May 16, 2012

You are here: Home / 2006 / May / Archives for 30th

Clinton schools may bar cell phones

May 30, 2006 By

Students in the Clinton public schools could soon be barred from using cell phones and other portable electronic devices at school during the school day. Students in Clinton have been allowed to use cell phones, mp3 players and iPods before and after school and during lunch.

Clinton High School principal Karinne Tharaldson is taking her concerns to the school board. “It is very difficult to enforce a policy that is half-way enforceable. What I mean by that is you’re allowing students to have cell phones before school, at lunch and after school and we’re supposed to enforce it differently at different times during the day,” she says. “That’s really hard to do.”

Cell phones can not only be used to make calls but to send text messages, and it’s that kind of clandestine use that can be disruptive in the classroom setting. “I’m not naive enough to believe that we’re ever doing to ban (cell phones) completely, but I certainly would like for us to have a policy that from the time they arrive at Clinton High School and the time they leave that (the cell phone) is in their locker,” Tharaldson says.

Tharaldson’s not sure who students are communicating with, but she is sure cell phone use distracts students from their academics. The Clinton School Board is considering a new policy that would allow students to bring cell phones to school, but they could not be activated during the school day.

Tharaldson estimates about 75 percent of Clinton High School students have a cell phone. “There are concerns about how they are using those,” she says. Tharaldson has caught kids using the camera on their cell phone to snap pictures of tests, and then peddling those pictures to other students who’ll take the same exam later. Superintendent Dr. Randy Clegg suspects students are text-messaging test questions and answers to one another during exams.

The ban on in-school cell phone use would apply to kindergarten through 12th grade students in Clinton. The school board will consider adopting the policy at its June meeting.

Filed Under: Education

Weekend temperature records

May 30, 2006 By

Summer doesn’t officially arrive until June 21st but it sure -felt- like the season showed up early during the holiday weekend. Sweltering, unseasonable heat and stiffling humidity settled over the state and Miles Schumacher, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, says a few new records were set on Sunday. Schumacher says Mason City and Ottumwa each hit 93 for new records with Waterloo tying its record of 93. The Quad Cities hit 95 on Sunday, also for a new record. A number of cities also had new records set for the highest low temperatures, as overnight lows only dipped into the 70s. Schumacher says it cooled off early this (Tuesday) morning and much of Iowa should only be in the low-to-mid 80s today. Clouds and a cold front are moving through, bringing temps much closer to normal. He says the Memorial Day weekend was very summer-like. Schumacher says the heat and humidity was much more typical of mid-July, not late May, with overnight low temperatures staying in the 70s, highs around 90, with dewpoints more like mid-summer in the 60s and 70s, “and that’s what really made it feel sticky.”

Filed Under: Weather

Governor signs alternative energy bills

May 30, 2006 By

Governor Tom Vilsack has signed a handfull of bills into law which seek to promote the use alternative forms of energy. The largest piece of legislation deals with ethanol and biodiesel, providing $2 million in grants to gas stations in each of the next three years to install E85 tanks.Monte Shaw of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association hails the legislation. “This is a great step forward for the industry. Iowa has been the leader in the production of renewable fuels. This bill puts us on the roadmap to be the absolute leader in the use of renewable fuels,” Shaw says. The bill establishes a goal: by 2020, one-quarter of the fuel purchased in Iowa should be ethanol or biodiesel. Twenty-five ethanol plants are on-line in Iowa today, using corn to make the alcohol fuel. There are three biodiesel plants operating in the state, using soybeans to make fuel. Representative Steve Olson, a Republican from DeWitt, helped craft the renewable fuels legislation, and he stood behind the governor as Vilsack signed the bills into law. “It was the conclusion to a long process,” Olson says. “It’s (an) historic day for Iowans.” Dawn Carlson of the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa says pumps that dispense E85 — the higher-concentration of ethanol — are expensive to install. “In metropolitan areas it could cost over $100,000 to put E85 in because you have to add on to your property, you have to get fire marshall approval, tanks, the dispensers,” Carlson says. “A new dispenser to put E85 in is going to be over $15,000 and to retrofit an existing dispenser we have to send those to Houston, Texas and where it costs over $7500 just to retrofit a dispenser that you’d see out there today.” Carlson says the question for gas station operators is whether consumers will buy E85. “For us to put it in we’ve got to see demand out there to know that we’re going to be able to sell the product,” Carlson says. Station owners won’t install E85 pumps if they think they’ll be losing money, and demand thus far has been “pretty low” according to Carlson. “The demand has not been enough to justify the expenditures today but we’re hoping with this legislation it’s going to increase awareness,” Carlson says. Carlson says as many as 30 stations are “waiting in line” to apply for the state grants for installing E85 pumps, and if those came on line in the next year it would double the number of pumps dispensing E85. The other pieces of legislation Vilsack signed today double the state tax credit for electricity produced by wind turbines, gives a tax credit to electric utilities that use a soybean-based lubricant on turbines and rewards those who buy solar energy production equipment. Vilsack says the new laws start Iowa on a “march” toward energy independence. “The group of bills that we sign today basically continue to put Iowa on the renewable fuel and energy map as a national and world leader,” the governor says. Vilsack calls the bills an “investment” in the state’s future. This past Saturday, Vilsack visited the “Echo Village” located just outside of Fairfield where solar and wind power are being used. “There’s a housing development which is using all alternative energy sources,” Vilsack says. “(I) talked with one of the homeowners who indicated that their heating bill was $48 last winter.”

Filed Under: Politics & Government

King goes to southern US border for second time in May

May 30, 2006 By

For the second time this month, western Iowa Congressman Steve King has made a trip to the U.S./Mexico border. King flew into Tucson, Arizona on Friday morning, then he went down to the border and met with a small group of border control officers. King says the officers “wanted to have an opportunity to address a congressman…and not be on the record with their remarks, but to give (a congressman) a feel for what it’s like to be on the border.” King, a Republican from Kiron (KY-run), has advocated construction of a concrete fence along the nation’s southern border to stem the tide of illegal immigration. On Saturday, King helped a group called “The Minutemen” put up a barbed wire fence along a small portion of the border. “They will keep building fence as long as there are resources and manpower,” King says. “It looks like there is plenty of manpower.” King was among two-hundred volunteers who attended a news conference Saturday morning, then built fence in the afternoon. “Part of the effort was also to send a message nationwide that there are plenty of Americans (who) are ready to take this border control into their own hands,” King says. The fence is being built in southeastern Arizona on a cattle ranch. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps formed in 2002 and its first patrol was along that 10-mile stretch of the border. President Bush has referred to the group as vigilantes. Congressman King was in western Iowa on Memorial Day, giving speeches at ceremonies in Denison and Sioux City.

Filed Under: Politics & Government

New barriers make roads safer

May 30, 2006 By

Iowa roads are safer thanks to new barriers designed here in the Midwest. Dr. Dean Sicking is director of the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility which created the Midwest Guardrail System. He says the problem with highway guardrails built up to now is that they were designed to handle accidents involving passenger cars. Automobiles are lower and lighter than many other vehicles on the road today, and Sicking says when guardrails are hit by SUV’s and pickups, vehicles with a higher center of gravity, they tend to roll over more often and to go right through the barrier because of their greater weight. The new design incorporates structural changes that he says have already proven their worth. He says raising up the guardrail helped accomodate higher vehicles and they’ve changed where splices are located and other details that added to the capacity of the barrier. Sicking says testing shows it’s not only 70-percent safer than older roadside barriers, this design virtually eliminates rollovers for SUV’s and pickups. There’s an 11-state Regional Pooled Fund Program, and Iowa’s among them, so Dr. Sicking says this is “your tax dollars in action.” It’s becoming a standard in quite a few states, and though California was the first he’s heard from many states making the barrier system their standard guardrail design for all their highways. The center’s work has also produced safer construction barriers, bridge railings, and even safer barriers along racetrack walls. The safety facility is funded by several regional states with the goal of improving safety both on the road and in what it calls “ran-off-road crashes.”

Related web sites:
Midwest Raodside Safety Facility

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

U of I experts helping salvage hurricane-damaged documents

May 30, 2006 By

The University of Iowa’s top experts at preserving documents are working with two libraries in Mississippi to rescue a host of unique items that were damaged during Hurricane Katrina last fall. Gary Frost, a conservator at the U-of-I, says we’ve all heard how the powerful storm tore up homes and businesses on the Gulf Coast, but libraries, too, fell victim to the intense winds, rain and waves. “Buildings were leveled, windows were blown out and storm surge came in on the first floor,” he says. “The documents, the books, the pictures, the photographs maps got soaked and many times, became moldy.” Frost and other preservationists from the Iowa City institution have already made a trip to Biloxi to see how their services can help the Jefferson Davis Library and the Biloxi Public Library. Frost says the two facilities were heavily damaged in the storm and now the U-of-I team has its work cut out for it. He says the goal is to restore the documents themselves and, just as importantly, to image the documents so there is a digital copy and when there are legibility problems, they can be enhanced and restored on the electronic image and the original document won’t have to again be touched. Frost says many of the libraries’ documents from the 19th century were hardest-hit by the hurricane. He says they were damaged worse than many other genres of library materials because they tend to mold easily and because of the different media of writing tend to have legibility problems from the start. Frost says the U-of-I team has already restored unique Civil War-era correspondences from the Davis family — Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederate States of America. Frost says one of the next projects will include the local history collection at Biloxi’s public library, which suffered serious damage and needs to be cleaned and restored.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Deadline looms for farmers

May 30, 2006 By

The deadline is fast approaching for farmers to sign up for an important federal subsidy program. Steve Phillipps of the Farm Service Agency says June 1st is the deadline to sign up for the Direct and Counter-cyclical Payment Program. He says the program provides payments for corn and soybeans based on the historic yield as part of the direct payment and the counter-cyclical part is an additional payment based on the price of the corn and beans at for the marketing year. Phillipps says the payments can add up for farmers. He says for corn it’s probably about 20-dollars-an-acre and about half that much for beans. Phillipps says it will cost you in another way if you don’t meet the deadline. Phillips say there’s a 100-dollar late filing fee if you miss the June deadline, and then you have until September 30th to sign up. Phillipps says you can sign up for the program at your local Farm Service Agency.

Filed Under: Agriculture
Newer Posts »