The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page A5

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR INDYSTAR.COM 2nd THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009 A5 WHO WAS NAMED IN PRICE-FIXING CASE RESEARCHER'S DREAM: Jeff Gronek, system administrator at lU's Data Center, enters information on the Big Red supercomputer. Big Red is part of the TeraGrid project, which could be replaced by CHARLIE NYE The Star pating in price-fixing schemes in the Indianapolis, Columbus and Seymour markets. Federal prosecutors gave company officials immunity from prosecution in exchange for their help. In November 2007, the company settled with plaintiffs for $4.7 million. MA-RI-AL NOBLESVILLE (DOING BUSINESS AS BEAVER MATERIALS): The company agreed to a $1.75 million fine.

PRAIRIE MATERIAL SALES, BRIDGEVIEW, ILL. (NOW KNOWN AS SOUTHFIELD Gary Matney, 54, the company's top Indiana manager, worked undercover for the Justice Department to gather evidence. Prairie Material fired him in 2005. Neither Matney nor the company was charged. In April 2008, the company agreed to pay $19 million if plaintiffs dropped their legal claims against it.

AMERICAN CONCRETE INDIANAPOLIS: The company, owned by the Mann family, became the first defendant to agree to a settlement in October 2007 in the lawsuit filed on behalf of about 5,000 customers. The company was not charged with any antitrust violation by the U.S. Department of Justice in its criminal investigation. The company sold out to Spurlino Materials of Ohio in 2005, and the settlement money will come out of the proceeds of that sale. Source: Star archives The following companies were involved in the conspiracy to fix ready-mix concrete prices: HUGHEY CARMEL (FORMERLY DOING BUSINESS AS CARMEL CONCRETE PRODUCTS): The company was fined $225,000.

The Federal Highway Administration in November 2006 issued an order prohibiting Carmel Concrete from doing highway work through Aug. 2, 2009. The company filed for bankruptcy liquidation in March 2007. BUILDER'S CONCRETE SUPPLY FISHERS: The company was fined $4 million. The Federal Highway Administration in August 2006 suspended Builder's Concrete from doing highway work.

IRVING MATERIALS GREENFIELD: The company agreed to pay a $29.2 million fine and received amnesty for reporting allegations of price-fixing agreements in Bloomington, Marion and Muncie. The Federal Highway Administration in January 2006 lifted a suspension that had prevented Irving Materials from doing highway work for four months. Irving Materials agreed to hire an outside monitor who would report only to the U.S. government and to remove those involved in the price-fixing conspiracy from management. SHELBY GRAVEL, SHELBYVILLE (DOING BUSINESS AS SHELBY MATERIALS): The company was granted amnesty from prosecution for partici- INDIANA UNIVERSITY DATA CENTER OPENING: November.

COST: $32.7 million. WHAT: The new building on the Bloomington campus is designed to better protect the university's technology resources from power outages sparked by storms and other natural disasters. WHAT IT WILL CONTAIN: The center will house the Big Red supercomputer and at least eight small supercomputers from IBM, Dell and Cray for the FutureGrid network. Source: Indiana University Computers Network will increase machines' speed, power. From A1 well-funded National Science Foundation project dubbed TeraGrid.

It, too, exists to link supercomputers at universities for research. IU's Big Red supercomputer is part of TeraGrid. "TeraGrid (members) lead the industry of supercomputers," said David Moses, executive director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. FutureGrid, with its experimental approach to networked supercomputing, one day could replace TeraGrid. The difference between the two projects has to do with the flexibility of the supercomputers used and their data-processing capabilities.

TeraGrid supercomputers have specialties. A supercomputer based at one university, for example, may do calculations extremely fast. One at another university may be able to store vast amounts of data. Which supercomputer a researcher uses depends on what capabilities are needed for the research. FutureGrid supercomputers, on the other hand, will leverage what's called "cloud computing." Researchers will be able to use the supercomputers as a group instead of individually because they will be networked in a way that increases their speed and power.

The goal, Wheeler said, is to create a supercomputing system that researchers can use without having to worry about the hard- roads, a group set up to promote health and life-science businesses in Indiana. He expects life-sciences companies to crop up based on research that's done on supercomputers and driven by the digitization of health care. Jim Jay, president and CEO of TechPoint, said the presence of FutureGrid will help build the state's reputation as a hotbed for technology. IU plans to buy eight supercomputers by this fall and have the entire FutureGrid network up and running by next summer. Five other schools, plus Purdue and the High Performance Computing Center at the Technical University in Germany, will provide additional processing power.

The FutureGrid team will be led by Geoffrey C. Fox, director of IU's Pervasive Technology Institute Digital Science Center. Some of the $10.1 million will be used to expand IU's other supercomputers, including Big Red, which will be moved to the campus's new Data Center. "This is really the big leagues," Wheeler said. Call Star reporter Erika D.

Smith at (317) 444-6424. ware design and its capabilities. "It's about different kinds of supercomputers," he said. "Across very, very high-speed networks, we'll be able to make them work together." Say the word "supercomputer," and many people may think of omnipresent HAL 9000, from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." But in reality, supercomputers represent the ability to run applications that require complex calculations, simulations and data modeling. Fifteen years ago, they were used for mathematical calculations and determining molecular structure.

Today, researchers from various disciplines use supercomputers to model the spread of viruses such as H1N1 to determine how best to stop it, or figure out whether information available on the Internet can be used to predict someone's Social Security number. "If you understand where things are vulnerable, you can close the holes," Moses said. To have that kind of super-computing power in Indiana at the disposal of researchers and, perhaps, companies will be invaluable, said David Johnson, president and CEO of BioCross- Plaintiffs claim they were overcharged millions of dollars after suppliers colluded to set inflated prices to charge buyers, a federal crime known as price-fixing G. Daniel Kelley an attorney for IMI, one of the largest concrete suppliers in Indiana, declined to comment on the judge's ruling. Barker said in her ruling that pursuing the case as a class action conserves judicial resources.

The government also pursued criminal charges against the concrete companies. In 2005, the U.S. Justice Department slapped concrete giant IMI with what then was the nation's largest antitrust fine in history $29 million for illegally driving up the price of concrete sold in the Indianapolis area. The price-fixing conspiracy came to light after an FBI investigation that included phone- and wire-tapping of conspirators, several of whom were sentenced to prison terms. Call Star reporter Jeff Swiatek at (317) 444-6483.

Concrete Government pursued criminal charges in case. From A1 can Concrete and Prairie Material Sales have already settled out of court for a total of $24 million. A fourth defendant, Hughey has filed bankruptcy. The $24 million in settlement money is being held in a bank account to be distributed to victims, Gilchrist said. The class is made up of 5,000 direct buyers of ready-mixed concrete, typically sold by the truck-load, from the defendants' Central Indiana plants.

The class is automatically created from company sales records. Buyers who don't want to take part in the lawsuit can opt out, Gilchrist said. Buyers include contractors, commercial builders, farmers and do-it-yourselfers. No municipalities are included because they don't buy concrete directly, Gilchrist said. and Patio Too! FALL SAVINGS! 30 to 50 off Discontinued Merchandise Love to sell? We want you! The Star Media, Advertising Sales Open House Thursday, Sept.

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