Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 10, 1977)
‘Ppears aboutn >d open[» binginlll prc# the 'Pletebj year. r ew equipment akes northern onstruction easy l THE BATTALION Page 7 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1977 United Press International NEW YORK — Construction work in Alaska is a race against time and the rigors of the Arctic winter but ultra-modern computer peripheral equipment is making it easier. Take the case of Litwin Corp., a Hous ton petrochemical construction subsidiary of Royal Little’s Amtel Corp. of Providence, R. I. Litwin has a big job underway at the appropriately named hamlet of North Pole, Alaska. “In that climate, if you miss a deadline or two between March and September, you’ll have to wait until the next spring thaw to make up the lost time -— if you have good luck, ’’ says LeRoy Fronk, direc tor of data processing for Litwin. And, he explained, today’s building methods, particularly those that must be employed in sophisticated petroleum and petrochemical projects, require the rapid transmission and digesting of vast amounts of data. “The problem until recently,’ he said, “was that by the time the data was gathered and processed, it frequently was outdated before management and the top engineers had time to react to it. This forced a contractor to resort to educated guesswork and often the guesses missed. ” One thing that had to be calculated was “local productivity. ” Litwin has engaged in sophisticated construction much around the world and it has discovered that the productivity of labor fluctuates greatly by area and so does machine productivity because of different conditions. Management back in Houston needs up to date information about productivity on the job in order to make decisions and transmit them to the men on the spot. For example, it is vitally important to keep abreast of all piping activity. “Piping is half the cost of any petroleum or pet rochemical building project,’’ Fronk said, “If you keep on top of the piping, you’re on top of the job.” Litwin has managed to do that on the job for Energy Co. of Alaska at North Pole by installing a key-diskette communica tions system made by Data 100 Corp. of Minneapolis. Fronk said the system has enabled it to process four times as much data on the job and do it in 48 hours, compared with up to three weeks for older computer systems. Litwin used to have the coded data from remote construction sites as far away as St. BY PLAYING PRICES GOOD THURSDAY, FRIDAY,fc$ATORDAY,AUGUST 11,12,&13,1977 PRIZE VALUE NO. OF ODDS FOR PRIZES ONE STORE VISIT ODDS FOR ODDS FOR 13 STORE VISITS 2S STORE VISITS 11.000 00 20 210.000 to 1 10.164 to 1 0.077 to 1 100 00 21S 10.036 to 1 1.503 to 1 751 to 1 20 00 400 0.333 to 1 710 to 1 369 to 1 6 00 1.430 2.037 to 1 220 to 1 113 to 1 2 00 4.ITS S00t»1 74 to 1 37 to 1 1 00 20.000 147 to 1 11 to 1 sit to i TOTALS 30 106 110 to 1 Sto 1 414 to 1 Thit fame taint playad in tha fifry-tmro (571 participating Piggly Wiggly atoraa Ipcatad in Northaaat Tanas. Southarn Arkansas. Was tarn Mississippi and Louisiana. IRLOIN Arift Proten Heavy Beef 4 Swift Proten Heavy Beef CHUCK STEAK • lb. $H STEAKS Fr()sh ED SAUSAGE Neuhoff Preferred SAUSAGE Bro "' n N s<lve H MEATS Neuhoff Preferred • • IES Banquet [$ 1 lb. pkg. k 99* 8 #2. pkj. 89* 99* 9 9 • • $ 8 oz. ctns. i SWISS STEAK Swift Proten Heavy Beef Shoulder cut >9 9 9 9 • lb. lb. Maryland Club GROUND COFFEE Banquet EVAPORATED MIlK'^ Cs BEST FLOUR 5 69< 9 9 9 FROZEN DINNERS jumbo 20* 103 ct. roll PAPER TOWELS TOMATO CATSUP ^ M “ nte £ VANILLA WAFERS BBQ SAUCE ICE CREAM Sunshine Kraft Piggly Wiggly 11 oz. box . 18 oz. btl. Vi gal. ctn. FROZEN FOOD SPECIALS Minute Maid $ a ORANGE JUICE. . . 3 V.V 1 49 Green Giant Whole kernel NIBLET CORN . .10 oz. pkg. THE FRIENDLIEST STORES IN TOWN ★ 2700 Texas Axe. South ★ 4300 Texas Axe. ★ 3516 Texas Ave. ★ 200 East 24th St. ★ 9 Redmond Terrace COLLEGE STATION and BRYAN, TEXAS mublefi&H Green Stamps every Tuesday withor more purchase. we welcome FOOD STAMP SHOPPERS Croix in the Virgin Islands or Russia sent to its Houston office, then key-punched and transmitted to United Computing Sys tem at Kansas City for processing. The new Data 100 Model 77 system al lows a lot of the essential work to be done right on the job in North Pole with the aid of a 256-character cathode ray tube before the data goes to Houston. Then it gets to Kansas City within three or four hours and is processed and the re sults are sent to North Pole and back to Houston the next day. “We know the data is virtually error- free when we first get it under the new system,” Fronk said — “There aren’t any unpleasant surprises three weeks later as there used to be.” And that, he said, means “neither Lit win nor the client is left out in the cold.” Young engineers receive awards Twenty-seven recent high school graduates were singled out for awards in August at the close of the 6th Engineering Concepts Institute (ECI) of Prairie View A&M Univer sity. Those honored were among about 160 enrolled in the program de signed to give early exposure to en gineering as a career and the course work required. Funding this year’s ECI were Aluminum Co. of America, Bechtel Corp., Bell Laboratories, Dow Chemical, Ex xon, General Electric Foundation, Mobil Oil and Xerox Corp. Selected as outstanding students in engineering communications were Harry Duffy of Crosby High School, Shirley Holland of Hempstead High, Samuel Kempt of Houston Kashmere, Annette Moore and Debbie Cosby of Houston Yates, and Melanie Ridley of Dennsbury High in Fairless Hills, Pa. Honored in engineering graphics were Keith Mouton of Beaumont Hempstead High, James Williams and Michael Mosley of Hempstead, LaShon Mitchell and Oliver Wool dridge of Houston Worthing, and John R. Williams of Leto High in Tampa, Fla. Awards in engineering concepts went to Robert Montgomery of Houston Kashmere, Keith Smith of Baytown Sterling, Alane Mavis of Houston Smiley, Michael Collins of Crosby, Walter Swindell of Dallas Carter and Ronald Robinson of McCall High in Tallulah, La. Engineering mathematics laurels were received by Smith, Cosby and Swindell, plus Michael Lightfoot of Fort Worth Dunbar, * Earnetta Moore of San Antonio Houston, Byron Lewis of Houston Kashmere, Rosalind Blacknell aVid Chiquita Davis of Houston Jones, and Brenda Sherrod of Cleveland High in Buf falo, N.Y. Funds supplied for community agency training Nationwide training of state edu cation agency personnel in com munity education has again been funded by Texas A&M University. Dr. Robert I. Berridge said seminars are planned in Washington, McAllen, Indianapolis and Salt Lake City. They will be conducted by Texas A&M’s Center for Community Education in Oc tober and January, April and June, 1978. Federal funding of $77,884 from the U.S. Office of Education (USOE) supports the program. It will involve state community educa tion directors from all 50 states. State grants will fund some direc tors’ participation. Directors from non-funded states will be supported through the Texas A&M Center budget. Berridge directs the Texas A&M center and heads the USOE grant program assisted by Mike Killian. The 1976 series of seminars in Kansas City, Denver, Atlanta and Seattle was conducted under a $70,080 USOE grant. Many veterans at A&M despite drop nationwide The number of veterans attending Texas A&M University on the GI Bill continues to run about 1,200 annually, a sharp contrast to large drops reported nationwide, said campus VA officials. The Veterans Administration stated last week that the November, 1976 enrollment figure was consid erably lower than the figures for November, 1975 because the 10- year eligibility period had just run out for 3.6 million veterans in the post-Korean and early Vietnam period. Texas A&M liaison spokesmen, however, noted that the number of veterans attending on GI Bill bene fits remains about the same as in the past — 1,200 in the long terms and 650-700 for the summer sessions. It remains to be seen if the number will significantly change this fall, they added. In the 33-year life span of the GI Bill school plan, nearly 17 million veterans have been educated since World War II. Even with the small er enrollment figures for last fall, said the VA, about 1.2 million per sons were using GI Bill benefits at that time. I