Liberty teen sacks her way to a $1,000 prize!

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LIBERTY, MO (KCTV) -

Jennifer Malicoat likes to go by the name MacKinzie. But, whether it's Jennifer or MacKinzie, you should know this about the 18-year old from Liberty - she can really sack groceries.

In fact, she's one of the best sackers in the country, bringing homethird prize in a recent national grocery sacking contest sponsored by the National Grocers' Association.

Malicoat bested 24 other sackers in the contest, which took place at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas during the association's national convention. She sacked a first time to reach the finals pitting the top five sack specialists against one another, then again in the final "sack off." For her efforts, Malicoat, a Liberty High School senior who sacks groceries at the Liberty Price Chopper on 291 Highway, won $1,000 and a lot of respect.

"She's just a natural," said Debbie Reek, officer manager at the Liberty Chopper. "MacKenzie had to win our store competition with 27 Price Choppers competing, then the Missouri contest down in Branson with even more sackers to stack up against, before she even got to Vegas. When she started competing, she had only worked here about three months," Reek continued.

Now, abouta year into her tenure at Price Chopper, Malicoat has defeated nearly 100 of the bestgrocery sackers in the country. What's it like to compete on the big stage in Sin City?

"I was more excited than nervous," Malicoat said. "There were a lot of people there, folks attending the convention, and families of the people competing, but I just focused on the items."

Malicoat and the others competed in three categories: timing, technique and weight. The timing is obvious. Malicoat's time was :58.I'm not sure what the Russian and French judges (just kidding) were looking for with technique, but with regards to weight, the key was evenly distributing the items among the threebags competitors were given.

Malicoat said it was no big deal.

"The hardest part was all the small items: tiny cans, soap and other things that were tough to handle. I just tried to keep everything in the right categories anddistribute them evenly among thebags," she said.

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Liberty teen sacks her way to a $1,000 prize!

Liberty rolls past Whitehall 58-38 in the District 11 4A tournament

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Perhaps no one has experienced more success in local basketball in recent years than Liberty High's boys program.

Not only have the Hurricanes won three Lehigh Valley Conference titles in the past six seasons, but they've also qualified for the state tournament seven times in the last eight years.

But this year has been different for Liberty, which had to scramble to schedule and then win a makeup game last week just to qualify for the District 11 Class 4A tournament.

Once in, however, it seems like old times for Liberty, which scored 19 unanswered points in the second half Wednesday night to turn a three-point game into a 58-38 rout of host Whitehall in a 4A preliminary-round game.

The Hurricanes (12-11) earned a Saturday night date with No. 1 seed and Mountain Valley Conference champ Pocono Mountain West at Pleasant Valley in the second game of a 4A quarterfinal. Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg North will meet in the 6 p.m. opener.

Jaevan Dobbins and Ludwin Gonzalez scored 17 points apiece and Deshawn Oyeniyi added 12 points and 12 rebounds as Liberty ended Whitehall's season at 13-10.

"It's a good time of year to be playing arguably our best basketball," Hurricanes coach Chad Landis said. "It's a credit to the guys and their determination to not have the season end. We've been pretty close a couple of times to not making it through."

But there was nothing close about this one, at least in the fourth quarter.

Whitehall led 5-2 and 7-4 early, but spent most of the night playing from behind. The Zephs trailed 28-17 at halftime, but rode the hot hand of senior Aaron Keglovits to get within 39-36 after a Keglovits trey with 1:20 left in the third quarter.

The Zephyrs wouldn't score again, however, until 2:45 was left and Liberty had used the aforementioned 19-0 run to go up 58-36.

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Liberty rolls past Whitehall 58-38 in the District 11 4A tournament

Recruiting the next generation of political leaders

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This Wednesday I stumbled upon an article in Richmonds Style Weekly magazine covering the Feb. 8 convention of the Libertarian Party of Virginia. According to the articles author Tom Nash, this convention was the biggest and most important for Virginia Libertarians for quite some while. Given the recent relative success of the partys gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis (who made his mark by running a seemingly honest, intellectual campaign and winning 6.5 percent of the vote), Nash contends that the party hopes to maintain this momentum by having as many Libertarians as possible on the upcoming ballots.

Apparently, the tactic to achieve this involves inviting everyone on the partys email list to run for office, even if they have no chance of winning. One person who received this invitation was a high school student from the Maggie L. Walker Governors School for Government and International Studies. The student told Nash that he would consider running for office after finishing college.

Anyone who knows me also knows that my politics tend to fall so far left that they occasionally slip off the scale into an alternate universe where the gender binary has been all but eradicated, socialism reigns and everyone is free to sip tea and play with their cats in a borderless world of total equality.

Needless to say, libertarianism is not always consistent with these ideals. I do, however, hold a soft spot in my heart for the well-intentioned rationality of the party, so Nashs article made me wonder how many capable, up-and-coming young people might be drawn into politics by what is essentially a power vacuum in the Libertarian party.

One member of the University of Richmonds chapter of Young Americans for Liberty, Kelly Farley, WC17, said she planned on pursuing business as a career, but could easily see herself in politics: Libertarians are the party of the individual, liberty and, in my opinion, self-responsibility. I would be honored and proud to represent the libertarian opinion some day.

Another UR student, Martha Ashe, WC15, said that although she identified with the Libertarian party philosophically, she chooses to vote Republican because she is fiscally conservative and the party has more traction. She said, While I dont think I would ever run for politics, if I did, it would be hard for me to run as a Libertarian because I dont think the party has as much traction at this time. Ashe added, however, that she is confident we are trending toward a greater support of libertarianism: I do believe that most young people in my generation are Libertarian, whether they realize it or not, and that as my generation matures, the libertarian party will start to gain popularity.

While the upper levels of the two dominant parties in this country can seem like private clubs that require 80 percent networking and 20 percent underhanded dealing to gain entry, it might be that all it takes in Virginias Libertarian party right now is to show up.

Since the platform tends to attract a mixture of young people who are intelligent, ambitious or radical (and occasionally all three), I can happily picture a future where the party is dominated not by gun- and flag-toting old men, but by recent college graduates with clear plans for a more free country. Whether or not I support the whole ideology, I would rather have a relevant faction of young, educated people than not.

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Recruiting the next generation of political leaders

Gateway to islands

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20 February 2014| last updated at 08:18PM

Pulau Rawa

1 - Located 45 minutes away from Mersing by speed boat, this crown jewel of Mersing is a private island owned by the Sultanate of Johor and has two small exclusive resorts Rawas Safari and Alangs Rawa. Besides its exclusivity, the small island is also known for a powdery white beach backed by a steep hill. Hike up the hill along a pathway that will take you to the edge of the island, and youll be rewarded with a spectacular view of islands dotting the vast South China Sea. Sunset is the best time to view the islands.

Pulau Besar

2 - Formerly known as Big Boar Island since the wild creature used to roam freely there, the island is 30 minutes away by speedboat from Mersing. It is a wonderful tranquil hideaway and a perfect place for diving and snorkelling. There are several other islands around it but the highlight here is the prolific occurrence of a giant cockle which can grow up to 1.5m in length and weigh up to 70kg. The island boasts three resorts DCoconut Island Resort, Aseania Resort and Mirage Island Resort.

Pulau Pemanggil

3 - If you opt for a secluded getaway, this is an ideal remote spot. Pulau Pemanggil, three hours by ferry from Mersing, is the furthest in the cluster of islands. It is a favourite destination for deep-sea fishing. The black marlin, giant trevally, great barracuda, narrow-barred mackerel, grouper, snapper and stingray thrive here. As the island is not known to many, the corals remain untouched and the waters are pristine. There is only one resort, Lanting Beach Resort.

Pulau Aur and Pulau Dayang

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Whole Genome Analysis, STAT

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Newswise Although the time and cost of sequencing an entire human genome has plummeted, analyzing the resulting three billion base pairs of genetic information from a single genome can take many months.

In the journal Bioinformatics, however, a University of Chicago-based teamworking with Beagle, one of the worlds fastest supercomputers devoted to life sciencesreports that genome analysis can be radically accelerated. This computer, based at Argonne National Laboratory, is able to analyze 240 full genomes in about two days.

This is a resource that can change patient management and, over time, add depth to our understanding of the genetic causes of risk and disease, said study author Elizabeth McNally, MD, PhD, the A. J. Carlson Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic at the University of Chicago Medicine.

The supercomputer can process many genomes simultaneously rather than one at a time, said first author Megan Puckelwartz, a graduate student in McNallys laboratory. It converts whole genome sequencing, which has primarily been used as a research tool, into something that is immediately valuable for patient care.

Because the genome is so vast, those involved in clinical genetics have turned to exome sequencing, which focuses on the two percent or less of the genome that codes for proteins. This approach is often useful. An estimated 85 percent of disease-causing mutations are located in coding regions. But the rest, about 15 percent of clinically significant mutations, come from non-coding regions, once referred to as junk DNA but now known to serve important functions. If not for the tremendous data-processing challenges of analysis, whole genome sequencing would be the method of choice.

To test the system, McNallys team used raw sequencing data from 61 human genomes and analyzed that data on Beagle. They used publicly available software packages and one quarter of the computers total capacity. They found that shifting to the supercomputer environment improved accuracy and dramatically accelerated speed.

Improving analysis through both speed and accuracy reduces the price per genome, McNally said. With this approach, the price for analyzing an entire genome is less than the cost of the looking at just a fraction of genome. New technology promises to bring the costs of sequencing down to around $1,000 per genome. Our goal is get the cost of analysis down into that range.

This work vividly demonstrates the benefits of dedicating a powerful supercomputer resource to biomedical research, said co-author Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute and Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science. The methods developed here will be instrumental in relieving the data analysis bottleneck that researchers face as genetic sequencing grows cheaper and faster.

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Whole Genome Analysis, STAT