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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 1986)
Friday, December 5, 1986/The Battalion/Page 3 MMBaaaHHManMHBNBafeRionHKaHMaiaRnuanHBHMBHB'BMaBnnitrc State and Local QB Cities seek merry Christmas sales B-CS merchants say sales up I'oat art; i iim. as aboL'l ire on J nd shoif By Sandee Smith Reporter ■ i;.*] iM Mcrchantj; in the Bryan-College ll! Station area hope for an increase in larmedjMes every yeat when the Christmas eresliti shopping season begins. * over ini This year is no different, but it is firedkiBil to ° eai ^y to confirm reports of higher sales and employment in lo- cal stores. tewspaj “Every year you have a rise in em- lostagei ployment in tlie retail establish- [idnt IfBents.” said Hamp Paterson, labor j H^Barket analyst for the Texas Em ployment Commission. I “1 won't get the report for the first uent oftBirt of December until early Janua- , howetsB-” Paterson said, “but everything eil Ull , I’\e heard sounds promising.” in Hidfl Martha Mewis, marketing direc- f tor for Post Oak Mall, said the start flf the busy shopping season is en- ;ge StauBtiraging for the mall merchants. ‘jerastsiB “I think Bryan-College Station is killElniB’ing K 00( * business compared to ifHther cities,” Mewis said. “The mall lorne ' Has definitely crowded at lunch on Tie Friday after T hanksgiving and liere was standing room only in the tajoranHiod court. “I saw a picture of the Town and ountry Mall in Houston from Fri- jay and there were only about four leople in the picture. If I had to make a decision on the strength of our business by that pic ture, I'd say we are doing better than other areas in the state.” Preliminary figures were reported by some stores by comparing the ticket sales from the day after Thanksgiving in 1985 to this year, Mewis said. From those figures, the increases in some stores have been Bank of Bryan, said the volume of business from the commercial cus tomers increased noticeably in the past week. “If there was a real increase in business it could have a positive im pact,” Telg said. “Whether business will stay at this level for the next three and a half weeks remains to be “If I had to make a decision on the strength of our busi ness . . . Td say we are doing better than other areas in the state. ” — Martha Mewis, Post Oak Mall marketing director ager said. “I feel there was a consid erable increase over last year’s Thanksgiving weekend, though.” Milsap added that Dillard’s was hiring about the same amount of temporary help as last year. “We usually depend more on our regular employees,” he said. “They know the merchandise already. We just increase their hours during the holidays.” Astronauts ‘adapt’ to space as others may adapt to Earth per- Ills aw reported to be as much as 10 cent. Texas A&M economics professor Dr. Morgan Reynolds said the early signs for local business look good. “It looks like demand is high,” Reynolds said, “but it’s hard to tell how this will affect the local econ omy so early on in the season. “The bankers and merchants are in the middle of that part of eco nomics. The economists can go back and study the actual effects after the figures come in.” Ken Telg, senior vice president of operations for First City National seen. The oil economy has had such a harmful effect on business in the past year that merchants should re main realistic about a possible per manent increase in business, but this could be a beginning, Telg said. Greg Milsap, manager for Dil lard’s, said the Christmas holidays are the most important time of the year for the retail business. “It definitely has a big effect on the year-end figures for business,” Milsap said. “I’m not at liberty to give out exact figures on our sales,” the store man- Mewis said there has been an in crease in employees all over the mall. “The department stores and the food court have hired more help to work during this period,” she said. “T he temporaries are very impor tant to give customers the necessary attention.” She said she has been pleased with the success the stores have experi enced so far this year. “The weekend is usually the busi est time,” she said. “But the shop pers have been out in good force during this week, too. “The business usually drops off after Dec. 26, so these three weeks before Christmas will be very impor tant. “The after-Christmas sales can bring in as many customers as the Thanksgiving sales, though.” anel: African farming needs new methods By Olivier Uyttebrouck Stuff Writer At current growth rates, Africa’s bopulation will double to one billion jople by the year 2000 and already- declining food supplies are likely to become even leaner, panelists treed Thursday night. T think we have to be honest that here is something wrong with our lorkethic,” Nigerian Damien Ejigiri told the audience of about 30 Afri- I cans and Americans at a seminar ti- Bed “Africa: Facing the 21st Centu- ty,” sponsored by the African Smdents Association. “We have lost die 20th century and if we continue on the way we’re going . . . we will lose the 21st century too.” Dr., Wesley Peterson, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M, said that during the 1960s food production managed to stay ahead of the soaring popula tion. But today, about one-fourth of the food consumed in Africa is im ported and about one-third of this imported food comes in the form of foreign aid. Peterson described three types of explainations for the lagging food production: • The radical view: The slow growth in agricultural production is the legacy of Africa’s colonial past when the continent was divided up into illogical political divisions and made dependent on foreign powers. • Natural disaster: Drought, lo cust and other natural problems, compouded by civil wars and the po litical turmoil within countries is re sponsible for slow agricultural pro duction growth. • Policy view: The misguided policies of African governments have retarded agricultural produc tion. For example he says, many gov ernments keep food prices artifi cially low to keep down popular unrest and food riots in the cities. Peterson said there is truth in each of these views but he says west ern economists tend toward the pol icy view. The radical view is weak ened by the fact that most European powers withdrew from Africa be tween 1955 and 1965, he said. Nigerian Chibo Onyeji, an agri cultural economics graduate student stressed that industry can best serve African agriculture by devising methods and technology tailored to the unique conditions there. As examples, Onyeji says that or ganic fertilizers, made from plant and animal materials found in abun dance in Africa, should be favored over expensive imported chemical fertilizers which are difficult to use. By Julie Vass Reporter NASA astronauts must adapt to space travel just as individuals must adapt to situations on Earth, a NASA astronaut said Thursday at the Memorial Student Center. Dr. Bill Thornton spoke to an au dience of about 40 people at the Bi oengineering Department’s Grad uate Engineering Seminar. Thornton spoke from his experi ence on two space shuttle flights aboard the Challenger. There are numerous situations that the astronauts must face and adapt to when they travel through space, he said. During his first flight in 1983, Thornton studied how astronauts adapted to space motion sickness. Thornton said the sickness occurs when an object rotates around a per son at such high speeds that the per son begins to feel that he, rather than the object, is moving. Thornton described it as a “senses conflict.” Space motion sickness is by no means as bad as seasickness, he said, but it is quick, surprising and lasts periodically for about 36 hours. Af ter that time, an astronaut usually will build up resistance to motion sickness, Thornton said. He added that the sickness strikes about 40 percent of those who go on space flights. Other effects, Thornton said, in volve physical appearance. Sometimes, he said, astronauts grow as much as two inches in height during a flight. But this change is only temporary, Thornton said, and the astronauts return to their normal heights upon landing. Thornton said exercise on space flights is limited, and this negatively affected the astronauts. Astronauts would return and some would have trouble walking, running or even getting out of a chair, he said. Thornton invented a treadmill Dr. Bill Thornton that simulated walking in the Fiarth’s gravitational atmosphere to remedy the exercise problem. “It brings you back in better con dition and makes you feel good,” he said. Thornton said that although the treadmill is not mandatory for short space flights, it could be used in fu ture space stations. Dr. Wendell Mendell, a planetary scientist with the National Aeronau tics and Space Administration also lectured, saying that space stations are in the future and so is a manned base on the moon. Mendell currently is working with NASA’s Solar System Exploration Division on the building of a lunar base. “In a space station, people will have to learn how to live and work in space,” Mendell said. “There will have to be crews there constantly.” The moon can be used for several things, he said, ranging from re search and use of the moon’s re sources to colonization. “The moon is our kindergarten for learning to live in the rest of the solar system,” Mendell said. “Someday it will be common for you to know someone . . . who works in a space station,” he said. BUY :el 5 e direct sales fireworks M&V.W* I ^ AND SAVE!! fliv^ ORDER NOW FOR IMMEDIATE SHIPMENT FREE GIFT WITH ORDER!! 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