Friday, December 5, 1986/The Battalion/Page 3
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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.
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