With 11 days left until their regular season opener, the Washington Mystics were back in the gym Wednesday afternoon less than 24 hours after defeating the Indiana Fever, 87-67, in their preseason opener in Indianapolis.

Coach Mike Thibault spent the final portion of practice on the main court at Verizon Center working on end-of-game situations. In one drill, prized offseason acquisition Elena Delle Donne stepped into the passing lane for a steal to preserve a lead. Moments later rookie Shatori Walker-Kimbrough did the same.

Its a play the No. 6 pick in this years draft made time and again while at Maryland, where she completed her career this past season as the schools fourth all-time scorer.The guard-forward also developed into a responsible defender, leading the Terrapins in steals as a senior.

Walker-Kimbrough finished with 12 points in 20 minutes in Tuesdays exhibition, logging the most playing time among the starters at a venue where she shined in college. As a junior, Walker-Kimbrough was named most outstanding player in helping the Terrapins win the Big Ten tournament title at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

[Elena Delle Donne sharp as Mystics beat Fever in preseason opener]

Im not going to lie. I was a little nervous, Walker-Kimbrough said of her professional debut. Its so crazy just being out there actually going against a different team. Its like so surreal to me, but it went great. I thought we played really good as a team.

Honing team chemistry has been a priority during training camp given the many newcomers to the club. Just two starters against the Fever were with Washington last season, and among the seven reserves who played, only forwards Tianna Hawkins and Ally Malott have experience in a Mystics uniform.

Thibault held out starting guard Tayler Hill because of a sore ankle, and backup point guard Ivory Latta did not play while sherests her surgically repaired knee. Also missing from the lineup were Emma Meesseman and Kristi Toliver, both starters who have yet to come back from playing overseas.

Meesseman and Toliver are expected back next week, but not in time for the final preseason game Monday night against the Minnesota Lynx at Verizon Center.

I thought it was good just to get out there against a different team, said forward Asia Taylor, who came off the bench to lead Washington with 13 points against the Fever. I liked our energy we came out with. I liked that coach put us out there with different lineups and different matchups, and I got to play a bunch of different positions, which was good for me to just kind of get out there and put everything together weve been doing in practice.

[After 10 seasons in the WNBA, Ivory Latta remains Mystics bundle of energy]

The next few days of practice are set to include, among other assignments, installing more offensive sets, Thibault indicated. The Mystics are somewhat limited in what they can do in that regard in part because of the absence of Toliver, the starting point guard.

Still, getting Delle Donne more comfortable within the offense remains an ongoing process, with the next step scripting plays designed especially for the 2015 WNBA MVP. Delle Donne joined the Mystics in a blockbuster offseason trade with the Chicago Sky in which Thibault, also the general manager, dealt the No. 2 overall pick this year, center Stefanie Dolson and guard Kahleah Copper in exchange for the then-restricted free agent.

Delle Donne had 12 points, three assists and two rebounds in 17 minutes against the Fever while frequently matched against forward Candice Dupree, a five-time all-star.

We arent running that many plays right now, and were certainly not running plays designed for individuals at the moment, Thibault said. She had a good flow [against Indiana]. The goal is to play her between 15 and 18 minutes and kind of get her out there particularly when they had Dupree and those guys on the court. I thought it was a good start.

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Shatori Walker-Kimbrough 'nervous' in preseason debut as Mystics ... - Washington Post

Light initiates many chemical reactions. Experiments at theLaser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Physicshave for the first time demonstrated that increasing the intensity of illumination some reactions can be significantly faster. Here, acceleration was achieved using pairs of ultrashort laser pulses.

Light-induced reactions can be accelerated by increasing the intensity of illumination -- this has been demonstrated in experiments carried out at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw. In order to thoroughly investigate the nature of the processes involved, ultra-short consecutive pairs of laser pulses were used, and an increase in the rate of reaction between the molecules was observed by up to several dozen percent. The observations of the Warsaw scientists have been reported in the well-known scientific journalPhysical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

"Our experiments provide fundamental knowledge about the physical processes that are important for the course of important light-induced reactions. This knowledge can potentially be used in many applications, especially when dealing with high intensity light sources. These include, among others, various microscopic imaging techniques, ultra-fast spectroscopy as well as photovoltaics, particularly if light-focusing devices such as solar collectors are used," says Dr. Gonzalo Angulo (IPC PAS).

In light-induced reactions, a photon with the appropriate energy excites a molecule of dye. When there is a molecule of quencher near the excited molecule, an interaction takes place: there may be a transfer of energy, an electron or a proton, between the two reactants. Reactions of this type are common in nature. A good example is electron transfer in photosynthesis, which plays a key role in the formation of the Earth's ecosystem.

It turns out that a factor that can influence the acceleration of reactions is the intensity of the light that initiates them. In order to study the nature of the processes taking place, the Warsaw chemists used laser pulses lasting femtoseconds instead of the traditional continuous stream of light. The energy of the impulses was adjusted so that, under their influence, the dye molecules moved into the excited energy state. The pulses were grouped in pairs. The interval between pulses in a pair was several dozen picoseconds (trillionths of a second) and was matched to the type of reacting molecules and the environment of the solution.

"The theory and the experiments required care and attention, but the physical idea itself is quite simple here," notes Jadwiga Milkiewicz, a PhD student at IPC PAS, and explains: "In order for the reaction to occur, there must be a molecule of quencher near the light-excited dye molecule. So, if we have a pair of molecules that have already reacted with each other this means that they were close enough to each other. By increasing the number of photons in time, we thus increase the chance that if, after the reaction, both molecules have managed to return to their ground state, the absorption of a new photon by the dye has the potential to initiate another reaction before the molecules move away from each other in space."

The course of reactions in solutions depends on many factors such as temperature, pressure, viscosity or the presence of an electric or magnetic field. The research at the IPC PAS has proved that these factors also influence the acceleration of the chemical reaction that occurs with an increased intensity of illumination. Under some conditions, the acceleration of the reaction was unnoticeable, in optimal conditions the rate of the reaction increased by up to 25-30%.

"In our experiments so far, we have concentrated on light-induced electron transfer reactions, that is, those which change the electrical charge of the molecules. However, we do not see any reason why the mechanism we have observed could not function in other variations of these reactions. So, in the near future, we will try to confirm its efficacy in energy transfer reactions or in reactions involving also proton transfer," says Dr. Angulo.

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With More Light, Chemistry Speeds Up - R & D Magazine

The Ravens front office did not draft a receiver. Inhale, exhale and relax. Not only is there still time in the offseason, but the receivers on the roster, notably Breshad Perriman, still have a lot to prove and have not had the time to prove it.

Barring injury (please God) this will be Perriman's first complete offseason. He now has chance to enter and undergo a full training camp, therefore practicing with the maximum ammount of reps.

The lack of chemistry with Joe Flacco was apparent this past season, especially on stop routes along the sidelines where Flacco's ball placement was often wayward and the ball was being thrown much after Perriman turned around.

If Perriman and Flacco can go through an entire training camp and an entire pre-season together, the resulting chemistry gained could help mitigate the loss of Steve Smith, and perhaps even help Breshad Perriman ascend as a number one wide receiver.

Perriman and Flacco have a lot of things to iron out. Perriman still fights the ball and his transition to a runner after catching the ball is still not as smooth as it could be. The timing on routes that demand to be sharp - like slants, comebacks and back shoulder fades was not present last year. They have the opportunity to make big strides in the coming offseason. It would not be a stretch to say that it is paramount for the two players in question to find their groove.

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Joe Flacco, Breshad Perriman finally have chance to build chemistry ... - Baltimore Beatdown

David Ross, right, congratulates Jon Lester for pitching a complete game for the win against the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 1 in Chicago.

Jon Durr/Getty Images

What makes a group of athletes greater than the sum of its parts? Is it the knowing glance that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady exchanges with Rob Gronkowski when he looks down the line of scrimmage? Is it the fire that the Chicago Cubs Jon Lester mustered after his personal catcher David Ross trotted out to the mound to dispense some wisdom in a tense sixth inning?

Team chemistry is the most elusive factor in sportsthe holy grail of performance analytics, according to Harvard Business Review. Its only logical that certain teams get along better than others, but how important are these relationships, and can teams optimize them?

The fact that the sports worlds intangibles seem, by definition, immeasurable make them an irresistible challenge for researchers whove figured out how to quantify so much of what happens on the field of play. Neuroscientists have claimed to measure chemistry through the synchronized heartbeats of teammates. Other researchers have examined the correlation of high fives and wins.

The rewards for solving the chemistry riddle are high, in part because maximizing chemistry would come at almost zero cost. If a team could determine that a player would contribute more of a winning attitude than another guy with a similar statistical output, theyd get that chemistry boost for freeat least until other teams figured out how to quantify that extra boon to team spirit.

Professional sports franchises are still a long way away from figuring out how to maximize their players ability to work together. Sam Miller, who wrote a feature on team chemistry for ESPN the Magazine in 2013, told me that its not like you have 25 guys, therefore you have 25 relationships. You have 25 guys, therefore you have probably billions of relationships. And Russell Carleton, who has written about the quantification of chemistry for Baseball Prospectus, says major-league clubs havent yet come close to understanding a baseball team as its own little culture. The economics of baseball ensure that in-house analytics gurus focus more on a players hard statistics than something as squirrelly as clubhouse presence. At least for now, every team would be advised to build its roster based on wins above replacement rather than, say, the alleged 10 wins worth of value that pitcher Brandon McCarthy claimed his teammate Brandon Inge contributed off the field.

In reality, were not even particularly close to developing a consensus understanding of what the term chemistry means. Analysts and academics have mountains of player performance data, but these on-field metrics can only carry their research so far. Baseball players spend more time in the relative privacy of locker rooms, dugouts, bullpens, airplanes, and hotel rooms than they do on the field. The limited access researchers have to these spaces means theyre lacking a vital source of quantifiable data. With limited inputs to calculate chemistry, statisticians have to get creative to find something measureable. But what they end up measuring might not actually be chemistry.

Take the work of Katerina Bezrukova, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management who has worked with Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association to shed light on chemistrys role in team performance.* Her research focuses on the demographic fault lines in sports, intrateam divisions that develop from differences in teammates racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. She claims that teams must strike an optimal balance between diversity and homogeneity and that teams that fall too far on either side of the golden mean win fewer games. In an MLB season, she finds, chemistry is worth about three wins.

Although demographic factors may have some say in how a team gets along, Bezrukovas research pays little mind to players individual personalities. Thats a far more difficult element to harness, but without it you end up with a circuitous definition of chemistry. Bezrukova has found something to measure. Its just unclear what that something is.

A paper presented at this years MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference leans on a similar crutch. In Search of David Ross, named for the backup catcher and spiritual leader of the 2016 World Series champion Cubs, takes a stab at quantifying the indirect impact that an individual player can have on team wins through making their teammates better. The authors do some messy math to get there, employing a regression model on FanGraphs wins above replacement statistic. There is on average a 20 percent variance, they report, between a teams actual win total and the cumulative WAR of all the players on that team. They attribute half of that 20 percent gap to what they call chemistry.

If we wanted to measure chemistry for real, pro baseball would need to function as a laboratory first and a competitive arena second.

There are plenty of problems with this approach. Carleton and Miller both say such a model, which points to a negative space in the calculation of team performance and works backward to fill it in, risks sweeping a lot of unrelated stuff into the chemistry bucket. Miller points out that analysts have traditionally attributed discrepancies between team wins and cumulative WAR to a teams relative clutchnessthat is, random (well, probably random) fluctuations in how similarly skilled players perform in crucial moments throughout the season. Carleton says his concern is that the paper bundles on-field interaction effects into chemistry. His example: If shortstop A plays for a team whose pitching staff produces a lot of ground balls, he may have an inflated WAR compared with shortstop B, whose pitching staff generates a lot of fly balls. Shortstop B produces less value for his team because hes spending a lot of time twiddling his thumbs, but that doesnt necessarily mean he has bad relationships with his teammates or even that he is worse at baseball.

When I brought this up with the authors of the David Ross paper, they said their methods accommodate exactly this sort of scenario. That shortstop who is fielding a lot of infield ground balls? They argue he has good chemistry with his pitchers.

The issue here, then, isnt that the authors are bad at math. Its that their version of chemistryessentially, anything that makes teams better than the players individual characteristics might suggestis not what most of us would call chemistry.

The authors of the papera pair of economists at the Chicago Federal Reserve and a professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Businessfound a creative workaround given their lack of access to baseball clubhouses, using publicly available player performance data to take aim at an abstract target. If we wanted to measure chemistry for real, pro baseball would need to function as a laboratory first and a competitive arena second. In this fantasyland, statisticians would have unrestricted access to clubhouse social scenes. They could track what players talked about behind closed doors and how long those conversations lasted. They could also randomize trades, testing out different players in different circumstances. Carleton argues that measuring chemistry wouldnt even be that hard in a world like this one. But sadly for researchers (and happily for players), that level of omniscience and omnipotence isnt in the offing, at least in this century.

In the present day, MLB teams use personality exams that that have little more validity than a Myers-Briggs test. But more advanced analytics may find their way into front offices soon. Bezrukova has presented her research to general managers, and Carleton also confirmed to me that in-house analysts from various teams are working on measuring chemistry. But even small breakthroughs will be hard to come by when no one knows what to look for. Until we reach a consensus view of
what chemistry means, well all just be guessing whether David Ross paternal drawl instilled just a touch more confidence in Jon Lester, and how much it matters if it did.

Correction, May 2, 2017: This piece originally misstated that Katerina Bezrukova is a psychology professor at the University of Buffalo. She is a professorat the University at Buffalo School of Management. (Return.)

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Will Pro Sports Teams Ever Figure Out How to Quantify How Well Teammates Get Along? - Slate Magazine

On Earth Day, April 22, a hundred thousand people marched all across the world for science. Tens of thousands demonstrated in Los Angeles and London, while 200 people marched 200 miles north of the Arctic circle in Norway. In 600 cities on every continent, citizens and scientists carried signs like Fund science, not walls and Science trumps alternative facts. In Washington, D.C., the biggest crowd protested Donald Trumps proposed budget cuts to scientific research in public health and climate.

Trump is carrying out normal Republican politics. None of the many Republican candidates for president in 2016 thought evolution should be taught in public schools. A majority of Republican voters believe in creationism.

The issue of climate change shows the influence of political ideology on attitudes toward science. A Pew poll found that only 15 percent of conservative Republicans believe the earth is warming mostly due to human activity, 34 percent of moderate Republicans, 63 percent of moderate Democrats and 79 percent of liberal Democrats. A majority of conservative Republicans believes that climate scientists are influenced by a desire to advance their careers and political ideology, not by scientific evidence or public interest.

To put it simply, conservatives dont believe in science or scientists.

Heres how science denial works in real life. Lots of private websites offer their version of science, paid for by private money that they dont disclose, using clever tactics to pretend to search for truth. An example is the Heartland Institute, which has been denying the existence of warming for decades.

On the other side is Understanding Science, a public project of the University of California at Berkeley, funded by the federal National Science Foundation. This step-by-easy-step primer offers a balanced and authentic understanding of how science really works. But those who automatically accuse both government and the nations best universities of politicized scientific fraud would dismiss this site as propaganda. So they wont learn from it how our scientific community does a far better job of policing high standards for honesty and frankness than either politicians or corporations.

And they wont think about who pays for science: Most scientific research is funded by government grants (e.g., from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, etc.), companies doing research and development, and non-profit foundations.

Public and private sources have different priorities for funding scientific research. My nephew works on the development of a drug to stop Alzheimers for a biotechnology company formed by scientists and venture capitalists. Their research is motivated both to find better medicines for our collective health and to make money. As I approach 70, the prospect of preventing brain degeneration before it hits me is exciting. Their profit might extend my useful life.

Some privately funded scientific research is not in the public interest at all, such as the tobacco companies effort to deny the link to cancer, funneled through sciency-sounding propaganda organizations like the Heartland Institute.

The Republicans in Congress are not waging a war on all science; they quote from Heartlands fake science. They attack government-supported science because it might lead to government spending. For example, the discovery of lead in the water in Flint, Michigan, meant that old pipes must be replaced on 17,000 homes at an estimated cost of $7,500 each, totaling $127.5 million. Government-paid scientific research documented how lead affects babies brains, supported the creation of regulations which forced industry to stop using lead, compared the levels of lead in Flints water to experimental evidence on poisoning, and thus demonstrated the need for federal intervention.

Republicans in the Senate voted overwhelmingly to deny funding to deal with Flints crisis, but that effort lost by one vote. Congress authorized $170 million for Flint.

In the words of Understanding Science, Science affects your life every day in all sorts of different ways. Good public science saves lives and serves the public interest through government spending and government regulation. But those are Republican curse words. That is the deep secret behind the anti-science policies of Republicans in Congress and the White House. If they want to shrink government, they have to slow down or even stop science. They use tactics of obfuscation and delay. House Science Committee chair Lamar Smith attacked a 2015 study showing rising global temperatures. He used his old tactics, honed over decades in Congress: he demanded thousands of emails and other documents in search of malfeasance, misspent funds or corruption. He never found any, but he slowed down science he doesnt like.

This is not in our national interest. If we dont prepare for the worlds new climate, if we dont prevent health crises through regulation of pollutants, if we dont spend now on inconvenient science, we will have to spend much more later in economic and social costs. Peter Muennig, professor of public health at Columbia University, estimates that the two fewer healthy years of the 8,000 Flint children exposed to lead might cost American society $400 million.

The astrophysicist and TV explainer of science, Neil deGrasse Tyson, said, The good thing about science is that its true, whether or not you believe it.

The bad thing about Republican science politics is that our children and grandchildren will pay the price. Without science, its just fiction.

Olga Rodriguez | AP

http://myjournalcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/web1_AP17112820985283.jpgOlga Rodriguez | AP

Steve Hochstadt is a writer, a gardener and a retired Illinois College professor of history. His column appears Tuesdays in the Journal-Courier and is available at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.

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Commentary: Better living through chemistry - Jacksonville Journal Courier

DRYDEN, N.Y.

Dryden Middle and High Schools will remain closed on Wednesday after closing early Tuesday due to a small chemical fire, according to school officials.

Authorities say the fire started in a trash can in a chemistry lab on school property. No one was reportedly injured during the fire.

The fire started when a student cleaning up wiped a container with a chemical on it and tossed the paper towel in the trash. Another student then threw away a wet paper in the same trash can which caused a reaction and sparked the fire.

A teacher was able to quickly put the flames out with an extinguisher. Students and faculty were instructed to evacuate the building at the time of the fire.

School officials along with the Dryden Fire Department decided it was best to dismiss school so the incident could be fully evaluated.

The Superintendent of Dryden Central Schools said the middle and high schools will stay closed on Wednesday so crews can conduct air quality tests as precaution.

Dryden Fire Department along with Dryden Ambulance, Ithaca Fire Department, Dryden Police Department, and New York State Police all were called to the scene to investigate.

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Dryden middle, high schools to remain closed after chemical fire ... - CNYcentral.com

Former chemistry professor Phil Janowicz is running for Congress for the first time in an attempt to unseat Republican Ed Royce, who has been a Californian representative for 25 years. Janowicz says he is running for Congress to oppose Trumps agenda, noting that his opponent has voted in lockstep with the president. The congressional election takes place in November 2018.

As a chemistry teacher here at California State Fullerton, I was constantly amazed by the grit and determination of my students, Janowicz said in a speech at the university on 25 April to announce his Democratic candidacy. When I learned how many of my students were struggling to meet basic food and housing needs, I decided that I had to do more than teach chemistry.

Janowicz tells Chemistry World that he was deeply affected by the plight of his students, even beyond the issue of crippling student loan debt. He recounts how many of those he taught were afraid for their parents to attend graduation due to concerns about deportation. The students, themselves US citizens, were fearful that their parents would be put at risk by attending because they lacked proper documentation.

After beginning his teaching at California State Fullerton in 2010, Janowicz left academia shortly after securing tenure to launch an education consultancy in January 2017.

In announcing his candidacy, Janowicz said he is running for Congress to resist the Trump agenda, and criticised his opponents record of voting with Trump 96% of the time. This was an apparent reference to a figure put forward by the polling data analysis website FiveThirtyEight to reflect how often Royce voted in line with the presidents positions.

Janowicz is concerned about the lack of scientists and individuals with science, technology, engineering and mathematics backgrounds in Congress. We need to tackle the problems of today with data we need to bring scientists back into public office, he says. Janowicz points to a proposal from the Trump administration to pull the earth science division out of Nasa, and warns that this will stymie the agencys ability to gather critical data from its satellites. If they cant collect the data, we cant even report on what is going on, he says.

Nevertheless, Janowicz acknowledges that going up against a Washington DC career politician will not be easy. He has raised about $30,000 (23,000) over the past few days, and the goal is at least $200,000 by late June when the filing period ends. Meanwhile, records indicate that Royces campaign has raised over $2.8 million.

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Ex-chemistry professor to run for Congress - Chemistry World (subscription)