Wednesday, January 29, 1986/The Battalion/Page 11
World and Nation
Blacks in South Africa
now returning to school
Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
— Black students ended two years of
school boycotts Tuesday and
streamed back to classes for the new
academic year on the strength of a
pact parents reached with the white-
led government.
Attendance was heavy as schools
reopened in urban centers including
Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town
and Port Elizabeth, where boycotts
cut attendance for much of 1984
and 1985.
On some days in recent months,
more than 200,000 black students
boycotted classes out of 1.7 million
enrolled in urban areas. The boy
cotts have been a central factor in 17
months of racial unrest that led to
the deaths of more than 1,000 peo
ple, most of them blacks.
Outside a school in Johannes
burg’s huge black township of So
weto, police used tear gas to break
up groups ot chanting students, resi
dents said. But there were no other
reports of trouble, and the fragile
accord appeared to have opened the
door to normalizing the long-trou
bled black schools.
Police reported the stabbing
deaths of four black men in a fight
between rival gangs at a squatter
camp outside Cape Town. Police
headquarters in Pretoria also ac
knowledged riot patrols shot dead a
15-year-old girl and a 35-year-old
man Monday in Kagiso, west of Jo
hannesburg.
The girl was slain after police
broke up a rally to debate whether to
return to school, one of several such
meetings banned by authorities. The
Kagiso youths decided to go to
school 1 uesday, but a black newspa
per noted the accord could be
threatened by such incidents.
Boycotts over black demands for
equal education with white children
started in early 1984 as part of the
protest against apartheid, the system
of legal racial segregation under
which 5 million whites deny the vote
and other rights to 24 million blacks.
A breakthrough came in late De
cember, when education officials ne
gotiated with the National Parents’
Crisis Committee, a group with
widespread backing from activist
youths.
Demands included the withdrawal
of soldiers from riot duty in the
townships, an end to the state of
emergency and the release of de
tained leaders as well as educational
grievances.
Study says elderly’s disuse
of mental skills causes loss
Associated Press
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — New
results from a study of elderly peo
ple indicate that the partial loss of
certain mental skills may be due
more to disuse than disease and can
be reversed with simple mental exer
cises.
A study of 229 members of Puget
Sound Group Health, a health main
tenance organization in Seattle,
showed that of those whose induc
tive reasoning and spatial orienta
tion skills had declined since 1970,
about 40 percent were able to re
coup the losses after five one-hour
training sessions.
The findings are important be
cause “in studies of later adulthood
the assumption has been made that
when decline begins to occur that it
is irreversible,” said researcher
Sherry Willis, a human development
associate professor at Pennsylvania
State University.
“I would say that much of what we
call decline is presumably not irre
versible; that what we call decline ap
pears to be, for many people ... a
function of disuse,” Willis said.
Some suggestions include work
ing crossword puzzles or playing
word games for inductive reasoning,
or woodworking or intricate needle
point for spatial orientation.
“I would say that much of
what we call decline is pre
sumably not irreversible. ”
— Sherry Willis, associate
professor at Pennsylvania
State University.
The study was conducted from
1983 to 1985 by Willis and K.
Warner Schaie.
Schaie began the Seattle Longi
tudinal study in 1956 while a doc
toral student at the University of
Washington.
Inductive reasoning, the ability to
see relationships or make inferences,
is used to comprehend what you
read, such as directions on a medi
cine bottle. Spatial orientation, liter
ally the ability to turn in your mind
two- or three-dimensional objects, is
necessary for reading road maps or
following instructions for assem
bling things such as furniture.
Researchers have found that on
the average these two cognitive skills
show an earlier decline, beginning in
the mid-60s, than other skills and
therefore give researchers a larger
sample population, Willis said.
The 229 people studied, who
ranged in age from 62 to 94, had
been tested in 1970 on those skills as
part of Schaie’s larger longitudinal
study.
Based on a comparison of results
from standardized tests of the two
cognitive skills from 1970 and prior
to the training, Willis found that
about 60 percent had declined, and
the rest remained stable.
After the five one-hour training
sessions, 40 percent of the decliners
had returned to 1970 levels and
about half “improved significantly”
on the post-training cognitive skills
tests, she said.
Mexicans seeking to fulfill federal orders
BUSINESS
Career Fair Banquet
February 4 at the HILTON
Cash bar at 5:30 Dinner at 7:00
Tickets on sale now thru January 31
BLOCKER LOBBY
Have dinner with the recruiter of your choice
ONLY $8.00
Watch The Battalion for more Business Career Fair Information
GIZMO'S
CAESAR
oresents 1
MIXED DRINKS AT N0RTHGATE!
HAPPY HOUR
Mon-Fri 4-8 Sat. All Day!
$1 00 Well Drinks $1 50 Call Drinks
750 Draught Beer
109 Boyett next to
Whole Earth
846-8223
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — With an 8,900-
foot cloud of smog hanging over the
city, government and private offi
cials held urgent meetings Tuesday
on how to fulfill federal mandates to
stagger working hours and reduce
automobile traf fic by one-fifth.
The Ecology and Urban Devel
opment Department issued the or
ders in response to a month-long
ollution blight being blamed for
eadaches, dizziness, queasiness and
intestinal problems among the city’s
18 million residents.
Daily temperature inversions have
trapped factory emissions and the
uncontrolled exhaust from 2.2 mil
lion vehicles in the mountain-ringed
city. Sustained winds of 62 mph (100
kmh) would be needed to blow the
smog away, according to scientists
quoted by the government newspa
per El Nacional.
Ecology Secretary Guillermo Car
rillo Arena announced the anti-pol
lution program Monday after tour
ing the city with President Miguel de
la Madrid. The central part of the
metropolitan area, known as the
Federal District, is a department of
the federal government.
The program calls for:
• Rearrangement of working
hours in government and private of
fices, stores and schools, beginning
in February, to spread out the rush-
hour.
• Restriction of private vehicle
use to six days a week, with every ve
hicle carrying a colored sticker to
identify the day it may not be used.
The move, to begin with sticker dis
tribution in about 10 days, is ex
pected to keep 450,000 cars off the
streets each day.
• A request that the state petro
leum monopoly Pemex switch to
non-polluting fuels in its plants in
the Federal District.
• Strict monitoring of factory
emissions and the probable transfer
of 32 factories, include cement
plants, out of the city by 1987.
Taxis will continue to operate un
restricted, in the hope that residents
will use mass transportation, the de
partment said. El Nacional said auto
exhausts contribute most of the pol
lution to the cloud, which it said has
averaged 8,900 feet in depth in re
cent days.
To avoid the dizziness, headaches
and general queasiness cause by the
pollution, health officials recom
mended that residents keep their
windows tightly closed. In many
homes, however, windows are fitted
with ventilation slats and cannot be
closed completely.
Health officials also urged that
drinking water, which normally
must be boiled before use, be boiled
with alcohol to combat the extra pol
lution.
Ill
-
Mimm
Westinghouse Electronic Assembly Plant has
immediate career opportunity for 2nd Shift
Electronic Assembly Personnel.
Excellent opportunity for part-time students, particularly
Engineering students, who need full-time employment.
Company benefits include:
• Continuous training
• Individual work stations
Excellent medical insurance,
paid holidays, paid vacation,
pension and savings plan, and
access to our fitness center.
Additional benefits for 2nd or 3rd shift employees include
Shift Differential Payment.
Westinghouse in College Station manufactures printed circuit boards for
defense radar systems. U S. Citizenship is required for all
positions. Applications are being accepted from
7:30a.m.-7:00p.m., 7 days a week.
3=3?*“ Making MS
@> Were
wesvng^ouse sla „on. ' * iy|0r\H I
78 07 East BVPas-C° 764 9 2200 * ^ ^ ^
LAST DAY!
C DOEtfltfCD
0US
* UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP
* NO hidden fees or contracts
* Classes held 7 days a week
BODY DYNAMICS
V 696 - BODY A