’s 40 degrees at 3 p.m. as Jacob Mahan steps up to the plate. You need hot chocolate, piping hot and insulated in a Stanley Thermos.

You also need wool blankets and Toasti Toes stuffed into your sneakers. You need two pairs of gloves, a baseball cap and a jacket with a hood.

Of course you’re permitted to wear the warm knitted hat your grandmother made you for Christmas, but you don’t. This is baseball season, and nothing but a red baseball cap with the Arkansas “A” stitched on the front will do.

That’s the thing about college baseball. It starts in the middle of February, when it’s still winter according to the calendar, and it still feels like it if you live anywhere other than Florida or southern Texas.

Especially in Northwest Arkansas, where the average temperature last year on opening day at Baum Stadium was 42 degrees.

If the fans need blankets and warm drinks and Toasti Toes, how do our 40 favorite players make it through the game? Of course they wear warm layers and wear jackets in the dugout and keep an elevated heart rate by moving around and making plays, but I have an argument for something a little more obscure.

It’s the batter ditty. Every player has a walk-out song when it’s his turn to approach the plate.

Transplanted Californian-turned-Razorback Dominic Ficociello had 2Pac’s “California Love” as his walk-out song for the last two seasons. I have a $5 bet with my assistant editor that he chooses to pay homage to the Golden State again this year with the same song.We have many different types of crys talbeads wholesale.

Last year, in what most took to be a bet lost by Bo Bigham, his walk-out song was “Baby” by Justin Bieber for the first series against Villanova.Find Complete Details about howo tractor Truck.Want to find howo concrete mixer?

A batter ditty will put the player where he needs to be mentally and physically to deliver in the game. There’s even science behind it all.

In a study published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, certain types of music can be used to prevent choking, a sports phenomenon in which players don’t deliver under pressure. LeBron James has never experienced this phenomenon. We’ll delve further into the question of clutch next week.

Three basketball players had to shoot free throws under differing levels of pressure and with or without music. The music decreased the players’ self-awareness, and they performed better at the line.

In another study by the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, 12 healthy men cycled on stationary bikes. Those listening to faster-tempo music had higher heart rates and covered a longer distance in the same amount of time.

Each batter ditty applies to one or both of the studies; what’s not to love about them?

Whether it’s Jake Wise getting into the mental sweet spot with “You’re Worthy of my Praise” by Jeremy Camp, or Bo Bigham’s elevated heart rate from Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” there’s a lot to be said for walk-out songs.

Inspectors taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states.

Levees deemed in unacceptable condition span the breadth of America. They are in every region,We can supply howo truck products as below. in cities and towns big and small: Washington, D.C., and Sacramento Calif., Cleveland and Dallas, Augusta, Ga., and Brookport, Ill.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue ratings for a little more than 40 percent of the 2,487 structures, which protect about 10 million people. Of those it has rated, however, 326 levees covering more than 2,000 miles were found in urgent need of repair.

The problems are myriad: earthen walls weakened by trees, shrubs and burrowing animal holes; houses built dangerously close to or even on top of levees; decayed pipes and pumping stations.

The Associated Press requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, details on why certain levees were judged unacceptable and how many people would be affected in a flood. The Corps declined on grounds that such information could heighten risks of terrorism and sabotage.

The AP found specifics about the condition of some levees from federal and state records and in interviews with more than a dozen officials in cities and towns. The number of people who might be affected by a breach could not be determined because there are many different factors in a flood, such as terrain and obstacles.

The severity of the risk from any particular levee depends not only on its condition but also the population, infrastructure and property it protects. The Corps is currently conducting risk assessments of levees under its jurisdiction.

Local governments are responsible for upgrading unacceptable levees. Some local officials say that the Corps is exaggerating the dangers, that some deficiencies were approved or not objected to by the federal government and that any repairs could cost them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

"It's just not right to tell a little town like this to spend millions of dollars that we can't raise," said Judy Askew,Find Complete Details about howo tractor Truck. mayor of Brookport, a hardscrabble town of about 1,000 on the banks of the Ohio River.

Compared with other types of infrastructure, the nation's levees, within and outside federal jurisdiction, don't fare well. They earned a D-minus for overall condition from the American Society of Civil Engineers in its latest report card in 2009, ranking behind dams, bridges, rails and eight other categories.

The condition of flood control systems came into dramatic focus in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina's rain and storm surge toppled levees in New Orleans and tore up the Gulf Coast. It left 1,800 people dead and was the costliest storm in U.S. history with damage estimated at $108 billion.

Afterward, Congress told the Corps to catalog federally overseen levees, many of which it built and handed over to municipalities to run and maintain. The Corps has spent more than $140 million on inspections and developing the inventory, which is posted online.

As of Jan. 10, the agency had published ratings for 1,451, or 58 percent, of the levees. Of those, 326 were unacceptable, 1,004 were minimally acceptable with deficiencies that need correcting, and 121 were acceptable.

Some levees had inadequate "freeboard" — extra height to prevent overflow, which can weaken the landward slope of the levee. For example, the Corps found there was not enough height in a levee along a 20-mile stretch of Mississippi's Yazoo River system, which came close to being overtopped in 2011 during historic flooding of the Mississippi River valley.

Many pipes built into levees to drain storm water were made of metal that has rusted. And pumping systems are giving out. In Brookport, inspectors found inoperable pumps and deteriorating pipes in its 6-mile-long earthen levee. Their report said a gaping hole just outside town has put the structure in "critical condition."

Corps specifications require that levee slopes be kept clear of plants and burrowing critters such as ground squirrels and gophers. The tunnels could weaken the walls by providing pathways for water. Thick vegetation also can conceal cracks, holes and unstable slopes. A 2010 Corps report found parts of a 2.2-mile-long Mississippi River levee in South St. Paul, Minn., dotted with trees, brush, weeds and tree stumps.

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