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Preparations are under way for the 45th Annual Junior Science, Engineering, and Humanities Symposium to be held Feb. 3-5 at the University of Florida.

More than 300 ninth- through 12th-grade students and science teachers from school districts throughout the state will attend. The event is sponsored by the university’s Center for Precollegiate Education and Training, the Academy of Applied Science, U.S. Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. More than 100 administrators, faculty and graduate students will participate in this important event.

Twenty 11th- and 12th-grade students will present their research in competition. First-, second- and third-place speaker winners will be awarded scholarship monies to the university of his or her choice. The first- and second-place winners will present their research at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (NJSHS) in Orlando in May. All five speaker winners will be awarded trips to attend the NJSHS.
» Read more after the jump →

In two years and with a little help from the state, Deborah Frank will have repaid her student loans from nursing school.

Frank, a licensed practical nurse at the Manteno Veterans Home for the last 12 years, is one of the first to participate in the state’s new loan repayment program aimed at recruiting and retaining more nurses to work at Illinois’ four veterans’ homes.

Under the Veterans Home Nurse Loan Repayment Program, the state has set aside $1.22 million so it can offer qualifying nurses grants up to $5,000 annually over four years to repay education loans.

The incentive should help the state better compete with private hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities that all are trying to find and keep qualified nurses in a shrinking pool of candidates, according to Jessica Woodward, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
» Read more after the jump →

AP

Credit-market tremors _ like the ones linked to the housing crisis _ are beginning to show up in the $85 billion student-loan market.

While there’s no apparent shortgage of loans available to college-bound Americans, analysts say rising defaults, coupled with a new law that cuts federal subsidies to student lenders, are beginning to strain the industry.

The rising defaults have surfaced amid falling home prices and rising foreclosures, trends that last summer touched off a crisis in global credit markets as investors faced the prospect of not being repaid on mortgage-backed securities.

In some cases, families whose home loans are resetting at dramatically higher rates may have difficulty keeping current on payments on student loans or auto loans _ which recently have » Read more after the jump →

Yale University next month plans to announce a student aid plan that could rival Harvard’s initiative to ease costs for “middle-income'’ families.

The governing board for Yale, located in New Haven, Connecticut, met last week to discuss the enhanced program, university spokesman Tom Conroy said in a telephone interview yesterday. The change is occurring “irrespective of any other institution’s announcement,'’ he said. Conroy couldn’t supply details about the initiative, he said.

Harvard on Dec. 10 unveiled a plan that trims the annual cost of attending the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school by as much as half for families earning between $120,000 and $180,000. Other schools, responding to competition for the best students, will follow suit, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the Washington-based American Council on Education.

“Elite selective institutions are in fierce competition with each other for everything,'’ Hartle said in a telephone interview yesterday. “When one makes a bold step like Harvard, the others need to follow suit. I expect we will see similar action by a number of elite institutions within the year.'’

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena yesterday said it will replace loans with grants for students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year. Pomona College in Claremont, California, said it will make an announcement on financial aid today.

Princeton First

Affordability programs trace their beginnings to 1998, when Princeton, in New Jersey, dropped loans from aid packages for needy students, said Tony Pals, information director for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington. Grant-only packages were expanded to all Princeton undergraduates in 2001.

“There was a lot of doubt that peer institutions and other schools would be able to follow through,'’ Pals said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Obviously, we’ve seen that they have been. Harvard’s move will further that trend.'’

Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, are among more than 30 institutions who have already instituted programs such as the elimination of loans for some lower-income students, according to the nonprofit Project on Student Debt.

“With Harvard, if it is a straight-up competition thing, we can’t compete on an endowment level,'’ John Burness, Duke University’s senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said in a telephone interview. “But we look at it and wonder, `Should we be tweaking it?”’

2004 Decision

Harvard started to address its costs systematically in 2004, when then-President Lawrence Summers decided to make attendance free for students from households with incomes of less than $40,000. That figure was raised to $60,000 last year.

President Drew Faust is expanding the program so that students from families earning $120,000 to $180,000 will pay 10 percent of income for tuition and fees. Those earning less than $120,000 will pay on a declining scale, with households at $60,000 attending for free. The new program is designed to focus on a “middle-income group,'’ she said.

The typical family earning $120,000 will pay about $12,000, compared with $19,000 now, according to data supplied by Harvard. The total cost of attending Harvard without aid this year is $45,620, the school has said.

At Princeton, the family contribution from households earning from $120,000 to $180,000 ranges from 5 percent to 20 percent of income, said spokeswoman Cass Cliatt. The average is about 16 percent, with families typically contributing $23,545 and receiving grants of $21,150, Cliatt said.

Payment Varies

The payment varies because Princeton considers an individual family’s assets, such as stocks and land, as well as income, while Harvard assumes an average net worth for each level of income, Cliatt said. Princeton excludes home equity from its considerations in computing aid, a step Harvard said on Dec. 10 it will also take next year.

“We are delighted that many of our peers are now addressing the challenge of these families in the more middle-income levels,'’ Princeton’s Cliatt.

Public universities and liberal arts colleges, could make their prices clearer and help students become less reliant on loans, said Matt Reed, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Project on Student Debt.

“Not everyone can do what Harvard did,'’ Reed said. “What we really hope is that all schools, across the spectrum of schools, will move in that direction.'’

In 2006, the nation’s median household income was $48,200, according the U.S. Census Bureau. Families with incomes exceeding $174,000 were in the top 5 percent of earners. bloomberg

Not all borrowers are benefiting from the Fed’s moves to cut interest rates. The problem: Loans that are tied to a variety of interest-rate benchmarks — some of which aren’t necessarily moving in lockstep with Fed action.

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.25% — the central bank’s third rate cut since mid-September — to help ease the credit crunch and reduce the economy’s chances of falling into a recession. The moves have helped some borrowers who have seen interest rates on their credit cards and home-equity lines of credit fall. Interest rates on many fixed-rate mortgages also have dropped amid a decline in Treasury yields as investors sought out safe investments.

But rates remain stubbornly high on other loans, including student debt and many adjustable-rate loans made to the same type of subprime borrowers whose troubles are now reverberating throughout the global financial system. These rates remain high because many of these loans are tied to the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and not to more conventional interest-rate benchmarks such as Treasurys or banks’ prime rate. » Read more after the jump →

Brad Pitt and George Clooney need to watch their famous backs. There’s a new sex symbol in town, and he’s arrived with a vengeance and a passport.

It’s not every 28-year-old Brit who seduces Keira one minute and turns his on-screen affections to Angelina the next.

Meet James McAvoy, who stars with Keira Knightley in the critically acclaimed “Atonement,” which opened Friday, and also logged time in Chicago last summer filming steamy scenes with Angelina Jolie for the upcoming “Wanted,” where he plays the son of an assassin.

“Atonement” is based on the novel by Ian McEwan. It’s set at a lavish English estate, and McAvoy plays a working class gardener called Robbie, who is smart enough to get a scholarship to medical school. His life is just beginning and then he falls in love with Cecilia Tallis, the rich daughter of the manor, played by Knightley. But that joy is interrupted when Robbie is falsely accused of a terrible crime by Cecilia’s jealous 13-year-old sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan) and then sent to jail before being shipped away to the front lines of World War II.

The film includes one of the hottest film love scenes ever, with McAvoy and Knightley in a dark English library while no one in the manor is looking.

“Oh, that library scene,” McAvoy says, laughing. “I think it’s embarrassing to do love scenes and it’s never easy. The thing is you just get on with it. It’s part of the job.”

He says he’s not one of those guys who jokes with an actress during love scenes. “I can joke around a bit, but you have to watch yourself. If you joke around too much you can overdo it. Joking doesn’t really help alleviate the tension.

“So, you just do these love scenes. I can say that love scenes are one part of my job that I’d love to give away to someone else.”

But even if the scorching scene with Keira was a bit of an ordeal, “Atonement” certainly wasn’t. “It’s the best script I’ve ever read,” says McAvoy, who got raves last year for “The Last King of Scotland” and also starred in 2005’s “The Chronicles of Narnia.” “I thought the characters were beautifully drawn and Robbie was just such a tortured, exquisite individual. He’s such a good man and then circumstances totally rip him to shreds. It’s your basic story of a good man wronged.

“He’s sent to jail and then to war but not as an officer. He’s a prisoner, so he gets the worst duty. He has to struggle for his sanity. This is a young man who needs to repair his soul.”

Filming “Wanted” in Chicago gave McAvoy the opportunity to experience a little American culture. At Wrigley Field, no less.

“I saw my first American baseball game in Chicago, which was fantastic,” he says. “I saw your Cubs play St. Louis. It was raining, but then the rain stopped and the Cubs won.”

Big Picture News Inc.