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Morningside and Brian Cliff meet in conference softball tourney

May 2, 2007 By

Sioux City hosts the Great Plains Conference softball tournament beginning Thursday and city rivals Morningside and Briar Cliff meet in the opening round. Morningside is the top seed. After setting a school record with 42 wins in 2006 coach Jessica Sitzmann’s team enters the post season with a 40-9 mark after winning the GPAC regular season title.

Sitzmann says they had a lot of returning players with something to prove from last year. They added in some new players and she says it has been a fun group. The winner gets an automatic trip to the NAIA region tournament but there are some at large bids available. She says they need to finish in the top three to have a chance.

Sitzmann says her team has momentum heading into the tournament, and they want to try and maintain that.  Morningside swept the season series with Briar Cliff but Sitzmann expects a tough game. Sitzmann says they’re quick and put the ball in play. Northwestern is the second seed in the tournament and takes a 30-15 record into a first round matchup against Hastings of Nebraska.

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New Mexico man dies after swerving to avoid animal

May 2, 2007 By

An out-of-state motorist died near Mason City early this morning. State Patrol investigators say the driver swerved to avoid a small animal that ran across Highway 65 in front of the car, and the vehicle rolled over several times, killing the driver and injuring a passenger. Driver Safety Specialist Scott Falb says it’s a pattern safety analysts find all too often.

“Most of us are animal lovers,” Falb says, “and the last thing that we ever want to do is to hit an animal. But quite frankly, that attitude can put us in danger.” Every year there are a number of crashes in which drivers say they were trying to avoid a deer or other animal and lost control of their vehicle. The swerving high-speed vehicle rolls over, goes into a ditch, and someone’s injured or may even die as a result. 

Falb says that’s a high price to pay, and the pattern of those fatal accidents spurred state safety and transportation officials to collaborate in recent years on a PR campaign titled “Don’t Veer for Deer.”

 

Even though you don’t want to hurt deer, Falb says it’s much safer for the driver and passengers in the vehicle to hit the animal that it is to make a “radical” maneuver that’s likely to make them lose control of the vehicle. The dead man in this morning’s crash is identified as 47-year-old Brian Madrid of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A 43-year-old woman who was riding in the car is hospitalized in Mason City.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

UNI students create solar-powered lawn mower

May 2, 2007 By

UNI solar powered lawn mower Students at the University of Northern Iowa have designed and built a solar-powered lawn mower — which they hope you’ll be pushing around your yard someday. The UNIMower (YOU-nah-mower) is virtually noiseless. UNI industrial technology professor Reg Pecen says, “It’s really quiet using a permanent magnet D.C. motor.”

And, like the grass it mows, the UNImower is very green. Pecen says it uses no gas or oil and spews no emissions. Pecen says every weekend, 54-million Americans mow their lawns and use some 800-million gallons of gas per year. He says an EPA study finds all of that mowing using two-stroke engines causes about nine-percent of the air pollution nationwide.

The UNIMower, he says, is very eco-friendly. Pecen says two silver solar panels are mounted on the mower’s handles. Pecen says the mower would need to sit in the sun for about six hours to charge and then would be able to run for about an hour, long enough to mow the average home’s yard. He says the prototype cost about $1,800 to build but he hopes they’ll eventually be able to mass-produce them for a price that could rival traditional mowers. Pecen says UNI hopes to make the mowers “commercially viable.” 

Audio: Radio Iowa’s Matt Kelley reports. :43 MP3

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation Tagged With:

April was cooler and wetter than normal

May 2, 2007 By

snow on basket and trees State Climatologist Harry Hillaker says a look at the numbers shows the month of April came close to record-setting cold. But, Hillaker says overall the month ended up just over one degree cooler than normal.

Hillaker says it was the coolest April in 10 years, and started off 10 degrees colder than normal and on pace to be one of the coldest on record. But, Hillaker says a warm up in the second half of the month that saw temperatures hit the 90′s, sent the average up.

Hillaker says there were more showers than in an average April. Hillaker says the statewide average was about an inch-and-a-quarter more than normal. The wettest area was in the western and west-central area of the state, including Guthrie Center, which averaged over nine inches of rain. He says the far northern part of the state was the only area that wasn’t wetter than normal.

Hillaker says the plentiful rain continues a trend. He says it was the fifth consecutive month of above normal rainfall and the five months, December through April, are the fourth wettest on record. Hillaker says there were a couple of unusual weather events in April.

Hillaker says there was a hard freeze at the start of the month that saw temperatures below freezing for six straight days, and then there was a big snowstorm that saw northwest Iowa get as much as ten inches of snow.

Hillaker says temperatures are averaging just below normal for the year with the extremely cold February and part of April, and an unusually mild March and January. Hillaker says all four months have been wetter than normal making it the sixth wettest year-to-date thus far. The temperature in April averaged 47-point-two degrees with an average rainfall of four-point-six inches. 

Filed Under: Weather

Noel Miller loses another custody battle for sons

May 2, 2007 By

Evelyn Miller The mother of a five-year-old Floyd County girl who was abducted and killed in 2005 has once again lost a legal battle to regain custody of her two sons. A Floyd County District Court judge ruled in February against Noel Miller continuing to have parental rights for her two young sons, and now the Iowa Court of Appeals has affirmed that decision.

The boys had been in foster care since July of 2005 when their sister Evelyn Miller (pictured) disappeared from their apartment near Floyd. She was found dead a few days later on the banks of the Cedar River. The Court of Appeals in their decision says the district court properly ruled to take away Miller’s parental rights, saying the children would be at risk of harm if returned to their mother.

The father of the boys, Casey Frederiksen, signed away his rights to his sons as he is serving a 14-year prison sentence for child pornography. 

Audio: Bob Fisher report. :36 MP3

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Sale of old keys has Anamosa prison changing locks

May 2, 2007 By

Locks are being changed at one of Iowa’s prisons after cell block keys were apparently sold over the Internet. A locksmith who retired from the Anamosa State Penitentiary in the 1970s and died a few years later reportedly had a wide collection of keys at home, including some from various parts of the prison.

After the man’s wife died last year, their belongings were sold at an estate sale, including the keys. Someone who bought the keys turned around and advertised them on e-Bay — claiming they would still fit in some locks at the maximum security prison, including cell doors. The keys sold to an unknown bidder. Prison officials say they never knew the extra keys existed and doubt they’d still work, but are changing an untold number of locks, just to be on the safe side.  

Audio: Radio Iowa’s Matt Kelley reports. :38 MP3

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Rest areas now offer more internet information

May 2, 2007 By

The rest areas along Iowa’s interstate highways now offer more information to motorists who’re stopping for a break. The Department of Transportation installed computer monitors in kiosks that allow limited computer access. Steve McMenamin of the DOT maintenance office, says the kiosks are the second phase of a program that already offers wireless internet access.

McMenamin says some of the kiosks have track ball access, others have touch screens. He says they’re meeting this week to talk about the information provided and some possible changes. The rest areas did have computer screens that showed weather and travel information, but now motorists are able to pick and choose what they see using the track balls or touch screens.

McMenamin says the kiosks give you access to the internet without the need for a computer. McMenamin says you don’t have quite the variety you would with your own computer, but he says there is still regional weather, local weather, and gas,food and lodging information that is specific to the reststop site.

McMenanmin says the contractor that services the kiosks sells advertising on them to recover their costs. He says you may see some adds as you scroll through the information. McMenamin says some of the companies are advertising statewide, so you could see things that are available statewide. McMenamin says so far the kiosks are being well received. He says they plan to tweak the information based on feedback from users.

He says they are making changes, so you may not see the same thing tomorrow that you see today. McMenamin says with bad weather behind us, they can focus on updating the sites. The are 40 rest areas across the state.

Information on the location and services available at Iowa’s rest areas.

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