By USSA

KREISCHBERG, Austria — In a history-making FIS World Championship effort, 23-year-old Noah Wallace (Spokane) earned his first World Championship medal in slopestyle skiing —taking bronze.

Wallace put down the third best run of the day, topping off a 82.40 run with a switch leftside double cork 1080 on the last hit. Competition favorite and top-ranked skier Australian Russ Henshaw, put down three 90-point runs to easily secure second place, but ultimately the day would belong to Swiss skier Fabian Boesch.

Boesch put together an unbeatable combination with a switch double misty 1260 Japan to a right double-corked 1260 to earn his first FIS World Championships title.

“I had a lot of fun today,” said Wallace, who has only been competing in World Cups since 2013. “It was a great time skiing. The course was awesome and the jumps were pristine. I loved today.”

Wallace wasn’t the only American with a good result. Three landed in the top 15: Robby Franco (Lake Tahoe) was sixth, Colby Stevenson (Park City) eighth and Matthew Walker (Aspen) 13. On the women’s side, Nadia Gonzales (Angel Fire, N.M.) was 11 and Jamie Crane-Mauzy (Park City) 13. Lisa Zimmerman of Germany took first, Katie Summerhayes of Great Britain second and Zuzana Stromkova of Slovakia third.

This was Wallace’s first World Championships, and first World Champs medal.

By Bill O’Driscoll, Reno Gazette-Journal

Talk about liftoff.

JetBlue Airways’ coming nonstop flights linking Reno and New York City promise to elevate not only the future of Reno-Tahoe International Airport but also the broader economy in northern Nevada.

From filling hotel rooms to luring new business to the sheer prestige of “New York” and “nonstop” in the same sentence, Reno-Tahoe stands on a new level of opportunity, officials say.

“If we want to leverage Reno-Tahoe, it really helps to have the top name to point to, and that’s what we have,” Chris Baum, CEO of the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority, said of the new connection to the nation’s most populous market and financial epicenter. “Talk about instant credibility.”

In the broader marketplace, it brings attention at a time of growing economic recovery in the region. Among the recent items providing a boost to northern Nevada: Tesla’s $5 billion battery gigafactory, the just-announced $1 billion Switch data center and continued shrinking unemployment and rising home prices.

Read the whole story

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

California’s drought crept in slowly, but it could end with a torrent of winter storms that stream across the Pacific, dumping much of the year’s rain and snow in a few fast-moving and potentially catastrophic downpours.

Powerful storms known as atmospheric rivers, ribbons of water vapor that extend for thousands of miles, pulling moisture from the tropics and delivering it to the West Coast, have broken 40 percent of California droughts since 1950, recent research shows.

“These atmospheric rivers — their absence or their presence — really determine whether California is in drought or not and whether floods are going to occur,” said F. Martin Ralph, a research meteorologist who directs the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

The storms, which flow like massive rivers in the sky, can carry 15 times as much water as the Mississippi and deliver up to half of the state’s annual precipitation between December and February, scientists say. Though atmospheric rivers are unlikely to end California’s drought this year, if they bring enough rain to erase the state’s huge precipitation deficit, they could wreak havoc by unleashing floods and landslides.

Scientists using a new type of satellite data discovered atmospheric rivers in the 1990s, and studies since then have revealed the phenomenon’s strong influence on California’s water supply and extreme weather.

Read the whole story

Benjamin and Lynette Hart of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine will present information on breed-specific and gender-specific behavioral profiles of dogs most commonly chosen as companions in the mountains including golden Retrievers, Labrador retrievers, German shepherds, Rottweiler’s, boxers and chihuahuas.

The program will begin at 6pm Feb. 19 at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences in Incline Village.

They will also share information about timing a spay or neuter procedure to reduce the likelihood of joint disorders and some cancers, and where there are major breed or gender differences.

Benjamin Hart is a distinguished professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, where he was chief of the Behavior Service. He now leads a research project studying the adverse effects of spay/neuter with regards to breed, gender, and age of neutering. Lynette Hart is a professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, where she teaches and does research on human-animal interactions. She is a collaborator on the spay/neuter project.

Cost is $5.

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

In a remote Nevada park, a team finds an abandoned Winchester rifle from 1882. Who left it there?

There it was, abandoned for the ages, propped up against a juniper tree in far-eastern Nevada’s Snake Mountains, a Winchester Model 1873 repeating rifle: the gun, as legend goes, that won the American West.

For archaeologist Eva Jensen, it’s something much more — a mystery that continues to baffle the staff at Great Basin National Park: Who owned it? A luckless hunter or miner? Maybe an outlaw on the run?

And how on earth did it get there?

The search for answers has taken the 57-year-old veteran scientist out of the field and into tiny research libraries — scouting out old newspapers, 130-year-old bills of sale, family histories and yellowed letters in several Western states.

Read the whole story

By Carolyn Gregoire, Huffington Post

What does animal hibernation have to do with Alzheimer’s? More than you might think. According to new research, the way that critters wake up from a long winter’s rest could help scientists devise new treatments for dementia.

Research from Leicester University have isolated a cold-activated protein, RBM3, which helps restore brain activity of animals that are coming out of long hibernation periods. Though the protein also exists in humans, it’s been found to be missing among Alzheimer’s patients, whose brains also commonly have a reduced number of synapses.

Here’s how it works: When animals go into hibernation, their number of brain synapses decreases so as to allow them to enter a prolonged state of inactivity. Then, the cold-activated protein RBM3 rebuilds the synapses when the animal wakes up, thereby restoring normal brain activity. The research believe that a drug that mimics the effect of this protein may have the potential to restore lost brain function among individuals suffering from neurodegenerative disorders.

Read the whole story

A motorcyclist died Jan. 19 after colliding with another motorcyclist on the Geiger Grade.

Nevada Highway Patrol officers said a Harley Davidson motorcycle ridden by 34-year-old Reno resident Trenton Michael Perry for reasons unknown crossed the center line and into the northbound lane. He collided with a 2014 black Harley Davidson motorcycle traveling north being ridden by Jerald Allen Bailey, 35, of Reno. Each rider was thrown from his bike.

Both were transported to Renown Medical Center in Reno. Bailey had non-life threatening injuries. Perry died at the hospital.

The investigation is still ongoing.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

A $25,000 award is being offered for information that results in the arrest of the person who shot at an El Dorado County sheriff’s Deputy on Oct. 17, 2014.

At 8am that day a deputy working patrol found a truck in a turnout in the area of Cable Road and White Mountain Ranch Road. While walking down a trail from the turnout the deputy came in contact with a male subject who refused to comply with verbal commands. A physical struggle ensued between the two.

The suspect was able to retreat to his vehicle where he retrieved a handgun and fired it at the deputy, but didn’t hit him. The deputy returned fire, but it’s not known if the suspect sustained any injuries.

The suspect is described as a white male, approximately 6-foot-1-inch to 6-foot-2-inches tall, weighing 200-250 pounds, with a goatee, wearing a flannel shirt, dark pants and boots. The suspect was last seen driving away on Cable Road in a mid-1990s to early 2000s white Dodge single cab truck without a license plate.

The sheriff’s office is asking anyone with information to contact either Detective James Peterson at 530.642.4713 or Detective Ken Barber at 530.642.4710.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

South Lake Tahoe is looking for people to help with its 50th anniversary bash.

There will be meeting Feb. 5 at 5:30pm at Lake Tahoe Airport.

Volunteers are needed for:

• Open house committee
• Time capsule and treasure hunt event committee
• Float-homecoming committee
• Dinner event committee
• Invitation committee
• Book committee.

For more info, contact Tracy Franklin at 530.542.6093 or tfranklin@cityofslt.us.

For the first time since 1998, South Lake Tahoe City Council members are receiving a raise.

The five current members voted themselves a raise Jan. 20. The pay goes from $452 a month to $946. If they work 20 hours a week, this comes to less than $12 an hour.

The state dictates how much the salary may go up – 5 percent per year. Going forward the council will bring this to a vote every two years instead of waiting so long. Raises may only be given after a new council member is seated — another state rule.

The annual cost per council member will be $8,358. This includes workers’ comp, CalPERS, Medicare and the like. The cost to taxpayers is $41,790 for the five.

In their discussions all five hope this bump in pay will help attract younger, full-time workers in the future who might now be able to afford to take a day or two off work for council commitments.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report