Currents

Chess Royalty

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS Rio Grande Valley chess team won its third consecutive national championship, defeating Webster University in April for the President’s Cup.

Our June 2012 story The Kings and Queens of Brownsville told how young students made all the right moves to turn the U.S.’s southernmost border town into a chess powerhouse.

Members of the UTRGV chess team often mentor K-12 students in Brownsville schools.

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FOCUS ON TEXAS PHOTOS

Bridges

POWER OF OUR PEOPLE

Know anybody as inspired and exceptional as Hunter Beaton, featured on Page 12? Let us know so we can shine the spotlight on them.

August 22

National Tooth Fairy Day

The tooth fairy forks over an average of $4.70 per visit in the U.S., a recent poll shows. That’s a far cry from the nickel recommended more than a century ago.

The Chicago Tribune carried the rst published mention of the tooth fairy— in 1908. Writer Lillian Brown advised that parents might have an easier time persuading children to have loose teeth pulled if a “tooth fairy” left a small gift of 5 cents under youngsters’ pillows for each tooth lost.

SCORE ONE FOR THE CO OP

When Hereford Sports & Wellness took delivery of two digital scoreboards for its soccer eld in the Panhandle town, the nonpro t community center realized it didn’t have the means to install them.

Deaf Smith Electric Cooperative did. The co-op sent a bucket truck out tted with an auger and a crew of linemen, who drilled a half-dozen 6-foot-deep holes to securely mount the new displays.

Cool Coat

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

—STEPHEN KING ENGINEERS HAVE CREATED the whitest paint ever—a paint so white that building surfaces coated in it are 8 degrees cooler than the air on a sunny day. The innovation could reduce air conditioning demands and mitigate the effects of climate change, Vice reports.

The new paint, developed by a team at Purdue University, reflects 98.1% of sunlight. Researchers used barium sulfate, a powder that’s reflective across all wavelengths of sunlight, to pigment the new paint—unlike most white paints, which tend to use titanium dioxide as pigment.

FINISH THIS SENTENCE

IT’S SO HOT...

Tell us how you would nish that sentence. Email your short responses to letters@TexasCoopPower.com or comment on our Facebook post. Include your co-op and town. Here are some of the responses to our June prompt: I always laugh when

my dad …

Says rain sounds like a cow peeing on a at rock.

SUE BIGAY SAM HOUSTON EC LIVINGSTON

Read the comics to me— in di erent voices to match the character. Couldn’t pronounce a word, so he made up a new one that sounded similar.

CRAIG MASSOUH PEDERNALES EC SATTLER

To see more responses, read Currents online.