Squash: All About Strategy | BU Today | Boston University

The BU Squash Team has been ranked as high as 31st in the nation this year, the best ranking in team history. Photos by Tom Hagglof

When Jacob Roscoe became president of the BU Squash Team last year, he hoped to make it more than just a club sport. He wanted it to be run more professionally, and most of all, more like a true team.

?We needed to practice more,? says Roscoe (CAS?14). ?We needed to hire a coach, and we needed to train as though we were a varsity program.?

The team now has five scheduled practices a week, Monday and Wednesday mornings and Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights. They play up to four matches in a typical weekend and compete against club and varsity teams. This year, the team has reached a ranking of 31 among all programs in the country?varsity and club?and it is currently ranked 5th among all club teams.

?We want to become a varsity sport, and we?re trying to use this year as an anchor,? says team vice president Ben Bunjapamai (SMG?15). ?Last year was the first year we pushed to act like a varsity team, and we finished 50th in the nation. This year, we?ve jumped so much further.?

The BU club was established just five years ago and today competes in the College Squash Association (CSA), playing roughly 25 matches a season against teams from the Boston area, among them MIT, Northeastern, and Tufts, and around the country, such as Duke and NYU.

Ben Bunjapamai (SMG?15) won a match against MIT 3-1 on November 8.

The roster is international, with members from South Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Sweden, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. Although the 18-player squad cannot recruit players, Roscoe and Bunjapamai email interested students and offer advice on how to get into BU.

?This year, we?ve spoken to kids from Europe, Australia, and Egypt, and at least 10 kids from India,? Roscoe says. ?We?ve gotten lucky that they?ve been attracted to the University and to the potential of a growing program.?

Squash, like racquetball, is played on a closed-wall court. Roscoe describes it as ?a tennis court folded at center net, so that both players are playing on the same side.? Fast and strategic, the game is won more often with clever ball placement than with power.

While BU?s predominantly male team plays in the men?s division, women are welcome, and female players Chandler Burke (ENG ?16), Chloe Warren (CAS?16), and Alex Smith (CAS?16) have joined and compete.

This season, which started in October and ends this month, the Terriers have posted a record of 10-8 in 18 official CSA matches, including the team?s first win over MIT, a varsity team, and a 5-4 victory over Boston College.

After winning the G Division last year, the team is looking to move up to the C Division playoffs later this month.

Members of the BU and MIT squash teams prepare to go against one another November 8 at the FitRec Center. BU won 5-4.

?That would put us up against very few club teams,? Bunjapamai says. ?Last year, out of the 10 teams in our division, only one was a varsity team. This year, if we get into the C Division, only about three would be club teams.?

The Terriers are still a young team, with just two seniors set to graduate. Roscoe and Bunjapamai are planning the team?s future with care, watching the skills of the players improve, and hoping, when the time is right, to talk with the athletics department about making squash a varsity sport. It is, after all, a strategic endeavor.

The BU Squash Team faces crosstown rival Boston College on Sunday, February 3, at noon at the Fitness & Recreation Center, 915 Commonwealth Ave.

Paul Ryan can be reached at pryan15@bu.edu.

Source: http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/squash-all-about-strategy/

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Solar development absorbing Calif. farmland

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) ? There's a land rush of sorts going on across the nation's most productive farming region, but these buyers don't want to grow crops. They want to plant solar farms.

With California mandating that 33 percent of electricity be generated from renewables by the end of the decade, there are 227 proposed solar projects in the pipeline statewide. Coupled with wind and other renewables they would generate enough electricity to meet 100 percent of California's power needs on an average summer day, the California Independent System Operator says.

And new applications for projects keep arriving.

Developers are flocking to flat farmland near power transmission lines, but agriculture interests, environmental groups and even the state are concerned that there is no official accounting of how much of this important agricultural region's farmland is being taken out of production.

""We've been trying to get a handle on the extent of this for quite a while now," said Ed Thompson of American Farmland Trust, which monitors how much of the nation's farmland is absorbed by development.

The California Department of Conservation, which is supposed to track development on privately held farmland, has been unable to do so because of staff and funding reductions, officials say.

"I'd love to say we have all of that information, but we really don't," said Molly Penberth, manager of the land resource protection division. "We're going to play catch up getting that information, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley."

Planning department records in four of the valley's biggest farming counties show about 100 solar generation plants already proposed on roughly 40,000 acres, or about the equivalent of 470 Disneyland theme parks. Planners in Fresno County say their applications for solar outnumber the ones they received for housing developments during the boom days.

Solar developers have focused on the southern San Joaquin Valley over the past three years for the same reason as farmers: flat expanses of land and an abundance of sunshine. Land that has been tilled most often has fewer issues with endangered species than places such as the Mojave Desert, where an endangered tortoise slowed solar development on federal land.

Much of the solar development is proposed for Kern, Tulare, Fresno and Kings counties, which are home to more than 400 crops that pump $30 billion into the economy and help sustain U.S. food security.

In January, the farmland trust released a report projecting that by 2050 more than 570,000 acres across the region could be lost to development as the Central California population explodes. Farmland losses due to housing, solar development, a warming climate, cyclical drought and ongoing farm water rationing to protect endangered fish, plus the state's signature transportation project ? the High Speed Rail ? are all issues the trust is trying to monitor.

"These are things that don't make headlines, but come under the category that you don't know what you've got until it's gone," Thompson said.

No statewide plan or policy exists to direct projects to areas where land is marginal for farming and power transmission lines exist or can be easily routed, though groups as diverse as the Defenders of Wildlife and the independent state oversight agency Little Hoover Commission have issued studies calling for one.

Projects are approved by elected county boards of supervisors, or if larger than 50 MW, the California Energy Commission.

"There's no consistent approach" county to county in deciding what gets approved on farmland, said Kate Kelly, a planning consultant who is studying the environmental impact of valley projects for Defenders of Wildlife.

While one of the nation's leading solar trade groups has not taken an official position on conversion of farmland to solar, Katherine Gensler of the Solar Energy Industries Association says more thought must go into location.

The largest solar facility operating so far covers 500 acres 60 miles northwest of Bakersfield and produces enough electricity for 36,000 homes.

Just three weeks into 2013, five valley farmers have told the Department of Conservation that they want to cancel low agriculture tax rate contracts to develop solar on their property. None takes advantage of a year-old law making it easier to cancel on marginal land, Penberth said.

County boards of supervisors are attracted to the promise of clean energy construction jobs. Some of the projects are on prime land as small as 20 acres, some on habitat shared by threatened or endangered species such as the kit fox, Swainson's hawk and blunt nose lizard. The 9,000-acre Maricopa Sun project in western Kern County is on prime land that the county says lacks a reliable water supply.

Almost always developers chose sites because there's a willing seller in the vicinity of existing transmission lines, experts say.

Transmission is the biggest reason for the holdup of a massive project that energy planners, agriculture interests and environmentalists agree is perfectly situated ? the Westlands Solar Park in remote Kings and Fresno counties. It's planned for 47 square miles of farmland fallowed because of high levels selenium in the soil.

Developers say the project ultimately could provide 2.7 gigawatts of electricity ? enough for 2.7 million homes. But the wait for approval from the California Independent System Operator to tap into transmission lines for a large project proved too long so they got out. For now.

"We realized it would be a seven-to-10 year process," said Joshua Martin, the solar company's chief financial officer. "We could easily have spent $7 million in fees to stay in line, but it doesn't make good business sense. It's a messy market right now and things need to calm down."

Ten years might be wishful thinking. An email the ISO sent to stakeholders on Jan. 18 said that it could be 12 years or longer before the needed upgrades in transmission infrastructure could be complete for solar projects currently waiting for transmission hookups in the Fresno area.

Westlands Solar Park is betting that environmental obstacles and connection costs will force many of the projects in the pipeline statewide to be abandoned. But what they're hoping in the meantime is that state regulators eventually will direct solar development away from prime farmland.

Next month the California Energy Commission is set to make a move in that direction with adoption of a report that will recommend a coordinated approach placing solar in "zones with minimal environmental or habitat value," near existing or planned electric system infrastructure. The agency would also collaborate with the Department of Conservation to identify areas of the state with marginal land.

Martin says the move likely is too late to help the projects that are stalled and in danger of missing out on federal tax incentives that expire in 2016.

"Someone needs to take a role and say what lines should be built and which aren't in the state's best interest," said Martin. "So far we have been underwhelmed."

____

Reach Tracie Cone on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TConeAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-02-Solar%20Land%20Rush/id-534ce0151fdc40bda91760c9b790984b

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Interview with Rich Eisen of NFL Network about the Super Bowl and more

Posted on January 30, 2013 at 11:28 pm by Stephanie Stradley in General

Recently, I participated in the Courtyard by Marriott writers poll asking for? ?the opinions of some of the most educated writers in football news.? Hey that?s me! Actually, I am not a big believer in game predictions, mostly because I think that if they played the game 10,000 times, they?d have 10,000 results, some favoring ?Read More

Recently, I participated in the Courtyard by Marriott writers poll asking for? ?the opinions of some of the most educated writers in football news.? Hey that?s me! Actually, I am not a big believer in game predictions, mostly because I think tha?

Source: http://blog.chron.com/ultimatetexans/2013/01/interview-with-rich-eisen-of-nfl-network-about-the-super-bowl-and-more/

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Facebook's mobile ad revenue doubles in fourth quarter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc doubled its mobile advertising from the previous quarter as the world's No. 1 social network expanded its business aggressively onto handheld devices.

But the growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates. Extending its reach on mobile devices is crucial as more and more of its 1 billion-plus users begin to access its network via smartphones and tablets.

The company's overall advertising business grew at its fastest clip since before its May initial public offering, helping the company's revenue expand 40 percent and surpass Wall Street targets.

Shares of Facebook were flat at $31.24 in after hours trading on Wednesday, regaining ground after falling more than 8 percent immediately after the numbers were released.

"Overall solid quarter but maybe high expectations going into the quarter," said Aaron Kessler, an analyst with Raymond James.

Facebook said its mobile business accounted for 23 percent of total ad revenue, compared to 14 percent in the third quarter.

Some investors may have been expecting more from the mobile business.

"Mobile revenue was expected to be a little higher," said Kessler, who said he was looking for mobile revenue to be 25 percent of total ad revenue.

Finance Chief David Ebersman said that Facebook had "basically doubled" mobile ad revenue from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.

"Two quarters ago we really had no mobile revenue," Ebersman told Reuters in an interview. "In the course of a pretty short period of time, we've dramatically ramped up our ability to monetize mobile."

The total number of monthly active users on the social network reached 1.06 billion at the end of last year, with 618 million daily active users, Facebook said.

Facebook shares, which lost more than half their value following its May initial public offering, have regained ground in recent months as concerns about its mobile ad business and insider selling have eased. Shares have surged roughly 60 percent since mid-November.

Facebook said net income in the fourth quarter was $64 million, or 3 cents a share, compared to $302 million, or 14 cents a share in the year-ago period.

Excluding certain items, Facebook said it earned 17 cents a share, compared to the 15 cents a share expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Facebook has ramped up its online advertising services in recent months, putting a greater emphasis on mobile ads and introducing capabilities that let marketers target Facebook users based on their Web browsing history.

Advertising revenue in the fourth quarter grew 41 percent to $1.33 billion, with mobile ads representing 23 percent of Facebook's ad revenue.

Facebook's overall fourth-quarter revenue was $1.585 billion, versus $1.131 billion in the year-ago period. Analysts were looking for revenue of $1.53 billion.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-grows-revenue-40-percent-fourth-quarter-211444844--sector.html

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