Dodger Stadium Renovations Reveal A Facelift For Opening Day

LOS ANGELES _ Dodger Stadium opened its gates to fans for the first time in nearly six months Friday, unveiling a $100 million range of renovations to the 51-year-old ballpark.

They're not quite done yet, though. With opening day Monday, construction workers will be working on the stadium through the weekend to ensure regular-season readiness.

"It was no small feat," team president Stan Kasten said at a Friday news conference marking the changes. "We do still have tweaks to make, but we have, I think, enhanced the experience of fans on every level of this park."

To that end, the Dodgers completely renovated all restrooms in four of the five areas of the park, installed new hexagonal high-definition video boards in left and right field and added food options on the top three levels.

Cell-phone service support and a stadium-wide Wi-Fi network are also coming shortly.

"We think all those things together," Kasten said, "will bring you to a Dodger Stadium that is going to be as familiar as it's ever been for anyone who's come here for the last 50 years and a lot more comfortable."

Aesthetically, the park won't look all that different to fans, the most noticeable changes being the scoreboards and the smaller size of the field box section, designed to improve sightlines for higher-paying fans. Other adjustments include wider concourses, new entry plazas and play areas for children.

"They're subtle, and they're respectful of Dodger Stadium's rich history and its unique setting here," said Janet Marie Smith, the team's senior vice president of planning and development. "We tried to take some things that were vintage 1962 and not in a good way and transform this place into something that's really worthy of the marquee name of the Dodgers."

Smith oversaw the entire project in her fourth stadium renovation after Camden Yards in Baltimore, Fenway Park in Boston and Turner Field in Atlanta, where she worked with Kasten, then the Braves' president.

To renovate the now-twice-as-large home clubhouse, she hired the firm of D'Agostino-Izzo-Quirk the same architects responsible for putting seats atop the Green Monster at Fenway. Different firms were used for other parts of the renovation, helping to turn what Smith said should have been a "two-year project" into one condensed in an offseason.

The Dodgers also added an underground batting cage for visitors, which Angels manager Mike Scioscia said was "important" before Friday night's Freeway Series game.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/30/dodger-stadium-renovations-face-lift_n_2985580.html

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Iran criticizes Qatar for giving embassy to Syrian opposition

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accused Qatar on Friday of "intensifying the bloodshed" in Syria and criticized it for enabling an opposition bloc to open its first embassy in Doha.

Syrian opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib, whose group is recognized by the Arab League as the sole representative for Syria, opened the embassy in Qatar on Wednesday.

"It is in Qatar's interest to stop making hasty actions and intensifying the bloodshed in Syria," Iran's state news agency IRNA quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as saying.

"The wise ... people of Syria will never allow others to make decisions for them," he said.

Shi'ite Iran has strongly supported Assad in a two-year-old conflict that began with peaceful protests and turned into an armed revolt in which some 70,000 people have been killed.

In a blow to Assad, the Arab League on Tuesday gave Syria's seat to Alkhatib at a summit in Doha. It also endorsed the provision of military aid to Syrian rebels.

Tehran, calling the Arab League's decision "a pattern of dangerous behavior", has been at loggerheads with Western and Arab governments calling for Assad's exit from power. It accuses them of fomenting terrorism in Syria by arming rebels.

Iran has emphasized the importance of elections and reforms in Syria, but does not accept Assad's removal, saying a solution to the crisis cannot be imposed from outside the country.

Analysts say losing its Syrian ally would weaken Iran's ability to threaten its arch-foe Israel through the Syrian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah movement.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-criticizes-qatar-giving-embassy-syrian-opposition-110343921.html

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More fat, less protein improves canine olfactory abilities

Mar. 27, 2013 ? From sniffing out bombs and weapons to uncovering criminal evidence, dogs can help save lives and keep the peace. Now, researchers have uncovered how to improve dogs' smelling skills through diet, by cutting protein and adding fats.

Such a diet, say the researchers, appears to help dogs return to lower body temperatures after exercise, which reduces panting and, thereby, improves sniffing.

The findings could change how detection dogs are fed and boost their detection abilities, says Joseph Wakshlag, associate professor of clinical studies and chief of nutrition at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine. Wakshlag, who collaborated with researchers at Auburn University, is presenting the findings at the Companion Animal Nutrition Summit in Atlanta, held March 22-24.

The study, funded with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, also found that detection dogs are more reliable detectors than previously thought. The study is the first to be conducted in the world's only detection dog research facility designed in conjunction with a military dog trainer. The Alabama facility, which provides expert detection dogs to police and military forces, flushes out fumes between tests, ensuring a fresh field each time.

"Previous studies from other facilities, which lack this feature, had suggested detection dogs signaling for suspect substances are about 70 percent accurate," said Wakshlag. "The lower numbers may have been due to study design flaws which our new study overcame. Dogs tested in the new facility signaled with 90 percent and above accuracy. We also found we can push detection performance even further with the right kind of food."

Bucking conventional thinking, the group found that less protein and more fat in the dogs' diet helped trained dogs perform better in exercise and detection tests. During an 18-month period, they rotated 17 trained dogs through three diets Wakshlag selected: a high-end performance diet, regular adult dog food, and regular adult dog food diluted with corn oil. Measuring how different diets affected each dog, they found that dogs eating the normal diet enhanced with corn oil returned to normal body temperatures most quickly after exercise and were better able to detect smokeless powder, ammonia nitrate and TNT.

"Corn oil has lots of polyunsaturated fats, similar to what you'd find in a lot of nuts and common grocery store seed oils," said Wakshlag. "Past data from elsewhere suggest that these polyunsaturated fats might enhance the sense of smell, and it looks like that may be true for detection dogs. It could be that fat somehow improves nose-signaling structures or reduces body temperature or both. But lowering protein also played a part in improving olfaction."

Wakshlag designed the high-performance and corn-oil diets to have the same amount of energy from fat (57 percent). But the corn oil diet had less protein: 18 percent compared with 27 percent in the regular and high-performance diets.

"If you're a dog, digesting protein raises body temperature, so the longer your body temperature is up, the longer you keep panting, and the harder it is to smell well," said Wakshlag. "Our study shifts the paradigm of what 'high-performance' diet can mean for dogs. It depends on what you want your dog to do. A sled dog or greyhound may need more protein to keep going. But detection dogs tend to exercise in shorter bursts and need to recover quickly and smell well. For that, less protein and more fat could help."

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/UxahAFKiSzU/130327102652.htm

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