Daily Archives: January 5, 2021

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Ascension welcomes first babies of 2021 - WSMV Nashville

Some time early this year, contractors are expected to start a combined $3.7 million in road construction, building the first Ascension Parish-funded roundabout in the parish's history and widening a notoriously narrow outlet for congested La. 73 traffic near Prairieville.

Meanwhile, the entirely new St. Landry-Ashland road connector near Gonzales, which is expected to be the final link in a long-awaited alternative route to Mississippi River chemical plants, is largely finished. So are a series of turn lanes on La. 73 in the Oak Grove area of northern Ascension and a new bridge on Babin Road, parish officials said.

All of those projects are part of the more than $70 million Move Ascension program that has been slowly churning through a list of 34 road improvements and light synchronizations for the past several years, a parish listing shows.

The program has finished six projects in all through the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and, by the summer of 2021, parish officials said they expect to have seven to 10 projects under construction or headed to construction.

These projects come in addition to the separate $29 million state construction project to widen more than three miles of La. 42 in Prairieville, which is rounding toward completion after more than seven years of sewer and road construction.

State highway contractors also are replacing bridges on Airline Highway at Bayou Manchac at the parish line and farther south near Gonzales.

The Move Ascension program is a first of its kind for parish government, which hadn't previously built new roads in decades but focused on road overlay programs that did little to address capacity problems in the fast-growing parish.

Coming off parish voters' resounding rejection of a half-cent sales tax for the "Lanes for Change" road program in 2012 and subsequent rejections of other tax measures, parish leaders then vowed to find ways to finance road construction without a new parishwide tax.

Under the administration of former Parish President Kenny Matassa and the Parish Council at the time, road impact fees on new homes and businesses, road maintenance property tax districts for new, individual subdivisions, and tighter traffic impact analyses were outgrowths of that vow. So was the Move Ascension program.

The road program has amassed more than $70 million by cobbling together funds from a $25 million bond issue in 2016, $10 million in sales tax surplus, impact fee revenues, federal and regional road matching dollars, state road swap money in Prairieville and other sources, parish officials have said.

Move Ascension has been focused on generating the kind of traffic-easing and safety improvements that parish officials had long sought through grants and the state highway department, officials said.

Mike Enlow, a parish engineer who led the early development of the Move Ascension program, and other parish officials have pointed out that the program has focused, in part, on corridors, such as the critical north-south route along Roddy Road and the east-west route on Germany and Duplessis roads north of Gonzales.

Both areslated for lane widenings of narrow roads to improve safety, though not add capacity, and a string of future roundabouts for traffic flow and safety.

The program, however, doesn't have the money for major capacity additions, like adding new lanes, in a parish that was estimated in 2019 to need $1.25 billion in road improvements over the next 20 years.

Enlow suggested that the parish must balance getting traffic moving more efficiently before creating costly capacity expansions that would simply dump traffic into other bottlenecks.

But creating the program from scratch required hiring engineering firm HNTB and a collection of subcontracted design firms, selecting projects and spending millions on designing them, buying land and moving utilities, which meant Move Ascension moved slowly through the Matassa years.

The program and its millions in engineering and other costs with little in the way of construction at that point were a campaign point in 2019 for a batch of new councilmen elected to office that year, along with the new administration of current Parish President Clint Cointment.

Beginning in second-quarter 2020 and now this year, those years of behind-the-scenes efforts have begun to bear fruit on the roads.

"So, we had to stand up a program from nothing and, you know, that takes time," said Jeff Burst, a senior project manager with HNTB and a lead consultant for the Move Ascension program.

Burst and several parish officials who have worked closely with the program since the Matassa administration have pointed out that the three years it has taken to see construction start on Move Ascension more than halves the time it takes the state to complete a project from start to finish.

The first two of the next 10 projects headed toward construction this year are the $2.4 million project to widen existing lanes on narrow C. Braud Road, an important link between La. 73 near Interstate 10 and Bluff Road, and a $1.34 million roundabout at Henry Road and La. 930 in Prairieville, parish officials said.

Though the state Department of Transportation and Development and developers have built roundabouts in Port Vincent, Sorrento and Burnside, the Henry/La. 930 roundabout would be parish government's first after more than a decade of discussions and design for various intersections.

Councilman Michael Mason, a first-term member who was critical of the parish's engineering spending on Move Ascension during the campaign, has taken an interest in oversight of the road program and said his view of the program has changed.

"When you get a little bit more information and you start to see how the big plan starts to unfold, you kind of see what the importance is. It's all about the flow of traffic," he said.

Mason explained that his constituents are tuned into Move Ascension projects for their area and so seem to be supportive of what is planned. He noted that some aired worries late last fall that a Move Ascension roundabout for Germany and Braud roads had been canceled when a temporary traffic light was put up by a developer.

Mason said the roundabout is still planned as one of nine proposed in Move Ascension. The state transportation department is planning others as well.

In years past, new parish administrations and Parish Councils have sometimes tabled the road and drainage priorities of the prior leadership, often leaving fallow taxpayer-funded engineering work with little to show for the expense.

With few exceptions, the Cointment administration has largely allowed Move Ascension and the several million dollars spent standing up the program to proceed.

One exception has been the costly and controversial safety widening proposed for Tiggy Duplessis Road in the Duplessis area, despite strong traffic data indications of safety concerns. The parish is taking other safety measures but won't widen the road, the primary point of contention.

Martin McConnell, an administration spokesman, said improving traffic was one pillar of Cointment's election campaign.

"Traffic, drainage and growth, that's what he ran on and, I think, he recognized that Move Ascension was already in place, already moving forward and is one of those things, if you have something in there that is working, you work with it," McConnell said.

Read more from the original source:

In the making for more than three years, Move Ascension program bears fruit for road work - The Advocate

Need a COVID-19 test?

Free testing continues at Lamar-Dixon Expo Center from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Friday, according to the Louisiana Health Department.

What should I expect before visiting a test site?

You'll need to wear a mask onsite and stay in your car before getting testing.

For those 13 years and older, expect the site to have a self-administered nasal swab test. This allows you to swab your own nose on site while in your vehicle. Once that's done, you'll drop the sealed sample into a container on your way out of the drive-thru site.

Is the test free?

There is no cost, and no identification is needed.

How old do I have to be to take the test?

You must be at least 3 years old to take the test.

How will I know when my test result is available?

Test results are available by calling (866) MYQUEST (1-866-697-8378), but keep in mind that wait times can take days. Test results are also available through the Quest online portal or app.

See the original post here:

Ascension Partners with Ochsner to Offer Free COVID-19 Tests - The Advocate

Genshin Impact Version 1.3 is right around the corner, and one of the rumored characters that will make their debut with the update is the practical joker and funeral parlor director Hu Tao. This 5-star pyro and polearm-wielding young lady runs the day-to-day operations for the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor in Liyue, and she wouldnt mind giving the zombie Qiqi her last rites.

Bear in mind Hu Tao is currently rumored to appear in Genshin Impact Version 1.3 alongside Xiao, and all the information we have on her has come from leaks out of the closed beta. Well be sure to keep this guide up-to-date as Version 1.3 approaches launch in February.

Below will be listed her full set of attacks and abilities, her passive talents, constellations, and finally all of her ascension and talent material requirements. Since this information hasnt been officially confirmed as of publication (its all from the closed beta), any and all of this can change between now and Hu Taos debut. While shell still use Agnidus for ascension like other Pyro characters, she and Xiao appear to use a second, newer elemental material for their ascension: Juvenile Jade. This material will drop from a new world boss, the Ancient Geovishap.

Hu Tao Attacks and Abilities

Hu Tao Passive Talents

Hu Tao Constellations

Hu Tao Ascension Materials

Hu Tao Talent Ascension Materials

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Genshin Impact Hu Tao Character Guide - Attack of the Fanboy

Prince Harry and Prince William's rift has been going on since as long as we can remember.

However, as per predictions, the two will put behind their differences only when the Duke of Cambridge takes over the throne from their father, Prince Charleswhich itself will take a while to happen.

Royal commentator Carole Malone spoke about the brothers feud on Channel 5s documentary, William and Harry: Princes at War.

"It will be interesting to see what happens when Prince William becomes King. What will their relationship be like? she said.

"I think it may be better because William is always going to be King, nothing is going to change that and Harry will have accepted that a very long time ago, she continued.

"Also, William at that point will be top dog, what he says goes. Whatever Prince Harry does or says, William will be in charge, end of story, she said.

Other than that, royal expert Marlene Koeing also claimed that the two will eventually have to let bygones be bygones.

We don't know everything, we only know what leaks have been made. You would want them to sit down and work things out and have conversations but that is between them, she said.

"They are the only two people who can, Prince Charles or someone else can't say you really need to talk to your brother, she continued.

"They need to make the decision to say hey I am living a separate life but I need to talk to my brother as we need to work things out."

"Let Prince William and Prince Harry do it. I think the public is putting too much pressure on this, I know it sounds strange. But they need to do it on their own, it is not for us to decide how it works, she added.

Read more here:

Prince Williams ascension to throne could finally settle rift with Prince Harry - Geo News

Jeff Weinell has always been fascinated with snakes the way they can live all over the world, from deserts to rainforests and even his familys backyard in Gonzales.

When Weinell, 30, graduated from East Ascension High School in 2009, his fascination was just a hobby as he started school at LSU, studying engineering for a time.

Ten years later, Weinell, a graduate research assistant at the University of Kansas' Biodiversity Institute, is responsible for the worlds most recent discovery of a new species of snake one that lives in the Philippines.

Weinell says he was able to take a hobby and "turn it in to something I do all the time.

Levitonius mirus, or the Waray dwarf burrowing snake, is native to the Samar and Leyte islands in the Philippines and only grows to be just over a half-foot long, according to the study published by Weinell and three of his colleagues in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Weinell discovered the snake by accident.

This was totally unplanned, as far as I wasnt going to look for a new species at all, Weinell said. I was hoping to work on a different project, looking at the evolutionary relationships among this group of snakes called Pseudorabdion. It looks superficially similar to this new snake, so it would have been easy for someone to misidentify that. While I was working on that, I found this one.

While running a DNA sequence on a sample of what he thought was a Pseudorabdion in 2017, Weinell realized the DNA did not match the species he thought he was studying. Further analysis of the sample revealed that three specimens stored at the institutes biodiversity collection, gathered on missions between 2006 and 2012, were an entirely new species.

After years of gathering data on the new snake, Weinell and his colleagues published their findings.

The snakes Latin name, Levitonius mirus, was coined by Weinell partially after a mentor, California Academy of Sciences researcher Alan Leviton, who has spent decades studying snakes in the Philippines. The snake is even part of a new genus, or a taxonomic classification that species are grouped under, that was named after Leviton.

The second part of the scientific name, mirus, translates from Latin to marvelous.

There are a lot of cases where specimens are misidentified, and sometimes its going to be another species from the area thats already been described and someone just misidentified it. Other times, it turns out to be something really different, like in this case, Weinell said.

The specimens in the institute's biodiversity collection are the only known ones ever found, Weinell said, something he unsuccessfully tried to rectify in 2017 when he traveled to the Philippines to find more of the species.

Weinell is now planning a trip back to the country in the fall in hopes of trapping a living specimen of the new snake.

Weinell wont complete his doctoral degree at Kansas until 2022, but he said he could see himself focusing his career on studying the evolution of life in the Philippines.

Theres a lot to discover, he said. The Philippines, it being an island archipelago, really lends itself to studying evolution. Each island is basically a replicate experiment of evolution.

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Gonzales native discovers new species of snake native to the Philippines - The Advocate

GONZALESScotlandville spread the ball around like it was handing out late Christmas gifts Monday night at East Ascension.

The Hornets dished out 25 assists as they overcame an early deficit and overwhelmed the Spartans 80-60 in non-district action.

East Ascension (5-6) came ready to play. The Spartans made their first three shots, and quickly took a 7-0 lead, but Scotlandville (11-3) came charging back.

In the first half, every pass the Hornets made seemed to be the right one. They made 16 of 20 shots in the first half with 14 of the baskets coming off an assist. Scotlandvilles lead was 50-30 at halftime, and East Ascension got no closer than 15 points in the second half.

Weve been talking about our defense carrying us, but offensively we were in a rhythm tonight, Scotlandville coach Carlos Sample said. One thing that really impressed me was that we shared the basketball.

We did a real good job of sharing the ball and not just getting shots, but getting good shots.

For the game, Scotlandville finished at 67% from the field (28 for 42) and made 8 of 16 from 3-point range.

Zaheem Jackson made four 3-pointers and totaled 26 points. Also hitting double figures were Emareyon McDonald (24 points) and Cody Fleming (14 points).

East Ascension picked up its shooting in the second half, but the closest it could get was at 75-60 after a 10-2 run late in the game.

The Spartans, who made 25 of 50 shots, got big games from Keith Thomas (25 points) and Troy Dunn (19 points).

Theres an old school adage, Youve got to make more baskets than the other team, and thats what the heck they did tonight, East Ascension coach Tyler Turner said. Every time they shot the ball it went in. Theyre not the No. 1 team in the state for no reason. Theyre well-coached and made the baskets they needed to make.

We played hard and didnt quit. Our kids kept playing and kept fighting.

In the first quarter, Dunn hit a 3-pointer and Thomas added a pair of baskets as East Ascension took a 7-0 lead before Scotlandville got off its first shot. It did not take Scotlandville long to rally.

Cody Flemings 3-pointer tied the game at 10 and started a 16-0 run for the Hornets. Scotlandville made six free throws during the run and led 25-13 CZavian Teasett fed Jackson for a basket.

In the second quarter, Scotlandville made all nine of its shots from the field, a hot streak that included four 3-pointers. Early in the quarter, East Ascension trailed 29-15 before scoring on four consecutive possessions. It didnt matter as Scotlandville did the same to maintain a 14-point lead.

With time running out in the half, John Hubbard drove the baseline before kicking the ball out to Jackson, whose buzzer-beating 3-pointer capped a 16-5 Scotlandville run to close out the first half.

Continue reading here:

Scotlandville's passing sparks win over East Ascension | High School Sports - The Advocate

Starconches are a local specialty in Genshin Impact that are needed for the ascension of certain characters, like Tartaglia. Here's where to find them.

There are a lot of resources and collectibles for adventurers to find in the world of Genshin Impact. Berries growing on bushes, ore jutting from rocks in mountainsides, the loot dropped by Teyvats many monsters, and much more. Players can use these items as ingredients in culinary recipes to heal their party, at blacksmiths to forge weapons for them, or as resources in character ascensions.

Related: Genshin Impact: Where to Find More Violetgrass (& What it's For)

Character ascensions are an important component of the games level up mechanic. By default, characters can only grow to level 20 by defeating enemies or using level-up items (the latter of which is thequickest method). Players will need to collect a certain number of resources to grow past this limit. Enter the starconch, a seashell appropriately emblazoned with a star that characters like Tartaglia need to ascend. Those that managed to wish this Snezhnyna sniper to their team will want to collect lots of starconch to make him grow even stronger, and this guide willprovide the areas that this seashell spawns in.

The starconch are only native to some of the beaches in the Liyue region. This categorizes them as a local specialty in the games code, meaning they respawn every two days. Only three of these shells are needed for the first ascension, but the later ones require as many as 30 or more. Players with Tartaglia in their roster ought to routinely collect starconch over time so theyll have enough in their inventory every time theyre ready to ascend him to the next rank. Here are two places that the shells commonly appear, and the paths new players can take to reach them.

Yaoguang Shoal

This isle is the easiest location to access. Starconches can be found all around its beaches, so combing the area in a loop once every 48 hours will net several shells. It can be reached on the way to Liyue Harbor from Mondstat by taking a right at Guili Plains and heading towards the bridge leading to Mingyun village. The Statue of the Seven that reveals the areas map is found at the highest peak overlooking the shoal, so visit there first if it hasn't already been activated. This regions teleport waypoint, found on the eastern side of the longest isle, has several starconches in the vicinity that are easy to collect.

Guyun Stone Forest

Off the coast of Liyue Harbor is an archipelago of islands known as the Guyun Stone Forest. Its home to lots of high level enemies, and can be reached by gliding off the peak that's northeast of the city. The island with the teleport waypoint on it has at least one of the shellsnestled in the sand, but the island closest to the city has several more. Watch out for the Fatui Pyro Agent that patrols the island! Its possible to avoid him by sticking to the coastline, which players will want to do anyway to collect the starconches.

Next: Where to Find Philanemo Mushrooms in Genshin Impact (& What They're For)

Excerpt from:

Where to find Starconch in Genshin Impact | Screen Rant - Screen Rant