MONTREAL – Defending NAPA 100 champion Kerry Micks set a track record in NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Sirius Satellite Radio qualifying at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The driver out of Mount Albert, Ontario worked his way around the 14-turn, 2.710-mile road course in 106.664 seconds for an average lap speed of 91.465 mph.
It was Micks’ (No. 02 Beyond Digital Imaging Ford) first pole of the 2008 season and the third of his Canadian Tire Series career.
“The Beyond Digital Imaging Ford was good right out of the box,” said Micks. “Track position here is not critical but it will be good to start up front have a clean track to work with.”
The previous record was set by J.R. Fitzpatrick (No. 84 Fitzpatrick Motorsports Chevrolet) a season ago at 106.755 seconds (91.387 mph).
In tomorrow’s race, Fitzpatrick will start alongside Micks on the front row with a qualifying time of 106.803 (91.346 mph).
Starting third on the grid is Andrew Ranger (No. 27 Wal-Mart/Tide Ford). His fastest lap of the qualifying session was completed in 107.011 seconds (91.168 mph). Starting next to Ranger will be current championship point standings leader Scott Steckly (No. 22 Tow Truck in a Box/Schick Dodge) who timed in at 107.280 seconds (90.940 mph).
NASCAR Road Race style (group) qualifying procedures were used for the session. The field was divided into two groups based on their morning practice times.
The green flag for the NAPA 100 is scheduled to be wave at 10:20 a.m. ET tomorrow. The race will be televised live throughout Canada on RDS.
NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Sirius Satellite Radio-NAPA 100
After Friday qualifying; race Saturday
At Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Montreal, Quebec
Lap Length: 2.710-mile (road course)
(Car number in parentheses)
1. (02) Kerry Micks, Mt. Albert Ont., Ford, 91.465
2. (84) J.R. Fitzpatrick, Cambridge Ont., Chevrolet, 91.346
3. (27) Andrew Ranger, Roxton Pond Que., Ford, 91.168
4. (22) Scott Steckly, Milverton Ont., Dodge, 90.940
5. (7) Alex Tagliani, Lachenaie Que., Ford, 90.702
6. (4) Don Thomson, Jr., Ayr Ont., Chevrolet, 90.620
7. (1) Peter Gibbons, Stouffville Ont., Ford, 90.441
8. (17) D.J. Kennington, St. Thomas Ont., Dodge, 90.317
9. (88) Robin Buck, Campbellville Ont., Ford, 90.277
10. (9) Mark Dilley, Barrie Ont., Dodge, 90.274
11. (3) Jason Hathaway, Appin Ont., Dodge, 90.273
12. (23) Jeff Lapcevich, Grimsby Ont., Chevrolet, 89.672
13. (42) Peter Klutt, Halton Hills Ont., Pontiac, 89.672
14. (39) Dave Whitlock, Petrolia Ont., Dodge, 89.662
15. (19) Brad Graham, Glencoe Ont., Dodge, 89.593
16. (95) Anthony Simone, Holland Landing Ont., Chevrolet, 89.587
17. (29) Pierre Bourque, Ottawa Ont., Dodge, 89.570
18. (25) Jim Lapcevich, Hamilton Ont., Chevrolet, 89.388
19. (60) Ron Beauchamp, Jr., Windsor Ont., Dodge, 88.859
20. (10) Doug Brown, Brantford Ont., Dodge, 88.556
21. (56) Joey McColm, Ajax Ont., Dodge, 88.343
22. (94) Didier Schraenen, St. Hilaire Que., Chevrolet, 88.284
23. (69) Trevor Seibert, Williams Lake B.C., Ford, 88.250
24. (77) Derek Lynch, Warkworth Ont., Dodge, 87.924
25. (82) Dave Connelly, Arnprior Ont., Chevrolet, 87.175
26. (12) John Gaunt, Barrie Ont., Dodge, 86.748
27. (21) Jason White, Sun Peaks B.C., Chevrolet, 86.496
28. (71) Bryan Cathcart, Peterborough Ont., Dodge, 85.941
29. (18) Kent Nuhn, Williamsford Ont., Chevrolet, 85.327
30. (44) Jarrad Whissell, Calgary Alb., Ford, Provisional
31. (49) John Fletcher, Ancaster Ont., Dodge, Provisional
32. (72) Ashley Taws, Newmarket Ont., Chevrolet, Provisional
33. (67) David Thorndyke, Oshawa Ont., Chevrolet, Provisional
From Shon Sbarra / NASCAR
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Reviewing the Exit Polls Again
As has been the case every time a North Carolina poll is released over the last few months, people are again criticizing the 22% representation of African Americans in today's new Research 2000/Daily Kos poll.
They're doing this because the 2004 exit poll said that 26% of the North Carolina electorate was black. The reality, as I've written before, is that it was actually less than 19% black.
Here are the exact figures, courtesy of the State Board of Elections:
3,552,449 people voted in North Carolina in November 2004.
659,656 of them were black.
Do the math and that comes to an 18.6% African American electorate. That is not my opinion, that is a fact. It is somewhat conceivable the black electorate could go up to 22-23% this year but that is most likely the ceiling unless a whole heck of a lot of white people just stay at home this year. I have no doubt blacks will vote in record numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if everybody else does too, so it would take a lot for the proportion of voters who are black to make a huge leap. A 2-3% increase would still be a big deal but hoping for a 6-7% increase in the proportion is dreaming.
The 2004 North Carolina exit poll was also well off in terms of its gender (too female) and age (too young) distributions. The South Carolina exit poll from 2004 is full of mistakes as well.
Anyway the actual results of today's new poll are pretty ho hum. More confirmation that Kay Hagan has Elizabeth Dole's lead back down to single digits, as PPP and Civitas had previously shown, and that Barack Obama is keeping it close against John McCain.
They're doing this because the 2004 exit poll said that 26% of the North Carolina electorate was black. The reality, as I've written before, is that it was actually less than 19% black.
Here are the exact figures, courtesy of the State Board of Elections:
3,552,449 people voted in North Carolina in November 2004.
659,656 of them were black.
Do the math and that comes to an 18.6% African American electorate. That is not my opinion, that is a fact. It is somewhat conceivable the black electorate could go up to 22-23% this year but that is most likely the ceiling unless a whole heck of a lot of white people just stay at home this year. I have no doubt blacks will vote in record numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if everybody else does too, so it would take a lot for the proportion of voters who are black to make a huge leap. A 2-3% increase would still be a big deal but hoping for a 6-7% increase in the proportion is dreaming.
The 2004 North Carolina exit poll was also well off in terms of its gender (too female) and age (too young) distributions. The South Carolina exit poll from 2004 is full of mistakes as well.
Anyway the actual results of today's new poll are pretty ho hum. More confirmation that Kay Hagan has Elizabeth Dole's lead back down to single digits, as PPP and Civitas had previously shown, and that Barack Obama is keeping it close against John McCain.
152 More School Districts to Receive Laptops
Classrooms for the Future, a Pennsylvania Department of Education program, will give 152 high schools laptops for 2008/2009. The program annually grants funds to high schools to expand technology. This year the program will give out a total of $45 million. Program spokesman Michael Race says the two years of the program have been a success with kids demonstrating enthusiasm to learn by using new technology. The money is doled out according to need, enrollment, and the level of technology a school currently has in place. 10 Allegheny County school districts are set to receive some of the funds.
"Missing Ramps" not missing much longer.
The 67-million dollars missing ramp project where interstates 279 and 79 meet is now 70-percent finished. Penn dot district 11 executive Dan Cessna says you can expect to use the new ramps if you are headed from the North Hills to the airport for a new years day flight. Work will continue on other parts of the project through May. Cessna says because the new ramps are elevated and are curved they will be equipped with a deicing system that will monitor weather conditions and spray liquid calcium as needed. The project also calls for the hill just past the intersection, outbound, to be lowered by 8 feet. Cessna says that will lengthen sight lines, which will increase safety and lessen the back-ups in that area.
Deadline Looms for FACT Referendum
Monday, August 3rd, marks the last day over 200 Allegheny County bars and restaurants will have to collect petition signatures for a referendum concerning the county's 10 percent tax on poured alcoholic beverages. On Tuesday the petition will need to be submitted with 23,0006 valid signatures to add to the ballot the question of whether or not to cut the drink tax from 10 percent to 0.5 percent.
Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation (FACT) member and owner of The Carlton restaurant Kevin Joyce says he expects to have a enough signatures, but he does not know how many they have exactly to this point.
Voters will already see one ballot question concerning the drink tax in November. Allegheny County Council recently passed a bill adding the question of whether citizens would prefer a property tax hike in lieu of the drink tax.
County Chief Executive Dan Onorato has previously claimed that the only solution to an elimination of the drink tax would be a raise of property taxes.
But FACT members, disagree with the county's question and Onorato's claim. Joyce says that the deficit caused by a smaller drink tax could be covered through more strict management of county resources and tighter budgeting.
Onorato has also said that he believes the potential FACT ballot question could be illegal because it would unbalance the budget.
Currently the drink tax is estimated to raise over $25 million more than the necessary $30 million needed to subsidize public transportation.
Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation (FACT) member and owner of The Carlton restaurant Kevin Joyce says he expects to have a enough signatures, but he does not know how many they have exactly to this point.
Voters will already see one ballot question concerning the drink tax in November. Allegheny County Council recently passed a bill adding the question of whether citizens would prefer a property tax hike in lieu of the drink tax.
County Chief Executive Dan Onorato has previously claimed that the only solution to an elimination of the drink tax would be a raise of property taxes.
But FACT members, disagree with the county's question and Onorato's claim. Joyce says that the deficit caused by a smaller drink tax could be covered through more strict management of county resources and tighter budgeting.
Onorato has also said that he believes the potential FACT ballot question could be illegal because it would unbalance the budget.
Currently the drink tax is estimated to raise over $25 million more than the necessary $30 million needed to subsidize public transportation.
TauRx’s Alzheimer’s Drug: A Web of Tangles
By the end of last Tuesday’s midday press briefing at the Alzheimer’s Association’s International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, it was clear that the next news cycle would be chock full of stories around mid-Phase trial results of Singapore-based TauRx’s drug rember, a formulation of methylthionium chloride (MTC—the well-known reagent methylene blue), which has been used to treat urinary tract infections and some hemoglobin disorders since before there was a US Food & Drug Administration.
For one thing, it was an otherwise slow news day, at least to that point: the full Phase II results of Elan-Wyeth’s bapineuzumab wouldn’t be until later in the afternoon, and in any event nothing about that drug had been included in the advance press briefing. TauRx had also put out an unusually aggressive press release, claiming among other things “a new treatment that appears to slow the progress of the disorder by 81% over a year…an unprecedented result in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease” and that the Phase II results “strongly suggest that it is possible to halt progression in mild and moderate Alzheimer's.”
So there was the expected headline grabbing: London’s The Independent ran with “Alzheimer’s drug hailed as a ‘major’ development.” The Daily Mail heralded the "biggest breakthrough against disease in 100 years." News of the rember data even reached Kandahar, Afghanistan, TauRx chairman Claude Wischik told me the next day. But gladly, responsible news outlets seemed mostly to grasp that the work was early, and framed it as such.
What may not be apparent, however, is just how early, at least in terms of a US regulatory timeline. Although Wischik said he expects a Phase III trial to begin in the US, EU, Asia, and the Middle East within a year, there’s been no US IND filing yet. (The Phase II was conducted in the UK and Singapore.) Nor have any large species toxicology studies been completed. Wischik expressed some hope that these could be done in parallel with an IND review, and if not, he said, almost as an aside, it’s likely that the US trials will start with a different formulation than the one in the reported Phase II. Presumably, that means at least a bridging study.
In fact, the extent to which rember's safety profile has been vetted is unclear. Plus, treatment at the highest dosage form showed minimal efficacy in the Phase II due to cross-linking of the gelatin capsule shell by the MTC, leading to impaired dissolution/absorption of active drug. Those data were excluded altogether from the results presented at the meeting.
That said, the data are tantalizing because of the approach. In addition to plaques, the presence in the brain of tangles—abnormal fibers of aggregated tau protein--appears to correlate with dementia. Rember is a tau aggregation inhibitor; it appears to work by breaking up the bonds between tau molecules in tangles, allowing them to be cleared by normal cell pathways. The drug produced significant improvement relative to placebo at 24 weeks in moderate AD patients, and stabilized the progression of AD over 50 weeks in both mild and moderate patients. Plus, the effects were supported by SPECT and PET imaging showing evidence of efficacy in brain regions strongly affected by tau pathology.
As a proof of concept of the mechanism of tau inhibition, the TauRx study is significant. Showing that breaking up tangles has an effect on cognition adds credence to the belief that targeting them is a useful approach to treating AD. It also provides an alternative to drug strategies based on the amyloid beta (Abeta) hypothesis--trying to stop synthesis of amyloid beta or dissolving Abeta once plaques form, the basis for passive immunotherapies using antibodies, such as bapineuzumab. Indeed, Abeta immunotherapy appears to also lead to tau clearance in the brain.
Check this space and the upcoming September IN VIVO for more from the ICAD meeting, including putting what happened with Elan-Wyeth’s bapineuzumab in context now that the dust has settled, as well as a look at Baxter’s IVIg and the anti-histamine dimebon, both set to enter Phase III.
NC 5 Polling
Last week PPP conducted a survey on behalf of the Roy Carter for Congress campaign. The survey found Virginia Foxx leading 51-41, but there were a number of findings indicating this could end up being a close race:
-Virginia Foxx has only a 45% approval rating with voters in the district, well below the 50% threshold that is considered safe for an incumbent. It is a remarkably low 30% with the independent voters in the district whose votes will be critical if Carter is to win this fall.
-On the issue that matters most to voters in the district, Roy Carter has the edge over Virginia Foxx. 49% of respondents picked the economy as their biggest concern from a list of eight major issues, and among those folks Carter leads Foxx 48-45. If Carter is able to keep the campaign focused on the bread and butter issues that most affect the daily lives of people in the 5th district, he will have the upper hand.
-There are indications that the Republican brand is damaged in the district. Although he received 66% of the vote in the district in both 2000 and 2004, President Bush’s approval rating is just 34%. Just 20% of respondents think that the country is heading in the right direction under the current Republican administration.
-Although trailing, Barack Obama and Bev Perdue are both outpacing recent Democratic performance in the district. Obama trails John McCain by 19 points, a significant improvement on the 33 point losses Al Gore and John Kerry sustained against George W. Bush. Perdue trails Pat McCrory by 8 points here, where Mike Easley lost to Richard Vinroot by 12 in 2000. It’s also worth noting that Carter is polling at a higher level than both Perdue and Obama, an indication that he can differentiate himself from national Democrats, something that will be key to victory in this Republican leaning district.
Our full memo to the Carter campaign here.
-Virginia Foxx has only a 45% approval rating with voters in the district, well below the 50% threshold that is considered safe for an incumbent. It is a remarkably low 30% with the independent voters in the district whose votes will be critical if Carter is to win this fall.
-On the issue that matters most to voters in the district, Roy Carter has the edge over Virginia Foxx. 49% of respondents picked the economy as their biggest concern from a list of eight major issues, and among those folks Carter leads Foxx 48-45. If Carter is able to keep the campaign focused on the bread and butter issues that most affect the daily lives of people in the 5th district, he will have the upper hand.
-There are indications that the Republican brand is damaged in the district. Although he received 66% of the vote in the district in both 2000 and 2004, President Bush’s approval rating is just 34%. Just 20% of respondents think that the country is heading in the right direction under the current Republican administration.
-Although trailing, Barack Obama and Bev Perdue are both outpacing recent Democratic performance in the district. Obama trails John McCain by 19 points, a significant improvement on the 33 point losses Al Gore and John Kerry sustained against George W. Bush. Perdue trails Pat McCrory by 8 points here, where Mike Easley lost to Richard Vinroot by 12 in 2000. It’s also worth noting that Carter is polling at a higher level than both Perdue and Obama, an indication that he can differentiate himself from national Democrats, something that will be key to victory in this Republican leaning district.
Our full memo to the Carter campaign here.
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