St. Mary’s School in Sycamore acquired a weather station to assist elementary and junior high students with science and math curricula.

The private Catholic school purchased the station earlier this year and mounted it on the roof of the building at 222 Waterman St. The station has two remote devices. One connects to the fifth-grade classroom, and the other connects to the seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms.

The wireless devices receive and record all the weather data from the station on top of the building and store it in classroom computers, Principal Roseann Feldman said.

Students calculate real-life data from the weather station to study trends, said Brad Speiser, seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher .

The fifth grade also relays local weather to NASA.

NASA sends a weather satellite over the Sycamore area once a day, Feldman said. Students assist NASA by relaying cloud cover conditions from ground level that the satellite can measure from above.

St. Mary’s paid for the weather station with a $9,000 grant from Toyota last year. Only 35 schools nationwide received the grant.

Feldman said the school plans to purchase two more mobile weather stations in the next year to place in rural areas east and west of Sycamore.

A recent $57,500 grant from the governor’s office will help Kishwaukee Community Hospital scrub out bioterrorism concerns.

In February, Gov. Rod Blagojevich awarded $14.3 million to hospitals across the state. The majority of the funds will be distributed by the Illinois Department of Public Health to hospitals that are developing plans to aid victims of bioterrorism.

Kishwaukee Community Hospital will use its cut to build a portable showering system to clean victims of a bioterrorism attack, said Sharon Emanuelson, the hospital’s spokeswoman. The hospital will build the system in-house, using equipment purchased from local stores.

The proposed facility will be able to handle the mass decontamination of 45 patients in the event of a bioterrorist attack, Emanuelson said. The project is set to begin in the spring, but Emanuelson said she does not know when it will be completed.

In addition to the shower system, a cargo trailer will be purchased for storage of the portable shower units, Emanuelson said.

Hospitals around the state are using the money to aid victims of terrorist attacks, Blagojevich said. Twelve hospitals in the state, the hospitals that smaller hospitals report to, each received $522,000.

“Since Sept. 11, hospitals have been more alert and are more concerned about communication between agencies,” Emanuelson said.

Last year, Kishwaukee Hospital received $12,000 to improve and increase the isolation capabilities in the hospital, Emanuelson said. The improvements helped ventilate the rooms and also to change the ventilation system to prevent viruses from traveling.

Valley West Community Hospital in Sandwich, Kishwaukee’s sister hospital, received $16,700 for similar bioterrorism measures, Emanuelson said.