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KENNESAW, Ga. – EKU women's basketball (13-11, 6-5 ASUN) sets its sights on week six of ASUN Conference play with a road trip down South, facing Kennesaw State for the second time and Jacksonville State.

Thursday's contest with KSU is set for Thursday, Feb. 9 at 7:00 p.m. ET and Saturday's game is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 11 at 5:00 p.m. ET. Fans can view both games on ESPN+ or tune into 92.5 WEKY, the EKU Sports Network radio coverage with Wes Chandler on the call.

The Colonels are coming off a two-game home stand that saw the team take losses to Lipscomb and Austin Peay. EKU remains in fifth place in the ASUN standings.

Antwainette Walker was named the ASUN Newcomer of the Week on Monday, Feb. 6 by the league office. Walker averaged 25.5 points, 10.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.5 steals while shooting 53.8 percent from the floor.

The Lisle, Ill. native recorded a career-high 33 points going 13-of-21 (.619) from the floor in the loss to Austin Peay. Walker added 11 rebounds for her 12th double-double of the season, placing her in the top-15 in the NCAA.

Graduate Student Danielle Rainey enters week six of conference play scoring 10-or-more points in five of her last seven games, including 17 points in back-to-back contests with Bellarmine and North Florida.

Eastern Kentucky Notes - EKU head coach Greg Todd needs 10 wins to reach 300 in his career. - Walker was tabbed to the 2023 Ann Meyers Drysdale Award Mid-Season Top 10 list by the National Basketball Hall of Fame and the WBCA. The nod recognizes the top shooting guards in women's college basketball, voting is now available through hoophallawards.com. - Walker became the first player since Jalen O'Bannon on Jan. 16, 2016 to earn 30+ points, 10+ rebounds, and three steals in a single game. - With 126 assists on the season and averaging 5.2 assists per game, point guard Alice Recanati sits inside the top-30 in the NCAA in both categories. Recently entering the top-10 in EKU career assists, needs 14 assists to move into 6th in program history. - Emma Hacker and Ariel Kirkwood have both moved into the EKU all-time career block top-10 list this season, both averaging over 1.2 blocks per game. - Rainey recorded the first triple-double in EKU program history with 16 points, 13 rebounds, and 10 assists in the Colonels 110-49 win over Alice Lloyd.

Game 25: Eastern Kentucky (13-11, 6-5 ASUN) vs. Kennesaw State (9-13, 5-6 ASUN) - Thursday, February 9, 2023 – 7:00 p.m. ET - KSU Convocation Center – Kennesaw, Ga. - Tickets - Watch - Listen

All-Time vs. Kennesaw State - EKU is 3-0 all-time over KSU, including an 87-72 win earlier this season in the first game of ASUN play. - Walker led EKU with 28 points, seven rebounds, and four steals. Rainey (18) and Marissa Mackins (16) also found themselves in double-figure scoring.

Scouting the Owls - KSU is led by head coach Octavia Blue, who has compiled a record of 18-32 in two seasons. - After the Owls suffered a defeat to EKU earlier in the season, the Owls won three straight games over Austin Peay, Bellarmine, and Lipscomb. - Despite the added effort after the contest in Richmond, KSU has lost its last four conference games to North Alabama, Central Arkansas, Queens, and Liberty. - KSU is led by Jah'Che Whitfield, a graduate student from Sumter, S.C., who averages 14.2 points per game, 5.7 rebounds per game, and shoots 42.1 percent from the field. - Amani Johnson, a Preseason All-ASUN selection, leads the Owls with 4.9 assists per game.

Game 26: Eastern Kentucky (13-11, 6-5 ASUN) vs. Jacksonville State (12-10, 5-6 ASUN) - Saturday, February 11, 2023 – 5:00 p.m. ET - Pete Matthews Coliseum – Jacksonville, Ala. - Tickets - Watch - Listen

All-Time vs. Jacksonville State - Saturday's game is the 41st meeting between JSU and EKU, the Gamecocks own a 21-19 all-time record over the Colonels dating back to 2002. - Jacksonville State claimed both meetings last year in EKU's inaugural season in the ASUN.

Scouting the Gamecocks - Jacksonville State HC Rick Pietri entered his 10th season at the helm of the program, he has a 155-131 (.542) record with the Gamecocks. - The Gamecocks played a tough non-conference slate with losses to power-5 Georgia and Ole Miss on the road, wins over Samford, Utah Tech, and Chattanooga. - JSU has ASUN wins over Queens (x2), Central Arkansas (x2), and North Alabama. Losses to Lipscomb (x2), Austin Peay, Kennesaw State (x2), and Liberty. - Kennedy Gavin, a graduate forward from Petal, Miss., leads the Gamecocks with 12.5 ppg and 7.7 rpg. - Fifth-year point guard Shawnta Shaw leads JSU with 2.1 assists and 1.9 steals a game.

Follow Us Keep up with everything EKU women's basketball on Instagram (@ekuwbb) and Twitter (@EKUWBB).

Santa Cruz native Luke Rockhold, a 38-year-old former UFC middleweight champion, has traded the octagon for a circular ring. At least, for now.

His return to combat sports was announced Wednesday, when it was revealed that he’ll make his debut in the Bare Knuckle FC as part of the co-main event of BKFC 41.

His bout against Mike Perry at 185 pounds will feature five, 2-minute rounds. The fight takes place in Denver on April 29 and will be aired live on BKFC.tv pay-per-view.

“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Rockhold told The MMA Hour With Ariel Helwani on Wednesday. “And I’m still a free agent. That’s the beauty of life. That’s the beauty of where we’re at and where we’re going to keep it.”

Rockhold, 38, retired from the UFC after he lost by decision to Brazil’s Paulo Costa in UFC 278 on Aug. 20. Both fighters received $50,000 Fight of the Night bonuses for their exhilarating battle.

Rockhold requested his release from the promotion in January. His request was approved by Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Hunter Campbell, opening him up to other opportunities.

A former UFC welterweight, Perry, 31, is 2-0 for BKFC with wins by decision over The Ultimate Fighter’s Julian “Bang Bro” Lane and Bellator MMA attraction Michael “Venom” Page.

Rockhold said his contract is a one-fight deal.

“They gave me a fight with Mike Perry as the main event for this groundbreaking fight, I love it,” he said. “Mike Perry (expletive), he’s a little dog. I like what’s in front of me and I like the opponent. I like the (expletive) stage, and it’s (expletive) new. It’s different and it’s challenging.”

A 165-pound fight between fellow UFC veterans Eddie Alvarez and Chad Mendes will serve as the co-main event.

Rockhold went 16-6-0 in the UFC. He won the organization’s middleweight title by defeating Chris Weidman at UFC 194 on Dec. 12, 2015.

Rockhold is also a former Strikeforce middleweight champion. He defended his title twice and was the last fighter to hold the belt before Strikeforce was absorbed by the UFC in 2013.

Astronomers are still watching that asteroid that NASA whacked with a spacecraft back in September, in the first-ever test of whether an asteroid could be deliberately pushed off-course.

Almost immediately after NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission sent a golf cart-sized spacecraft crashing into an asteroid called Dimorphos, scientists hailed it as a huge success – and a powerful demonstration that an asteroid's trajectory can be altered.

"We know this process is really very effective – it's even more effective than a lot of people had originally expected," says Andy Cheng with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The experiment has boosted scientists' confidence, he says, that this kind of deflection technique could really work to protect the planet if Earth ever got menaced by a dangerous incoming space rock.

The collision altered the path of Dimorphos through space, shortening the time it takes to orbit another, larger asteroid by 33 minutes, according a new analysis in the journal Nature. The journal published a study detailing the results this week, alongside four additional scientific reports on this unprecedented asteroid deflection experiment.

Dimorphos is millions of miles away and about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Astronomers got their first good look at it in the final moments of the mission, as the DART spacecraft drew ever closer, sending back images of a gray, egg-shaped asteroid strewn with rubble.

Once the spacecraft hit the surface, it was obliterated, and its stream of pictures stopped. But telescopes watching the pair of asteroids saw that the impact kicked up a huge amount of dust and rocky debris, brightening the scene.

"It's just a bright cloud. A lot of dust came off. And we were just amazed. We knew right then, we can do some good science with this," says Ariel Graykowski with the SETI Institute, who works with a global network of telescope enthusiasts.

All the material ejected out of the asteroid by the impact gave the asteroid an extra kick, says Cheng, in the same way that shooting a bullet out of a gun makes the gun kick back.

"That's the recoil force, an extra force that's pushing against the asteroid," says Cheng, adding that this extra force was actually a lot bigger than the push that the spacecraft delivered by hitting the asteroid and embedding itself inside.

The orbiting Hubble Space Telescope was on the wrong side of Earth when the collision happened, so it couldn't watch the event, but it gazed at the asteroid soon after and watched the debris cloud change over time.

"That's something really exciting to see," says Jian-Yang Li, with the Planetary Science Institute, who says that eventually, a comet-like tail formed and got longer and longer.

It looked remarkably like tails that occasionally are seen on other asteroids, he says. It had never been clear what created those so-called 'active' asteroids, although some astronomers suspected impacts played a role.

"DART is the first experiment that actually demonstrated that impact can indeed generate a tail," he says.

The tail streaming off of Dimorphos can still be detected by telescopes. "We are still observing," says Cristina Thomas with Northern Arizona University, who says observations should wrap up this month.

Next year, the European Space Agency will send out a mission called Hera that should take close-up images of the asteroid, revealing the size of any crater left behind. It should also be able to determine the asteroid's mass. All of this should help astronomers understand even more about how to push asteroids around.

While astronomers say no large space rocks are currently known to threaten Earth, many small-but-still-dangerous asteroids have not yet been tracked, and planetary defenders say it's good to be prepared, just in case.

"We've shown now that we have a method to move an asteroid," says Graykowski. "It makes me feel a lot better to see that it worked, and that it worked so well."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

MP MENASHE, Israel, March 09, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Caesarstone Ltd. (NASDAQ: CSTE), a leading developer and manufacturer of high-quality engineered surfaces, today announced that Yosef (Yos) Shiran has been appointed as its Chief Executive Officer. Shiran, who previously served as Caesarstone’s Chief Executive Officer from 2009 to 2016, will reassume the role on March 16, 2023. Following Shiran’s appointment, Yuval Dagim, the current Chief Executive Officer, will step down and assist in ensuring business continuity and a smooth transition.

Shiran stated, "I am honored to rejoin Caesarstone as its CEO. Caesarstone is currently facing many challenges, but I believe that the Company has significant assets and potential, highlighted by its supportive Board of Directors and loyal employee base. I look forward to working with Yuval to ensure a smooth transition and renewing my collaboration with the talented Caesarstone employees in order to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. I am confident that as we work together we can empower our global position as an industry leader with a reputation for innovation, quality and service while creating value for all our stakeholders."

Dr. Ariel Halperin, Caesarstone’s Chairman, added, "The Company is fortunate to welcome Yos back as CEO, who’s familiarity and achievements with the Company will provide unique value, agility, and insights as we restructure the Company and aim to restore value to our shareholders."

Yosef Shiran has over 25 years of CEO experience for both private and publicly traded companies, including serving as CEO of Caesarstone from January 2009 until August 2016. Prior to Yosef’s current appointment as CEO of Caesarstone, he served as co-founder and CEO of SENSEQ Ltd. from September 2016, founder and CEO of Elight Ltd. from January 2020 and co-founder and chairman of the board of Inflow Ltd. from January 2021. Before his initial term as CEO of Caesarstone, Yosef was the CEO and director of Tefron Ltd. (NYSE: TFR) from January 2001 until August 2008, and prior thereto served as CEO of Technoplast Industries Ltd. from February 1995 until December 2000. Yosef has a B.Sc. in industrial engineering from Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and an MBA from Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Since it pioneered quartz countertops over thirty years ago, the brand has expanded into porcelain and natural stone and is on the ground in more than 50 countries worldwide while enhancing customer experience through the expansion of groundbreaking digital platforms & services. More information on Caesarstone: , , , and .

Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "goals," "intend," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "could," "continue," "expect," "estimate," "may," "plan," "outlook," "future" and "project" and other similar expressions that predict, project or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Such forward looking statements include statements regarding the Company’s sustainability goals and plans, intentions, expectations, assumptions, goals and beliefs regarding the Company’s business and sustainability vision. These forward-looking statements also may relate to the Company's plans, objectives and expectations for future operations, including estimations relating to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation measures in connection thereto, and expectations of the results of the Company’s business optimization initiatives. These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current estimates and projections of future results or trends. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties, both known or unknown. These factors include, but are not limited to: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on end-consumers, the effects of global economy and geo-politics on the Company’s business and operations; managing constraints in the global supply chain, raw material shortages, increased prices and effects of challenges in global shipping and transportation; Company’s ability to pass all or some of these increases to its customers; the strength of the home renovation and construction sectors; intense competitive pressures; disruptions to our information technology systems globally, including by deliberate cyber-attacks; the degree of the Company’s ability to develop, produce and deliver high quality and safe products; fluctuations in currency exchange rates against the U.S. Dollar; Company’s ability to raise funds to finance our current and future capital needs; Company’s ability to build-out and expand into certain markets and successfully integrate our acquisitions; the Company’s ability to effective manage its relationship with key suppliers; the outcome of silicosis and other bodily injury claims; regulatory requirements relating to hazards associated with our operations and products; efficiently manufacturing our products and managing changes in production and supply chain; economic conditions within any of our key existing markets; the success of our expansion efforts in the United States; the extent of the Company’s ability to meet its ESG goals and targets, management of GHG and other emissions; the impacts of conditions in Israel, such as negative economic, labor or geopolitical events; the unpredictability of seasonal fluctuations in revenues; disturbances to the Company’s operations or the operations of its suppliers, distributors, customers or other third parties and other factors, risks and uncertainties discussed under the sections "Risk Factors" and "Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factor Summary" in our most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on March 15, 2022, and in other documents filed by Caesarstone with the SEC, which are available free of charge at . These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Rodny Nacier, ICR, Inc+1 (646) 200-8870

Structured Abstract

The human reference genome has served as the foundation for many large-scale initiatives, including the collective effort to catalog the epigenome, the set of marks and protein interactions that act to control gene activity and cellular function. However, for more than two decades, efforts to construct a complete epigenome have been hampered by an incomplete reference genome. With recent technological advances, we can now study genome structure and function comprehensively across a complete telomere-to-telomere human genome assembly, T2T-CHM13. As a result, we can now broaden the human epigenome to include 225 million base pairs (Mbp) of additional sequence.

The epigenome refers to DNA modifications (e.g., CpG methylation), protein-DNA interactions, histone modifications, and chromatin organization that collectively influence gene expression, genome regulation, and genome stability. These epigenetic features are heritable upon cell division but dynamic during development, generating profiles that are unique to different tissues and cell types. Here, we present an epigenetic annotation of the human genome in which we explore previously unresolved regions, including acrocentric chromosome short arms, segmentally duplicated genes, and a diverse collection of repeat classes, including human centromeres. Generating a complete epigenetic annotation of the previously missing 8% of the human genome provides a foundation for elucidating the functional roles of these genomic elements that are critical to our understanding of genome regulation, function, and evolution.

Completion of the human epigenome required that we develop approaches to profiling the previously unresolved regions. Using the T2T-CHM13 reference with existing short-read epigenetic data, we identified 3 to 19% more enrichment sites for epigenetic markers. However, even with the complete reference, these short-read epigenetic methods cannot correctly resolve regions of the genome of high similarity, including segmental duplications, gene paralogs, or large repeat arrays. On the other hand, long-read epigenetic methods can resolve single-molecule epigenetic patterns within these regions by anchoring to flanking or infrequent unique regions, providing a foundational assessment of these areas. Long-read methylation calls using the T2T-CHM13 assembly increased the number of probeable CpG sites by 10% (3.2 M), revealing epigenetic patterning of genomic regions that were previously intractable. We generated long-read methylomes of distinct developmental time points and surveyed >99% of the genome’s CpGs. We probed highly homologous gene families and observed paralog-specific differences in regulation between disease and nondisease states. In tandem repeats, we identified differences in epigenetic regulation between genetically identical sequences present across different genomic locations, observing locus- and single-molecule-level differences in methylation. Our analysis revealed that these regions vary in epigenetic and transcriptional activity despite high sequence identity, highlighting the importance of the local chromosome environment as a modulator of epigenetics. Finally, the T2T-CHM13 genome assembly has opened exploration of the human centromere, enabling us to probe the epigenetic elements that define centromeric chromatin. The centromere is the site of assembly of the kinetochore complex, an essential complex for eukaryotic cell division. We generated complete epigenetic maps of human centromeres, revealing epigenetic markers of centromere activity that denote active human kinetochores. We predicted kinetochore site localization within active centromeres and report variability of kinetochore localization across individuals representing diverse ancestry.

The improvements in epigenetic profiling using T2T-CHM13 set the foundation for complete assemblies and long-read epigenetics for major biological advancements. Using technological advances in genome resequencing and alignment, we present a comprehensive functional assessment of previously unresolved genomic regions. This study marks the start of exploration into duplicated and repetitive portions of the epigenome, pioneering the exploration of epigenetics in a complete human genome.

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Abstract

The completion of a telomere-to-telomere human reference genome, T2T-CHM13, has resolved complex regions of the genome, including repetitive and homologous regions. Here, we present a high-resolution epigenetic study of previously unresolved sequences, representing entire acrocentric chromosome short arms, gene family expansions, and a diverse collection of repeat classes. This resource precisely maps CpG methylation (32.28 million CpGs), DNA accessibility, and short-read datasets (166,058 previously unresolved chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing peaks) to provide evidence of activity across previously unidentified or corrected genes and reveals clinically relevant paralog-specific regulation. Probing CpG methylation across human centromeres from six diverse individuals generated an estimate of variability in kinetochore localization. This analysis provides a framework with which to investigate the most elusive regions of the human genome, granting insights into epigenetic regulation.