Republican state legislators pitch college affordability plan in Naperville

By Susan Frick Carlman scarlman@stmedianetwork.com June 12, 2013 4:18PM

House Republican Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego), flanked by State Rep. Darlene Senger (R-Naperville), talks about a package of legislation Republican leaders say is designed to make college more affordable during a news conference on Wendesday, June 12, 2013, at North Central College. | Jeff Cagle~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: June 13, 2013 7:09PM

A group of Republican state legislators say they know how to bring a college education within reach for more Illinois residents.

The panel of state House GOP caucus members told those gathered at North Central College in Naperville Wednesday afternoon that the remedy involves a combination of tax deductions and tax credits that was devised by second-term Springfield Rep. Adam Brown.

The annual $1,000 tax credit would be available only to families earning less than $150,000 yearly, Brown said, and the $10,000 deduction would not come with the same limitations and restrictions that are attached to existing 529 prepaid college tuition savings plans such as College Illinois and Bright Start.

Brown said his proposal would enable families to invest the $10,000 with another independent agency, or keep the funds in savings.

?We feel like it will put Illinois on a more competitive page,? said Brown, who reported that the yearly cost of tuition, room and board at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has gone from $19,000 to $26,000 in the past decade.

House Republican Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said he and his legislative peers continuously hear families lamenting the ever-increasing cost of earning a degree.

?We want to try to find a way that we can ease the burden for them,? Cross said.

It?s discouraging, he and other lawmakers said, to hear people say that their kids headed to Missouri or Iowa to attend school, simply because it was a more affordable option.

?The expense of college is prohibitive, but what?s no good is if Illinois schools aren?t competitive ? and frankly, they should be super competitive with our neighboring states,? said Rep. Ron Sandack, R-Downers Grove, who asserted that the state?s money woes have been ?imposed? on its schools. ?We?re seeing outright migration, and frankly a brain drain of our future work force that?s not going to be developed in our state.?

Rep. Darlene Senger, R-Naperville, has been close to the negotiations aimed at closing the state?s nearly $100 billion public pension shortfall, and pointed out that much discussion in recent months has centered on the proposal to shift more of the burden of retirement plan contributions to schools. For every additional 1 percent schools must pay into pension plans, Senger said, families pay 2 percent more in tuition.

?We?re being sensitive to the word ?cost? and what it costs you,? including both the literal expense and the cost to the state of losing its place among the states that provide the highest-quality education through their public schools, she said.

According to Cross, passage of the long-stalled gaming bill would bring $250 million to $300 million to the table to cover the estimated $85 million expense of Brown?s plan. A pension fix, Cross said, would cover the cost of the college-affordability measures in less than a week by stanching the daily flow of $17 million into the swelling liability sum.

?It?s imperative that we get this pension reform done,? Cross said.

The group?s appearance at North Central kicked off a statewide tour aimed at building support for the proposal, which could come to the floor later this year. Sandack framed the plan as the most logical solution yet put forth.

?I can?t see why anyone would fight this legislation rather than embrace it,? he said.

Source: http://couriernews.suntimes.com/news/20677160-418/republican-state-legislators-pitch-college-affordability-plan-in-naperville.html

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College campus and retail development set for Alabama Highway site in Catoosa County

College campus and retail development set for Alabama Highway site in Catoosa County

by CatWalkChatt.com Rn T.Com

About 50 acres of Catoosa County-owned property will soon become home for a Georgia Northwestern Technical Community College satellite campus as well as a mixed-use commercial development.

County attorney Chad Young reported during the Tuesday, May 21, county commission meeting that the property?s sale had been approved and recommended the previous week by the Catoosa County Economic Development Authority.

Young said the college, which for several years has been in negotiations to build a satellite campus in Catoosa County, will occupy roughly 38 acres on the western portion of the property on Alabama Highway (Ga. 151), while a private developer has plans for mixed retail space on about 12 acres fronting the highway.

The sale is contingent on the county providing an entrance from the highway, constructing a road through the property, and adding an exit onto Holcomb Road. The county, the city of Ringgold and the local utility district are also being asked to provide sewer and water service to the site, Young said.

The Georgia Department of Transportation last year agreed to install a traffic signal and turn lane at Holcomb Road when the highway is widened to four lanes.

Young said preliminary estimates call for the county-provided infrastructure improvements to cost about $800,000.

?The purchase price will be sufficient to pay off the property (purchased by the EDA) and provide these improvements,? he said.

County commission chairman Keith Greene said both these developments should provide long-term benefits to the county.

?We?ll essentially break even (recovering the land?s purchase price) and end up with a commercial development that is estimated to generate about $10 million in annual sales,? he said. ?And the college will help in attracting other development to the county.?

Source: http://rn-t.com/bookmark/22674291

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'DWTS' pro: Finale voting glitch is $#&%^!

TV

Michael Maloney TODAY contributor

13 hours ago

ABC

"DWTS" pro Val Chmerkovskiy, with Zendaya, was not happy to hear that voting on ABC.com was down on Monday night.

"Dancing With the Stars" pro Valentin Chmerkovskiy helped to bring Disney star Zendaya to first place in Monday night's finals, with the pair earning a perfect score of 60 points for their two dances.

Chmerkovskiy?s accomplishment was all the more impressive given that his dance partner had accidentally elbowed his right eye during Monday?s dress rehearsal, which caused some severe bleeding.

Arguably, an even sharper blow to the pro dancer was learning that due to some apparent technical glitch, fans weren?t able to cast their votes on ABC.com. ("Dancing" devotees could still vote by calling, texting and going to Facebook.com.)

At first, Chmerkovskiy didn?t believe it when TODAY.com broke the news to him about the voting snafu on the post-show press line.

?Are you serious?? he asked. ?Who told you that??

In fact, host Tom Bergeron announced the problem just before the live performance episode ended. After Chmerkovskiy got confirmation, he was understandably frustrated.

"That's bull----," he said just before heading to the hospital to get stitches. "Well, good luck to everybody.?

It?s difficult to say which star ? Zendaya, Jacoby Jones, Kellie Pickler or Aly Raisman ? will be most affected by this particular voting platform not being available.

?Honestly, it?s really out of my mind,? pro Derek Hough told TODAY.com.

Pickler added, ?There?s nothing we can do about it."

As far as Hough was concerned, the satisfaction he feels over his and Picker?s freestyle dance, which also earned a perfect score and relied more on emotional content and less on bells and whistles, is better than winning the coveted trophy anyway.

?I know what (winning) feels like,? Hough candidly shared. ?What we did (Monday night) was so special. It takes the pressure off. If we don?t win or whatever happens, no one can take away from us what we did.?

"Dancing With the Stars" will reveal the winner of the coveted mirror ball trophy Tuesday night during part two of the season finale, starting at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/dancing-stars-pro-frustrated-over-finale-voting-glitch-6C10009731

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Waukesha County schedules opening for new mountain bike trails ...

Cyclists and Waukesha County officials will celebrate National Trails Day on June 1 by officially opening the new mountain bike trails in Minooka Park, the first in the county?s park system.

Volunteers from the Waukesha Bicycle Alliance invested more than 460 hours to design and develop the mountain bike trail, giving them a ride option close to home. The initial 1.5-mile loop will open on June 1, a second loop will open in the fall and the full system spanning five miles will open in Spring.

?My philosophy is I want trails I can ride to,? said Ron Stawicki, president of the WBA. ?The Kettles are great and the Tosa Trails and The Rock Sports Complex are great, but there?s still a 20-minute drive. It?s nice to have trails close to home.?

Riders will access the Minooka Park trails near picnic shelter #5, roughly at 1927 E. Sunset Dr., in Waukesha.

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas will lead the ribbon-cutting ceremony, at 9 a.m. on the June 1.

?Part of the Waukesha County Park System mission is to provide our citizens with many different recreation opportunities and activities,? Vrakas said. ?The mountain bike trails will meet a community and regional need and promote bicycling and outdoor activities in the park.?

Minooka Park is a popular recreation destination for hikers in summer and cross-country skiers in winter. The mountain bike trails will be separate from those paths.

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Source: http://theactivepursuit.com/waukesha-county-schedules-opening-for-new-mountain-bike-trails/

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Vudu Player update allows movie downloads on iPhone, iPad

Coming months after the feature's introduction on Android and PCs, Vudu has updated the iOS version of its app with the ability to download movies for viewing offline. Unlike the Android version, this feature is not restricted to tablets however, with downloads of your Vudu / Ultraviolet collection on iPads and iPhones. Other tweaks include making the Player "easier to use" and adding closed captions on iPhone. The Flixster app already allowed for Ultraviolet movie downloads on iOS, however Vudu has access to some movies that may not be available there. The updated version of the free app is available on on iTunes, although you will need an associated account (with updated password info) with unlocked videos to get any use out of it.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile

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Source: iTunes

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/AOUiIZxrzhk/

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Aggressive behavior linked specifically to secondhand smoke exposure in childhood

May 21, 2013 ? Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke in early childhood are more likely to grow up to physically aggressive and antisocial, regardless of whether they were exposed during pregnancy or their parents have a history of being antisocial, according to Linda Pagani and Caroline Fitzpatrick of the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine hospital. No study to date has controlled for these factors.

"Secondhand smoke is in fact more dangerous that inhaled smoke, and 40% of children worldwide are exposed to it. Moreover, exposure to this smoke at early childhood is particularly dangerous, as the child's brain is still developing," Pagani said. "I looked at data that was collected about 2,055 kids from their birth until ten years of age, including parent reports about secondhand smoke exposure and from teachers and children themselves about classroom behaviour. Those having been exposed to secondhand smoke, even temporarily, were much more likely to report themselves as being more aggressive by time they finished fourth grade."

The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health on May 21, 2013.

Given that it would be unethical to exposure children to secondhand smoke, Pagani relied on longitudinal data collected by Quebec health authorities from birth onward on an annual basis. Because parents went about raising their children while participating in the study, the data provided a natural experiment of variations in the child population of household smoke exposure throughout early childhood. Although no direct causal link can be determined, the statistical correlation suggests that secondhand smoke exposure does forecast deviant behavior in later childhood. The very detailed information collated for the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development enabled her to do something no other researcher has done to date: distinguish the unique contribution of secondhand smoke exposure on children's later deviant behavior. "Previous studies looking at groups of children have generally asked mothers whether they smoked or not, and how much at each follow-up, rather than asking whether someone smoked in the home where young children live and play," Dr. Pagani said. "Furthermore, few studies have looked at antisocial behaviour in the parents and even fewer have investigated the subsequent influence of prolonged exposure to secondhand smoke over the long term. None have taken into account the fact that disadvantaged families are less likely to participate in a long study like this one, which of course skews the statistics."

The statistics are backed by other biological studies into the effects of smoke on the brain. Secondhand smoke comprises 85% sidestream smoke emanated from a burning cigarette and 15% inhaled and then exhaled mainstream smoke. Sidestream smoke is considered more toxic than mainstream smoke because it contains a higher concentration of many dispersed respirable pollutants over a longer exposure period. "We know that the starvation of oxygen caused by smoke exposure in the developing central nervous system can cause low birth weight and slowed fetal brain growth," Dr. Pagani said. "Environmental sources of tobacco smoke represent the most passive and preventable cause of disease and disability. This study suggests that the postnatal period is important for the prevention of impaired neurobehavioral development and makes the case for the promotion of an unpolluted domestic environment for children."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Universit? de Montr?al.

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Journal Reference:

1. Linda S Pagani, Caroline Fitzpatrick. Prospective associations between early long-term household tobacco smoke exposure and antisocial behaviour in later childhood. J Epidemiol Community Health, 2013 DOI: 10.1136/jech-2012-202191

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/kRJ7JOBiU-k/130521132116.htm

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What do we eat? New food map will tell us

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) ? Do your kids love chocolate milk? It may have more calories on average than you thought.

Same goes for soda.

Until now, the only way to find out what people in the United States eat and how many calories they consume has been government data, which can lag behind the rapidly expanding and changing food marketplace.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are trying to change that by creating a gargantuan map of what foods Americans are buying and eating.

Part of the uniqueness of the database is its ability to sort one product into what it really is ? thousands of brands and variations.

Take the chocolate milk.

The government long has long classified chocolate milk with 2 percent fat as one item. But the UNC researchers, using scanner data from grocery stores and other commercial data, found thousands of different brands and variations of 2 percent chocolate milk and averaged them out. The results show that chocolate milk has about 11 calories per cup more than the government thought.

The researchers led by professor Barry Popkin at the UNC School of Public Health, are figuring out that chocolate milk equation over and over, with every single item in the grocery store. It's a massive project that could be the first evidence of how rapidly the marketplace is changing, and the best data yet on what exact ingredients and nutrients people are consuming.

That kind of information could be used to better target nutritional guidelines, push companies to cut down on certain ingredients and even help with disease research.

Just call it "mapping the food genome."

"The country needs something like this, given all of the questions about our food supply," says Popkin, the head of the UNC Food Research Program. "We're interested in improving the public's health and it really takes this kind of knowledge."

The project first came together in 2010 after a group of 16 major food companies pledged, as part of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign to combat obesity, to reduce the calories they sell to the public by 1.5 trillion. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation agreed to fund a study to hold the companies accountable, eventually turning to UNC with grants totaling $6.7 million.

Aided by supercomputers on campus, Popkin and his team have taken existing commercial databases of food items in stores and people's homes, including the store-based scanner data of 600,000 different foods, and matched that information with the nutrition facts panels on the back of packages and government data on individuals' dietary intake.

The result is an enormous database that has taken almost three years so far to construct and includes more detail than researchers have ever had on grocery store items ? their individual nutritional content, who is buying them and their part in consumers' diets.

The study will fill gaps in current data about the choices available to consumers and whether they are healthy, says Susan Krebs-Smith, who researches diet and other risk factors related to cancer at the National Cancer Institute.

Government data, long the only source of information about American eating habits, can have a lag of several years and neglect entire categories of new types of products ? Greek yogurt or energy drinks, for example.

With those significant gaps, the government information fails to account for the rapid change now seen in the marketplace. Now more than ever, companies are reformulating products on the fly as they try to make them healthier or better tasting.

While consumers may not notice changes in the ingredient panel on the back of the package, the UNC study will pick up small variations in individual items and also begin to be able to tell how much the marketplace as a whole is evolving.

"When we are done we will probably see 20 percent change in the food supply in a year," Popkin says. "The food supply is changing and no one really knows how."

For example, the researchers have found that there has been an increase in using fruit concentrate as a sweetener in foods and beverages because of a propensity toward natural foods, even though it isn't necessarily healthier than other sugars. While the soda and chocolate milk have more calories on average than the government thought, the federal numbers were more accurate on the calories in milk and cereals.

Popkin and his researchers are hoping their project will only be the beginning of a map that consumers, companies, researchers and even the government can use, breaking the data down to find out who is eating what and where they shop. Is there a racial divide in the brand of potato chips purchased, for example, and what could that mean for health? Does diet depend on where you buy your food ? the grocery store or the convenience store? How has the recession affected dietary intake?

"It's only since I've really started digging into this that I have realized how little we know about what we are eating," says Meghan Slining, a UNC nutrition professor and researcher on the project.

Steven Gortmaker, director of the Harvard School of Public Health Prevention Research Center, says the data could help researchers figure out how people are eating in certain communities and then how to address problems in those diets that could lead to obesity or disease.

"The more information we have, the more scientists can be brainstorming about what kinds of interventions or policy changes we could engage in," Gortmaker said.

But the information doesn't include restaurant meals and some prepared foods, about one-third of what Americans eat. If the project receives continued funding, those foods eventually could be added to the study, a prospect that would be made easier by pending menu labeling regulations that will force chain restaurants to post calories for every item.

Popkin and his researchers say that packaged foods have long been the hardest to monitor because of the sheer volume and rapid change in the marketplace.

The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, an industry group representing the 16 companies that made the pledge to reduce 1.5 trillion calories, says it will report this summer on how successful they've been, according to Lisa Gable, the group's president. The first results from Popkin's study aren't expected until later this year.

Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition, food studies and public health, says the data could be useful in pressuring companies to make more changes for the better. Companies often use "the research isn't there" as a defense against making changes recommended by public health groups, she notes, and it can be hard to prove them wrong.

"What people eat is the great mystery of nutrition," Nestle says. "It would be wonderful to have a handle on it."

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Find Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eat-food-map-tell-us-174342840.html

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