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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 1984)
Wednesday,January 25, 1984AThe Battalion/Page 3 Youth ranch to offer herapy, place to live By RENEE HARRELL Reporter Live-In Therapy for Youth, a program to help 10 to 17-year-olds overcome family problems, is scheduled to open April 7, says Richard "Dick” Brimer, director of re sidential services at Still Creek Ranch. The ranch, 13 miles north east of Bryan, offers 500 acres of rolling pastures, barns, pens, stock tanks and lives tock. “I’ve seen, firsthand, a tremendous need for a facility like this,” Brimer said. Two comfortable homes, a I swimming pool and a large re- j creation building are present ly on the ranch. In the future they plan to add more houses to the ranch and also to take in girls, Brim er said. House parents and five to seven boys will live in each house. Brimer is carefully plan ning the policies on admission and discharge for the state- licensed facility. The treat ment team consists of psycho logists, physicians, counselors, and a social worker. The boys will have personal treatment and group therapy. They will also have family visits. When both the youth and his family are ready, the youth will have weekend visits at home. The next step is home during the week and ranch visits on the weekend. This type of therapy is dif ferent than most because it is family-oriented. It doesn’t help to label the child an “emotionally disturbed youth”, but to have more emphasis on the family prob lem, Brimer said. Frances Rinehart, director of development, is in charge of the first community-wide “house shower” to set up housekeeping for the first home at Still Creek Ranch. Because federal or state funds will not be used for Still Creek Ranch, people who understand family life prob lems and want to be a part of building a healthy program can help. The “house shower” will be held 2 to 4 p.m. Feb. 12 at the College Station Community Center. The public is invited to select gifts for the ranch. Prof studies alternative fuels By SONDRA HOSTETLER Reporter Carbon fuel and a new en Brazos Valley Trailriders gear up for annual ride By KEVIN S. INDA Reporter nstic tom litical or mitudesli ufthe: sing adr to under is morel g than foil ml proti d that | Army a sstingagi linst de mies firei our m ith gret les mar srs. is editori r journi Usually when people see horses, wagons and a group of People sitting around a camp- Jire they think of a Western movie, but it also could be a local Bub called the Bra/os Valley railriders. Jerry Stuart, the club’s presi- Bent, says the club was started by a number of area residents who loutinely got together for trail- [ides each month. “We had been riding igether for some time before >e organized into a trailriding club,” Stuart said. One of the club’s annual acti vities is riding to Houston for the livestock show and rodeo, Stuart Taid. This year the club mem bers will leave College Station Feb. 14, on a 14-day horseback 'fide through the backroads of Texas that will take them to Houston for the event, he said. The trailride to Houston used to begin in Phelps, near Hunt- iville, Stuart said, where the loc- riders met another trailriding [roup, the Spanish Trail, and both groups rode to Houston together. “Last year we decided to leave from College Station a week ear ly and add another week to the trailride,” Stuart said. The Brazos Valley Trailriders has about 70 members, and Stuart expects about 40 mem bers to participate in the trail ride to Houston. He says a typical day on the trail begins at dawn and ends with the group sitting and eating around the campfire. The mem bers usually take a short time for lunch along the road, and cook their large meal, usually steak, chili or sausage, over the camp fire at night. The campfire is essential, Stuart said, since no chuckwa- gon is with the group until it reaches Phelps, where the group joins the Spanish Trail club. Stuart said members sleep in trailers or campers that they drive to the evening’s campsite before they begin riding each day. One large truck then takes the riders back to their horses, where they begin the day’s trail ride. Even though the trailride takes place on backroads, Stuart says spotters are placed at the beginning and the end of the trailride to alert and direct traf fic around the horses. Troy Yates, trail boss, is in charge of keeping people in line and within the rules set by the club. He says the trailride is a good way of relaxing and spending time with family. “This year could be a little cold, but if the weather is nice, everybody en joys it,” Yates said. gine design could be the com bination that will lead to a suc cessful coal-fueled engine, says a Texas A&M research engineer. Dr. William Harris, who is studying alternate fuels, said that through proper research an engine fueled by coal could be successfully developed. Changes would have to be made in both the engine and the com position of the coal fuel, he says. The research on coal-fueled engines that began in Germany during the early 1900s was en ded after World War II. Much of the information from this re search was either lost or des troyed over the past 30 years, according to a recent report from Germany on coal-fueled engines. Harris says continued re search in coal would be benefi cial because coal’s purified form, carbon, is renewable, unlike pet roleum-based fuel. “The idea of using renewable resources appeals to environ mentalists because the carbon dioxide is returned to the en vironment in a closed system,” Harris said. After purification, carbon is still about one-half the price of petroleum, Harris said. The coal-powered car could be driven from Texas to the East Coast and back on about $7 worth of coal fuel, he said. Pure carbon, a fuel with the consistency of powdered sugar, is more effective than coal parti cles, Harris says. However, after carbon is refined, problems still exist, roblems such as combus tion, erosion, and fuel injection, can be solved with a new engine design, he said. Harris hopes the fine powder of the carbon will be useful for fuel injection into the engine system. The powder, with a graphite base acting as a natural lubricant, should be easier to transport than the larger parti cles of coal, he says. Graphite in carbon also should retard erosion in the in ternal mechanism of the engine itself, Harris says. He expressed a hope that his new design idea will be useful against erosion. His design should enable the engine to operate without the in ternal friction of conventional engines, he says. Abrasion from the coal was one reason the tra ditional coal-fueled engine was unsuccessful. Dr. Jerald Caton, assistant professor of mechanical en gineering, learned through ex perimental computer models that the difficulty in combustion of coal could be reduced by a pilot flame. The initiator fuel would keep the flame burning, so a proper flame speed could be generated for adequate engine performance. Caton, a colleague of Harris, says that using coal fuel for an automobile probably is far in the future. The engine of a car rotates too fast for proper combustion with carbon, he says, but loco motive egines would be ideal for carbon fuel because of the heavy parts and lower speed of the en gine. Caton has tested Harris’ en gine design on a computer mod el. The design is based on a mod ification in the piston that pro tects the engine from being eroded by the coal particles. Harris and Caton emphasized that even though their idea appears to operate satisfactorily on a computer model, it still is necessary to test a working mod el of the engine. Complications in the design will show up in this model, Caton says. Both researchers say the problems of the coal-fueled en gine could be solved with time, money, and further research. Harris says that in the past lit tle interest has been shown in the development of the new engine design because of the great ex pense and time required. However, Caton says, the U.S. Department of Energy recently funded research for the project, and interest is beginning to pick up. evelopment oundation ‘Meeting the Needs of Texas ASM Today and Tomorrow” Office of Development Texas A&M University 610 Evans Library 845-8161 =XVC XX ide app left a bill loney < ’old givetj missing, j I assure!! happen i getting] SALE een noin 11 don'll] uisualc^l ve done i! 3 Days Only many' go larji Thurs., Frl., Sat. i and ini II the ? 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