Oden giving NBA one more try, choosing to sign with Heat

Former No. 1 pick Greg Oden will give it one more try in the NBA. Oden chose the Miami Heat Friday, one of six teams that had been on his list of finalists to try and make his return from injuries that have limited him to exactly one full season's worth of games, 82, in six seasons.

Oden had been working out for several teams for the last couple of weeks, trying to convince teams that he could potentially return to the form that made him the top pick of the 2007 Draft. Oden chose Miami over five other teams vying for his services: Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, Sacramento and San Antonio.

Since being waived by Portland in March 2012, Oden has spent much of his time rehabbing in Ohio, where he starred in one season at Ohio State.

ESPN.com first reported Oden's agreement with Miami. The Heat will have the luxury of bringing Oden back to form slowly. Miami re-signed veteran center Chris Andersen earlier this month to back up starting center Chris Bosh, so Oden will not be needed at the start of next season as he tries to get back in game shape.

The 25-year-old Oden has been star-crossed ever since the Blazers took him first overall in 2007, a pick ahead of Kevin Durant, who went to the then-Seattle SuperSonics. The two have been linked ever since, with Durant turning into a superstar, leading the now Oklahoma City Thunder to the Finals in 2012, while Oden has been besieged by injuries.

Oden had been injured in his only season in college, at Ohio State, tearing a ligament in his wrist that required surgery, keeping him from making his college debut until December. Essentially playing one-handed for much of the season, he was an AP first-team All-America, and led the Buckeyes to the national championship game, where he dominated future pros Joakim Noah and Al Horford. But Noah's and Horford's Florida team nonetheless beat Ohio State for the national title.

Oden's rookie season in Portland ended before it began, when he underwent microfracture surgery on his right knee in September 2007. The Blazers were confident that Oden would make a complete recovery and return for the 2008-09 season. And he played well most of what was his "rookie" season, averaging 8.9 points and 7 rebounds in 61 games -- though he missed three weeks after chipping his left patella in February 2009.

Oden was occasionally dominant the first month of the 2009-10 season, posting five double-doubles, including 13 points and 20 rebounds against Miami in November. But on December 6, 2009, he fractured his left patella in a game against Houston, a gruesome, freak "explosion" injury that occurred when Oden was jumping, and didn't come in contact with anyone. Of course, he missed the rest of that season.

Oden spent almost a year trying to rehab that injury, but when he ramped up his physical activities before the start of the 2010-11 season, he knees gave out on him again. Swelling in his left knee after a pregame workout in November, 2010, led to an MRI that showed damaged cartilage in his left knee, which required microfracture surgery on that knee. Oden, again, missed the entire season. And he missed the following season as well, when his right knee, which had been relatively stable since the initial microfracture surgery in 2007, began acting up again.

He underwent arthroscopic surgery in February 2012 to clean out debris in that knee.

The Blazers had tried everything to try and figure out why Oden's knees couldn't seem to support him. But, finally, they gave up on him, adding him to the unhappy list of big men that were cut down by injuries there, including Bill Walton and Sam Bowie.

Source: http://www.nba.com/2013/news/08/02/aldridge-on-oden-signing-with-heat/index.html?rss=true

Six Flags cedar point kate middleton The Conjuring prince harry Royal Baby Watch Teen Beach Movie

New 60,000 Star Online Data Set May Help Reveal Formation of Milky Way Galaxy

This map shows an infrared view of the Milky Way, as seen from Earth, plus the infrared spectra of two stars. Green circles show locations where infrared spectroscopy data were obtained during the first year of Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III observations with the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). The white boxes show the infrared spectra of two stars as seen by APOGEE; the red lines show where these stars live in the galaxy. One of these stars is in the galactic bulge, which is rich in elements heavier than hydrogen, and one is further out in the galactic disk, which has fewer such heavy elements. Image: Peter Frinchaboy (Texas Christian University), Ricardo Schiavon (Liverpool John Moores University), and the SDSS-III collaboration. Infrared sky image from 2MASS, IPAC/Caltech and University of Massachusetts.

"This data set is unprecedented for investigating the history and structure of our galaxy, as well as nearby low-mass stars," said Penn State assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics Suvrath Mahadevan, one of the SDSS-III scientists.

The highlight is a new set of high-resolution measurements of the amount of infrared light given off by each star at each wavelength. The scientists used infrared light, which is invisible to human eyes, because this light is able to penetrate the veil of dust that obscures the center of the galaxy. This light-blocking barrier limited the ability of previous studies to consistently reveal information about the stars in the Milky Way that were hidden behind the dust.

The new infrared detections are made possible by a new SDSS-III instrument that is part of an effort to create a comprehensive census of our Milky Way galaxy -- the SDSS-III's Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). The new spectra are the first data to be released by the APOGEE project. "The APOGEE instrument was designed for observing the infrared light from these hidden stars in our Galaxy," Mahadevan said. "This innovative instrument can obtain spectra of 300 stars in a single observation. Our goal is to obtain detailed information on approximately 100,000 stars during the three-year span of the APOGEE survey."

The question of how our Milky Way galaxy formed has been the subject of scientific speculation and debate for centuries. APOGEE's three-dimensional map will provide key information for resolving central questions about how our galaxy formed over the many billions of years of its history. The key is learning the compositions and motions of stars in each region of the galaxy. Mahadevan has led efforts to characterize low-mass stars and binary stars found during the APOGEE experiment.

The SDSS-III team also is publishing another 685,000 spectra from galaxies and quasars whose light began traveling toward Earth when our universe was much younger, just as the mysterious force of "dark energy" was beginning to influence the universe's expansion. These observations come from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). "The BOSS project is producing superb data that allow numerous investigations ranging from the large scale evolutionary history of the universe to the properties of supermassive black holes, which have the size of the solar system," said distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics Niel Brandt, another Penn State scientist involved with SDSS-III.

Donald Schneider, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, is the survey coordinator and scientific publication coordinator for SDSS-III. Public access to SDSS data always has been a key goal of the project. All data are available, to researchers and the public, at http://www.sdss3.org/dr10 . More information is online at science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/SDSS 7-2013.

Source: http://www.psu.edu/

Source: http://www.azoquantum.com/News.aspx?newsID=974

tom brady denver post Scandal denver broncos new england patriots Zayn Malik miss america