(NewsUSA) - In the wake of thrilling playoff games, football has never been hotter, and TUMS is in on the competitive action with its popular TUMSworthy Big Game Trivia contest.

The contest takes place on Twitter and offers fans a chance to win up to $88,000 in prizes.

The contest kicked off in advance of game day with a special head-to-head trivia matchup between football legends Terrell Davis and Hines Ward. Comedian and television personality Scott Rogowsky hosted the livestreamed event via @TUMSOfficial. Rogowsky will keep the questions coming as he hosts TUMSworthy Big Game Trivia on Big Game Sunday.

"I've always enjoyed the thrill of competition, and the trivia battle with Terrell Davis took me back to the gridiron," says Hines?Ward.

"I'm happy to get the win, but even more honored to support TUMS® and get fans excited for TUMSworthy Big Game Trivia on Sunday."

Davis relished the trivia battle, too.

"I had so much fun competing against Hines, but I can't wait for fans to have their chance to get in on the action. TUMSworthy Big Game Trivia is a great way for fans to enjoy their Big Game experience this year," he adds.

Fans can join any time before Big Game Sunday by registering on Twitter @TUMSOfficial.

Shortly before kickoff and during the Big Game, TUMS® will live tweet links from the @TUMSOfficial Twitter handle. Each tweet contains a unique link that sends players to a microsite, where they answer multiple-choice trivia questions and get instant feedback on their answers. Each correct answer equals one entry into the sweepstakes, and one grand-prize winner will be drawn randomly to receive a $56,000 cash prize. Participants also will have a chance to win part of an additional $32,000 in prizes throughout the game.

Players can share their standing on the live leaderboard via Twitter using #TUMSworthyTrivia, creating a fun and competitive community for players across the country or in the same room. In tweeting, participants also get one extra entry into the sweepstakes.

"TUMS® helps fans enjoy the Big Game to the fullest, not only by providing fast-acting and powerful relief of heartburn, but also by delivering engaging ways to elevate their game day experience," explains Amy Sharon, Director at TUMS.®

Visit TUMS.com for more information on TUMS® antacid products.

Hint: It's all about a new certification.

1.Right now, the beauty industry creates more than 877 pounds of waste every single minute in the U.S. and Canada.

That's over 421,000 pounds a day.

And we're not just talking hair (though there's 63,000 pounds of clippings alone). There's also excess hair color, lightener and toner (over 42,000 pounds) … used metal like hair foils, color tubes and aerosol cans (over 110,000 pounds) … And don't get us started about all the other stuff, including the personal protective equipment like gloves, masks and disinfectant wipes the staff has been running through since the coronavirus hit.

2.All that waste doesn't just magically disappear on its own.

It winds up going straight into landfills and potentially our drinking water.

Both of which can happen when all that extra hair color, lightener and toner are rinsed down the drain.

3.But wait! The first industry-wide Sustainable Salon Certification in North America lets you know which salons are doing their part to reduce their environmental footprint and become carbon neutral.

It's issued by Green Circle Salons, a beauty waste recovery service founded 12 years ago to help salons in Canada and the United States recycle and repurpose up to 95 percent of such waste. And now they're even offsetting participating salons' carbon emissions for free.

Here's how it works.

Metals are melted down into aluminum sheets or bars to be used to make products like car parts and bicycles.

Excess hair color is turned into clean energy or separated into water and oil, with the water cleaned and returned to the water system.

Personal protective equipment is likewise turned into clean energy, and any resulting ash can be used to make asphalt, bricks and other construction material.

And all that hair? Turns out lots can be done with it instead of just letting garbage bags full of sweepings produce greenhouse gases while trying to break down.

It can be turned into bio-composite plastic to make things like recycling bins, for example, or used to research and develop new environmental technology such as insulation and stormwater filtration. Heck, it can even be made into products targeted for humanitarian efforts.

"We give beauty waste a new life," says Shane Price," Green Circle Salons' founder and CEO, noting that you can easily find a nearby Certified Sustainable salon online. "Salons that obtain this certification prove to their clients and employees that they're proud to be sustainably responsible and are putting in the effort to make a crucial impact on the environment."

4.Salons displaying this decal in their window serve as an alert that you're helping to create a better world - and that those eco-warriors will love you for having your highlights done there.

In fact, according to a recent Market Research study, 88 percent of beauty professionals think it's important to work in a green and sustainable salon or barbershop. And 60 percent of customers said they'd even consider switching salons if they knew all the waste from their visit would be recovered.

(NewsUSA)

"The Lady's Mine"
by Francine Rivers

New York Times bestselling author Francine Rivers returns to the California frontier in this sweeping, romantic tale of a displaced New England suffragette, a former Union soldier disinherited by his Southern family, and the town they join forces to save.

Kathryn Walsh arrives in a tiny mining town in the Sierra Nevadas, coming to claim an inheritance of a defunct newspaper office. The town is overflowing with brothels and saloons, and a seemingly worthless mine. Kathryn relaunches her uncle's newspaper and finds herself pitted against the town's most powerful men.

When local saloon and hotel owner Matthias Beck keeps finding himself on the same side of the issues as the opinionated Miss Walsh, his restless search for purpose becomes all about answering the call of his heart. Purchase at https://bit.ly/3GBwObY.

"Specters of Sapience"
by Alex Hackett

The Sapience series is a dark, mature twist on the magical school concept. In the second book of the series, a big story is compressed into a quick read that alternates between jolting moments of terror and deep moments of love and self-reflection, which will resonate with any reader.

Around Sapience University, fallen combatants are emerging from their graves as undead creatures called Lifeless. Some hope to resurrect the Lifeless, while others want to return them to their graves. When everyone returns to Sapience for the winter semester, some students seem eerily different. Students continue their magical studies unaware that enemies walk among them. However, it won't be long until the enemy strikes and sends the school back into chaos. Visit www.spiritsofsapience.com.

"Terriers in the Jungle"
by Georja Umano

Roxie and Romeo, two spunky dogs, ponder, philosophize and crack jokes as they express underlying feelings of loneliness, fear and love. We watch them transform from unwanted street canines to beloved companions and pets. The two adore each other, their home and their mom Kate.

But Kate, being an ardent animal conservationist, decides the family will move to Kenya to help save endangered elephants. The dogs must now learn to survive in the midst of wildlife, dangerous people and circumstances far from most American dogs' understanding. We experience their journey as they adapt and grow into international heroes, in their own words. Inspired by real events! Purchase at https://amzn.to/3EJjPTB.

"Comfort in the Wings"
by Jennifer Collins

"A story of love, loss and the possibility of redemption that brings home the feeling of loss in a way that no words can truly express."

Larissa Whitcomb flounders in the wake of unimaginable losses. Forget about coping; she can barely function. Life as she has known it evaporates, and she isolates herself from work and friends. Aware, however, of the dangers of her bleak existence, she reluctantly agrees to embark on a unique business opportunity, which becomes Larissa's journey of grieving.

She will be challenged by unwelcome encounters, confronted by emerging secrets and emotions and startled to find joy in the most unexpected places. Can her battered heart open to new possibilities? Purchase at https://amzn.to/3yTWEo9.

NOTE: BookBites is presented by BookTrib.com.

(NewsUSA) - Each winter, unpredictable weather creates an avalanche of logistical and financial problems for local governments.

As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, these challenges are compounded by staffing shortages due to illness and quarantine. Local government officials struggle to find ways to keep their streets clear and safe, while meeting the expectations of local schools, businesses and residents, and managing spiraling costs.

However, the easy-to-use technology that has fueled the success of ride-sharing services is making inroads, so to speak, in snowplow fleet management and delivering a real difference for U.S. cities and towns this winter.

SNOWiQ, an Uber-like mobile application, helps municipalities quickly boost and manage their snowplow fleets. The program can match available plows and drivers with the snowy streets that need them most, enhancing local resources with the help of on-demand area contractors. The system clears the way for any resident or contractor with a truck and plow attachment to receive approval to plow city streets -- and get in on the action (and the income) of keeping wintery roads safe.

One notable example of the utility of SNOWiQ can be found in Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, that requires its full-time snow removal fleet to scale on a moment's notice.

The county turned to EastBanc Technologies, developer of SNOWiQ and the TERRAiQ platform whose smart technology fuels SNOWiQ and several other intelligent fleet management solutions, to modernize its operations and enable its field team to provide a fast and effective emergency response during winter storms.

The SNOWiQ application makes it easy to add contractors on an as-needed basis and to equip the entire fleet with the same easy-to-use tool -- a mobile application on their smartphones that is highly visual and shares route progress, updates and new requests in real time.

After completing a pilot, the program was launched full-scale for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. Full-time county drivers and on-demand contractors receive and report plowing progress from their mobile phones.

This strategy provides local supervisors with a detailed picture that enables maximum efficiency of workforce dispatching and scaling. An added benefit allows residents to access a public-facing SNOWiQ-powered dashboard to see real-time information about area snowstorm response activity.

The success of SNOWiQ highlights the feasibility and promise of mobile technology to help local governments deliver better service and cut costs. When spring comes and the snow stops falling, TERRAiQ technology could even be deployed to support building inspections and leaf removal, along with other on-demand public services.

Visit eastbanctech.com to learn more about SNOWiQ and the TERRAiQ suite of applications that power today's innovative connected experiences and improve our daily lives.

(NewsUSA) - If you have a chronic or recurring infection, getting accurate results of diagnostic tests can make a big difference in your quality of care and quality of life. Patients with infections value the resolution that comes from accurate testing, diagnosis, and good treatment that MicroGenDX's Next-Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS) enables.

When a patient is infected, they will usually be prescribed an antibiotic or antifungal by their healthcare provider. These antimicrobials are often chosen based on culturing, growing the specimen in a petri dish. There are limitations to this 150-year-old technology that MicroGenDX is helping to solve.

MicroGenDX uses DNA sequencing technology to identify all bacteria and fungi in a sample from an infected patient, no growth required. NGS detects many microbes that cultures often miss. This provides a patient's physician with a more comprehensive result enabling appropriate and optimized therapy.

"Our mission at MicroGenDX is to improve clinical outcomes by offering clinicians and their patients the most informative and impactful microbial diagnostic tests that science can provide," says CEO Rick Martin. MicroGenDX makes a difference for patients like Kelsey, who struggled with a urinary tract infection so painful that it left her bedridden. When Kelsey finally received the correct antibiotic to treat her infection based on MicroGenDX test results, she was able to recover and return to a pain-free life.

"What makes MicroGenDX unique is our curated database of over 50,000 microbes, our improved turnaround time, our patient-friendly price point, and our clinical research data that strongly supports the clinical utility of Next-Generation Sequencing," Martin emphasizes.

Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a technology that allows for more specific identification of disease-causing organisms than the traditional cultures and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) genetic tests used by many labs. Although the technology itself is not new, MicroGenDX, which has been in business for 12 years, has made NGS possible for use in an everyday clinical setting. In the past, NGS technology was expensive and time-consuming. Today, NGS is used by a variety of major companies and research institutions, including NASA, through MicroGenDX, and MicroGenDX is helping to open the door for the use of NGS in clinical medicine.

MicroGenDX provides results for diagnoses related to urinary tract infections (UTI), prostate infections, hip and knee infections, wound infections, sinus infections, lung infections and more. The company continues to conduct research to expand the evidence base for the technology, with more than 35 published clinical studies and more than 40 ongoing clinical trials.

MicroGenDX's NGS has a number of benefits over traditional culture and PCR labs:

- Accuracy. The MicroGenDX test matches patient samples against its microbial database of 50,000 species for maximum accuracy in the NGS results.

- Affordability. The MicroGenDX offers low rates for both qPCR and NGS to help clinicians and patients control costs without sacrificing quality.

- Speed. MicroGenDX has the quickest turn around time of any NGS provider on the market at 3-5 business days for most NGS samples.

- Variety. The MicroGenDX lab accepts a broad range of samples and can provide information on hard to culture and uncommon bacterial and fungal species, including Mycobacterium and Molds.

- Antibiotic Resistance: MicroGenDX recognizes the threat that antimicrobial resistant organisms present to current medicine and the over 35,000 deaths a year it causes. The use of NGS allows for targeted antibiotic treatment that helps combat the growing issue of antibiotic resistance. MicroGenDX also detects the presence of 17 antibiotic resistance genes allowing clinicians to avoid ineffective treatments.

Visit microgendx.com for more information about the company's services, and check them out on social media via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

(NewsUSA) - The to-do list for newly engaged couples can be daunting. Finding a venue, booking a caterer, choosing a dress -- there are many details that need to be factored into a wedding budget, regardless of who is paying. Starting a new life together is a perfect opportunity to establish solid financial habits that will serve you well throughout your marriage.

A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional can help couples develop a smart plan to manage engagement and wedding expenses. Setting priorities early on can help avoid conflicts as the big day approaches. Start by considering these four elements of planning for wedding expenses:

• Make a list. Write down everything you both need or want for your dream wedding. That includes items large and small, from the number of guests to the types of flowers or favors.
• Rank the list. Now that you have your list, put things in order of priority. Assign a number to each item in order of importance, such as a live band, sit-down dinner or elaborate cake. Or start by sorting needs and wants into categories, using 1 as most important, 2 as moderately important and 3 as least important. You will need to agree on the most important items, whatever those may be.
• Budget the list. Assign an estimated price to each category or item, according to how much you are able and willing to spend. Consider cutting back on flowers in order to fund a sit-down dinner, for instance, or opt for a buffet-style dinner so you can invite more guests.
• Listen to the lists. This is the time to be a good listener. Hear what your partner has to say about needs and wants; what is important to one of you may not be as important to the other. Financial compromise is a skill that will serve you throughout married life.

Data from loan services show that approximately 45% of couples racked up debt to pay for their wedding, and that ultimately the debt resulted in consideration of divorce. Nip that risk in the bud by avoiding debt when you assess your wedding expenses. A CFP® professional can help you think outside the box and guide you in making smart financial choices during the wedding planning process.

Visit LetsMakeAPlan.org for more information about managing wedding expenses and planning your financial future.