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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 18, 1975)
.11 ralwr Major breakthrough Mixture means deeper dives Page 6 THE BATTALION WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, IV! A major breakthrough in brea thing mixtures has opened new frontiers for deep sea divers and produced an anti-cancer agent. Dr. William P. Fife of Texas A&M University’s Biology De partment believes “there is no reason why divers can’t use our hydrogen-oxygen mix to go deeper, stay longer, and come up faster.” The Office of Naval Research shares his confidence and has funded the project for an additional $22,000. Fife has been testing the mixture on himself and a menagerie of dogs, goats, and pigs in simulated dives to 1,000 feet for periods of five to six days, breathing the mixture with no ill effects. “Now divers are limited to work ing no deeper than about 600 feet,” Fife explained. “I plan to reach depths of 1,800 feet. By varying the mixtures, divers will be able to sur face and decompress in half the time now required to avoid getting the ‘bends’ from nitrogen bubbles form ing in the blood.” Practitioners of diving previously have avoided the combination of hydrogen and oxygen because it is a highly explosive compound. More recently though researchers found it was not explosive if the oxygen in Lignite coal taken from test well Samples of lignite coal were taken from a Texas Municipal Power Pool (TMPP) exploration well on June 4. TMPP’s current exploration is taking place in Grimes County around Singleton and Roan’s Prairie. Samples pulled from the well in dicated a four foot thick seam of lig nite at a depth of twenty-three feet and a ten foot seam located 150-160 feet below the surface. Odle said a ten-to-one ratio of overburden material depth to seam thickness must be maintained to be economical. This means that for every ten feet of material lying over a seam, the seam must produce a foot of coal, with three feet being the minimum thickness. If the com pany dug down fifty feet the seam must be at least five feet thick to be worth the money invested. The TMPP is working toward a 20,000 acre coal-producing area and already has lease options on 5,000 acres in Grimes County, said Odle. Surveyed housing mostly OK A survey of College Station’s housing conditions has been com pleted and presented to the city’s Planning Dept. The survey was conducted earlier this year by the Dept, of Urban and Regional Planning at TAMU and in cludes ratings of the structural con ditions of every dwelling within the College Station city limits as of April 1. The terms used to rate the struc tures were standard (those meeting College Station housing code provi sions), rehabilitable (those needing minor repairs), and dilapidated (those in apparent violation of the housing code). The TAMU Dept, classified 9.2 percent of the 3786 houses in Col lege Station as substandard. In terms of housing units, 6.8 percent of the 11,773 units are classified as substandard. The department also reported that there are 64 single-family resi dences, two duplexes, and one mobile home in the city classified as dilapidated. TAMU has best year legislatively Dr. Jack Williams, TAMU Presi dent, told the Bryan-College Sta tion Chamber of Commerce last week that with appropriations for the University running 48 percent above the current budget, this has been the University’s best year legislatively. Dr. Williams indicated special credit should be given to Senator Bill Moore and Representative Bill Presnal in attaining this achieve ment. Dr. Williams also discussed fu ture plans, projected growth and some of the problems involved with growth. The B-CS Chamber expressed a vote of confidence and thanks to Dr. Williams, his staff, the Texas A&M Board of Directors, Senator Moore and Representative Presnal and acknowledged their significant con tribution to the economic, educa tional and social atmosphere of the Bryan-College Station area. the mixture is held to less than five percent. Until now, according to Fife, “di vers had to play a dangerous game breathing mixtures of nitrogen, which acts as a narcotic at depths of 200 feet or more, and helium which affects the central nervous system deeper than 1,000 feet. Of the other options, compressed air limits a diver to approximately 200 feet and pure oxygen is toxic.” But the most dramatic aspect of the research is that exposure to the mixture seems to be an effective treatment for skin cancer with a dis tinct possibility the technique can be used to fight other malignancies. Fife and Dr. Malcolm Dole of Baylor University collaborated on the project and tested hairless al bino mice having squamos cell car cinoma, a form of skin cancer. The mice were exposed to a 2.5 percent oxygen and 97.5 percent hydrogen mixture in a sealed chamber pres surized at 122 p.s.i. in Dr. Fife’s laboratory. Mice subjected to the pres surized hydrogen-oxygen environ ment for up to two weeks had their tumors turn black, with some actu ally dropping off. Others seemed to shrink and be in the process of being pinched off, the researchers re ported. In addition to the diving studies, Fife is now experimenting with the technique on a normally fatal type of cancer which causes fluid to develop in the stomach. So far, the mixture applied under pressure appears to have prevented malignancy in the test mice, according to Fife. May weather wet; July drier May was the weather fireworks month, with thunderstorms, hail, high winds and more than 11 inches of rain in the Carters Creek catch ment area. May 4-5 furnished most of the ex citement. Along with the storms, it was accompanied by three inches rainfall. Easterwood Airport got 9.8 in ches for the month. The official Na tional Weather Service total made May the eighth wettest on record. An average of 10.99 inches rain was gauged by 29 weather observers in a research network operated by Texas A&M University’s Meteorol ogy Department. Excluding two six-inch readings at Kurten, the twin cities averaged 11.33. August, 1974, was comparable. Conditions more ideal for sunba thing are listed in the NWS 30-day outlook, through mid-July. It fea tures near normal temperatures and below average precipitation, less than 2.9 inches. Expected mean temperature for the period is 81 de grees. May rains placed parts of the area more than halfway toward the an nual average 39.21 inches here. The five-month total is about three in ches above average, but more than four inches under the 1968 record pace. Due to the localized nature of thundershowers, May rainfall amounts varied from observer to observer. The in-town low of 7.66 inches was measured in the 1100 block of S. Winter St. A 13.23 inch total for May was taken in the 400 block of Tauber St. At the former, rain fell on seven days; at the latter, 13 days. One mid-Bryan observer had measurable rain of .01 inch or more, on 15 days. His total was 11.16 inches. Clipper in Floridi The midshipmen of the Texas Maritime Academy pulled into Mayport, Florida Sunday after enjoying an unscheduled stop at the Thomas Jefferson National Park on Dry Tortuga Island in the Florida Keys. Satellite communications with the ship said that many of the 200 cadets got an opportunity to go skin-diving before the cruise proceeded on TAMU’s “Texas Clipper.” The cadets, including 14 women, will start a fire-fighting school Tuesday at the Mayport Naval Station. They are sched uled for departure June 20 with arrival in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, June 27. They remain there through June 30. The summer cruise shoved off June 8 with a sendoffby Robert J. Blackwell, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Marine Affairs, and numerous Galveston civic leaders. The converted 15,000-ton oceanliner will carry the students on a two-month, island-hopping cruise around the Gulf of Mex ico and the Caribbean. About half of the students are TMA ca dets and the others are participants in TAMU’s “Summer School at Sea.” The cadets operate the ship under the supervision of the academy’s officers and staff. Others earn up to six hours credit in mathematics, English, history and geography. They can also participate in scientific research on board. The itinerary for the two-month cruise of the “Clipper’ 1 includes Caracas, Venezuela; St. Nicholaas, Aruba; Kingston, Jamaica; Miami, Fla., and back to Houston August 3. The final leg to Galveston follows August 4. 1 1 ( aJ SKAGGS ALBERTSONS DRUGS & FOODS UNIVERSITY SO. AT COLLEGE AVE. OPEN 7 AM TIL MIDNITE DAILY OPEN 9 AM TIL MIDNITE SUNDAY TcouponJ EXL 20” FAN PORTABLE BREEZE BOX MODEL 11065 2 SPEED PRICE WITHOUT COUPON $16.99 EFFECTIVE JUNE 18 thru 21, 1975 ICQUPONj: HEDGE TRIMMER DUAL SPEED MODEL HT410 PRICE WITH COUPON PRICE WITHOUT COUPON *34.99 EFFECTIVE JUNE 18 thru 21, 1975