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Missouri native selected for U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame

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A Missouri native and astronaut has been nominated for induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Dr. Janet Kavandi was born in southwest Missouri’s Springfield and grew up in Cassville and Carthage.

Dr. Janet Kavandi

Kavandi was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1994 as a member of the 15th class of U.S. astronauts. She has served on three space flights, logging more than 33 days in space and orbiting the Earth 535 times. During her time in the astronaut office, she supported the International Space Station payload integration, capsule communications and robotics and served as deputy chief.

Kavandi is the director of NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland where she is responsible for planning, organizing and directing the activities required in accomplishing the missions assigned to the center. The Glenn staff consists of more than 3,200 civil service and support contractor employees and has an annual budget of approximately $625 million. Her center is affected by the federal government shutdown.

Kavandi was also a part of NASA’s 2017 total eclipse broadcast in Jefferson City. The Capital City was one of the communities considered as one of the best viewing places during the historic event.

Kavandi is a graduate of Missouri Southern State University in Joplin and Missouri S & T in Rolla.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

Missouri regulators reconsider massive wind energy project after high court order

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The Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) is holding hearings in Jefferson City this week to determine if a massive wind energy project will move forward.

Wind Farm

In July, the state Supreme Court ordered the Commission to reconsider the Clean Line Energy Grain Belt Express project it had previously rejected. The proposal calls for a high voltage transmission power line to be built from wind farms near Dodge City in southwestern Kansas, across northern Missouri, and through Illinois to the Indiana border.

Clean Line Energy, which is in negotiations to sell the project to sustainable energy developer Invenergy, is seeking permits from state regulators in Kansas and Missouri to build the power line.

If Invenergy successfully acquires the project, it would consider the option of extending the power line through Illinois as originally intended. The Illinois portion of the venture had previously been OK’ed by regulators, but the decision was reversed by a state appeals court which determined the project operator would have to purchase infrastructure in order to qualify as a public utility.

Invenergy bills itself as North America’s largest privately held renewable energy provider. The Chicago based company has 89 wind projects worldwide that generate 12,814 megawatts of power. The firm and its affiliates claim to have more than $9 billion in total assets.

The Grain Belt Express as originally envisioned would include 780 miles between Kansas and the Indiana border where it would connect to a grid that supplies energy to heavily populated northeastern states.

The project would cost $2.35 billion with $535 million being spent on the Missouri portion, all of which would be privately financed. It would carry 4,000 megawatts (MW) of wind-generated power with 3,500 MW going to Illinois, Indiana and the east while up to 500 MW would be secured for Missouri.

The transmission line would run through eight counties across north Missouri – Buchanon, Clinton, Caldwell, Carroll, Chariton, Randolph, Monroe and Ralls. A presentation from Clean Line Energy at the Tuesday PSC hearing stated the power line would generate $7.2 million annually in property taxes for the counties while landowner compensation would total $32 million.

Two organizations strongly opposed to the project have a vocal presence at the hearings – the Missouri Farm Bureau and the Missouri Landowners Alliance. Attorneys for both groups quizzed Clean Line Energy Tuesday over its ability to complete the project should the sale to Invenergy fall through. The company has dropped out of two other major transmission line projects and now has zero employees after once having 50.

The Farm Bureau and Landowners Alliance claim the project would seize private property through eminent domain without providing any benefit for the state. Columbia attorney Brent Haden, who was hired by the Farm Bureau for the PSC hearings said it would force farmers and ranchers to spend time and money on court battles to keep their property.

“Somebody who’s in the middle of harvest, in the middle of planting, in the middle of calving season has to come in and take time to come out of the field, talk to a lawyer they don’t want to be talking to in the first place, spend their money to get a lawyer they don’t want to have to hire in the first place, to then turn around and fight a battle with a corporation who has taken their land who shouldn’t have the right to that privilege to begin with,” said Haden.

Proponents of the transmission line contend it’ll bring large benefits to Missouri. In addition to the tax revenue and landowner compensation, Clean Line Energy and a consortium of utilities that have agreed to accept delivery of 200 MW of wind power estimate municipalities will save at least $10 million annually.

Clean Line Energy Chairman Michael Skelly contended during Tuesday’s hearing that the project would significantly lower utility bills for customers, claiming the price of wind has dropped 20 percent in the last year-and-a-half alone. “It is amazing how quickly the cost of renewable energy is dropping,” said Skelly. “And the reason why is that wind turbines are getting bigger and bigger. That allows for greater energy capture with a similar investment.” (Although Clean Line Energy has no employees, Skelly remains its lone officer)

The reason the PSC is once again considering the Grain Belt Express is that the Missouri Supreme Court said the regulator made an error in determining it didn’t have the authority to issue a permit for the project until county commissioners granted approval.

The PSC actually rejected the Grain Belt project twice.  It initially denied a request filed in July 2015 by Clean Line, saying the company failed to prove that the project was economically feasible or that it promoted the public interest.

Clean Line then regrouped and came back to the PSC after acquiring 39 cities who signed on to be wind power customers in the form of a group known as the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission.  Columbia, Rolla, and Hannibal are among the cities in the group.

That submission from Clean Line was also rejected in 2017.  Four of the five PSC commissioners said that they found the second proposal met the criteria to grant the request but asserted that they were handcuffed by a recent court decision which indicated county approval was needed in order run cable over roads.

The PSC is holding hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in the Grain Belt case.

Former northwest Missouri college wants to reopen as technical school

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Efforts to reopen Tarkio College as a two-year technical institution took a step forward this week. At a special presentation inside Thompson Hall on the Tarkio College campus, assistant to the college president, John Davis, says an application for certification has been submitted to the Missouri Department of Higher Education. Davis says the decision to open the college’s doors now lies in the state’s hands.

Photo courtesy of Tarkio College Alumni Association

“We believe it will take anywhere from 45 to 90 days,” Davis says on the state’s application process. “We will keep the pressure on the state. One of our board members, who actually is kind of our chief engineer when it comes to the buildings, lives right outside of Jefferson City. He’ll be going in on a regular basis to visit and make sure they are moving along on that. We’re optimistic it will be closer to 45 (days) than the 90.”

To finalize certification, the state requires the college to have $150,000 in escrow. Davis says a “Founder’s Fund” campaign was kicked off in June and has raised $212,000 toward a year-end goal of $250,000. Those funds will help keep the college open for the first year and maintain lower costs for students.

In the meantime, Davis says work will continue to shore up a few facility needs inside Thompson Hall, which already has an entire floor of classrooms fully equipped for student use.

“We have some classrooms identified on the first floor for some of our technical programs that still need to be outfitted with the equipment to teach those classes,” Davis says. “We’ll also need to clean them up and paint them. The biggest hurdle right now is that we have a fire alarm system that was built in 1968 that has to be updated.”

Davis believes regional businesses need workers with specialized training and skills, which led to the idea for Tarkio College to become a two-year technical institution rather than a four-year college.

“The programs we’ve identified for our application are plumbing, wind energy, and computer technology,” Davis says. “Also, we’ll have a series of academic development courses for students that do not have the skills to compete at a two-year or four-year college.”

Various regional businesses and manufacturers attended this week’s presentation about plans to reopen the school, which closed in 1992. Davis says it was important to host a wide variety of employers to gauge expectations from students entering a technical institution.

“It was really a combination of two groups today,” he says. “One group was business and industry, and the other group was different economic development groups. We had the Missouri Department of Economic Development here, Northwest Development, and Atchison County Development Corporation. All of those groups have access to funding for some of the repairs we have to do, and some of the money we need for startup costs.”

Pending the state’s decision on certification, Davis says the vision is to reopen Tarkio College sometime during 2019, specifically the summer semester. Within five years, the goal is to offer technical and career-oriented certificates in five areas to 200 students a term.

By Brent Barnett of Missourinet affiliate KMA in Shenandoah, Iowa

Mizzou researcher finds unique phenomenon between bees and 2017 total eclipse

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Biological sciences professor Candace Galen says bees were silent as the Earth fell into complete darkness during last year’s historic eclipse. As the eclipse passed overhead, MU researchers, including scientists, volunteers and elementary school students and teachers in Missouri, Idaho and Oregon, including over 200 elementary school students and teachers from Columbia Public Schools, gathered audio data on the behavior of bees.

Photos courtesy of the University of Missouri

“Getting dark in the middle of the day is not something that happens in a bee’s normal life,” she says. “It’s a behavioral miscue. Here darkness is a cue for night, that a bee is familiar with, but it’s coming at the wrong time of the day. Did they use it as a cue or not, even if it is completely out of context? What we found is yes, they do.”

Tiny microphones the size of a USB flash drive were placed at 16 locations with bee-pollinated flowers that were away from human-generated traffic.

Earlier research on bee behavior has found that bees usually fly slower at dusk and return to their colonies at night. In Galen’s study, researchers discovered that bees completely stopped buzzing during totality, but they continued to fly during the periods of reduced light that occur in the phases of a partial eclipse.

“It’s a soundscape,” Galen says. “What we have is a buzz that is longer. Either the bees were flying more slowly or making longer flights.”

A grant from the American Astronomical Society helped to fund the study.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

Missouri sheriff, on Robert Brashers: “He is a serial rapist and a serial killer, but no more”

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(Sound from the New Madrid County news conference is courtesy of Missourinet television partner KFVS)

Missouri state troopers say a now-deceased serial killer was responsible for the 1998 killings of a mother and daughter in southeast Missouri’s Portageville, as well as the gruesome rape and murder of a South Carolina woman in 1990.

Suspected serial killer Robert Brashers died in 1999 (photo courtesy of the Missouri State Highway Patrol)

The Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Division of Drug and Crime Control (DDCC) joined New Madrid County Sheriff Terry Stevens for a Friday morning news conference, to make the announcement.

Sheriff Stevens describes the murders of 38-year-old Sherri and 12-year-old Megan Scherer as one of the most heinous crimes in New Madrid County history.

“No telling how many hours have been put into this investigation,” Stevens says. “I have no doubt in my mind that this is the most heavily investigated case this county has ever seen.”

Stevens says a serial killer named Robert Brashers is responsible for all three murders, including the South Carolina death.

He says Brashers killed himself during a 1999 standoff with law enforcement officers in the Bootheel town of Kennett.

During that standoff, Kennett police learned that Brashers had active warrants from an April 12, 1998 incident in Paragould, Arkansas, where he had been arrested for trying to break into the home of a single woman.

That April incident was about two weeks after Sherri and Megan Scherer had been killed.

Missouri state troopers are crediting a DNA technology company called Parabon for helping to solve the Scherer murders.

Sheriff Stevens says Parabon’s technology identified Brashers as the suspect.

“Make no mistake about this gentleman, he is a serial rapist and a serial killer, but no more,” Stevens told reporters at the New Madrid County Courthouse.

Investigators say Brashers’ remains were exhumed on September 27, pursuant to a court order. They say that additional DNA samples were collected and that lab testing confirmed that Brashers’ DNA matched the suspect DNA in the Portageville murders, the 1990 South Carolina murder and the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old Tennessee girl.

As Sheriff Stevens and Missouri state troopers held their Friday morning news conference, law enforcement officers in Greenville, South Carolina held a separate news conference.

The “Greenville News” notes that Brashers was convicted of attempted second degree murder in 1986 in Florida, and served just three-and-a-half years in prison before being released in 1989.

Less than a year after being released from prison, Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller says Brashers killed 28-year-old Genevieve Zitricki.

“He attacked her as she slept,” Chief Miller told South Carolina reporters on Friday. “He bludgeoned her, strangled her and sexually assaulted her.”

The “Greenville News” reports authorities in multiple states are now taking a closer look at Brashers in other cold cases.

The murder cases were profiled on “America’s Most Wanted.”

DDCC Sergeant Shawn Griggs praises what he describes as a coordinated effort between multiple federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, all working together to bring resolution to the victims’ families.

Griggs notes that Missouri state troopers have been in contact with the Scherer family.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

Missouri’s Nobel prize winner expected a call from Sweden, but not for the reason you might think

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University of Missouri professor George Smith says he and his science friends like to play pranks. A standard prank among them is to call each other in the middle of the night – with a Swedish accent – and say they’ve won a Nobel prize. During a press conference to recognize Smith as the latest winner, he says he knew Wednesday’s phone call was the real deal.

Retired University of Missouri professor George Smith wins the 2018 Nobel Prize for chemistry, along with two other researchers

“I kind of knew it wasn’t any of my friends because the connection was so terrible. Sweden is a really advanced country, but I think that they need some work on their phones,” he says.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Smith and two other researchers this year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry by “harnessing the power of evolution”. Smith becomes the first University of Missouri professor ever to win the honor.

In 1993, Frances Arnold of Caltech in Pasadena conducted the first directed evolution of enzymes, which are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. She has refined the methods now routinely used to create new catalysts. The uses of Arnold’s enzymes include more environmentally-friendly manufacturing of chemical substances, such as pharmaceuticals, and the production of renewable fuels.

In 1985, Smith developed a method to evolve new proteins. He says he worked on the prize-winning technique for not quite 10 years.

Gregory Winter of the MRC molecular biology lab in Cambridge, England used Smith’s phage display for the directed evolution of antibodies, with the goal of producing new pharmaceutical drugs. It is used for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases. The technique can also lead to the discovery of antibodies that can neutralize toxins, combat metastasized cancers and fend off autoimmune diseases.

Smith, who is now retired, was a professor in the Division of Biological Sciences for about 40 years.

During Wednesday’s announcement, Smith displayed humor, modesty and generosity by thanking the university and his co-winners for “winning him the Nobel prize”.

“Think of science as a web of influence and so on and one particular person is in the middle,” he says. “That particular person can’t take full credit for it. You just have to realize that person is a stand in, is a representative of a whole field of knowledge.”

He says science doesn’t work by “picking winners”, deciding which person will make a big breakthrough and a lot of money.

“That’s not how science works,” he says. “Science is a big community of people that are engaged in their work and in their teaching. Someone like me can flourish at Mizzou and I think that’s something Mizzou should be proud of – of nurturing that kind of intellectual community.”
He says he hopes the honor will lead to better things for Mizzou.

“Let’s hope that the hard times that we have lived through for the last couple of years will be a little less hard times,” he says.

Smith has also received $250,000 as part of his prize. He says his family plans to donate the money in a way that would indirectly honor the award.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

For the first time in history, a University of Missouri professor wins Nobel prize

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says a longtime Mizzou professor and two other researchers have been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry by “harnessing the power of evolution”. According to the MU News Bureau, George Smith becomes the first University of Missouri professor ever to win the honor.

Photos courtesy of the University of Missouri

The science organization says the 2018 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have “taken control of evolution and used it for purposes that bring the greatest benefit to humankind”.

Frances Arnold of Caltech in Pasadena gets half of the $1.01 million prize for work leading to the development of new biofuels and pharmaceuticals. Smith and Gregory Winter of the MRC molecular biology lab in Cambridge, England split the other half.

In 1993, Arnold conducted the first directed evolution of enzymes, which are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. She has refined the methods now routinely used to create new catalysts. The uses of Arnold’s enzymes include more environmentally-friendly manufacturing of chemical substances, such as pharmaceuticals, and the production of renewable fuels.

In 1985, Smith developed a method known as phage display, a virus that infects bacteria, can be used to evolve new proteins.

Winter used Smith’s phage display for the directed evolution of antibodies, with the goal of producing new pharmaceuticals. The first one based on this method was approved in 2002 and is used for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases. Since then, phage display has produced anti-bodies that can neutralize toxins, counteract autoimmune diseases and cure metastatic cancer.

Smith, who is now retired, was a Mizzou professor for about 40 years in the Division of Biological Sciences.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

Summit draws election officials, Homeland Security Secretary to Missouri

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U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was in the St. Louis area on Monday. Neilsen spoke at the Election Security Summit being held at World Wide Technology in Marylands Heights.

Summit draws election officials, Homeland Security Secretary to Missouri

She said while the Russian government made a “blazon” attempt to interfere in the 2016 elections, “we have no evidence that votes were altered.”

“Any attempt to interfere with our election, successful or unsuccessful is a direct attack on our democracy.” said Neilsen.

Missouri Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is joining a bipartisan group of 25 Secretaries of State and other election officials from across the country for the two-day summit.

“With heightened scrutiny of election security, we want to provide the assurance that – as always – state election authorities are leading the way, and we continue to work together to protect elections,” Ashcroft said. “We are bringing together officials at each level of government to come away with useable, actionable takeaways to continue securing elections.”

Other Secretaries of State that will be in attendance include Kyle Ardoin (LA), Barbara Cegavske (NV), Matt Dunlap (ME), Tre Hargett (TN), Rolando Pablos (TX), Paul Pate (IA), Maggie Toulouse Oliver (NM), Mac Warner (WV) and Kim Wyman (WA).

Story by Missourinet contributor Jill Enders

Ivanka Trump visits St. Louis area to discuss workforce development

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Ivanka Trump is touring the country to unite academic, business, and political leaders in a series of workforce development roundtable discussions. During a visit today at Lewis and Clark Community College near St. Louis, she says the nation’s low unemployment rate is creating an unprecedented climate.

Ivanka Trump speaks to hundreds of U.S. Steel workers in Granite City, IL on July 26, 2018

Ms. Trump wants to connect unemployed and underemployed Americans with the training necessary to fill skilled jobs in growing industries.

“For the first time in history, we actually have more job vacancies than unemployed people,” she says. “There’s skills mismatched that exist. What can we do about it?”

She says the federal government is going to reconcile workforce programs to make them more accountable and think holistically about the role of education through the lifecycle of American workers.

“I think as a federal government, we are not very good, typically, at training. But we can leverage the knowledge of the private sector. We can say be our partner and help us do better,” Trump says. “Help us amplify the issue. Help us think about ways that we can be creative. Help us leverage technology, for example, to create better transparency for our students and our workers across the country.”

Ms. Trump cites the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics saying the country has 6.6 million vacant jobs.

“They can tell you the industries they are in, but they can’t tell you geographically where those jobs are located and they can’t tell you the underlying skillsets required to fill those jobs,” she says.

Trump goes on to say the U.S. is experiencing historic low unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women and the disabled.

Todd Sauter contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

Southwest Missouri wireless company to build $8 million headquarters, add 135 new jobs

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Springfield-based Russell Cellular is creating 135 new jobs in the southwest Missouri region and building a new eight-million dollar corporate headquarters there. According to a press release from the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, the additional jobs and 40,000 square foot site will be created over the next five years. Nathan Mindeman, Vice President of Sales Operations, tells Missourinet the job openings will be in a variety of departments, including human resources, payroll, IT support and operations.

Southwest Missouri wireless company is expanding

Chamber economic development staff worked with company leaders as they narrowed down possible locations for the expansion and helped the company access state incentives from the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Along with partners at Greene County and the City of Battlefield, the Chamber also connected Russell Cellular to various community resources to ensure the company’s capital investment and job creation remained in the Springfield region.

“We know that nationally, the majority of all new jobs are created by existing businesses in a community, and Russell Cellular’s expansion is a great example of that,” says Ryan Mooney, the Chamber’s senior vice president of economic development. “We know they could decide to grow in lots of different places in their expanding territory, but we applaud their decision to create these kinds of high-wage jobs right here in our region. We will continue to focus on creating a vibrant community that makes headquarters operations like this possible here.”

In 1993, Jeff Russell left a career in farming to start selling wireless phones from the trunk of his car. One year later, he launched Russell Cellular’s first corporate office in Springfield. Today, the company operates more than 400 stores in 30 states and employs more than 1,700 people with about 150 of those being Missouri workers.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet