LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Junior Katie Koshes (Amity Regional/Woodbridge, Conn.), senior Maddie Damon (Kasson-Mantorville/Kasson, Minn.), senior Rachel Douglas (Rappahannock/Warsaw, Va.), senior Megan Hensley (Ashland Blazer/Ashland, Ky.) and senior Cielo Meza (St. Bonaventure/Ventura, Calif.) were selected MaxPreps/NFCA National High School Players of the Week, respectively, announced on Monday for games played May 25-May 31.

 

East
Koshes went 3-0, did not allow a run and held her opponents to a .100 batting average in the circle last week for the Spartans. She twirled three complete-game shutouts, surrendered eight hits, struck out 22 and walked three in 21 innings of work. In a one-hitter against Lauralton, Koshes struck out a week-best 15 and walked one in a 3-0 win. She also tossed a two-hit shutout with seven punchouts during a 3-0 triumph versus Cheshire. The junior hurler opened the week with 14-strikeouts in a four-hit win against Mercy.

North
Damon guided Kasson-Mantorville to a 4-0 week in the circle and at the plate. The senior hurler was 4-0, did not allow a run and struck out 46 in 25 innings. She capped off her stellar week in the circle with back-to-back four-hit shutouts against Zumbrota-Mazeppa in 2-0 and 1-0 victories. She struck out 11 with zero walks in the opener and followed with 10 more punchouts and one walk in the nightcap. Against Caldonia/Spring Grove, Damon sat down 16, surrendered three hits and did not walk a batter. At the dish, she was 8-for-10, recording four two-hit contests with three doubles a home run and five runs scored. She doubled and scored the game-winning run in game two versus Zumbrota-Mazeppa, while going 2-for-4 with a double, homer, two RBI and two runs against Caldonia/Spring Grove.

South
Douglas powered the Raiders at the plate last week, batting .500 with two doubles, a home run, eight RBI and five runs scored. The outfielder/second baseman went 2-for-3 with a home run, four RBI and two runs scored in a victory over Lancaster. She added a double and three RBI versus Colonial Beach and concluded the week 2-for-3 with a double, run and RBI against Essex.

South Central
Hensley was 3-0 with a 0.00 ERA and 39 strikeouts. She twirled a five-inning no-hitter in her first start of the week against West Carter. In that contest, she struck out 11 and did not walk a batter, while adding two home runs, four RBI and four runs scored in a 12-0 win. Hensley struck out 15 more, walked three and scattered six hits in a 7-0 blanking of Raceland. She closed out the week with a six-hit complete game effort in a 2-1 victory over Boyd County. The senior fanned 13 and did not walk a batter.

West
Meza allowed just one hit, struck out 37 and did not walk a batter in two complete-game shutouts last week for St. Bonaventure. The senior fanned 19 of 21 batters in a no-hitter, her second in three starts, against Sierra Vista. Meza also tossed a one-hit shutout with 18 punchouts in an 8-0 victory over Lompac and finished the week facing just batter over the minimum and held her opponents to a .023 batting average in 14 innings.

MaxPreps.com, the official high school statistical provider of the NFCA, provides all statistics for the NFCA High School Player of the Week award. To nominate a player for the award, the coach must enter his or her athlete’s game stats into MaxPreps.com by Sunday evening to be eligible that week.

The MaxPreps/NFCA High School Players of the Week are announced on NFCA.org every Monday during the spring season, with one representative chosen from each of five separate high school regions. During the fall campaign, just a single player is selected representing all participating regions.

MaxPreps is a free stat tool that is available to high school coaches across the country and is one of the most recognized and respected high school athletics websites on the internet. Coaches who enter their team’s stats on Max Preps will not only be nominating their players for this award, but they will be getting their team’s information out to thousands of high school sports fans and college coaches across the country.

To obtain a coach’s login, please contact [email protected] or call 1-800-329-7324 x1. To enter a team’s stats on the MaxPreps website, please click here.

Years ago, I was on the road a lot for work. As a corporate medical director I attended conferences around the world to stay current on cutting-edge medical trends. That meant a lot of frequent flier miles, and a lot of nights spent away from home.

At first I loved the opportunities to explore a new city. But soon I found myself less enthusiastic about the prospect of flights and hotels. The security lines. The traffic to and from the airport. The “hurry-up-and-wait” lifestyle.

Now, new research on the way business travel affects health may help to explain my ambivalence toward the time away.

It comes from Columbia epidemiologist Andrew Rundle, who analyzed data from 18,328 working people who received annual health assessments from EHE Inc., the New York-based provider of corporate wellness programs. Rundle’s study provides a more nuanced picture of the health of business travellers than we’ve ever had before.

That’s great because until now the picture’s been confusing. Years back, in a newspaper column, I described studies on business travellers as portraying a dichotomy. Some studies, including one from 2010 that I co-authored, showed that business travellers tended to be healthier than workers at large. But a 2011 look at a different EHE data pool established that a lot of travel was bad for people’s health. The study associated lots of time on the road with higher blood pressure as well as higher body weight.

This latest study goes a long way toward explaining the dichotomy. It mentions selection bias as the reason why people who travel for work tend to be healthier than those who don’t travel at all. Because those who are ill tend not to volunteer, or be selected by their bosses, to go away.

To accurately determine the health effects of business travel, this study compares people who go away a lot for work with those who travel only a little.

Compared to occasional travellers, that is, people who logged just one to six nights on the road per month, those who travelled 21 or more nights per month were more likely to smoke, have sleeping trouble, be sedentary or report problems with alcohol, anxiety or depression.

“The odds of being obese were 92 per cent higher for those who travelled 21 or more nights per month compared to those who travelled only one to six nights per month,” writes Rundle in a Harvard Business Review article about the study. They also had higher blood pressure and lower amounts of good cholesterol in their blood.

This isn’t great news. Travel for work is remarkably prevalent. For example, Americans conducted more than 500 million business trips in 2016 alone. Imagine the hubbub if a particular food or drink featured the same health risks as extensive business travel.

So what to do?

One, we need to reassess our general attitude toward business travel, which is regarded as a perk in most workplaces. It’s reasonable to feel jealous that Sally in marketing gets to attend that convention in Hawaii, but we should realize that Jeff, the VP of sales, who spends 150 days a year on the road, is engaging in an activity with its own set of health risks. The road can be a lonely and stressful place when you’re on it for extended periods, leaving one far from friends and family, and at the mercy of unpredictable weather and airline schedules.

Two, occupational medical staff should cooperate with human resources to devise a set of healthy travelling guidelines for the road warriors on company payrolls. Is there a healthy dose of business travel? How much is too much? And how can we get better at predicting those most at risk?

Third, those who travel should try to focus on wellness while on the road. Often, business travellers can fall into cycles of stress followed by indulgence. A hard day of travel sets up the reward of after-dinner dessert and loneliness-busting late nights in the hotel bar.

Instead, travellers should realize that living well requires discipline regardless of where they’re spending the night. When I’m living out of my suitcase for work I take special pains to eat better, to mitigate stress with daily exercise rather than a couple of drinks at the hotel bar, and to stay disciplined on my sleep hygiene. I’d encourage frequent travellers to learn a good hotel-room exercise workout, either from a trainer or by getting up to speed with the many posted on the web. Nothing encourages a healthy frame of mind like physical activity.

Such changes may not be enough to restore the glamour that previously existed around jet flights and departure lounges. But it would improve things a lot for those doing the travelling to at least recognize the health risks.

Dr. James Aw is the chief medical officer of Medcan, a Toronto wellness clinic.

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Fortnite’s concurrent player count has hit a staggering peak of 8.3 million.

Following the rollout of Fortnite’s Korea-only challenges this week, that has players visiting internet cafes, Epic Games Korea’s Sung Chul Park revealed the number in an interview with Inven (via VG247).

It’s an astonishing achievement, particularly when you remember that, back in February, the game hit an all-time high of 3.4 million concurrent players. At that time, it caused some serious server problems for Epic – it seems that the developer’s invested in some backup tech since then.

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Mashing buttons will get you nowhere!

Guru Meditation:

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Bear in mind that, this time last year, Fortnite had managed to amass over 7 million players in total, never mind playing at the same time.

As the game’s popularity has grown, it’s seen mash-ups with the various cornerstones of pop culture, with an Avengers: Infinity War crossover and, more recently, an NFL tie-in.

Players can grab a themselves a football-themed skin and customise it, choosing from all 33 teams and an additional Fortnite team.

Meanwhile, if you’re all sorted on the cosmetics front and want a leg-up with Week 7 challenges, you can check out our guide right here.

Shabana is a freelance writer who enjoys JRPGs, wine, and not finishing games. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

 

Click:Make Money Online

Often touted for its many health benefits, new research suggests you might not even need to drink coffee to reap some of its rewards, with a U.S. study finding that just the scent of a cup of joe could help give people a cognitive boost that improves performance on certain tasks.

Led by the Stevens School of Business along with researchers at Temple University and Baruch College, the team carried out two studies to investigate whether the scent of coffee alone, which has no caffeine, could be strong enough to boost cognitive performance.

In the first study, the researchers looked at performance Graduate Management Aptitude Test, or GMAT, a computer adaptive test required by many business schools.

They gave a 10-question GMAT algebra test to around 100 undergraduate business students in a computer lab setting, and divided the participants into two groups.

One group took the test in the presence of an ambient coffee-like scent, while a control group took the same test in an unscented room.

The researchers found that the group in the coffee-smelling room scored significantly higher on the test.

To investigate further, and find out whether it was the coffee scent which increased alertness and subsequently improved performance, the team designed a follow-up survey which they gave to more than 200 new participants.

The group were surveyed on their beliefs about various scents and their perceived effects on human performance, with the participants reporting that they they believed they would feel more alert and energetic when smelling a coffee scent, compared to a flower scent or no scent.

They also said that exposure to coffee scent would increase their performance on mental tasks.

The results suggest that smelling a coffee-like scent, despite having no caffeine in it, has a effect similar to drinking coffee in part due to the participants’ expectations, suggesting a placebo effect of coffee scent.

“It’s not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting,” commented lead researcher Professor Adriana Madzharov. “But they also thought they would do better, and we demonstrated that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance.”

Madzharov is now looking to explore whether coffee scents could have a similar placebo effect on other types of performance, such as verbal reasoning.

Coffee has previously been found to also have many physical health benefits, including a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes and dementia, with some also suggesting that it may even help us live longer.

The results can be found published online in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

ROCHESTER, Minn. – For the second consecutive season, Rock Valley (Ill.) defeated Herkimer (N.Y.) in the NJCAA Division III Softball Championship Game. This year’s edition saw the top-seeded Golden Eagles hold off a seventh-inning push from the No. 2 seed Generals for a 3-2 victory.

 

Spurring Rock Valley on to victory was freshman pitcher Morgan Adolph. For her dominance throughout the tournament, she was named the championship’s Most Valuable Player and received the Most Outstanding Pitcher award.

Sophomore catcher Vivi Marquez excelled as well for the Golden Eagles, earning the Most Outstanding Offensive Player award. Rock Valley sophomore first baseman Kaytee Keefe received the Marucci Elite Hitter award, while sophomore third baseman Haley Love was tabbed Most Outstanding Defensive Player for the tournament. The trio was joined by Golden Eagles freshman pitcher Katie Starkey and freshman left fielder Abby Kissack on the all-tournament team.

Rock Valley began its quest for the championship with an 18-0 run-rule victory over Allegheny County-South (Pa.) in the opening round. The Golden Eagles defeated St. Cloud Tech (Minn.) 4-1 in the quarterfinals before topping Herkimer for the first time in the tournament with a 2-1 win in the semifinals.

Rock Valley finished off the season with a 52-5 record after the title game victory. Herkimer dropped to 38-9 for the year with both of their only two losses DIII opponents coming at the hands of the Golden Eagles.

— Courtesy of NJCAA.org

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t saying what he is willing to do to keep a provision protecting labour rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer workers inside a renewed North American free trade pact.

More than 40 Republican lawmakers wrote U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday demanding the removal of language in the agreement pledging all three countries to support “policies that protect workers against employment discrimination on the basis of sex, including with regard to pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, gender identity.”

The legislators urged Trump not to sign the agreement unless the language was removed.

The three countries are expected to sign the deal, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA for short, at the G20 meeting in Argentina at the end of the month.

Agreement represents ‘Canadian values’

Trudeau says the deal Canada negotiated has some of the strongest labour and environmental provisions of any trade deal the country has signed.

He also says he is not going to negotiate in public when asked how far he would go to keep the provision in the agreement.

“We got to a good agreement that I think represents Canadian values, Canadian approach, but also values that are broadly shared amongst citizens of our three countries,” Trudeau said Sunday at the end of a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.

“In any trade deal, there are going to be people who would like this or like that or not want this or not want that,” he said, adding that moving forward with a strong agreement is in the interest of all three countries.

In a letter to the White House flagged Friday by the U.S. website Politico, the coalition of 40 members of Congress said the United States “has the right to decide when, whether and how to tackle issues of civil rights, protected classes and workplace rights” as a sovereign nation.

“A trade agreement is no place for the adoption of social policy. It is especially inappropriate and insulting to our sovereignty to needlessly submit to social policies which the United States Congress has so far explicitly refused to accept,” reads the letter, released Friday.

Signatories to the letter include Iowa Republican Steve King, who made headlines in Canada last month when he tweeted his support for the controversial Toronto mayoral campaign of alt-right anti-immigration champion Faith Goldy.

Another signatory, Republican Doug Lamborn, has expressed concern congressional approval for USMCA could set a precedent “for activist courts” and he said in a statement Friday that Trump needed to remove the “troubling language … adopted behind the scenes.”

The deal must make its way through Congress, and the letter sent Friday to Trump suggests he could lose some Republican support for the agreement unless changes are made.

Trudeau said Sunday that every country will go through its own ratification process.

“Canada will, the United States will,” he said. “But we’re going to let the American officials and administration focus on their ratification process while we focus on ours.”

What’s up, everybody! Sydnee here, and tomorrow, November 16, starting at 2pm PT/5pm ET/10pm UK (November 17 at 9am AET) I’m streaming Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu.

I’m stoked to jump back into Kanto and check out the change in catching wild Pokemon. Won’t you join me?

You can watch live on YouTube, Twitch, and Mixer.

In the meantime, get hyped with by watching the trailer below. See you tomorrow!

COLUMBUS, Ga. – With a comeback eight-inning victory, Central Methodist claimed the Gold Championship of the NFCA NAIA Leadoff Classic with a 6-5 victory over Auburn Montgomery in the title game at South Commons Softball Complex.

Campbellsville (6-1) topped the field in the Silver Bracket, while Georgia Gwinnett (9-4) earned the Copper Bracket crown. 

Finishing the tournament 5-1, the Eagles (also 5-1 for the season) tied the game when Hannah Blackmon hit a solo home run with one out in the bottom of the seventh. After holding the Warhawks (7-2) scoreless in the top of the eighth, they loaded the bases with one out, and Bri Boatwright hit a soft liner that fell just out of the reach of the shortstop for the game-winning walkoff single. AUM trailed 4-1 after the first inning, but chipped away at the deficit with a run in the second and third, and two in the fourth to grab its first lead of the game, 5-4. The lead would last until one out in the seventh when the comeback started.

In the semifinals, Central Methodist rallied from a 9-2 deficit in the seventh inning and Lindie Adair capped off the eight-run comeback with a walk-off single in the 10-9 win over LSU-Alexandria (9-3). During the seventh, the Eagles recorded seven hits and took advantage of three walks. The Generals grabbed the big lead by scoring five in the first and a single run in the third, fourth, fifth and seventh innings.

In the other semifinal, Auburn-Montgomery outlasted Lindsey Wilson, 8-4, in a three-hour-and-15-minute marathon. The Tigers scored four runs in the top of the ninth to secure the victory and advance. The Blue Raiders’ Chelsea Showers rallied them twice with two-run home runs in the fifth and seventh innings, but they could not mount one last rally in the bottom of the ninth. 

Campbellsville claimed the Silver Championship Bracket with a 9-0 five-inning victory over Belhaven (9-5). The Tigers recorded eight hits and Neely Quint tossed a two-hit shutout with three strikeouts. After single runs in the first and second innings, the Tigers extended their lead to 5-0 in the fifth courtesy of Hailey Szpila’s three-run round tripper and closed out the scoring with a four-run fourth, highlighted by another three-run long ball by Kristin Benton.

The Tigers edged William Carey (7-6), 5-3, while Belhaven defeated Park, 7-3 to advance to the title game. Emily Todd homered for the Blazers against the Pirates, while Adrean Jordan doubling twice and knocking in a run for the Tigers.

In the Copper bracket, Bellevue (1-4) picked up its first win of the season with a 2-1 nailbiter over Friends in the consolation final. In the Copper Championship, Georgia Gwinnett rolled to a 12-1 victory over Oklahoma Baptist in six innings. The Grizzlies recorded nine hits, including a grand slam by Alycia Fields, who finished with five RBI.

In the gold consolation final, Thomas jumped out to a 6-0 lead over the first three innings and cruised to a 10-1 win over Reinhardt. Rachel Hoeft started the scoring with a two-run home run in the first and added to the lead with back-to-back RBI singles by Hoeft and Nadal in the third. They closed out the scoring with four runs in the seventh. Hoeft went 3-for-4 with three RBI and two runs scored. Amanda Ruthkowski homered for the Eagles.

Thomas and Reinhardt reached the gold consolation final picking up 13-8 and 12-3 (in six innings) triumphs over USC Beaufort (9-2) and Ave Maria (7-12), respectively. The slugfest between the Sand Sharks and Bears featured nine long balls, three off the bat of USCB’s Amanda Brown and two more from Maddie Byrd and one off the bat of Mariah Sanborn. For the Bears, Carmen Nadal, Chelsea Carter and Kelsey Connolly left the yard. A seven-run third catapulted the Eagles to a 12-3 run-rule win over the Gyrenes. Trailing 3-0, Reinhardt scored 12 unanswered runs with the final two coming on Balli Willis’ home run.

The Lynx and Warriors advanced to the silver consolation finals with 4-2 and 4-3 victories over William Woods (3-8) and Olivet Nazarene (1-4), respectively. In the final, Corban defeated Lindenwood-Belleville, 8-0 in five innings. The Warriors broke open the game with a seven-run fourth highlighted by two-run double by Rae Dorras and two-run home run by Jaslyn Rush. Serena Boyd scattered four hits and struck out three to earn the complete game shutout.

VICTORIA — The economic cost of substance use in Canada in 2014 was $38.4 billion, or about $1,100 for every Canadian, says a report released Tuesday.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction partnered with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research to examine the data and estimate the harms of substance use based on health, justice, lost productivity and other costs.

The study concludes that despite record opioid overdose deaths across Canada, more than two-thirds of substance use costs are associated with alcohol and tobacco.

It finds the four substances associated with the largest costs are alcohol at $14.6 billion, tobacco at $12 billion, opioids at $3.5 billion and marijuana at $2.8 billion.

The report says the ability to track costs and harms caused by each substance will be a valuable asset to federal, provincial and territorial efforts to reduce the damage caused by these substances.

In concludes the costs associated with alcohol use jumped from $369 per person in 2007 to $412 per person in 2014.

Legalized marijuana coming in the fall

Tim Stockwell, with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, says many people would consider opioids to be the cause of the most economic and personal harm.

“I think most people would be surprised to know that alcohol and tobacco are killing ten times more people than the other illicit drugs combined.”

Matthew Young, a senior research and policy analyst at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction in Ottawa, says the report comes at a time when Canada is in the midst of a deadly opioid overdose crisis and is about to legalize the recreational use and sale of marijuana in October.

“Even though those are really important, we shouldn’t lose sight of some of the substances we take for granted that are intertwined with our regular lives because they do still exact a toll,” he says.