Daily Archives: February 15, 2020

Only a few months after saying little progress had been made in repairing more than 700 water leaks around the city, Fort Smith Utilities Director Lance McAvoy told Fort Smith city directors that about 70% of the citys reported leaks have been fixed.

McAvoy reported at the boards study session Tuesday (Feb. 11) that as of Feb. 4, the city only had 212 reported leaks left to repair. There are 135 sites where the leak has been repaired, but there is still work to be done on site restoration.

At a Feb. 5 board meeting, directors approved hiring 10 additional employees for the water and sewer department who would join the 17 department employees to create nine three-person teams working to fix the 700 leaks in the citys water system as well as taking care of new leaks reported to the department. The goal was to be caught up on the leaks in 18 months, then utilities director Jerry Walters told the board.

Nine months later, McAvoy told the board the city still had around 700 leaks needing repair. At that time, the city had not received the $350,700 worth of additional equipment, essential to build the nine teams, the board approved through a resolution Aug. 20. The city also had not filled all 10 of the new positions.

Since November, some of the new equipment has arrived and more employees have been hired, McAvoy said. This, along with crews working seven days a week except during holidays, has helped the city begin to get a leg up on the leaks.

Those numbers indicate less new leaks reported than what we repaired. We actually caught up by 48 leaks in October, 22 in November, 41 in December and 43 in January, McAvoy said, regarding a handout he gave directors. This means we are gaining on the leak issue.

Total leak repairs completed those months were 73 in October, 42 in November, 65 in December and 69 in January. That does not add up to 500 the difference between the amount of leaks on the citys books in November as compared to the number outstanding now. That is because over the past few months utility department workers have gone out and put eyes on every leak on the list. In doing so, they found many leaks had actually been repaired, but the work orders had never been closed, McAvoy said.

About a year ago, we went through our work orders with an internal audit and found several that had never been closed out. Apparently, we didnt fix the problem because that problem still exists. We went from a whole bunch down to just over 200. We are actually looking much better that what we were in November, he said.

After completing the backlog of leaks, the teams will continue to repair new leaks as well as turn toward a proactive system of preventative maintenance on the water system, which will include valve replacements, meter replacement and unidirectional flushing of the 720 miles of water lines, McAvoy said.

We have worked reactionary for too long. For every dollar you spend being proactive, you save $4 spent reactionary, he said.

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Fort Smith utilities boss says the city is making progress on water leaks - talkbusiness.net

The overarching question about the direction of the Wizards is even if things do work out even if they progress this season, add a lottery pick, retain Davis Bertans, and bring back a healthy John Wall; how will they pass the bar set by prior iterations of the team? How would they become a contender?

Its a question they will face in the near future as long as Bradley Beal and John Wall are on the roster and one that is magnified as the Wizards sit at ninth in the Eastern Conference heading into the All Star Break, two games in the loss column behind the Orlando Magic. With the playoffs being reasonably within reach, the idea of a quick turnaround may be more plausible than it seemed prior to the season. As Ted Leonsis asked this past summer,

To what end however? Wouldnt the Wizards be trending towards a repeat of the Wizards of 2014-2018, a core group that reached the Eastern Conference Semifinals on three occasions but ultimately last exited the postseason after a first round series loss to the Toronto Raptors in 2018? How does that reconcile with Tommy Sheppards comments after getting the full-time general manager role in July that I dont ever wanna say, Lets go get the eighth spot. Thats not the big picture at all.

A person could argue that point and time may prove that to be true, but going in there are noteworthy differences in what Sheppard is building compared to the group(s) we watched most recently frequent the postseason.

There are only two players left from the team that lost game six to the Toronto Raptors in the spring of 2018 John Wall and Bradley Beal. Wall, as we all know has missed the majority of game action since that series with a variety of injuries, most notably an Achilles tear. In that time, the dynamic of the team has shifted to it being Beals team. As the roster around him evolves, his imprints are all over this teams successes and failures.

Beyond Beal, however, is where the major differences lie. The prior iteration of the Wizards was a team with a bloated payroll and established veterans who were known commodities and in some cases were on their last legs in the NBA.

That version of the Wizards was handcuffed by a front office which cashed in all of their chips to put that team together. They traded a lottery pick for Markieff Morris, they used all of their cap room in the summer of 2016 on players who ultimately did not have a material impact (Ian Mahinmi) or players who required additional assets attached to them to move their money (i.e. Andrew Nicholson and Jason Smith).

As a result, as other teams continued to add to their core, the Wizards core grew old, injured, and never had the pipeline of young players, draft picks, or cap space necessary to complement or improve upon their core. They didnt have the assets to go get Kawhi Leonard or Jimmy Butler when the opportunity arose, nor did they have the cap space to take on contracts for additional draft capital or depth. That team was capped out and stuck in reverse.

An easy narrative is that this team faces a similar fate because of Walls Supermax contract. Ultimately that may prove to be true but it ignores some realities. This team isnt going to go from a 30-win team to contender status overnight. Yes, management has asked why cant this be quick but was that taken too literally? Does management really expect them to go from 30 to their first 50-win season in decades overnight? Or do they think that the bottoming out doesnt have to take years that they can quickly get back to the playoffs behind Brad and continue to build around that nucleus in a way the prior iteration of the Wizards could not?

Washingtons actions seem to suggest just that. While some thought the Wizards were going to cash-in on Mahinmis contract to bring in a high salary veteran player to put next to Wall and Beal and create a new big 3, they did the opposite. They transacted to take another flier on a prospect Jerome Robinson.

The Wizards want the turnaround to be quick, otherwise they would have looked to trade Beal, but they are not any shortcuts. What does this mean?

We can only take our best guesses but the Wizards actions seem to indicate that instead of taking the bandage approach for a third piece that likely would result in a poor mans version of the prior Wizards Big 3, they are building what they hope is a deep, cost-efficient roster with players who have room for development around their Supermax and Max contract players.

Since the Wizards have not mortgaged future draft capital to get to this point, they will have the opportunity to add to that core or eventually consolidate young players and/or picks in a trade for an all-star type at the appropriate time.

The three younger centers on the Wizards roster, Bryant, Wagner, and Pasecniks make a combined $12 million in salary next season, less than ten percent of the expected room below the luxury tax line. Their starting power forward, Rui Hachimura will have three years left on his rookie contract which will average slightly north of $5.1 million annually over that time. Troy Brown Jr., Jerome Robinson, Isaac Bonga, and Admiral Schofield also will be in their rookie deals for the foreseeable future. Their 2020 draft pick, will result in ideally another rotational player on a rookie scale deal for possibly the next four seasons.

Theyve put volume and manageable contracts around their back-court to the point where they can splurge (within reason) on Davis Bertans because as many as three starters and four of the five primary reserves seven/tenths of their top ten rotation players could conceivably be on rookie deals or fixed contracts at less than $10 million annually.

None of this means a thing if the players dont develop. The front office is taking on a difficult task rebuild on the fly around their back-court and to do so they will have to hit and hit big on more than one of these margin moves. However unlike the prior iteration of the team, theres actually a chance that a 20-year old develops into more than they are today then there was of those veteran teams breaking through their limited ceiling.

And if it doesnt work, Washington still took the marginal steps necessary to start, or continue a rebuild, depending on where you think this team is at right now. They dont have to get rid of Troy Brown or Rui Hachimura to start a rebuild; they would be part of that rebuild.

Beal has signed an extension which allows the Wizards to play this out, even if he does eventually grow impatient and request a trade down the road, they are in position to get a massive return for Beal one that may not even require a step back based on the track record weve seen with teams like the Pacers, Thunder, and Pelicans as they have quickly recovered after trading away a star.

Washington will also have flexibility for the future, which previous Wizards teams often didnt have. Why cant this be quick? does not mean the front office expects a Finals appearance in June 2021. What I think it means is that the Wizards will use the next few years to position themselves to be a contender in a way their predecessors could not. Maybe they hit it big with their next draft pick. Or maybe they dont.

Maybe they have to wait on the Wall contract to mature to add the last piece or maybe he becomes a valuable contributor to the team once again. Maybe Beal becomes an elite player they need him to be to make this work or maybe he doesnt. Thats not the point here.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical and just a few weeks ago, the Wizards franchise player was expressing frustration after a disappointing loss to the 19-win Chicago Bulls.

We dont know which way any of this will go but what we do know is theyre no longer stuck in reverse. They are moving forward and thats the big difference between this team and the team we last saw in the postseason walking off the then-Verizon Center floor after game six versus the Raptors just two seasons ago.

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The Wizards are making incremental progress, which is just fine. - Bullets Forever

US-based biomedical research organisation CHDI Foundation and IBM Research have released a joint research paper revealing the development of a new artificial intelligence-based predictive model that helps determine when patients will begin to experience symptoms of Huntington's disease (HD), and how quickly these symptoms will progress.

HD is a neurodegenerative disease that causes the progressive breakdown of brain nerve cells. But unlike other neurodegenerative diseases, HD is caused by a single gene mutation "with a striking correlation to age of motor symptom onset", according to CHDI Foundation chief clinical officer Cristina Sampaio.

"People with HD may be identified and tracked from an early age long before the onset of manifest symptoms. As a result, HD may also be a good entry point for gaining insight into the mechanisms of and the development of treatments for other neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis," she told ZDNet.

The published paper, titledResting-state connectivity stratifies premanifest Huntington's disease by longitudinal cognitive decline rate, was released after three years of joint work between the two organisations and is the second paper to be published by the pair.

IBM Watson researcher Guillermo Cecchi said the paper focused on identifying how existing functional MRI (fMRI) data can be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models to assess whether there is a change in a patient's motor and cognitive performance.

"Part of what we're trying to do is pinpoint with more accuracy what determines a particular patient with certain genetics will experience symptoms early in life or later in life," he said.

See also:IBM unveils new AI model to predict potentially harmful drug-to-drug interactions(TechRepublic)

He continued to explain how there was also the goal of uncovering people that were at higher risk of developing symptoms earlier, so they could eventually be a target for early intervention and monitoring in order to better understand the effects and outcomes of any new drug.

"Having that in mind, what we did was show that we can take a single brain scan and have accuracy about whether that particular patient belongs in the rapidly declining population or it belongs in the slowly declining population," Cecchi said.

"The way you know whether someone is slowly or rapidly declining is by looking at them over several years, so three, four, five years, and then you measure their motor symptoms and you can see over the course of five years whether the motor symptoms were changing slowly or changing very rapidly.

"But then you would need those five years to determine whether someone is deteriorating fast or slow, so what we're showing here is all you need is a single scan -- a functional MRI -- to have very good accuracy to determine whether that particular patient belongs to the fast declining or slow declining group."

Sampaio agreed that functional MRI can provide a "rich source of information", but noted its "technical complexity, until recently, has limited its broad application".

"In our study, we show that a single cross-sectional fMRI data point can predict future progression of cognitive and motor signs and symptoms of HD. Prognostic biomarkers that predict future events, like the fMRI in our study, are used to enrich for clinical-trial participants with certain pathological features to maximise the likelihood of success," she said.

"Our study results are a first step for HD clinical trials. We now need to further validate to develop fMRI as a robust prognostic biomarker in premanifest HD."

Read:Intel and GE Healthcare's X-ray machine uses embedded AI to prioritize scans (TechRepublic)

For the research, Cecchi said based on a "couple of hundred" scans, the AI model produced around an 80% accuracy output rate.

Moving forward, IBM Research and CHDI plan to replicate the study in other hospitals.

"We show that we can take data from one hospital, learn about it, and apply it to data acquired in another hospital, and still be robust and obtain the same results," Cecchi said.

Cecchi said the goal would be to eventually have the model approved by medical bodies globally and for it to be used as a standard in the field when it comes to not only HD, but other neurodegenerative diseases as well.

Similarly, a joint study by the Epilepsy Centre at Kuopio University Hospital, the University of Eastern Finland, and Neuro Event Labs resulted in the group successfully developing an AI algorithm to help quickly and automatically assess the severity of myoclonus jerks from video footage.

The model can be used to identify and track key points in the human body of myoclonus -- brief, involuntary muscle twitching -- which is the most progressive drug-resistant symptom in patients with myoclonus epilepsy type 1.

As part of the study, 10 clinical video-recorded test panels were used and it showed that the automatic method using the model correlated with the clinical evaluation. It was also able to quantify the smoothness of movement and detect small-amplitude and high-frequency myoclonic jerks by detecting and tracking predefined key points in the human body during movement.

Updated 13 February 2020, 9:37AM (AEDT): Correction it is CHDI Foundation.

Read more from the original source:

CHDI Foundation and IBM tracking the progress of Huntington's disease using AI - ZDNet

AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost says Honda has made big progress with its power unit over the winter and has targeted a top five finish in the constructors championship for his team.

We are very optimistic for this season, he explained. First of all, the car showed very good results in the wind tunnel.

For a second Honda, our friends in Japan, in Sakura, made big progress during the winter months from the performance side as well as from the reliability side.

Third, we have two good drivers. They showed that already last year, we just missed the middle of the podiums.

AlphaTauri will also continue to use some of the same hardware as Red Bull. We have a very close relationship with Red Bull Technologies. We have the complete rear suspension from them, we have the gearbox from them, the hydraulics, the front suspension. That means also from the mechanical side, we are very competitive.

Toro Rosso equalled its best constructors championship position in its final season last year with sixth place. Tost expects the team can go one better this year.

Tost said the team is waiting for further details of the new rules for the 2021 F1 season before advancing its work on the new regulations which will come into force next year.

We started in October last year with a concept group working on the 21 car, he said. Now we must wait until the technical regulations will be finalised. I hope this will be the case [in] March.

And then from month to month, more and more people, our engineers will jump over to the 21 project. But we must not forget this season 2020 and we also want to develop this car because as I just mentioned a few minutes ago, we must be competitive and we must really show good results.

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F1: Tost targets top five after "big progress" from Honda - RaceFans

Parents who disagree with marks their children receive on school report cards sometimes argue the grading system is not fair and should be altered. Few suggest grades ought to be done away with entirely.

That would be crazy. Childrens progress in school has to be measured somehow. That seems obvious.

So why, then are some reportedly suggesting Ohios system of report cards for schools ought to be scrapped? That makes no sense, either.

Controversy over how report card data is used to determine whether students should be permitted to transfer out of public schools and to state-subsidized charters has brought the topic up again. Critics of the system point out that it takes money from some public schools that do well in many regards but fall short in a few.

That is a valid criticism. But some are using it as an argument in favor of eliminating the school report card system. It is unfair to public schools, they argue.

No, it is not. Just like individual teachers grading systems, it may require changes in the interest of accuracy and fairness. But parents and taxpayers in general deserve a look into how well schools serving their children are doing.

Ohio legislators may want to fine-tune the report card process. Like any other complex system, this one ought to be re-examined regularly. No doubt it can always be improved upon and that should be done. But eliminating it is, in two words, ridiculous and irresponsible.

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Reports cards needed to gauge students' progress | News, Sports, Jobs - The Review

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

Though the potential trade to send right fielder Mookie Betts from the Boston Red Sox to the Los Angeles Dodgers hasn't gone through yet, there has been "progress," according to Jon Heyman of MLB Network.

Heyman added the "sides seem hopeful."

The deal was initially expected to include the Minnesota Twins, who were giving up pitcherBrusdar Graterol, but concerns over his medical history stalled talks. Chad Jennings of The Athletic reported Saturday the Twins "are out of the Betts/[David] Price trade talks."

However, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the three teams remain active in discussion, but it's possible there are two separate deals: one between the Twins and Dodgers and another between the Dodgers and Red Sox.

Alex Speier of theBoston Globe reported that the Red Sox are "considered unlikely to end up with Graterol."

Los Angeles was initially expected to receive Betts and pitcher David Price while sending outfielder Alex Verdugo to Boston and pitcher Kenta Maeda to the Twins, but the Graterol reports "spooked" the Red Sox, perJeff Passanof ESPN.

From Passan: "The Red Sox, sources said, were spooked by a medical review of Graterol, the hard-throwing 21-year-old right-hander who has undergone Tommy John surgery and missed time in 2019 because of a shoulder injury."

Heyman reported Sunday that Graterol could now end up with Los Angeles as part of a separate deal for Maeda, noting that other team doctors have "no big issue" with the pitcher's medical reports.

PerCaesars Palace, the Dodgers' World Series odds rose from 7-1 to 4-1 after reportedly acquiring Bettsa four-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove winner and 2018 AL MVPand Price.

Los Angeles has won104,92 and106 games the past three seasons and reached twoWorld Series but it still looking to win its first title since1988.

Link:

MLB Rumors: 'Progress' in Mookie Betts Trade; Red Sox and Dodgers 'Hopeful' - Bleacher Report

Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry is still rehabbing from surgery to repair a broken hand he suffered back in October.

On Wednesday, head coach Steve Kerr gave an update on Currys status, saying that he has been getting more conditioning as of late:

Hes jumped into a few of our non-contact, offensive 5-on-0 stuff, said Kerr, via Anthony Slater of The Athletic. But hes coming around. Well have another update I guess, a more thorough update, on March 1. But right now, everything is going smoothly and hes just trying to build his conditioning base and keep getting better.

Kerr added that there were no plans to get Curry into contract drills before March 1. The Warriors star has said hes aiming for a return in early March.

Curry struggled in the four games he played this season, averaging 20.3 points, 6.5 assists, 5.0 rebounds and 1.3 steals over 28.0 minutes per game while shooting 40.9 percent from the floor, 24.3 percent from 3-point range and 100 percent from the free-throw line.

Of course, that is an incredibly small sample size, and Currys numbers almost surely would have leveled out had he remained healthy.

The 31-year-old is in his 11th NBA season and will miss out on All-Star festivities for the first time since 2013.

Curry won back-to-back league MVP awards in 2015 and 2016, also capturing the NBA scoring title in the latter year after registering 30.1 points per game.

The sharpshooter is also not the only key member of the Warriors backcourt sidelined due to injury, as fellow guard Klay Thompson has been recovering from a torn ACL he suffered during last years NBA Finals.

Read more here:

Warriors news: Stephen Curry's rehab progress updated by Steve Kerr - ClutchPoints