Alternative Fuels (Pages 1/2) Bookstore Inventory (Page 8)

What’s below in this edition

 Alternative fuels (Pages 1/2)Bookstore inventory (Page 8)

Screening-center alliance (Pages 2-4) Science in Toyland (Pages 8-10)

 Effective organizations (Page 4)New-media art (Page 10)

 Summer fun (Pages 4-6)‘Mgt.’ accounting (Pages 10/11)

 Concerts, films (Pages 6/7)New coach (Pages 11/12)

 ‘Relayers’ in action (Page 7)ID switchover (Page 12)

 The weather (Pages 7/8) And finally (Pages 12/13)

☻☻☻☻☻☻

KVCC to begin alternative-fuel training

A fall-semester course in alternative fuels and advanced-technology vehicles will signal KVCC becoming one of 27 sites in North America aligned with the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium.

The one-of-its-kind consortium, based at West Virginia University, was established in 1992. Over the last 14 years, it has fashioned instructional courses focusing on ethanol and flex-fuel vehicles, biodiesel and natural-gas vehicles, propane-powered vehicles, emissions testing, alternative-fuel applications for a variety of machinery, electric and hybrid vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells.

“Our first class,” said David (Charlie) Fuller, laboratory manager for KVCC’s program in automotive technology and its point man for this new thrust, “will be an overview of alternative fuels and vehicles that utilize advanced technology.

“The rapid increase in fuel prices, coupled with concerns for the environment and air quality,” Fuller said, “has led many Americans to seek information about alternatives to gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum-based products.

“This introductory course is designed to provide basic information for the general public, automotive technicians, employers, fleet operators, and instructors,” he said. “The course will explore the nature and extent of the problems, as well as some viable solutions that are currently available or in development.”

The two-credit class will explain the advantages, disadvantages, technology, components, infrastructure and availability of vehicles powered by ethanol, synthetic fuels, methanol, natural gas in both compressed and liquefied forms, electricity, hydrogen, propane, fuel cells, biodiesel, and hybrids.

“We’ll also cover the sources and effects of air pollution caused by transportation vehicles,” Fuller said, “and explain the ramifications of the U. S. dependence on foreign energy resources.”

Other consortium-aligned training sites in the Midwest are at Lansing Community College, Ohio Technical College, the University of Northwestern Ohio, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana in Gary, and Morton College in Illinois.

Fuller said the next KVCC offering would be a training course for emergency “first responders” and fire fighters who have to cope with crashes involving vehicles powered by these new forms of fuel.

As part of KVCC’s connection to the training consortium, the automotive-technology program will be a host site for the National Alternative Fuel Vehicle Odyssey observance on Saturday, Oct. 14.

Booked for the college’s Michigan Technical Education Center, the event will feature workshops and presentations on alternative fuels, environmental impact, the economics of freeing the nation from dependence on foreign oil, and legislation and policy-making that could promote the cause of alternative-energy technologies in transportation.

Other tentative attractions will be drive-and-ride demonstrations of the next generation of hybrid vehicles and vendors from the alternative-fuel industry. It will be free and open to the public.

This will be the training consortium’s third national Odyssey, with the first two staged in 2002 and 2004. The latter day of awareness to showcase alternative technologies in transportation was held at 54 sites in 34 states.

For more information about KVCC’s entrance into the realm of training in alternative fuels or about the upcoming 2006 Odyssey, contact Fuller at extension 4178.

Life-science firm allies with screening center

Speeding up the complex, costly drug-discovery process, which has economic-development and job-creation implications, is the objective of an alliance between a Kalamazoo-based life-science company and KVCC.

The college’s Michigan High Throughput Screening Center and Kalexsyn Inc. have established a joint-service agreement. The alliance will facilitate the process for drug researchers to identify and synthesize compounds that show promise in the treatment of the spectrum of diseases.

The screening center, based at the Michigan Technical Education Center (M-TEC) and with a library of more than 100,000 drug-like components, uses its sophisticated, roboticized, high-speed equipment to find the proverbial needle in a haystack when it comes to identifying pathways that offer promise of success in the discovery and development of drugs.

The screening center’s clients include pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology enterprises, university researchers and government laboratories.

“After our screening process provides hits,” said Robert Kilkuskie, the center’s senior director, “our clients often need expert chemistry assistance to proceed with their studies. The senior scientists at Kalexsyn are uniquely qualified to bring professional solutions to those chemistry needs.”

With expertise in organic synthesis, physical-property modification, analog strategies, and diversification of compound collections, Kalexsyn, as the center’s preferred provider of medicinal-chemistry services, “can further accelerate the drug-discovery process,” said chief executive officer David Zimmermann, “at all stages, including the optimization of leads and the synthesis of intermediates and building blocks.”

What this all means,” said Kathy Johnson, the M-TEC’s director of business development, “is that Kalexsyn’s medicinal chemists refine the hits with potential to further narrow the focus of the research. The earlier you know what does or does not work, the better the cost-effectiveness.

“That’s why the screening center’s rapid evaluation of a large number of drugable compounds against a single drug target,” she said, “is so critical and so important. That’s also why the role Kalexsyn plays is equally as important.”

Kalexsyn, located in the Southwest Michigan First Innovation Center, was founded in 2002 by Dr. Robert Gadwood and Zimmermann. Both are former Pharmacia chemists with decades of pharmaceutical and business experience. Each member of the Kalexsyn chemistry staff has on average 16 years of experience in pharmaceuticals. Kalexsyn also has a team of scientific advisers who are world-renowned medicinal chemists.

“This alliance will add value for customers of the screening center through our capability for carrying out development of the hits and leads identified by its library of compounds,” said Gadwood, Kalexsyn’s president and chief scientific officer.

The not-for profit screening center’s mission is to serve the needs of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies by offering access to services that most enterprises do not have in house, Kilkuskie said. “The innovatively diverse library has helped clients proceed with research decisions faster for less money. This benefits the entire biotechnology and life-sciences sectors.”

Because of its screening center, KVCC was invited to join the Core Technology Alliance (CTA), a coalition of major, life-science research initiatives based at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, Western Michigan University, and the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids.

The CTA was established by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to foster biotechnology research and business-development applications. The CTA’s mission is to place the state of Michigan on the leading edge of medical, health-care and industrial breakthroughs via research into the life sciences and biotechnology.

The screening center joined a collaborative network of advanced technology facilities that includes the Michigan Animal Models Consortium at the Van Andel Institute, the Michigan Center for Biological Information and the Michigan Proteome Consortium that are both part of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, the Michigan Center for Genomic Technologies at Wayne State University, and the Michigan Center for Structural Biology at Michigan State University.

Through its connection to the CTA and the alliance’s cadre of life-science and biotechnology research partners, KVCC joins such academic institutions as Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, Rutgers University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Kansas in providing not-for-profit services in throughput screening for early-stage investigators.

Building a top organization is M-TEC topic

Fashioning core leadership skills, polishing decision-making skills, and forging a vision for any and all kinds of business enterprises are the focus of a half-day video conference slated for Wednesday, July 26, at the KVCC Michigan Technical Education Center.

“Leadership in the New Workplace: Building Organizations to Excel” will feature presentations by:

♦ Jack Welch, former chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric.

♦ Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the administration of President Bill Clinton.

♦ Author Brian Tracy whose expertise is sales strategy.

♦ Justin Menkes, known for his method of quantifying executive skills and author of “Executive Intelligence.”

♦ Pat Lencioni, a consultant on organizational health and teamwork whose books include “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team” and “The Five Temptations of a Leader.”

The session, which runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., is limited to 60 participants. The $189 fee includes lunch and seminar materials.

The presenters will explore how enterprises of all varieties can develop core sets of leadership skills in their managers and staff, establish the foundation for building effective relationships for stronger teamwork, put into place a process for effective decision-making in times of crisis, chart a path for clarifying focus and vision in an organization, and discover ways to uncover executive intelligence and implement it.

Participants in this live broadcast via satellite can register online at or e-mail at .

Full slate of fun, adventure for kids at museum

Toys, science and space are the featured attractions at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s hands-on happenings for youngsters on Wednesdays this summer.

Beginning June 21 and through July 26, free activities, designed to mirror the museum’s next nationally touring exhibition “Science in Toyland,” are slated for 1 to 4 p.m.

Also part of the Wednesday-afternoon billings will be mini-missions in the Challenger Learning Center at 2 p.m. and planetarium shows at 1:30 and 3 p.m. While there is no admission fee to the museum, there is a $3 fee for the space missions and star shows.

The June 21 theme is “Scientific Toys” as participants use the principles of science to create playthings.

Other topics are: “Dolls, Puppets and More” on June 28; “Games Galore” on July 5; “Toys That Go” on July 12; “Trucks, Trains and Planes” on July 19; and “Puzzles and Brain Teasers” on July 26.

“Science in Toyland” runs from June 17 through Sept. 4. Its seven interactive stations show how toys and play can introduce children to science.

Created by the California Science Center in Los Angeles, the exhibition uses toys, fun and games to demonstrate scientific principles that come alive in safe experiments and require some creative problem-solving. The objective is to foster a positive attitude about the sciences.

At two of the demonstration stations, children can learn about construction techniques, including one that tests their ability to choose the building methods and materials to successfully bridge an eight-foot “valley.” While at play, they are learning about how to conceive the sturdiest of support trusses and how cranes work.

Tops teach about inertia, angular momentum, and the concept of “center of gravity.” One of the challenges is to choose the right top and the right configuration to produce the longest spins.

The advanced technology of a mock roller coaster demonstrates the effect on speeds of moving vehicles when the track is positioned at a variety of inclines and angles.

What better place than the nation's No. 1 auto-making state to learn about the mechanics of motion and the effects that several scientific principles have on the efficiency of a speeding vehicle.

Youthful visitors can apply their thinking caps and manual dexterity at a station full of dominos, teeter-totters, swings, stairs and blocks. The experiment involves using these props to create the most interesting chain reaction.

At a station titled “Catch the Wind,” visitors will learn how the principle stated and proven by 18th-century Swiss scientist Daniel Bernoulli comes into play in being able to move a sailboat across the water no matter what the wind direction is.

“Science in Toyland” encourages children to make science-related toys from common household items, and uses a balloon to highlight the principles involved in static electricity, rocket flight, transportation, sound production, and sound enhancement. A balloon is the perfect prop for demonstrating Newton’s Third Law of Motion – for every action or push in one direction, there is an equal reaction in the opposite direction.

They will be introduced to “thaumatropes.” The thaumatrope, a word with Greek origins meaning “wonder” and “turn,” is a disk with images on both sides and mounted so it can spin. While the thaumatrope is spinning, images merge so that, for example, the bird pictured on one side appears to be in the cage depicted on the reverse side. Developed in 1825, the toy illustrates the persistence of vision, a phenomenon that makes movies and television possible.

Many of these aspects will be amplified in the free Wednesday activities.

The planetarium shows are “Terri & Her Telescope” at 1:30 and “The Wright Way to Fly” at 3 p.m.

The latter deals with the scientific exploits of the Wright Brothers as they create tools and methods that reveal the principles of flight.Inspired by news reports about Otto Lilienthal’s glider flights, Dayton bicycle-makers Wilbur and Orville Wright began investigating flying machines so that they could build one of their own. In this production, a newspaper reporter interviews the brothers to learn about the research and experiments that laid the foundations of the science of aviation, and resulted in the first powered flights of a heavier-than-air machine.

This show was obtained from the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton. It was prepared using the diaries and notes of the Wright brothers.

The 20-minute “Terri & Her Telescope” is a locally produced program about a girl and her affinity for learning about what’s up there.

The Challenger Learning Center’s mock space missions are controlled and flown by means of a “space station” and “mission control.” This summer’s scenario is a “Voyage to Mars.”

For more information about free activities or to purchase tickets, call (269) 373-7990 or dial into the museum’s website at

Glowfriends, ‘Grail’ are Thursday-night attractions

The Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s Thursday slate of evening concerts and films for adult audiences in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater continues with the music of Glowfriends on June 22, the German film, “The Forest for the Trees” on June 29, and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” on July 6.

Also slated for the summer are the free showings of back-to-back-to-back episodes of three PBS documentaries on Sundays.

All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. on that Thursday. Admission is $5; $3 for students with IDs.

Glowfriends was founded and fronted by a Kalamazoo brother-and-sister duo, Mark and April Morris. She does the vocals in their folk-rock style and he plays the guitar. Other members are Holly Klutts Morris on bass guitar, Jenn Hendrix on vibraphone, and percussionist J. W. Hendrix III.

While Glowfriends had performed in and around the Kalamazoo area for several years, the group was also booked into the International Pop Overthrow Festival in Liverpool, England.

Produced in Germany in 2004, “The Forest for the Tree” tells the story of a ninth-grade teacher who attempts to begin a new life in a new town. It won the Sundance Film Festival’s “Jury Prize.”

“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” stars the full stable of British performers in this classic 1974 comedy – Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones.

It’s a reworking of the legend of King Arthur and the search for the magical cup reportedly used at The Last Supper. The quest leaves Camelot in a shambles of laughter. This troupe of British TV comedians offer plenty of laughs, chuckles, sight gags, sick jokes and wit, all wrapped up in loony satire.

Here’s the rest of the “Thursdays at the Museum” line-up of concerts and films:

● The Shawn Bell Group, July 13.

● “Stormy Weather,” July 20.

● Kruziki Transatlantica Quintet, July 27.

● Folk artist Patricia Pettinga, Aug. 3.

● “Spare Parts,” a Slovenian film, Aug. 10.

● The Norwegian “Hawaii, Oslo,” Aug. 17.

Continuing through Aug. 6 are the Sunday showings of three award-winning documentaries. The stories of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and others are told in “Great Artists” at 1:30 p.m. The 2:30 attraction are episodes of James Burke’s “Connections 2,” while the roots of western civilization are explored in “Ancient History” at 3:30 p.m.