Author: Serkadis

Good news, PS3 owners. That Japan-bound Uncharted 2 skin pack is also coming to the US and EU PlayStation Stores next week.

It looks like the judge who oversaw the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case realized that the original $1.92 million award was just ridiculous — even if the Justice Department supported it. Instead, the court has reduced the award to $2,250 per song, saying that seems much more reasonable:

The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music. Moreover, although Plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages

While I question the use of “stealing” here, and still think that $2,250 seems pretty high (even the judge admits that if he weren’t reducing the amount from the jury and had been able to set the amount originally, he probably would have gone even lower), this case had all sorts of problems from the start — with tremendous evidence (well beyond just an IP address) that Jammie was, in fact, doing a fair amount of file sharing. Her defense and attempted reasoning were weak and not at all helpful. This seems like a case where she would be better off paying this off (somehow) and moving on.

It’s now in the hands of the record labels if they’ll accept this or if they want to have a new trial concerning damages. Again, for them, this might be a situation where they’re best off accepting it and moving on. The original $80,000 damages got the labels a ton of bad press, with even the musicians whose music was shared speaking out against the case and other musicians arguing it was a reason to disband the RIAA.

Update: News.com suggests both sides might appeal. The interesting part is from the labels who, like I suggested above, do want to just bury this story and have the case be over with — but might be worried about setting a precedent allowing a judge to lower a jury award.

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A little departure from our regular fare this Friday, the Worker Bee and I definitely had fun with this one. We’ve shared our thoughts on the Biggest Loser in weeks past. Now we show you what the future of weight-loss television could look like if it continues heading in the direction it’s in…

“Oh, here’s a good one. It’s called the Pound-O-Meter,” Joe Gideon chuckles and holds up a device that looks suspiciously like a bathroom scale. “It’s a bathroom scale. But we trademarked the term ‘Pound-O-Meter,’ hoping it would become synonymous with weight loss. “Want to measure your weight, American consumer? You’ll need a bathroom Pound-O-Meter! You can still find them at discount stores and outlet malls. I think I make thirteen cents every time one is sold.” Joe Gideon is 73, fairly trim for his age, with more salt in his hair than pepper. He sits at a soda-crate desk on a folding chair in a cramped office in the back of a cramped gym in Philadelphia. His desk is cluttered with diet pills, weight loss toothpaste, aerobic rubber headbands, eyelid-fat calipers, chocolate inhalers, and an array of other health products, all bearing his name or likeness. Fourteen years ago, this man ran one of the largest televised health franchises in the nation.

Gideon is more commonly known as “The Belly Whisperer.” For almost two decades he was the host of America’s most popular health reality show. Gideon started out as a health advice DJ on a small radio station in South Philadelphia. At publicity events, Gideon would stand on a platform and whisper health advice directly onto people’s naked stomachs. Belly whispering is more than a gimmick for this man, it’s a passion, “Nothing works better than good advice delivered directly to the flesh,” says Gideon, “My advice is nothing revolutionary. I’ll tell you what I say. I say, ‘Don’t eat sugar. Eat more veggies. Stop with the sodas. If you can’t pronounce the first five ingredients, toss it out. Don’t eat sugar. Don’t eat sugar.’ That sort of thing. It’s not a mystical technique, I believe people are more open, more vulnerable and ready to listen when someone is right up on their belly.”

Gideon’s popularity landed him a two year contract whispering to bellies on national television. “Season one was so good,” says Gideon, “So simple. It was all about the message, and the message was right.” But the ratings weren’t. Belly Whisperer wasn’t anywhere near the #1 slot when it first aired in 2012. Biggest Loser: Cat Edition was the current weight loss TV powerhouse, a show where contestants were paired with obese cats for team weight loss challenges, the perfect program for the pet lover trying to lose weight. Comparatively, Gideon’s whispering just wasn’t attracting any attention.

Enter Barrett Shamefries, one of reality television’s most powerful players. He earned the nickname “80% Shamefries” for his dogmatic view that any show will be more successful with “80% more tears.” Barrett was brought in to revamp season two of the floundering show. He brought the tears by adding high endurance challenges to each episode, and within months the show was popular enough to attract major advertisers.

By season three the advertising had swelled so much that the show was extended from a half hour to an hour, with the second half of the show devoted to new Belly Whisperer brand health products. Car companies even jumped on the band wagon with new models like the Nissan Slimline, the Volkswagon Skinny, and the Toyota Thin which notably added weights and rubber bands to the steering wheel to provide a workout while driving.

Gideon still drives a Toyota Thin, which he claims is a fine, smooth ride despite the steering problems. When asked about the other archaic health products, Gideon shrugs, “Hey, I sold my name to most of these brands. I wouldn’t want to look like a hypocrite, would I?”

As the brands multiplied and the competitive aspect of the show increased, the actual belly whispering took a back seat.

“By season four the words I whispered to the belly weren’t even recorded. My whispers became a thing of magic, of mystery. People would guess at what I was whispering. [The whispers] were a big secret. Like Victoria’s Secret I suppose. Except more people were fascinated with my plain-faced overweight people than Victoria’s drop-dead gorgeous super models. You’d have to find a psychiatrist to explain that one to me.”

“Shadenfreude,” explains psychiatrist Ellen Brick, “It’s a German word that translates roughly to ‘happiness at the misfortune of others.’ Though I don’t know why there isn’t an American version of the word as we’ve sure harnessed it as a commodity.” Brick, who became a household name after testifying in the Mayla Jones case, believes most modern reality television programs are essentially different methods of tapping into the American public’s need for shadenfreude. “Belly Whisperer wasn’t even the number one offender. “SPAC!” comes pretty close to shadenfreude in pure form.” SPAC! (Sad People Alone Crying) is Fox’s #1 reality series, currently in its 18th season. Brick is neither surprised nor upset at the show’s popularity. After all, FOX is the same network that created the less popular series “The Tank,” in which contestants were locked in an abandoned Russian space station training vessel and rationed 300 calories of acai berries a day until they either lost 200lbs or forgot their own names.

Shadenfreude or no, Belly Whisperer raked in a 23 market share for season five.

In season six, Shamefries hired fitness guru Natalica (no last name) to play bitter to Gideon’s sweet. “We had a good cop, bad cop routine our viewers really loved,” says Gideon, “Natalica would knock the contestants down a notch, and I would bring them back up. Though we had to let her go in season seven after she attempted to stab a contestant with a fork. Other than that, the show was easy money.”

Then David Mosley became a contestant.

“The man tried to eat a live horse on one of our ‘Wild West’ themed episodes. The show’s horse wranglers had to tranquilize him.” Gideon shakes his head and grimaces.

Dave Mosely, or “Crazy Dave” as the public came to call him, was so popular, Shamefries brought him back as a contestant three years in a row. Mosely would publicly gorge himself for months before the show’s production date simply to have more weight to lose once the contest began.

Barrett Shamefries, who rarely speaks in public, will gladly discuss his favorite contestant. “They loved him! The viewers, the advertisers, everyone tuned in to find out if Dave could outshock us all with something new. Fistfights with contestants, public bulimia, using vodka and hair gel as a diuretic, the ratings were through the roof, both before and after the amputation.”

Shamefries is referring to the live season 13 finale in which Mosley amputated his own arm to beat the final competitor on the pound-o-meter. “We had to change the rules for the next season, loss of appendage being immediate grounds for disqualification. But we didn’t tell the public, so people tuned in just to find out if another nut case would saw off an arm to win. Dave was a blessing.”

Gideon doesn’t agree, “I remember thinking how the amputation was a first sign that the content of the show had departed from its original intent. I can’t believe it took 13 years and human mutilation for me to pick up on the changes. But the ratings didn’t quit and neither did we. Even after the first person died.”

On April 8th, 2027, Mayla Jones died on live national television.

Shamefries shows true remorse when discussing Jones. “It is unfortunate. What happened to that girl.” Shamefries lights and finishes a cigarette before continuing, “You know, there’s no magic number. There’s no definitive measurement we can all agree on, no exact calculable amount of time a person can live without eating. For some people it may be weeks, for others months, for some even longer. Didn’t Ghandi go three years without eating? Anyway. We all assumed Mayla could last from March to May without food. It is truly sad that she could not.”

Jones death became known as Maylagate, and the resulting televised civil trial received higher Nielson ratings than any other televised event of the decade.

Mayla Jones’ family sued Gideon and Shamefries for the entire value of the Belly Whisperer franchise, an estimated value of 1.7 trillion dollars. The case dragged out for months. To everyone’s amazement, Shamefries and Gideon continued to produce episodes of The Belly Whisperer through the duration of the trial.

Shamefries becomes bullish when discussing trial details. “Absolute malarkey,” he puffs, “Mayla signed a statement claiming she was in perfect health and had complete control over all her decisions and actions during the show duration. She chose to compete in the ‘Starve for your Life’ challenge, and she lost. Her death was unfortunate, but completely legal and allowed.”

Shamefries paces quickly as he opens up about the case, “And we won! We didn’t pay a single dime, but of course that was inconsequential because of all the negative publicity the trial generated. And then the “Frozen Fourteen” happened five days after the verdict, which just poured salt on the wound.” Shamefries is referring to the fourteen Belly Whisperer contestants who perished in an avalanche during the “Climb Everest or Die” challenge of that season’s competition. “But that was not our fault,” claims Shamefries, “Those contestants would have died whether they were fat or thin. That was just a freak accident of nature. Nobody could have foreseen it.”

Shamefries and Gideon won that civil case as well, but public opinion was so poor by that point that Congress rushed out a law declaring citizens to be incapable of judging their own health, nullifying previously-signed reality show statements and opening the floodgates for hundreds of new law suits. “Some fork-stabbing victim sued us and won,” says Shamefries, “Gideon lost most of his money to the guy. Fortunately, I had transferred my assets to a Cayman Island account before the suit was settled, and I now live comfortably outside the US border.” Shamefries seems content with his current status, happy to have exited the reality TV scene before America switched to the current popular health solution of over-the-counter-anti-diabetes pills (guaranteed to reduce risk of Type 2 diabetes by at least 4%)

While most people these days take the pill, some still opt for old fashioned diet and exercise. For those people, Gideon runs a small gym in South Philadelphia. A year’s membership- including weekly consultations- costs less than Gideon used to charge people by the hour for his famous whispering. Surprisingly, Gideon looks younger and healthier today than he did the last three seasons of Belly Whisperer, though he claims he hasn’t changed his eating or fitness habits in over 30 years.

“Sometimes I wish I could go back to a time when people were still entertained by karaoke competitions, and the fattest things on TV were reruns of bad Eddie Murphy movies.“ Gideon pauses to take a puff on his chocolate inhaler. “I don’t regret my decisions. I still believe in the same ideology of health. I just wish I had spread the message in a different way.”

Gideon still belly whispers the clients that come to his gym; simple, sweet messages about cutting back sugar and eating more vegetables. But his whispers are no longer heard by a nation and there are 80% fewer tears.

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Joaquin Phoenix has resurfaced following some controversial behavior in 2009. The clean-shaven Oscar winner has teamed with Hannah Montana’s Miley Cyrus, as well as his former girlfriend Liv Tyler, in this PSA to raise awareness about suicide prevention for the To Write Love on Her Arms campaign.

Watch Miley try and explain (in song) who Lady Gaga is to a very confused Joaquin!

Skiers and snowboarders looking to take advantage of 2 to 3 feet of snow dumped across Southern California’s mountains may want to wait until next week when another 6 to 12 inches is expected to fall, weather experts said.

Snow levels should reach about 3,000 feet today and possibly as low as 2,500 feet, according to a National Weather Service official.

All roads to Big Bear were closed this morning until further notice. According to Caltrans, there were cars stuck on Highway 330.

“On these types of days you got everybody wanting to get up there with their snowboards,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Tommy Cunningham.

Bear Mountain resort has closed its doors for the day because of electrical power problems and “too much snow,” said Dallas Goldsmith, manager of a local ski and snowboard shop. By this morning, six customers had wandered into his shop.

“But next weekend,” he said, “business will get fantastic.”

Lifts lay partly buried in nearly four feet of powder that would be a winter sports enthusiast’s dream were it not for the difficult conditions reaching the mountains.

“It’s still dumping,” Goldsmith said. “If you live up here on a side street, you’re stuck.”

In Orange County, snow was creeping down to the 4,000-feet mark at Santiago Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains.

And in La Cañada Flintridge, real estate agent Fran Vernon looked out her window to see powder dusting the foothills.

“It’s come down lower than I’ve seen it, and I’ve lived here since 1985,” Vernon marveled. “It’s a beautiful sight.”

— Amina Khan

Photo: La Canada Flintridge residents are treated to an early morning view of a light dusting of snow in the local foothills and San Gabriel Mountains. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

More storm photos > > > >

Ben Bernanke’s job hangs in the fate of select U.S. senators and that alone is enough to throw this market into uncertainty.

So what’s the next thing to freak about?

The United States’ growing debt ceiling. We’re about to breach out $12.4 trillion link in March and we need a vote to raise it.

Senators who vote against Bernanke based on the events of Massachusetts will look to maked a stand against increased debt.

At least with Bernanke, there’s another guy waiting in the wings.

What happens if we can’t spend anymore?

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Sorry Ben Bernanke: Your Inflation Fighting Scheme Won’t Work
• Why Paul Volcker Is Still Giving The Fed Way Too Much Credit
• Obama Goes To War With Lame-Duck Dodd Over Financial Regulation

The Pagani Zonda came out of nowhere in 1999. It saw what other supercar makers had to offer. It contested the game with a beefy Mercedes engine, an interior looking like a fashion designer’s wildest dream and a sound which sent lions crying to their lioness mothers. Let’s not forget exclusivity.

But now, it is time for the Zonda to leave the reign in favor of a new generation of Pagani hypercars. The C9 is the name of the monster which is being crafted by the company as we speak.

In an … (read more)

Filed under: Suzuki, Volkswagen

Volkswagen currently holds a 19.9-percent stake in Suzuki, making the German automaker the largest shareholder in the much smaller Japanese automaker. Will VW try to increase its stake in Suzuki in the future? Not if it’s up to Suzuki CEO Osamu Suzuki.

Automotive News reports that Suzuki (the CEO) told members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club that the company his wife’s grandfather founded isn’t interested in VW taking a piece of the pie “when Suzuki becomes a bigger and more successful company.” Suzuki told reporters that his response to VW’s request for a larger stake in the company will likely be “let’s continue as we are.”

Suzuki has reason for thinking about a good answer to VW’s potential approach for more shares due to the fact that the German automaker is growing like a boiling wienerschnitzel. The People’s Carmaker already possesses 11 brands ranging from Škoda to Lamborghini, and Suzuki says his company has no interest in becoming number 12. Good thing Suzuki said as much, since VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech has reportedly said that he was interested in growing VW’s stable of brands to an even dozen.

[Source: Automotive News, sub. req. | Image: Lennart Preiss/AFP/Getty]

Report: Suzuki not interested in selling larger stake to Volkswagen originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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William Wrigley Jr. has left Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., 15 months after the venerable Chicago firm was officially sold to Mars Inc. for $23 billion.

Wrigley, who had stayed on as chairman of Mars’ Chicago-based Wrigley subsidiary, informed Wrigley workers of his departure on Jan. 4, the company confirmed Friday.

Wrigley, whose great-grandfather founded the gum empire, will focus on several business and philanthropic initiatives in Chicago and around the world, the company said.

He was Wrigley’s executive chairman in April 2008 when the sale to Mars was unveiled.

After the deal was completed in October 2008, Wrigley was made chairman of the Wrigley subsidiary and William Perez stayed on as its chief executive.

But Perez left just two weeks after the deal closed, and Dushan “Duke” Petrovich took over as the subsidiary’s president, reporting directly to Paul Michaels, chief executive of privately-held Mars.

There are no plans to appoint a new chairman of Wrigley, the company said.

[email protected]

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said he feels “betrayed” by Mark McGwire’s admission that he used steroids.

“We competed against [McGwire’s Athletics] in the ’90s, and when I saw that, I was like, wow, I could have been in more playoffs, maybe I’d have had the chance to be in the World Series because we had a pretty good ballclub,”  Guillen said.

“I think Jerry Reinsdorf should have more division championship [banners] hanging around this ballpark than we have because we competed against them pretty good, and when you see the two best hitters they have that were on the juice, you feel betrayed.”

Get the full story: ESPNChicago.com

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

Everyone is told to recycle because it is good for the environment, but what if it was also good for you? RecycleBank is a program that financially rewards households for recycling. And the concept is sweeping the  country, with small and large cities signing on. Even cities that already offer recycling, such as Chicago and Los Angeles, are looking at the independent program as a way to raise recycling rates.

When a person uses RecycleBank, their community money by conserving natural resources, and diverting trash from landfills — and they earn points for discounts at stores. The bins are weighed each week, and for every pound of recycling a person collects, he or she receives 2.5 points. The more one recycles, the higher the reward, up to the maximum of 450 points per month.

The average RecycleBank member collects $240 in reward value each year, according to the company. The points can be redeemed at more than 1,500 local and national retailers including:

• Bed Bath & Beyond
• Hobby Lobby
• Olive Garden
• Ruby Tuesday
• Sam’s Club
• Seventh Generation
• Sunglass Hut
• Whole Foods Market
• Zales

Aside from the typical paper, plastic, and aluminum, RecycleBank accepts “e-waste,” which includes laptops, cell phones, iPods and mp3 players. Since these items cannot be thrown into the recycle bin, the company provides shipping labels online so members can mail the products to the appropriate location and still receive points.

“RecycleBank has seen dramatic results across the country. We have doubled, tripled and even quadrupled recycling volumes wherever we launch our program. This creates a quadruple win scenario as residents gain savings and free products through the rewards program. Local main streets see a stimulus as over 50 percent of all rewards redeemed are redeemed locally,” said Lisa Pomerantz, vice president of communications for RecycleBank.

RecycleBank, which was founded in 2004, is growing quickly. It currently operates in 300 cities in 24  states, including major markets such as Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Just last summer, RecycleBank took its program international by launching in the United Kingdom in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, as well as Halton Boroughs.

Currently, Chicago is in the middle of a six month pilot program, in which 10,000 houses in Wards 5, 8, and 19 were selected to participate. Chicago expects to redirect approximately600 tons of waste from landfills, as well as producing more than $500,000 in local economic stimulus.

“Chicago is a beautiful place to live, work and raise a family,” said Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in a statement. “Working with RecycleBank will enable us to meet our recycling goals while giving something back to our residents. During these rough economic times, saving money on groceries, clothing, at the pharmacy, or even on free movie tickets is of significant value.” Results of the pilot will be available once the program is complete this spring.

Beginning in April, RecycleBank will launch a pilot program of 15,000 homes in the West Valley and North Central sections of Los Angeles.

City leaders like the program because it offers a reward to residents for doing what cities want them to do in the first place.

“Partnering with RecycleBank is a great way to protect our environment, invigorate our local economy, keep our community clean, and deliver meaningful, everyday savings to the residents of Westland,” Mayor William Wild of Westland, Mich. said. “Everybody wins.”

RecycleBank has been receiving accolades for its efforts. It was named the 2009 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and the United Nations Programme 2009 Champion of the Earth.

To date, RecycleBank has saved 4.3 million trees and 288 million gallons of oil, the company estimates. Its formula: For every one ton of paper that has been recycled, 17 trees are saved. For every three pounds of plastic, aluminum and glass that is recycled, one gallon of oil is saved. RecycleBank keeps an ongoing tally of its positive carbon footprint, and each member’s impact also is tracked by total recyclables.

Call RecycleBank to find out if their services are offered in your community, 1(888)727-2978.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Citing a lack of campaign money, Republican governor candidate Bob Schillerstrom will drop out of the race today and endorse Jim Ryan.

Schillerstrom’s campaign confirmed the candidate will end his campaign at an 11 a.m. Loop news conference.

Schillerstrom, an attorney and DuPage County Board chairman, had 2 percent support in a December Tribune poll.

He struggled to gain traction with four Republican governor candidates in the contest who hail from DuPage, a Republican stronghold.

Read more on Clout Street.

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

If you’ve been shopping for a Hauppauge HD-PVR component video recorder in the last few months you may have noticed they’ve been pretty difficult to find.  Apparently after a very good black-Friday deal at Amazon, they were backordered and even Hauppauge themselves had few to ship.

Well they are begginning to get caught back up and that’s good news for HTPC shoppers.  And the “normal” price seems to be settling much closer to $200 these days as well.  Here’s a few places you can find the Hauppauge HD-PVR:

Newegg

Newegg (affiliate) now has these back in stock.  The Hauppauge HD PVR 1212 is $209.99 with $8.50 shipping.

Amazon

Amazon (affiliate) has the Hauppauge HD-PVR in stock as well although their website says “usually ships within 2-4 weeks”.  Hauppauge HD-PVR But the cost is even lower at $200.70 and free shipping!

Bestbuy and Buy.com both show it out of stock so far.  I expect we’ll see the Hauppauge device settle around $200 as the new AverMedia device gets closer to release.  Speaking of the AverMedia, I had a very interesting (and promising) interview with the folks there and plan to have a few posts about that in the next few days.  Stay tuned!

Cook County Board president candidate Dorothy Brown is holding a news conference this morning to discuss the controversy over employee jeans days in her circuit court clerk office.

Her office promises a “full accounting” of how money is spent from the program that allows circuit court clerk employees to pay $2 or $3 on some days for the privilege of wearing jeans in the office.

Read more in Clout Street

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

University of Chicago establishes new center for chemical innovation

University of Chicago chemists published an article in the Journal of Chemical Physics three years ago that described an early step in the process for efficiently converting methane into synthesis gas, which is useful for producing liquid fuels and hydrogen.

Such developments could be critical if the nation is to take better advantage of its abundant methane reserves, said Steven Sibener, the Carl William Eisendrath Professor in Chemistry and the James Franck Institute, whose research group conducted the study.

Now Sibener and his associates at four partner universities have established a center for chemical innovation to pursue a broader range of similar research aimed at spurring innovation and economic competitiveness.

A $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation supports the work.

The new Center for Energetic Non-Equilibrium Chemistry at Interfaces (CENECI) is a team effort of UChicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Montana State University, Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Additional partners who endorsed the center proposal are Argonne National Laboratory, Cabot Microelectronics Corporation of Aurora, Ill., and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

“The people we’ve grouped together at these five schools are acknowledged leaders in the kind of science that was important for successfully tackling this challenging class of problems,” said Sibener, who heads the center.

Energetic chemical reactions

The new center will explore the chemical reactions that unfold under conditions infused with more energy than would normally occur. “One hopes to find new chemistries or more efficient ways of doing known processes,” Sibener said.

The syngas experiments are but one example of non-equilibrium chemistry. In the experiments, the UChicago team collided beams of molecules traveling at supersonic speeds onto a modestly heated metal surface.

The high-energy collision breaks the bonds between the methane molecule’s carbon atom and its hydrogen atoms, an important step in the process of turning methane into syngas.

Complementing this, the catalyst held at modest temperatures ensures high selectivity in subsequent surface reactions.

The NSF center for chemical innovation will pursue three research themes: new chemical transformations and catalysis under energetic conditions; materials growth, initially focusing on diamond growth for technological applications; and reactions in liquids.

“I am hopeful and enthusiastic about the center,” said Cliff Spiro, Vice President of Research and Development at Cabot Microelectronics. “In my 30 years of industrial research across many disciplines, this is a theme that comes up time and time again, and is truly fertile ground for breakthroughs of real significance.”

Impatient for discovery

Spiro said that when Sibener first told him about the center’s mission, “I couldn’t stop peppering him with examples from my world of combustion, diamonds, metallurgical coatings, optical films, and semiconductor processes. I can’t wait to learn of their discoveries.”

The new center will offer education and outreach activities in addition to research.

In the outreach component, the five CENECI institutions will provide chemistry education programs to underrepresented Hispanic and African-American K-12 students in Chicago, Madison and Boston, as well as to Native American students in Montana (K-14, including tribal colleges).

The center also will arrange collaborative research exchanges, giving graduate students and postdoctoral researchers the opportunity to receive co-mentoring from a senior scientist who supervises a CENECI laboratory at one of the other institutions. Other opportunities target undergraduate participation.

In addition to the CENECI funding, Sibener also recently received two Department of Energy grants to support other projects. One of them is a three-year, $885,000 grant for Single Investigator and Small-Group Research to study emergent behavior in chemistry and physics.

Interactive behavior

The study’s goal is to understand how new chemical and materials behavior emerges from the various interactions of their atoms and molecules. “Sometimes when you put things together they behave differently than when they’re alone,” Sibener explained.

Sibener’s team will analyze chemical reactions as they occur, molecule by molecule. The researchers then will change the chemical environment for small groups of molecules sitting on an atomically tailored surface to see if they react differently than would an isolated molecule.

Another step would entail attempting to influence the growth of chiral materials—materials that are right- or left-handed at the molecular level—which determines their optical properties and alters their chemical reactivity.

The third grant is extending the Sibener group’s collaboration with Lance Cooley and other researchers at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Together they seek to improve the fundamental understanding of superconducting materials needed for advancing linear collider technology.

Sibener received notification of all three grants within a recent six-week period. “It was an amazing six weeks,” he said.

Seattle-based Nordstrom, Inc. (NYSE: JWN) announced plans to open a new Nordstrom Rack in downtown Chicago.

The 36,000-square-foot store will be located on East Chicago Avenue between North Michigan Avenue and North Rush Street, and is expected to open in Fall 2010.

The Nordstrom Rack will join a vibrant retail, dining, and hospitality presence at this city block location that includes the Chicago flagship Polo store and RL Restaurant, Tiffany & Co., Banana Republic and the five-star Peninsula Chicago hotel.

This will be the seventh Nordstrom Rack in the greater Chicago area and the second Nordstrom Rack downtown, joining the Nordstrom Rack at the Shops at State and Washington on North State Street.

The nearest Full-line store is the Nordstrom Michigan Avenue store, less than one mile from the new Nordstrom Rack location.

“We have a lot of great Chicagoland customers and want to give them yet another way to shop with us,” said Scott Meden, president of Nordstrom Rack.

“This is a terrific location just off the Magnificent Mile that is easily accessible and part of a strong retail mix. We are very excited about this opportunity to serve more of our customers in downtown Chicago.”

Nordstrom Rack carries merchandise from Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com at 50-60% off original Nordstrom prices.

Nordstrom Rack also offers a wide selection of apparel, accessories and shoes from many of the brands carried in Nordstrom stores and purchased specially for Nordstrom Rack, with most at savings of 30-70% off.

About Nordstrom, Inc.

Nordstrom, Inc. is one of the nation’s leading fashion specialty retailers, with 184 stores located in 28 states.

Founded in 1901 as a shoe store in Seattle, today Nordstrom operates 112 Full-line stores, 69 Nordstrom Racks, two Jeffrey boutiques and one clearance store.

Nordstrom also serves customers through its online presence at nordstrom.com and through its catalogs.

Nordstrom, Inc. is publicly traded on the NYSE under the symbol JWN.

A pizza deliveryman has been charged with trying to lure a 12-year-old girl into his van as she was walking home from school, police said.

Heriberto Cejeda, 59, of the 6800 block of North Seeley Avenue in the West Rogers Park neighborhood, is scheduled to appear in bond court today, charged with child abduction/luring a child under 16 years of age, according to Police News Affairs.

About 5 p.m. Thursday, the suspect tried to lure the girl into a blue GMC mini-van on the 4400 block of North Ashland Avenue in the Ravenswood neighborhood.

The girl ran home and told a parent, police said.

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.