I have been a customer for over 25 years and am a bit upset that we are not receiving official records for Kootenai County anymore, but instead for Spokane County. My interest is in Kootenai County and what is happening in our neighborhoods and at our courts. It seems that there is very little coverage of our area by your paper anymore, not what I am wanting to purchase daily. I have conferred with others and they are upset also. Please advise if this is a permanent change and if it is, all I have spoken with will be canceling their subscriptions too.
Sad for all/Jacqui.

Answer: In response to complaints about the disappearance of the Idaho public records in our newspaper, we're working on a solution. We believe we'll be able to publish them in our weekly zoned editions -- the Handle Extra and the Post Falls Voice.

Kindness Hero Essays

My hero is my doctor, Mrs. Bailey. She takes care of me and helps me be healthy. She gives me shots and yummy suckers after I am done getting my shots.My doctor is a baby doctor. She takes care of everybody in the world. When I visit my doctor she lets me use here stethoscope. She is very nice to me and she knows I want to be a baby doctor, so she tells me all about her job.Mrs. Bailey doesn't talk rude to me and that encourages me to be nice to other people. I also see my doctor helping all the kids and making them feel better when they are sick. That makes me want to help children people.Because of knowing there are a lot of children in the world who need baby doctors like her, I want to help them feel better too.Marilyn BaxleyBy Edward Santos, fifth grade, Mark Twain Elementary School .

UB Founds Honors College for Exceptional Students

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo announced today the founding of The University Honors College, marking a major milestone in UB's long tradition of providing honors programming for exceptional undergraduate students.

"Today's founding of a full-fledged honors college with a four-year curriculum will enable our honors students to take fuller advantage of UB's tremendous intellectual resources," Tripathi said.

Efforts to allow smoking ban exemptions off to slow start

SPRINGFIELD — Less than two months after Illinois' smoking ban kicked in, efforts to allow smoking in casinos and private clubs for veterans got off to a slow start Wednesday.Lawmakers delayed votes on smoking ban exemptions in a House committee despite having several scheduled, but the issue caused sparks all the same.Early on, Democrats used procedure to prevent a lawmaker from altering his plan allowing smoking in Veterans of Foreign Wars halls and American Legion posts.The lawmaker, state Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, slammed down his chair in the hearing room, berated a Democratic staff member in the hallway and later called the committee's chairwoman “an idiot."Some veterans argue they shouldn't be denied the ability to smoke in their private clubs. Bloomington veteran Arthur Valeu, on the other hand, said he doesn't want to be used as a political pawn.“I don't want my service to this country to be used in that way," said Valeu, who supports the ban.Casinos fought for an exemption to the original ban last year, but didn't receive one.

New Study Paves Way For Using Nanofluids In Cameras, Microdevices And ...

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated that liquids embedded with nanoparticles show enhanced performance and stability when exposed to electric fields. The finding could lead to new types of miniature camera lenses, cell phone displays, and other microscale fluidic devices.

"This study may open up a new vista for using nanofluids in microscale and nanoscale actuator device applications," said Theodorian Borca-Tasciuc, a professor of mechanical engineering at Rensselaer, who led the research project.

The manipulation of small volumes of liquid is critical for fluidic digital display devices, optical devices, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) such as lab-on-chip analysis systems. Most research into such systems has been conducted with regular liquids, but not nanofluids, which are liquids embedded with different nanoparticles.