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NCAA Tournament Bracket Predictions: NCAA Tournament 2011 Bracket, Schedule and Predictions

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

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NCAA Tournament Bracket Predictions: NCAA Tournament 2011 Bracket, Schedule and Predictions- Now you are right! The 2011 NCAA Tournament Bracket that is ready and printable is already available and announced today. The much awaited NCAA Tournament 2011 and its printable NCAA Tournament Bracket 2011 will compose of 68 teams that are divided into four different conferences, and that is the West, East, Southwest and Southeast. What is the NCAA Tournament 2011 in-stored to all the basketball fans out there.

The NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship is a single elimination tournament held each spring in the United States, featuring 68college basketball teams, both conference champions and at-large selections. The tournament, organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches and was the brainchild of Kansas coach Phog Allen Held mostly in March, it is informally known as March Madness or the Big Dance; the tournament, and especially the national semi-finals and final (the Final Four), has become one of the nation’s most prominent sporting events.

The 2011 NCAA Tournament bracket has been released. For a printable bracket, click here. The play-in games begin on Tuesday, March 15. The first round starts on Thursday and runs through March 17-18. The second round runs through March 19-20. The Sweet 16 games will be played on March 24 and 25, while and Elite Eight games start on March 26 and conclude on March 27. The Final Four games will be played on April 2 and the national champions will cut down the nets on April 4.

Apparently, Duke, Kansas, Pittsburgh and Ohio State picked up the four one-seeds in this year’s tournament. This year, however, has severely lacked dominant teams, so the No. 1 seeds may be moot points.

In Texas’ bracket, where they received the four seed in the West region, they’ll have to go through the likes of No. 5 Arizona, No. 1 Duke and either No. 3 Connecticut or No. 2 San Diego State to reach the Final Four. This is barring upsets of course – which is something that is bound to happen.

Looking past the opening game against either UNC Asheville or Arkansas Little Rock, Pitt has a date with either Butler or Old Dominion. We all know about Butler – while they’re not as good as the Final Four team that reached the championship game last year, they’ve got some pretty good wins this year against Florida State and Stanford. Old Dominion is 27-6 and won its last nine games. They also beat George Mason, Clemson, Xavier, and Richmond, so they’re obviously a good team.

Meanwhile, the Kansas State Wildcats are a fifth seed and will play 12th Utah State in the first round while the winner of fourth seed Wisconsin and 13th seed Belmont awaits. The Missouri Tigers are the 11th seed and will play Cincinnati in round one and, if they win, await the winner of third seed UConn and 14th seed Bucknell.

he Big East conference sent 11 teams to the tournament, the most of any conference. Second most was the Big Ten. They sent seven. We plan to have previews up soon on all the Indiana region teams in the Big Dance, along with a breakdown of the Big Ten’s chances

Nevertheless, the tournament is televised on CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV in the United States as of 2011 and onward, with CBS televising the Elite Eight and Final Four until 2016 exclusively. Previously the whole tournament, except the play in game on ESPN, was televised on CBS.

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Daylight Savings Time 2011 – This Sunday the current time change occurs – Digital News Report

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Daylight Savings Time 2011 – This Sunday the current time change occurs

Digital News Report

Digital News Report – Daylight savings time is going to happen this Sunday, March 13, 2011. At 2 a.m., this is when most the United States will change their clocks to one hour ahead in order to adjust to the new current time. As you grumble about losing an hour of sleep this Saturday, here is some history and information about why we change our clocks each year.

Daylight Savings begins in the Spring and ends in the Fall. If you can remember that it is like a race for the year that you want to get ahead in the beginning of the year to hurry up to summer and in the Fall you want to fall back an hour to put off winter. There is another saying that is easy to remember. Spring ahead and Fall Back. Which is move one hour in advance in the Spring and in the Fall you go back one hour for the new current time.

There are exceptions to which areas observe the Daylight Savings Time. Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the majority of Arizona don’t change their clocks and remain in standard time. The only place in Arizona that does participate in Daylight Savings is on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Indiana used to not participate in parts, but the state passed laws to make Daylight Savings Time observed statewide beginning in 2006.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has extended the Daylight Savings Time period. Initially, the new law wanted to extend the time a whole two months, but was extended only three weeks earlier in the Spring, and one week more in the Fall. The reason for this was farmers and airlines said it would cause too many problems in their industries. Other countries might not observe, or have a different Daylight Savings Time schedule which can make it difficult to schedule flights. The farmers say that the livestock is affected by the shifting times.

Who originally thought up this idea of Daylight Savings? It turns out that it goes way back to Benjamin Franklin. He thought that setting the clocks for a person’s work day would help to extend daylight hours. This makes sense because there wasn’t any electricity back then. However, it wasn’t until London builder, William Willett promoted a pamphlet in 1907 suggesting adjusting the clocks in the spring and in the fall and its benefits. There is an online history lesson about Daylight Savings at http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/index.html.

If you are not sure what your current time is after Daylight Savings Time change begins, you can always visit http://www.time.gov which will let you know what time it is to set your clocks.

If you really despise going around setting your clocks twice a year, you can buy an atomic clock that will automatically sync up to the correct time. The clock receives a radio signal telling the clock what time it is and it will correct for daylight savings time for you.

By Victoria Brown

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Battlefield 3: Faultlines pt1 – made of win – Atomic

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Video: If it’s wrong to be calling Battlefield 3 game of the year material this early, we don’t want to right.

Getting motion in a video game right is a bloody giant challenge. With all the clock-cycles in the world, and years of development, CG characters are only just now starting to look and move real, and even then they often look their worst when they try and interact with their environment.

Games, by comparison, would seem to have no chance in this regard – which is why the latest trailer for Battlefield 3 is so damn jaw-dropping.

And it’s a gameplay trailer to boot! Just check out the way the soldiers get out of their APC, or they way they weave as they run through that back alley. It’s perfect – no foot-gliding at all. They look absolutely a part of their environment.

Oh, and the action looks pretty tight, too – it’s all campaign play, by the way. Check it out.

Battlefield 3 is out later this year on all major platforms.

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HCA Rises in First-Day Trading After Record $3.79 Billion IPO

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

March 10, 2011, 10:38 AM EST

By Lee Spears and Pat Wechsler

March 10 (Bloomberg) — HCA Holdings Inc., the hospital chain that went private in 2006, rose 3.6 percent on its first day of trading after completing a record $3.79 billion, private equity-backed initial public offering.

The Nashville, Tennessee-based company increased $1.08 to $31.08 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 10:32 a.m. HCA sold 126.2 million shares at $30 each, the top of the proposed range, the company said yesterday in a statement.

The IPO surpassed that of Houston-based energy-pipeline company Kinder Morgan Inc., which raised $3.3 billion in its Feb. 10 initial stock sale. Private equity-backed IPOs in the U.S. have gotten a boost this year as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rallied to the highest level since June 2008, increasing investors’ interest in companies acquired through debt-fueled acquisitions as credit markets started to freeze four years ago.

“We have a market that’s more willing to take on risk,” said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist at RidgeWorth Capital Management in Richmond, Virginia, which oversees $52.5 billion. “This is a much better, much warmer climate for this type of offering.”

The underwriters may exercise an overallotment option to buy as many as 18.9 million additional shares within 30 days, the company said. HCA sold 87.7 million shares, while existing investors sold 38.5 million.

Private Equity IPOs

Companies owned by private equity investors have accounted for 80 percent of the funds raised in U.S. IPOs since the beginning of the year, and the shares have gained 10 percent on average through yesterday, compared with 4.8 percent for companies not owned by leveraged buyout firms, Bloomberg data show.

KKR & Co., Bain Capital LLC, Bank of America Corp. and other owners invested about $5 billion in equity in the $33 billion takeover of HCA. Including debt, it was the largest leveraged buyout at the time.

In acquiring HCA, KKR and Bain chose a company with steady cash flow and a business that’s protected to a large extent from swings in the economy. Cash flow from operations was $3.16 billion in the year before the 2006 buyout, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As of Dec. 31, 2010, that number was little changed at $3.09 billion.

For-profit hospital chains such as HCA depend more on commercial payers and less on government beneficiaries than do nonprofits, which have already seen their revenue reduced by government cutbacks, particularly in Medicaid.

The company offered as many as 124 million shares at $27 to $30 apiece, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America and Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. of New York led HCA’s sale.

HCA plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the symbol HCA starting today. Proceeds will be used to repay debt, HCA said in the filing.

–Editors: Elizabeth Wollman, Lisa Rapaport

To contact the reporter on this story: Lee Spears in New York at lspears3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jennifer Sondag at jsondag@bloomberg.net.

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UMB exec expects growth this year

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

BY JERRY SIEBENMARK
The Wichita Eagle

Bill Greiner, the man BusinessWeek magazine calls the “sage of Kansas City,” expects 2011 to be a year of economic growth.

But the chief investment officer of UMB Financial Corp.’ s Scout Investments told several hundred UMB clients and business people at the Hyatt Regency Wichita on Tuesday morning that he expects inflation to increase and the unemployment rate to remain high.

Greiner said he expects the 2011 real gross domestic product to fall somewhere between 2.9 percent and 3.5 percent.

The high end of his GDP forecast would mean “reasonable job growth,” he said.

Real GDP in 2010 was 2.9 percent, up from negative 2.6 percent in 2009.

Greiner said he thinks this year’s GDP will be primarily driven by a 10 percent increase in capital spending by businesses.

“Corporations’ balance sheets are extremely liquid,” he said. “That’s probably going to be a significant catalyst for growth.”

With continued growth comes the likelihood of rising inflation.

“We think inflationary pressure is truly starting to build,” Greiner said, adding that he expects annualized consumer price index inflation to be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 percent by the end of the year.

Unemployment will remain high, ending the year at 9 percent, Greiner said.

Greiner also expects in 2011:

* Consumption expenditures will be between 2.6 and 3.1 percent.

* The federal funds rate — the rate at which banks sell and buy funds at the wholesale level — will end the year between 0.2 and 0.5 percent. It currently is 0.12 percent.

* Housing starts will total 100,000. The total would be skewed toward multifamily units because of rising default and foreclosure rates, Greiner said, since “those people, when they get kicked out of their houses, need someplace to live.”

Reach Jerry Siebenmark at 316-268-6576 or jsiebenmark@wichitaeagle.com.

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Nickelodeon’s Nick.com/KCA Voting For 2011 Awards Ceremony – Etidbits.com

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

The annual Nick Kids’ Choice Awards are just around the corner, set to air on April 2nd, and will be hosted by actor Jack Black. Today, the popular kids cable channel launched the official subsite where viewers of the network could log on and cast their votes on who they want to give the awards to at the green slime-fest of an awards show.

This year, viewers can log on and vote on who they want to win the KCA blimp. Such awards such as their favorite television program, their favorite cartoon, their favorite movie, favorite song, favorite book, favorite video, favorite singer and more can all be voted on at . At least 20 awards will be given at the show

The show is set to air live as usual at the Galen Center at the University of Southern California this year. You can expect a lot of surprise appearances from celebrities, as well as a lot of stunts to take place, not to mention a lot of slime.

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