Church members attend 2005 World Youth Day...

Church members attend 2005 World Youth Day

More than 90 young Catholics from Orange County are on their way

to Cologne, Germany, for the 20th annual World Youth Day.

The Diocese of Orange has organized the largest group in its

history to attend the event, which begins on Aug. 19. St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Costa Mesa has the largest

contingent.

World Youth Day includes prayer sessions, ceremonies, classes and

youth social events.

The youth from St. John church, who started raising money for the

trip two years ago, have brought in more than $35,000 to cover travel

costs, according to the Diocese of Orange.

OCPAC announces

new board members

The Orange County Performing Arts Center has elected four new

board members -- Active Living International CEO David Collins, Los

Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson, corporate advisor Louis

A. Delmonico and Hanford Hotels Chairman Donald E. Sodaro.

Collins, whose company specializes in retirement resorts, also

serves as a developer of retirement communities in Spain, Mexico and

the Netherlands. He is an active member of the National Assn. of Home

Builders and has been a member of the Philharmonic Society of Orange

County for more than 30 years.

Johnson, who joined the Times in 2000 as senior vice president and

general manager, earlier served as president of the educational book

company Landoll Inc. His other newspaper credits include tenures at

the Orlando Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune.

Delmonico, a longtime consultant to CEOs and senior management,

has held executive positions for CBS Audio Products, the General

Electric Company, JVC and Matsushita. Locally, he has served as

chairman of Orange County’s Forum for Corporate Directors and has

been on advisory boards at Chapman University and UC Irvine.

Sodaro, whose hotel management company is headquartered in Newport

Beach, previously worked for Sixpence Inns of America and Motel 6. He

currently chairs the board of trustees at Chapman University.

UCI gets chemical bonding center grant

UC Irvine chemistry professor Shaul Mukamel has received a

$1.5-million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish

a chemical bonding center on campus.

The foundation presented awards to three institutions this week, a

tradition that it began last year. The other recipients were Columbia

University and the California Institute of Technology.

Each of the three centers will tackle a specific problem of modern

chemistry. The UCI center will examine the real-time inner workings

of molecules, with the goal of illuminating such chemical events as

the making and breaking of chemical bonds and the gain and loss of

electrons.