Q: About 4 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 29, I saw three horses on Lincoln Avenue at Locust Street, and there was a squad car with the lights on and the officers were out on the sidewalk. I’d like to know what was going on with three horses in the city limits of Davenport.
— Laura, Davenport
A: Davenport Police Lt. Jeff Bladel said three horses got loose from their pasture, which is on an acreage on Cedar Street. Officers were able to contact the owner, who responded and assisted in corralling the horses. No harm came to the horses or any people.
Q: Do you take a simple blood test to tell whether you have Parkinson’s disease, or is it more complicated than that?
— Quad-Citian
A: The quick answer is that it’s more complicated than a simple blood test, but a group of researchers in Great Britain also recently announced they had found a simple blood test for Parkinson’s disease. News of this came more than a month ago, so the situation may change in the near future.
Right now, a blood test is one of the battery of tests that people can take to determine whether they have Parkinson’s disease. The blood test measures hormonal levels, and there are also neurological tests and tests to insure a person does not have a tumor, for example. A personal medical history is often included. Doctors may also test out certain drugs on a patient to either confirm or to rule out Parkinson’s disease.
Q: I saw an article recently about the broken sensor at Eastern Avenue and Locust Street, and I think we’ve got the same thing at Marquette and 53rd streets. If you are going north or south on Marquette, you’re typically waiting a minute and a half to two minutes for the light and when you finally get green, you have people running the light on 53rd Street so that cuts your time down, and you’ve only got about five seconds so only one or two cars can go by at most. If you’re sitting in a line of 10 cars, you’re done for 10 minutes. I wonder whether the city could have someone look at that.
— Bill, Davenport
A: Gary Statz, city traffic engineer, says all of the signal equipment at 53rd and Marquette streets is working properly. The maximum wait time on Marquette is 80 seconds, and that happens very rarely. The typical wait is about 40 seconds. Marquette was programmed for a minimum of 6 seconds of green with that time extended by 2 seconds every time someone drove over the detector loop. The maximum green time is 20 seconds on Marquette, regardless of the volume of traffic. If there was a 2-second gap with no traffic on the loop, the lights would turn yellow.
“We have changed that time to 3.5 seconds to lessen the probability of the second driver waiting too long to move forward after the first driver has driven off the loop. As long as traffic continues to cross the loop with gaps of less than 3.5 seconds between vehicles, the green will stay on to accommodate that traffic,” Statz said. “The maximum green time of 20 seconds should be enough to clear all of the traffic in most cases. If you just miss the green light, you will wait 55 seconds for the next green.”
Followup file
From Jan in Eldridge: I saw that a woman from Eldridge inquired about how to get glue off things. The best way to get glue off glass, plastic, jars, anything, is either Avon Skin So Soft, or WD-40. Take the Skin So Soft and just dump it on the glue, rub it around, let it soak for a while and take hot water to it, and it’ll rub off and be just like new.
(Answers provided by Times reporters Brian Wellner and Deirdre Baker and city of Davenport.)
