Helping hands on local farms • B1 APRIL 3, 2012
Easter eats, on the side • F1
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Landfill trash gas power plan disturbs neighbors
St. Charles is getting out of the air-transport business
The AirLink facility at St. Charles Bend. The health system plans to sell the air-transport assets to a for-profit company, which will continue with service.
By Markian Hawryluk The Bulletin
St. Charles Health System will shut down its AirLink Critical Care Transport program as of June 15, selling its assets for $6 million to Metro Aviation, the for-profit medical aviation compa-
Andy Tullis The Bulletin
ny that has piloted and maintained the AirLink aircraft for the past four years. The Shreveport, La.-based firm plans to form a new transport company under the AirLink name with no interruption in service. See AirLink / A6
By Hillary Borrud The Bulletin
Neighbors of Knott Landfill have expressed concerns about a California company’s proposal to speed up the decomposition of buried garbage and sell the resulting gas. But one Deschutes county official says the plan, developed by Irvine-based Waste to Energy Group LLC presents no health risk. “We’ve got 2.5 million tons of garbage in the ground, and it’s always producing gas,” Deschutes County Solid Waste Department Director Timm Schimke said on Monday. “It’s not like we’re introducing something new into the mix.” Landfill gas contains some hazardous air pollutants, but similar substances are found in other common sources, such as wood stove smoke, said Schimke, who expects to hold a public meeting with the county commissioners this month. Though the meeting has yet to be scheduled, commissioners have expressed support for the project. The county already has held informational meetings for neighbors and the environmental and business communities. David Poboisk, who lives near the landfill, has criticized the project loudly in recent months. “There are many areas that I have questions and concerns about, and other people should have questions, too,” Poboisk said on Monday. “When I first heard about this project, I was worried about the groundwater,” said Poboisk, whose family shares a well with 13 other households. The project the county is considering would speed up decomposition and gas production by injecting steam into the waste. Some of the steam would come from liquid that already exists in the landfill, although the project might eventually use water. See Landfill / A6
New club to replace notorious nightspot
Los Angeles Times
NEYYATTINKARA, India — Retired government worker and small-time coconut farmer Prakasan Thattari is very proud of his invention: a machine with the look of a giant metallic praying mantis that clangs fearlessly up vertigo-inducing coconut trees.
MON-SAT
We use recycled newsprint
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A device that aims to decode the brain By David Ewing Duncan New York Times News Service
Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
A mover carries chairs to a truck from the former Boondocks Bar & Grill on Northwest Newport Avenue in Bend on Monday. A liquor license application indicates the establishment will reopen as Liquid Club & Lounge.
• An associate of the previous owner says he plans a more upscale bar with a dress code, no more strippers By Nick Grube and Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
An associate of Boondocks Bar & Grill owner Howie Long plans to open an upscale nightclub in the same Newport Avenue building that has drawn the attention of Bend police for persistent criminal activities, such as theft and fighting. Last Friday, Kin Kwok Cho filed a
liquor license application with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to open Liquid Club & Lounge. The prospective owner hopes to make bad behavior at the site a thing of the past. “I’ll try to manage it better,” Cho said. “I’d like to make it a little more upgraded. I’ll try to not get in as much trouble.” Liquid Club & Lounge will have live, recorded and DJ music, as well as danc-
ing, karaoke, pool tables and video lottery. Cho’s application lists live and DJ music only on Thursday through Saturday nights. He also plans to have a dress code. Boondocks, which closed March 31, was often the scene of theft and violence during its four years of operation. Since 2009, there have been 966 calls for service involving the bar, according to Deschutes County 911 records. More than 62 percent of those came on Saturdays or Sundays, many for thefts, fights and other disputes. See Bar / A5
India’s coconut industry: big business, but few humans willing to do the work By Mark Magnier
HEALTH EXPERIMENT
It climbs well, but has a little trouble cutting off the coconuts once up there, said Thattari, who estimates that he’s gone through thousands of dollars tinkering with various gizmos. “I spent all my retirement money,” he said. “The machine is close to my heart.” Here in India’s southern state of Kerala, a lush land known as
“God’s country,” coconuts are big business: The state boasts more than 500 million coconut trees, covering 40 percent of its
S. Sathish, a coconut climber, has been picking coconuts in southern India part-time for three years. He’s a rarity, as coconut farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to hire pickers. Mark Magnier / Los Angeles Times
The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 109, No. 94, 38 pages, 7 sections
land. But these days, coconut farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to find pickers. See Coconuts / A6
INDEX Business Calendar Classified
E1-4 B3 G1-4
Comics B4-5 Community B1-6 Crosswords B5, G2
Editorials C4 Local News C1-6 Obituaries C5
TODAY’S WEATHER Sports D1-6 Stocks E2-3 TV & Movies B2
Mostly cloudy High 54, Low 27 Page C6
LA JOLLA, Calif. — Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last summer donned what looked like a rakish black headband that held a feather-light device the size of a small matchbox. Called the iBrain, this simple-looking contraption is part of an experiment that aims to allow Hawking — long paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — to communicate by merely thinking. The iBrain is part of a new generation of portable neural devices and algorithms intended to monitor and diagnose conditions like sleep apnea, depression and autism. Invented by a team led by Philip Low, a 32-year-old neuroscientist who is chief executive of NeuroVigil, a company based in San Diego, the iBrain is gaining attention as a possible alternative to expensive sleep labs that use rubber and plastic caps riddled with dozens of electrodes and usually require a patient to stay overnight. “The iBrain can collect data in real time in a person’s own bed, or when they’re watching TV, or doing just about anything,” Low said. The device uses a single channel to pick up waves of electrical brain signals, which change with different activities and thoughts, or with the pathologies that accompany brain disorders. But the raw waves are hard to read because they must pass through the many folds of the brain and then the skull, so they are interpreted with an algorithm that Low first developed for his Ph.D., earned in 2007 at the University of California, San Diego. (The original research, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was done on zebra finches.) See iBrain / A4
TOP NEWS COURT: Strip search judgment, A3 GSA: Scandal rocks agency, A3