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Name released in fatal workplace accident in Northwood

June 29, 2006 By

Officials have released the name of an Albert Lea, Minnesota, man who was killed in a workplace accident this week in Northwood. Fifty-three-year-old Dennis Vanderwoude was pronounced dead at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester Tuesday after an accident Monday night at Advanced Component Technologies Incorporated.

Vice President of Operations Jerry Derner says Vanderwoude was crushed by a machine. Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s records show a call was made to the plant Monday night shortly before 9:30 requesting an ambulance be sent to the scene.

The Iowa office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration confirms it is investigating an accident at the plant but could not release any further details as they were compiling information for their report.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Two charged in Dubuque concert scam

June 29, 2006 By

Two men have been arrested and charged with first-degree theft in connection with that concert ticket scam in Dubuque. Authorities say 20-year-old Jeffrey Adam Revis of Florida and 30-year-old Charles L. Warthan of Tennessee were two of the people behind the scam, which saw hundreds by tickets to a “Summer Jam 2006″ concert at the Dubuque County Fairgrounds.

According to authorities, other scam artists are being sought in connection with the bogus tickets. Top Billboard stars Ciara, Chamillionaire, and Chris Brown were listed on the tickets, but none of the stars had been signed to play the show at the Dubuque County Fairgrounds.

Dubuque County Sheriff’s deputies set up a sting at Dubuque-area store after someone called the store, saying he’d come pick up the money from tickets that had been sold. They later arrested Revis and Warthan. People who bought tickets to the non-show can turn them in at the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office and authorities say they hope to hand out refunds eventually.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Grassley supports choice for Treasury Secretary

June 29, 2006 By

President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary was confirmed Wednesday by the full Senate, a few hours after clearing the Finance Committee, which is chaired by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.

Grassley says Henry Paulson worked his way up over 30 years in the investment banking industry, becoming C-E-O of Goldman Sachs in 1999. Grassley says Paulson’s salary last year was 63-million dollars, adding, “I want to emphasize that because I think a lot of people in the United States are so cynical, that they wouldn’t believe anybody would give up that kind of salary to come and be secretary of the Treasury for less than 200-thousand dollars a year. But there are people in this country that are selfless and willing to serve the public through public service.”

Paulson grew up on a farm in northern Illinois and attended Northwestern University. Grassley says Paulson took low level jobs at the White House after graduating and then worked at the Pentagon, before moving into banking.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Harkin talks hydrogen cars, flag burning

June 29, 2006 By

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin says a Senate subcommittee has approved 250-thousand dollars a project in Des Moines to explore the use of hydrogen powered cars. Harkin says the goal is to demonstrate the cost-effective operation of a fleet of hydrogen-electric vehicles converted to run on hydrogen made from ethanol.

Harkin, a democrat, says its a small project to test the feasibility of the idea. He says it’s to show proof of concept in a few vehicles to show it works. The money is in an appropriations bill that still must be approved by the full House and Senate.

On another topic, Harkin says his vote against the call for an amendment to ban flag burning was the same as his vote on the same issue 16 years ago. Harkin says, “The flag is an important symbol of our democracy. None of us should ever do anything to show disrespect for the flag. At the same time I will never do anything that would diminish the freedom that our flag represents. If you truly believe that the first amendment guarantees free speech as it does, then you have to believe in the people’s right to express themselves, even if that expression is offensive to us.”

Harkin says there’s a reason the vote always comes before the Fourth of July and in an election year, “Pure politics, on the part of the republicans.” Iowa’s other U.S. Senator, Republican Chuck Grassley, voted for the amendment.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , ,

Oskaloosa company helps light Iowa sports projects

June 29, 2006 By

An Oskaloosa lighting company is playing a key role some Iowa-based projects involving sports. Jerome Fynaardt is the mobile sales manager for Musco Lighting, says the company has been providing support for the Norway baseball movie “The Final Season.” He says they’re shooting at a number of different sites and they’ve been supplying a Musco unit to light the areas for various daytime and nighttime shoots.

Fynaardt says they have a mobile truck that moves to the various filming sites. Fynaardt says most of the time the truck has been used for fill light on the baseball field, and at the other filming sites.

Fynaardt says Musco is also supplying the lighting for the new racetrack in Newton. He says that lighting is currently being installed and is set to be finished up sometime around the middle of July.

Fynaardt says the lighting changes as track designer Rusty Wallace makes trips to the track to check it out. Fynaardt says every time Wallace comes up there are a few little things he wants to change, but it looks like there will be some 800 light fixtures on the track.

Fynaardt says the lighting used for the track is different than what’s used for other sports. Fynaardt says they use what’s called a “green fixture” for football and baseball fields and the lights are mounted on a 60 to 120 foot pole. He says some of the lighting at the Iowa Speedway will be mounted on poles, but other lights will be fixtures on the inside of the backstretch and on pit row.

Fynaardt says there’s a special pride in being an Iowa company and working on Iowa projects. He says it’s always nice to do Iowa events and makes it easier to be involved. Musco will also help with some of the lighting and sign poles for the upcoming Special Olympics National Games in Ames. Musco has supplied lights for the Olympics, and sent its trucks to New York and the Pentagon to help with recovery efforts after 9-11.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

Students hold summit on smoking prevention

June 29, 2006 By

Grinnell College is hosting the annual summit of the “Just Eliminate Lies” (JEL), youth anti-tobacco group. Cassie Peterson is the president of JEL and says some 300 young people are attending this seventh summit which has the theme: “Lights Out on Big Tobacco.” She says they’ll educate the youth on the basic tobacco facts and information and “the lies and manipulative efforts done so by the industry that we fight against, big tobacco.”

Peterson says they’ll teach the kids to fight back against the tobacco industry. Peterson says they’ll teach the young people how to market against the tobacco companies. Peterson says they’ll use the same message they’ve used in their commercials and events and will teach the kids to take the message back to their hometowns.

Melissa Nelson is one of the members of the executive council that leads the JEL. She says there’s 32 executive council members and three commissioners spread out all across Iowa that coordinate the state events. Nelson says she believes the group is making a difference when it comes to youth tobacco use.

Nelson says when you look at how the rates of teen smoking have gone down, they’ve made an impact. The JEL activities are funded by money from the state’s settlement with the big tobacco companies. The summit wraps up today (Thursday).

Filed Under: Health & Medicine Tagged With:

I-S-U computer ranks as one of the most powerful

June 29, 2006 By

Iowa State University’s new super-computer is among the 100 largest in the world. Chief Information Officer Jim Davis says the way they judge “bigness” is by analyzing the power of the computer. By the amount of work they can do on the computer, to be precise. Davis says that’s one of the things that makes the computer at Iowa State very special: “A small box,” he says, “and yet it can do five-point-seven trillion floating-point operations per second.”

When scientists at I-S-U work on computational problems, they often have huge amounts of data they need to feed into the computer and it must store their results, so he says this super-computer has lots of disk space as well as being “a very fast computational engine.” The rating affirming I-S-U’s top-100 super-computing status was issued at a worldwide computer conference going on in Germany.

Unlike the world’s first powered computer, invented at I-S-U nearly 70 years ago by John Vincent Atanasoff, this one was purchased off-campus. And operators have already dubbed it “Cy Blue.” It’s an IBM “Blue Gene” model computer, so “Cy Blue” is the Iowa State nickname for it. The I-S-U team is the Cyclones, and “Cy” is the school mascot.

Davis says Cy Blue not only rocketed Iowa State back into the world rankings of the biggest computers, it’s given researchers a powerful new tool. He adds they won’t stop there — this computer can keep on growing. He says they hope to expand it over time as it becomes used more heavily. As researchers come with bigger projects to compute, he says it’ll be possible to double or even triple its size.

CyBlue contains 2,048 processors. It includes 11 trillion bytes of data storage. And all its processing power sits in a black box that’s about the size of a big refrigerator.

Filed Under: Education, Technology Tagged With: ,
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