Page 4/The Battalion/Tuesday, August 7, 1984
A&M study shows drug programs help
University News Service
seem to
some chro-
Drug treatment programs
be successful in helping son
nic drug users kick tne habit, accord
ing to the results of a 12-vear follow
up study of almost 500 drug addicts
nationwide.
Of the 26 percent of the addicts
who reported they had not used il
licit drugs for the last year before the
follow-up, more than half said they
had been on a treatment program
when they quit, said Dr. Dwayne
Simpson, nead of the Behavioral Re
search Program at Texas A&M Uni
versity which is conducting the re
search — one of the few long-term
national studies of chronic drug
abusers.
Sponsored by the National Insti
tute of Drug Abuse, the study shows
that drug treatment programs may
be the key in disproving the old ad
age “once an addict, always an ad
dict.”
“These results do indicate that
drug treatment programs are suc
cessful. It is the strongest national
indicator that drug treatments are
effective,” said Simpson, professor
of psychology, who has Been in
volved in the research since it began
15 years ago.
The study also indicates that more
than half of the drug users who were
abstinent at the time of the six-year
follow-up also were abstinate at year
12.
In addition, figures from the
study show that 64 percent of the
group interviewed had refrained
from daily use of opiates for three
years or more.
“Three years is sort of the magic
marker. They’re pretty well on the
road to getting beyond the craving at
that point,” Simpson said. “These
data clearly demonstrate that people
can overcome addiction. It is not a
lifetime affliction.”
Addicts — primarily heroin ad
dicts — targeted for 12-year follow
up interviews were selected from a
group of drug abusers who were ad
mitted to treatment in 18 federally-
supported and community-based
programs in the Drug Abuse Re
porting Program during 1969-1972.
Of the 697 addicts targeted for
the 12-year study, all of them had
also been contacted for six-year fol
low-up interviews. Seventy percent
of the target group were relocated
and interviewed, eight percent were
deceased and two percent refused to
be interviewed. Twenty percent
could not be located, Simpson said.
Interviews, which were conducted
face-to-face by trained interviewers,
focused on histories of drug use,
drug treatment, alcohol use, crimi
nal involvement and employment,
he said.
Interviewers also questioned the
study participants about their rea
sons for beginning use of drugs and
their reasons for quitting.
“Hitting bottom” was the most
frequently given reason for deciding
to end daily use of drugs. After that
decision was made, many of the
chronic drug users said they turned
to treatment programs, Simpson
said.
“Drug addicts attribute a great
deal of importance to treatment, but
there is a need for more treatment
than can be provided. We’re still
about 40 percent below the 1980
funding level,” he said.
Simpson said he hopes the results
of this study will influence lawmak
ers to give more importance — and
funding — to drug treatment and
prevention programs.
Gay students
(Continued from page 1)
detail and then make a report to our
Board of Regents to determine a fu
ture course of action.”
After reading the ruling and de
ciding if the court’s reasoning is
sound, the University will make a de
cision about appealing the ruling.
Hajovsky said that he thinks there is
a pretty good likelihood the Univer
sity will appeal the ruling.
Roberts said that the group
planned to file for recognition Mon
day, but the filing was delayed be
cause of difficulties arising in getting
in touch with GSS board members.
The group will file for recognition
by Thursday at the latest, he said.
Roberts said that GSS is a service,
not a social organization. It is de
signed to provide services to the esti
mated 2,700 to 3,000 homosexual
students at Texas A&M. The esti
mate is based on reports that about
10 percent of the population is ho
mosexual, Lenny DePalma, presi
dent of Alternative, said.
Alternative is an off-campus orga
nization which provides political, ed
ucational and social services to the
members of the homosexual com
munity in the Brazos Valley area.
Members include gay faculty, staff,
graduate students and residents, De-
Palma said.
“We’re not promoting homosex
uality,” DePalma said, “we are pro
moting the acceptance of it.”
Alternative and the Texas Human
Rights Foundation (THRF) have
provided financial and moral sup
port to GSS during the seven-year
court battle.
“This is about public education
and overcoming the myths and ste
reotypes about gays,” said Thomas J.
Coleman Jr., president of THRF.
Some of GSS’s programs include
the Gay Line, a phoneline staffed
with aavisers to give medical, legal
and pyschological help. The Gay
Line is not a dating service, Roberts
said.
Other programs include a coun
seling service and a roommate serv
ice.
“Basically, we’re asking for the
same thing accorded to any other or
ganization,” Roberts said.
Organizations that are recognized
by the University may have use of
things such as University facilities
and some University services such as
mail and copy services, said Dr. John
J. Koldus, vice president for student
services.
Organizations may have a student
account, request to use University
vehicles, advertise on campus and
use on-campus mail. Recognized or
ganizations also may request budget
support. But Koldus said organiza
tions are not guaranteed funds.
In normal circumstances, recogni
tion of organizations is based on
whether the organization duplicates
another group and if it is predomi
nately a student organization.
Slouch
By Jim Earle
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Computers
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(Continued from page I)
To solve the problem, he created
a paper card with punched holes to
relay electrical charge. The original
card had 45 columns and round
holes, and was the size of dollar bill.
The card currently used was de
signed in 1928 by the International
Business Machinery Corp.; it has 80
columns and rectangular holes. It’s
the same size as the 1880 card; the
dollar bill size shrunk. Punched card
equipment caught on, and by the
1930s was widely used for business
data processing.
The ideas behind Hollerith’s
punched cards were not better than
those of Babbage or Liebniz, but
technology had finally caught up,
and the ideas could be implemented.
The computer race had begun.
The first electromechanical com
puter was developed in 1939 by
Howard Aiken of Harvard. The
problem of financing, which hin
dered earlier inventors, was easily
solved. IBM financed construction
of the Mark I with money from its
advertising department.
The first electronic computer was
the Electronic Numerical Integrator
and Calculator. ENIAC was devel
oped during World War II for calcu
lating bombing tables. However, the
machine wasn’t finished until two
months after Japan’s surrender.
Both the ENIAC and Mark I were
externally programmed. Techni
cally, they were only calculators — a
machine must have an internally
stored program to be a computer.
But external programming, or cod
ing, came to mean more than just a
technical dividing line for names. It
was an almost unbeatable barrier be
tween the machine and the math.
Even though the ENIAC could add
two numbers in 1/5,000 of a second,
it was a task to write the addition
program.
Dr. Bruce McCormick, who heads
the computer science department
here, was working with the Univer
sity of Illinois’ ILLIAC III, when the
ILLIAC I, another externally pro
grammed machine, was being
phased out. He remembers how
much trouble it was to code instruc
tions in machine language, which
was what the ILLIAC I used:
“The ILLIAC I’s instructions
were punched by hand, with a hole
or space for each instruction. With
so much information going, people
often made mistakes. They soon
learned to glue the little punches
back in the holes to correct mistakes.
instead of starting over. Within a
year, though, everyone used assem
bly language; it was too hard to glue
back those punches.”
Besides being difficult to pro
gram, the early machines were dan
gerous. The machinary for the
ENIAC filled a large room with its
18,000 vacuum tubes, and it ran on
140,000 watts of power — enough
? ower to play a stereo for a year.
he tube-run machines became
more dangerous when the second-
generation computers came out.
The second-generation machines
ran on low-voltage transistors.
“The ILLIAC I had 300-volt lines
going around it,” McCormick says.
“Touching that will kill you. When
they switched to transistors, which
operate on 10 to 15 volts, the techni
cians became used to moving their
hands across the new machines.
When the technicians switched back
to repair the tubes, they forgot to be
cautious.”
the odd form of self-reproduction.
Anothef drawback for computers
was their hostile reception, a result
of the artificial intelligence labs, he
AI, the technology of “ma-
says.
chines who think,” was the most
publicized and criticized area of
computer technology. People feared
Public opinion wasn’t the only old
barrier opposing computer creators;
the current technology once again
slowed progress. But three major
developments in the 1950s helped
solve some of those problems. The
first development was the magnetic
core memory, which allowed lower
cost and faster access, and was more
reliable than the earlier tube mem
ories. Second, the higher level lan
guages were developed, such as the
Formula Translating system, or
FORTRAN, which allowed easier
communication with the machines.
Now a programmer could type in a
language similiar to English, instead
of a series of spaces and holes. The
computer had to translate FOR
TRAN to machine language. The
original FORTRAN was difficult to
learn; the language contained illogi
cal features, much like the irregular
verbs and strange spellings in En
glish. Another drawback of early
languages was their machine depen
dency. Each type of computer in
stalled needed another form of the
language. The third development
was the attempt to create an operat
ing system that would allow several
people to use the computer at once.
With these advances, the com
puter race was paced faster.
The general public, however, was
still unaware of computers except
for a few Sunday supplement stories
about “giant brains.’ 5
“People miss the fact that this field
has been crazy since 1946,” McCor
mick says. “Tne rate of growth has
become more noticable because
there are more people in the field. I
remember when Jim Snyder, the
chairman of the computer science
department at the University of Illi
nois, held a meeting for the Associa
tion of Computing Machinery. The
organization was so small tnat he
asked them to his house for cocktails
afterwards. Now the group has more
than 80,000 members.”
he cor
Wales,’
Burt
the field. The first transistor.: orrhagi
computer was the IBM 7090.1 grief
addition time for the IBM 70
4!/2 microseconds, compared to
microseconds for its vacuumti
twin, the IBM 709. The Com
Business Oriented Languit
known as COBOL, which war,
signed to handle business pn
instead of science problems,also*
developed during the second j
ation.
around
Burt
said th<
Celign*
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a year.
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peopl
field grew, so did the number of cor
porations. IBM, which started the
field with Mark I, now had competi
tion from RCA, UNIVAC, Under
wood and NRC. With the growth of
the field came the death of the first-
generation tube circuitry. By the
1960s the tranistor had taken over
He ^
The third generation of com; ,
ers was announced by IBM ini!'- T a ,B crs ’,
Advances were made in the area
printed and integrated ciroii
which made computers
Other advances were made
use of time-sharing and multii
gramming, which basically a
more than one user on a compiit I “ d / c
at a time. Not only did electronite r . ate
vices become faster, they alsow 3 llr f lln l
more reliable, more compacl r
less expensive. The third general
brought a new public awareness
United
man w
The
funera
Thursi
ments
day af
CA I IV W C* C/I1V. Cl TT Cll vIIVJJ ' ;.L -m, .
what these computers could do,ai i !
« , 1 min i r
the fears began to grow.
(Tomorrow: The present usa
computers.)
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