Notes from the Newsroom NewsOK.com Blogging Community

Fifteen Oklahoma high school rookie robotics teams received NASA Program Growth Grants of $6,000 each to compete in regional FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics competitions.

“This is very exciting for our state,” said NASA astronaut John Herrington, the first American Indian to travel in space. “One of NASA’s missions is to inspire the next generation of explorers. These grants will clearly benefit the students of our state by providing resources to promote math and science education through the use of robotics.”

NASA awarded 66 growth grants to first-year teams in the United States for the 2008 season. The grants provide financing for registration costs and for teams to build a robot for competition in one regional FIRST event.

Oklahoma City will host for the first time a FIRST Robotics qualifying event as part of the state’s efforts to meet the Oklahoma’s growing needs for a workforce with mathematics and science skills. More than 3,000 students are expected to participate in the regional event March 20-22 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

NASA Program Growth grant recipients:

— Bishop Kelley High School

— Broken Arrow High School

— Caddo-Kiowa Technology Center

— Duncan High School

— Edmond Santa Fe High School

— Elgin Public Schools

— Fairview High School

— Gordon Cooper Technology Center

— Great Plains Technology Center

— Idabel High School

— Morris High School

— Oklahoma City Homeschool Robotics Team

— Taloga High School

— Sapulpa High School

— Wright Christian Academy

Brian Sargent
Staff Writer

An entertainment event billed as an unprecedented gathering of Oklahoma’s most famous sons and daughters — the Centennial Spectacular — will be rebroadcast statewide several times during the next few months.

The spectacular, on Nov. 16 in the Ford Center, featured a display of the latest in lighting, multimedia and staging. Songs were written specifically for the show.

Headlining were country music stars Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Toby Keith, Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood.

“The Spectacular was an incredible finale to what has been a magnificent statehood celebration. Thanks to OETA’s broadcast, Oklahomans from all four corners of the state had front row seats to this magnificent show,” Blake Wade, Centennial Commission executive director, said. The next broadcast on the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority will be at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 2.

The spectacular will be broadcast on OETA OKLA:

— 8:30 p.m., Dec. 14

— 6 p.m., Dec. 19

— 7 p.m., Dec. 25

— 11 a.m., Jan. 1

— 1 p.m., Jan. 3

For more information, call OETA at (800) 879-6382 or go to OETA’s Web site.

Brian Sargent
Staff Writer

I recently interviewed Charles Ballenger, owner of Ballengers Furniture and developer of the Spring Creek Village shopping center in Edmond.

I love talking to Mr. Ballenger. He just has such high standards. He traveled the world to create the look of his shopping center, what he calls a mix of European flair and territorial influences. He’s also one of the most conscientious leasors I’ve ever talked with. He not only researches his tenants but he gets to know them personally, spends a lot of time finding out what drives them. If they are successful, that leads to his success.

 As I was glancing through my notes from our interview, one quote really stuck out to me.

“If you put enough investment into something, your heart and soul will follow.”

I know he was referring to business, but it seems like a pretty good motto for life as well. Thanks for the lesson Mr. Ballenger.

 Tricia Pemberton

Staff Writer

A study, recently released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, states that a prolonged drought during 2002 in North America cut in half the continent’s natural uptake of carbon dioxide, leaving more than 360 million tons more of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The amount not absorbed that year is equivalent to annual emissions from more than 200 million automobiles in the United States.

Scientists from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory will present the aforementioned data this and other findings on the North American carbon cycle at a world carbon dioxide in Hawaii this week. The results are the first from a powerful data and modeling system called CarbonTracker, released earlier this year by NOAA.

The study presents the first objective estimate of net atmospheric carbon dioxide exchange across North America every week from 2000 to 2005. The estimate is based on 28,000 global atmospheric observations.

In North America, humans release each year 2 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement. Typically, forests, grasslands, crops, and soil absorb about a third of those emissions. The natural ratio was upset in 2002, when North America experienced one of the largest droughts in more than a century.

Conditions hovering over nearly 45 percent of the United States were classified as “extreme” or “exceptional.” The amount of carbon taken up by vegetation and soil plunged from an annual average of 650 million metric tons to 330 million metric tons.

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 70 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.

Brian Sargent

Staff Writer

Public corporations spare little expense when producing their annual reports. Each year, media minions work tirelessly to generate glossy, themed publications that typically lead off  with a letter to shareholders from the CEO. Lavish color photos of products, workplaces, employees and executives are sprinkled liberally through such tomes. The companies tuck mandated regulatory information — the only section business journalists tend to read closely — in the back.

But the creative agency of Bruketa & Zinic has created an annual report that for Coatian food company Podravka that takes presentation to a new level. Podravka has included a separate cookbook titled “Well Done” that is tucked inside a cut-out section of its current report. The cookbook’s pages are blank — until you wrap the book in aluminum foil and bake it for 25 minutes at 212 degrees (100 degrees Centigrade). The recipes, printed with invisible heat-sensitive ink, are revealed by the cooking. If overcooked, the book will burn.

These photos, published by the design blog Dezeen show how the text and images appear on the pages.

Apparently the American phrase “cooking the books” doesn’t carry the negative connotation in the company’s homeland.

Don Mecoy
Business Writer

Participants in the Oklahoma Energy Summit 2007 at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City today are hearing from researchers and leaders in areas related to Oklahoma’s “Other” energy future right now.Panel members for this discussion are Steven Rhines, vice president, general counsel and director of public affairs for The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Mike Bergey, president of Bergey Windpower, John Richardson, president and CEO of ENERCON, a firm that provides engineering and technical services to more than 70 percent of operating nuclear plants in the U.S, and Irma S. Russel, director of The National Envionment Law & Policy Institute at the University of Tulsa.

Switch grass, wind power and nuclear power are topics of discussion at the moment.

A big event for the day, a lunch featuring oil and gas giants of Oklahoma in a panel discussion with the group, starts in about an hour.

Jack Money, Business Writer

I recently wrote a story about how Oklahoma banks compete and included a list of 10 biggest banks in the state. The story would have been fine without it, but I was glad to see that our designer included the list in the newspaper.
I like lists, and readership surveys tend to confirm that many others do too.
Each year about this time, Rex Sorgatz compiles his annual list of lists. It’s a catalogue of others’ “Year’s Best of…” lists, and it’s great fun.

The list will grow throughout the remainder of 2007, so he’s just getting started. But a few intriguing lists already have appeared. For instance, here we learn that the University of Oklahoma’s law school is tied for 73rd among the 2007 top law schools, according to one ranking. We also can see a Forbes list of of the world’s most expensive homes, including a $165 million, 75,000-square-foot Beverly Hills villa once owned by William Randolph Hearst. And we can see the best magazine covers of the year, which includes the one illustrated here from Texas Monthly.

For more, head over the Sorgatz’s fimoculous blog.

For a compendium of inane lists, check out McSweeneys to find creations such as “Titles from Dr. Suess’ Brief Foray into Realism” and “Names of The Beatles If They Were Born Today.”

Don Mecoy

Business Writer

The study showed that 94 percent of headache sufferers annually skip a family or social event due to a headache.  Additionally, 87 percent of respondents admitted to missing a day of work because of a headache. 

However, more than 40 percent of headache sufferers believed that others dismiss a headache as a valid reason to miss an event or work.

 About 45 percent of those who missed work or another function because of a headache were not truthful about the reason for their absence.  Many were embarrassed to miss events because of their headaches, and because they thought they should be able to “tough it out.”

        In fact:

               –   45 percent of respondents missed at least five family or social events in the last year because of a headache.

             –   Nearly 30 percent have missed up to five  days of work each month due to headache.

              –   25 percent reported that their co-workers resent the time they spend away from work due to a headache.

                –  20 percent reported their family and friends tend to resent them for missing events because of headaches.

               The National Headache Foundation stresses that a headache is a neuro-biological disease, and nearly 90 percent of men and 95 percent of women have had at least one serious headache a year..The founation wants headaches — particularly migraine headaches — to be diagnosed just like a heart disease, diabetes and epilepsy. 

          A headache is a treatable disease and people should not needlessly suffer, according to foundation officials.

          Currently, more than 20 million Americans suffer from migraine headaches, which most commonly experienced between the ages of 15 and 55. Seventy to 80 percent of sufferers have a family history of migraines. yet less than half of all migraine sufferers have received a diagnosis of migraine from their healthcare provider, according to the foundation, which is based in Chicago.

-Jim Killackey, Medical Writer

With Thanksgiving and Black Friday now in the rearview mirror, most Americans have turned to the task of putting up the Christmas tree.

 I went walking a few weeks ago on several Christmas tree farms in the Edmond area, getting a first-hand glimpse of the calm before the storm. The fields were quiet, the sky blue, the air still warm. It was so peaceful, I wished I’d brought a picnic and a blanket. Last weekend, dozens of families trecked out to the farms to pick out a tree for the year. The fields no doubt turned noisy with the sounds of families calling out their favorite picks, saws on wood, the baler and shaker machines clanking out a rhythm as they completed their jobs.

But the week before, when calm still ruled, I pulled out my favorite live Christmas tree memory.

It was the second year of my now 14-year marriage and a friend let my husband and I come out to her property to cut down a tree. In the field, it looked like the perfect tree. The fact that it towered over our heads should have been our first clue. That it took three hours with a hand saw to fell it, should have been a very strong second clue that this tree was never going to fit in our house.

But we were young and naive. I was pregnant, so we had to enlist help to haul the tree to our car, hoist it to the roof and tie it down. We didn’t realize our error until we got the tree off the car and sized up our doorway. Then we knew we had a problem. This 9-foot tree was never going to fit in our living room. But we had slaved for this tree, it was by-golly going to fit.

 We cut and trimmed until we had what resembled a giant cedar box. We then cut the trunk until it fit in our too-small tree stand. We stood the tree up and spent until 2 a.m. decorating it with every ornament, bit of tensil and string of lights we could find. Never mind that nothing matched. When I finally waddled to bed that morning, I was satisfied. We had the perfect tree.

When it came crashing down about 30 minutes later, breaking half of our ornaments, I sobbed.

After getting a stand reinforced with rebar and weighting the tree with dumbbells, it stood through Christmas (actually into February). Finally, when it became a fire hazard, a friend came and helped us haul it out.

My oldest daughter now has asthma, so gone are the days of live trees. But almost every year, a family member brings up the year of the giant cedar box and we laugh over the memory, like the Christmas treasure it is.

Hope you’re out their making some Christmas memories of your own.

Tricia Pemberton

Staff Writer

When I received an e-mail nearly two weeks ago about travel packages to the Big 12, I gave the message a quick glance and tossed it in my “maybe” folder. Maybe this would warrant a travel story, but it probably wouldn’t, I thought to myself.

I admit I don’t know much about football, but from what I was hearing, I didn’t think the Sooners would be making a trip to the championship.

Shame on me. As a Norman-native and a University of Oklahoma graduate, I should have never underestimated my alma mater.

I know I’m not the only fan who was a little nervous about the Sooners’ journey to the Dr. Pepper Big 12 Championship. But our nerves are calm now, at least until the Sooners take the field Saturday to play against Missouri.

Now some fans are rushing around to make travel plans to San Antonio. Luckily I don’t need tickets or reservations for my couch.

What about you? Are you going to the game? Are you making some last minute plans?

Ja’Rena Lunsford

Business Writer

jlunsford@oklahoman.com