The Oakland Athletics captured the AL West with another improbable rally in a season full of them, coming back from four runs down and a 13-game division deficit to stun the two-time defending league champion Texas Rangers 12-5 on Wednesday.

From clinking spurs to pounding hooves, the Baylor equestrian team will be in full force this weekend as it travels to take on Kansas State and Oklahoma State.

“It will be a very full weekend of travel and running around,” head coach Ellen White said. “It is going to be a great time for the girls to get to know each other. One big road trip.”

The competitions this weekend will mark the team’s first Big 12 events of the season.

Ranching and physics — an unlikely combination.

One Baylor researcher unites his two passions into a lifetime of work that has recently earned him a national award.

Dr. Marlan O. Scully, distinguished researcher at Baylor and member of the National Academy of Sciences, will receive the 2012 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Prize, the highest award given by the Optical Society of America, for his work in quantum optics.

As the Supreme Court revisits the use of race in college admissions next week, critics of affirmative action are hopeful the justices will roll back the practice. A new report out Wednesday offers a big reason for their optimism: evidence from at least some of the nine states that don’t use affirmative action that leading public universities can bring meaningful diversity to their campuses through race-neutral means.