Category: Articles

December 16th, 2024 by Justin Melillo

The sixth race of the 2024-25 World of Outlaws Pro Series season, powered by iRacing, takes to Knoxville Raceway on Monday night in the 410 Sprint Cars.
This top-level eSports dirt racing series combines a schedule of 10 tracks with two dirt oval disciplines—the series utilizes both the 410 Sprint Car and the Super Late Model—and with an open qualifying series format to allow for anyone to take part in the championship, the new Pro Series has different look than what we’ve seen in past World of Outlaws eSports championships. The last race on the 2024 side of the calendar, Knoxville Raceway will host Sprint Cars around the Sprint Car Capital of the World as the second half of the season begins.
The driver roster is set each week through the Qualifying Series races that are open to all iRacing members with a Class A Dirt Oval license. These qualifying races will run on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET, and the top-35 point scorers will be invited to the iRacing World of Outlaws Pro Series league each week for the Monday night main event. After the Monday show, the league is cleared out, and the process begins again. Points will be tracked as normal across those 10 main events to crown the series champion.
The main event will include a 35-lap feature for 21 cars that qualify in through qualifying, heat races, and last chance qualifiers. The action starts at 8:00 p.m. ET and it will be live on DIRTVision and across all of iRacing’s social media channels.
The following 35 drivers have qualified into Monday night’s event at Knoxville Raceway, utilizing the Sprint Car, by scoring the most points last week during the qualifying races:

We had a “New” winner in the series last week at Federated Auto Parts at I-55 Raceway on Monday night. Conner New, in his second career World of Outlaws Pro Series start, won in a photo finish against former champion Blake Matjoulis after a late race restart bunched the field back together for the final six laps. Matjoulis was hugging the wall on the bottom as New ripped the top lane. Off of the final corner on the final lap, they came together, and across the line, New had it won by just a corner of his front bumper.
Knoxville Raceway hosted the final race on the 2023 side of the 2023-24 iRacing World of Outlaws Sprint Car calendar, and when the dust cleared at the Sprint Car Capital of the World, multi-time iRacing World of Outlaws champion Alex Bergeron stood tall as he returned to victory lane in dominant fashion.
The Late Models also ran at Knoxville last season, in August, and it was Logan Rumsey who scored the win.

Based on the Marion County Fairgrounds in Knoxville, Iowa, Knoxville Raceway is known as the “Sprint Car Capital of the World.” Besides its premier event, the Knoxville Nationals, the track has also been home to the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum since 1992. The Knoxville Nationals pay out more than $1 million to competitors, with $175,000 of that reserved for the A-Main winner.
These races feature qualifying and heat racing to determine the 21 drivers that will compete in the main race.
The top-eight qualifiers will immediately transfer to the feature. Pole winners score 25 points, second place scores 23 points, and points are paid out through the transfer spots to eighth, who will receive 17 points. When the feature begins, the top-eight will invert, with the pole sitter starting eighth and the eighth place qualifier starting on the pole.
For everyone else who does not qualify in, there will be three heat races of eight laps each, where the top-three finishers will advance forward through to the main event. Heat races also pay out points to all drivers, with the winner scoring 15 points and ninth place taking home seven points.
There will also be two 12-lap consolation races where the top two finishers in each will move on, but no additional points are scored.
Feature races will be 35 laps in the 410 Sprint Car, or 50 laps in the Super Late Model. The Feature winner will score 100 points, making the maximum amount of points on any given night 125 for a pole and Feature win.

6. Knoxville Raceway | Dec 16, 2024 | 410S
–HOLIDAY BREAK–
7. TO BE ANNOUNCED | Jan 06, 2025 | 410S
8. Fairbury Speedway | Jan 13, 2025 | SLM
9. Eldora Speedway | Jan 20, 2025 | 410S
10. The Dirt Track at Charlotte | Jan 27, 2025 | SLM
For more information on the series, visit www.iracing.com/woo-pro-series. For more information on the World of Outlaws, visit www.worldofoutlaws.com. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.

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A strain now circulating in dairy cows appears to carry little risk for humans at present, but we need to develop an effective strategy before it mutates
As usual, I’m back with cheery topics to get us through the dark, cold winter months. No, I’m not talking about the studies on how dark chocolate reduces your risk of type 2 diabetes or why eating cake for breakfast isn’t as bad as we think it is. Instead, in the global health world, the main news is about avian flu, the H5N1 virus, and also the deadly outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of a mystery illness. It’s in these moments that I wonder why I didn’t choose a career in baking.
But trying to replicate a Mary Berry recipe would require eggs – and the United States is facing a shortage of eggs – like Britain did last year – with the main culprit being avian flu, which has either killed off or triggered the culling of hundreds of thousands of chickens. Avian flu has caused concerns recently given several step-changes in the seriousness of the potential threat: becoming endemic in wild bird populations; then its spread among domestic birds, causing a turkey lockdown in winter 2022; then reports from across the world about infections in mammals such as sea lions that feed on or live near wild birds. In the past year, a big shift has been the confirmation of mammal-to-mammal transmission among dairy cows in the US.
The growing proximity of the virus to humans has resulted in an increasing number of infections in humans in the past year (bird-to-human or cow-to-human), but H5N1 can still not transmit human-to-human the way Sars-Cov-2 or seasonal influenza can, which is why it’s considered low-risk. However, a recent Science article noted that the strain in cows would only require a single mutation to enable the virus to move from avian to human specificity. This is the shift that would trigger governments to activate their pandemic preparedness and response plans and would make it leap to the top of risk registers.
But there are even more puzzles when looking at H5N1. Prior to this year, the death rate was estimated to be about 50%, and it’s still deadly for many species of birds and cats. But out of the 57 confirmed infections in the US in the past year, all have been mild and none hospitalised. Scientists don’t fully understand why, although there are hypotheses: could the strain circulating in dairy cows (and causing human infections in the US) be less dangerous to human health? Or is it about the route of transmission from cows to humans, or some existing immunity in the population? It’s worth contrasting this with a teenager in Canada who was infected with H5N1 from wild birds (a different strain to the one in cows), and was admitted to hospital with severe pneumonia, where he remains on a ventilator.
Looking forward, it wouldn’t be wise to just assume it won’t further mutate or will be a mild strain. If I worked in a government health department, I would be preparing plans for how best to respond to more avian flu cases in humans, including GP and hospital guidance, vaccine and antiviral testing and stockpiling and containment plans.
First, we need to continue to detect cases, which requires a testing strategy and adequate diagnostics. Sequencing positive samples can tell us where someone got infected, the strain they have and how infectious transmission is. Currently, the UK has a detection strategy for high-risk workers and in hospitals. In the first part, samples are taken randomly through nose and throat swabs for those working closely with birds on poultry farms, for example, to identify asymptomatic cases and ensure we’re not having undetected spread. In the second part, NHS hospitals ensure those admitted to intensive care with severe respiratory infections or influenza-like symptoms are tested for avian flu, if seasonal influenza is not found.
We must also prepare medical countermeasures such as vaccines and antivirals such as Tamiflu. We are fortunate to have an approved vaccine, which has been previously used for those working on a mink farm in Finland, and the UK has stockpiled 5m doses. While it’s useful to have a generic H5N1 vaccine ready to go, it wouldn’t be specific to the strain circulating. On an avian flu briefing several months ago, a senior director from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the US was waiting to stockpile vaccines so that they could match the circulating strain most precisely, if needed. But producing enough vaccines rapidly would be a problem given that H5N1 vaccines are currently made in eggs, which are dependent on healthy chickens. The US government spends millions of dollars on contracts with poultry companies for eggs, kept ready for vaccine production. These chickens are kept in secret locations and protected by both physical and biosecurity measures to ensure the egg supply is secure. It’s estimated to take at least six months from the arrival of an egg to an approved vaccine, making emergency scale-up tricky.
In addition, we need a clear strategy over the management of spread. If the circulating strain is indeed mild in humans, would officials tolerate spread while vaccinating in high-risk groups? What if it’s more serious in humans, and young people and especially children become seriously ill? What if hospitals become overwhelmed? In this case, what is the plan to contain and delay until vaccination? How do we build trust in yet another vaccination campaign? It’s better to pre-empt these questions and prepare plans that help decision-making in a logistical and balanced fashion.
For now, unless you’re a scientist working in this area, a health or agricultural official, a farm worker or in close proximity to animals, or you consume raw milk or undercook meat (which is a bad idea anyway), it’s not yet a major concern. But if the picture changes further, we won’t be able to avoid the topic. For now, you can get back to your Christmas baking and those precious eggs.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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Bitwarden launches redesigned browser extension with enhanced user interface and functionality  SDxCentral
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Amy Thompson | Wright State University
According to an email sent by President Sue Edwards on Dec. 16, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Amy Thompson has accepted a position at Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan as the executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. She will begin in that new role on May 19, 2025. 
Edwards thanks Dr. Thompson for her contributions to Wright State and wishes her well.
The University plans to announce a transition plan soon.
The Wright State Guardian will continue to monitor and report on this subject.
Editor-In-Chief

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Nidhi is a Certified Digital Marketing Executive and Passionate crypto Journalist covering the world of alternative currencies. She shares the latest and trending news on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.
Binance has announced its 4th and 5th products on the Binance HODLer Airdrop program, selecting CAT and PENGU for the airdrop.
Users who subscribed to Simple Earn products with BNB between December 9th and 12th will receive the airdrops.
This program rewards BNB holders with token airdrops based on historical BNB balances.
Binance has introduced Simon’s Cat (CAT) and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) as the latest tokens in its HODLer Airdrop program. These additions mark the fourth and fifth products in the program, which rewards loyal Binance users with exclusive token airdrops.
As per the announcement, Binance will list CAT at 2024-12-17 09:00 (UTC) and open trading against USDT, BNB, FDUSD, and TRY pairs. Binance will list PENGU at 2024-12-17 14:00 (UTC) and open trading against USDT, BNB, FDUSD, and TRY pairs.
A significant portion of both token supplies has been allocated for the airdrops. Binance has set aside 12.7% of the total CAT supply, equal to $1.14 billion CAT, and 3% of the PENGU supply, or $2.66 billion PENGU, for the program.
The airdrops will be distributed to users who subscribed to Binance’s Simple Earn products with their BNB between December 9-12, 2024.
Simon’s Cat (CAT) is a BNB Chain-based meme coin inspired by the hugely popular animated series and meme, Simon’s Cat. On the other hand, Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) comes from one of the most successful NFT collections, expanding its reach into the cryptocurrency market.
The Binance HODLer Airdrop program rewards users holding BNB by distributing tokens based on snapshots of their BNB balances. Users automatically qualify by subscribing to Binance’s Simple Earn products, which also provide access to Launchpool and Megadrop rewards.
What makes this program unique is its retroactive approach. Unlike other earning methods, users don’t need to perform ongoing actions to qualify. Simply holding and subscribing their BNB makes them eligible for rewards.
By adding Simon’s Cat and Pudgy Penguins, Binance continues to blend meme culture with cryptocurrency innovation, offering exciting opportunities to its community of BNB holders.

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