Meet the Bears' picks

CRAIG STELTZ

Fourth round

No. 120 overall

-

LSU

6-0

202

- Career highlights: A Thorpe Award finalist last season, Steltz was a captain for LSU and a consensus first-team All-American selection. Was named the SEC defensive player of the week for performance vs. Ole Miss when he had two picks, made five tackles and broke up a pass. Fifth in school history in pass breakups with 34 and sixth in interceptions with 11. Played in the sub packages as a junior and had four interceptions. Played in nickel and dime packages as a sophomore and stood out in SEC title game vs. Georgia.

- The skinny: Projects best as a strong safety. Should …

Feeling the pinch

ENGINEERING SCHOOLS AROUND THE NATION ARE CUTTING BACK PROGRAMS AND HANDING OUT PINK SLIPS AS STATES STRUGGLE WITH BUDGET SHORTFALLS.

In 2000, Oregon legislators recognized that the state's economic base was shifting away from natural resources like timber and moving toward technology. Much of the state's employment growth was coming from the expanding number of hightech companies sprouting up around Portland. Thus, it was with much fanfare that the legislature announced a $ 10 million grant to the college of engineering at Oregon State to increase its engineering graduates from 480 to 550 students by 2005. The funds would also allow the school to expand its laboratory facilities …

FBI investigates Unabomber in '82 Tylenol deaths

CHICAGO (AP) — The FBI says it's investigating whether Unabomber Ted Kaczynski (kuh-ZIN'-skee) was involved in the 1982 Chicago-area Tylenol poisonings case that killed seven people.

Kaczynski wrote in court papers filed in federal court in California last week that prison officials conveyed a request from the FBI in Chicago for DNA samples.

Chicago FBI spokeswoman Cynthia Yates confirmed Thursday that the agency …

NOTEBOOK Agents seize drug-test samples

Federal authorities probing an alleged steroid distribution ringhave seized the results and samples of drug tests on selected majorleague baseball players from a drug-testing lab, a spokesman for thelab said Friday.

Internal Revenue Service agents served a search warrant to obtain"documentation and specimens" from a Quest Diagnostics lab in LasVegas, Quest spokesman Gary Samuels said.

Samuels would not say whether IRS agents took the drug-testresults or specimen of Barry Bonds, but said the agents tookmaterials consistent with a federal subpoena that had sought testresults and specimens from the San Francisco Giants' slugger andfewer than a dozen other players. Among …

The mechanical properties of hydrated intermediate filaments: Insights from hagfish slime threads

ABSTRACT Intermediate filaments (IFs) impart mechanical integrity to cells, yet IF mechanics are poorly understood. It is assumed that IFs in cells are as stiff as hard [alpha]-keratin, F-actin, and microtubules, but the high bending flexibility of IFs and the low stiffness of soft [alpha]-keratins suggest that hydrated IFs may be quite soft. To test this hypothesis, we measured the tensile mechanics of the keratin-like threads from hagfish slime, which are an ideal model for exploring the mechanics of IF bundles and IFs because they consist of tightly packed and aligned IFs. Tensile tests suggest that hydrated IF bundles possess low initial stiffness (E^sub i^ = 6.4 MPa) and remarkable …

FIFA, European clubs to open peace talks

ZURICH (AP) — FIFA will meet European football clubs next week to begin solving their long-running dispute over top players' international workload.

The club vs. country divide has seen the European Club Association ask players to prioritize national leagues and the Champions League above FIFA's desire for stars to peak at the World Cup and take part in the Olympic Games.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said on Thursday talks to seek a balance will begin in Zurich on Tuesday.

Blatter said FIFA vice president Michel Platini — the head of Champions League organizer UEFA who is a close ally of ECA chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge — also will attend.

The summit takes place …

US searching for 'radicalized' Americans

The top U.S. diplomat in Pakistan says the Obama administration does not know how many Americans might have disappeared overseas to train with al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

The number is not thought to be large, but Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson outlined a possible "nightmare scenario" _ people holding U.S. passports receiving terrorist training, then returning legally to the U.S. to …