The Battalion
ol. 83 No. 25 GSPS 045360 10 pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, October 5, 1987
iarthquake’s aftershock jolts California
■
■LOS ANGELES (AP) — A sharp
Rershock from last week’s severe
jolted Southern Califor-
i before dawn Sunday, causing at
1st one death and dozens of inju-
[s, damaging buildings, knocking
power and sending jittery resi-
Ints into the streets.
Ilhe quake, centered in suburban
isemead about eight miles north-
st of downtown Los Angeles, reg-
sred at 5.3 on the Richter scale of
aund motion, Don Kelly of the
S. Geological Survey said.
At the California Institute of
Technology the quake was measured
at 5.5, according to a spokesman,
Robert Finn.
The 3:59 a.m. quake was the 22nd
aftershock registering more than 3.0
since Thursday’s quake, which mea
sured 6.1 on the Richter scale and
caused six deaths and more than $75
million in damage.
Sunday’s shock, centered about
two miles west of Thursday’s, was
felt 40 miles west of Los Angeles in
Ventura County and 100 miles south
in San Diego. It was followed by
three tremors measuring 3.0 or
more within four hours.
43,000 homes suffered power
outages, and many residents, some
in bathrobes, gathered outside
apartments and houses, waiting for
more shocks. Others, camped out in
a downtown parking lot, said they
had been there since Thursday.
Mildred Robbins, 66, of Arcadia,
was pronounced dead at 5:14 a.m. at
Arcadia Methodist Hospital after
going into full cardiac arrest, admin
istrative supervisor Terry Pisenti
said. Efforts to revive her failed. The
cardiac arrest was accredited to the
shock the elderly lady received from
the tremor that shook her home.
In suburban Whittier, where hun
dreds of homes were damaged and
30 buildings collapsed Thursday,
residents who had been in overnight
shelters were evacuated to a lighted
baseball field. 500 people were
housed in eight of the available Red
Cross shelters.
California Medical Center, about
a mile south of downtown Los An
geles, sustained some structural
damage and power to the complex
was lost. The center was operating
on emergency power, nursing su
pervisor Elizabeth Adams said.
The quake required that an “un
usual event” be declared at the
coastal San Onofre nuclear power
plant, midway between Los Angeles
and San Diego, but the two operat
ing reactors were not damaged,
Southern California Edison spokes
man Dave Barron said.
Chunks of concrete fell from a
bridge over the southbound lanes of
the Pasadena Freeway, closing two
lanes. Small rockslides occurred else
where along the freeway that runs
northeast from Los Angeles. The
eastbound 91 Freeway was closed
due to buckling of the roadway, the
California Highway Patrol reported.
\&M scientists work on mind-controlled devices
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By Marie L. McLeod
Reporter
In the futuristic film “Firefox,’
int Eastwood operates a high-tech
Realistically, such ideas exist only
laboratories or in the imagination.
Producers of science-fiction films
(many of their ideas from projects
searchers are working on and
ose ideas are not that far off in the
In fact, Texas A&M researchers
e working on thought-controlled
1 "vices similar to the ones in the
ovie.
In a project called Advanced
xhnologies: Physiological Control
stems, researchers are trying to
id an application of human per-
rmance technology that will enable
[em to produce a control system
utilizes physiological variables,
e half Arl»| vs D r Charles Shea, chairman of
ic Elouise Beard Smith Human
hformance Laboratories.
iss on a playtl
an inchortwooil
recalled. 'Hi(| funds for the project are awarded
ft a catchup oil the University from Advanced
h our personneliechnology Grants allocated by the
sinting game tor|e!tas Legislature in two-year sets,
easaid.
The research program received
■20,000 for the first year and
100,000 for the second, he said.
The funds are allotted to various
jeets of the research program
[rough the bioengineering depart-
ent’s Human Systems Engineering
iboratory, he said.
“The research is a set of multidis-
fclinary projects,” Shea said.
He and Dr. Bill Barnes, both
alth and physical education pro-
Issors, are working in conjunction
Photo by Marie McLeod
Joe Signorile, left, and Jay Williams, graduate as- partment, try to develop a robot that simulates
sistants in the health and physical education de- human movement in response to a muscle signal.
with researchers from a variety of
disciplines.
Barnes and Shea are studying the
execution of simple commands to
robots on the basis of eye movement
and electromyography (EMG), an
electrical impulse resulting from
muscle movement, he said.
Currently, the eye-tracking sys
tems are expensive and require that
the head be relatively stable or care
fully monitored, Shea said. They
hope to eventually eliminate such
constraints.
They also are studying ways of us
ing eye positioning to get responses
on a computer screen or to guide a
wheelchair.
They are in the developing stages
of designing an application that will
enable handicapped people to use
eye movement for flipping switches
or turning pages of a book, Shea
said.
Electromyography is utilized with
prosthetic limbs and for simple con
trols that would be used on a num
ber of different machines, he said.
The electrical activity in the mus
cle would give off impulses. Then
the machinery would sense it, do a
signal process and transfer the im
pulse to something else, such as an
artificial limb, a wheelchair or a com
puter screen, he said.
A lot of their research is done
through the use of teleoperated ma
chines, Shea said.
“A teleoperator is a general-pur
pose, dexterous, man-machine sys
tem that augments man by enhanc
ing and projecting his neural-
muscular capabilities across distance
and through physical barriers,” Shea
said.
A simple example of this type of
machine is an automobile, because
man must use his senses and cogni
tive abilities to react to any given sit
uation, he said.
On the other hand, the auto
mobile aids man with its strength,
power, speed and endurance, he
said.
“A robot can be much stronger or
it can be 1,000 times smaller than
man,” Shea said.
Machines can function in adverse
conditions because they are
stronger, steadier and adaptive in
size, he said. Therefore, they may be
valuable in microsurgery or in exte-
mely adverse conditions in which
man can not survive.
Others involved in the research
include Dr. Gerald Miller of the Hu
man Systems Engineering Labo
ratory.
Miller and the lab assistants are
concerned with the use of voice con
trol, Shea said.
A computer can detect and make
use of words enabling it to elicit
some sort of response such as ma
nipulating a computer screen and
hopefully, someday moving a wheel
chair, the researcher said.
Finally, Drs. Bill Klemm and Ste
ven L. Peterson of the College of
Veterinary Medicine and the Col
lege of Medicine, respectively, are
studying the electrical impulses elic
ited from the brain during interac
tion with a control device, he said.
Through the use of an electroen
cephalograph, a machine that re
cords brain activity, they are able to
determine a person’s thought proc
ess and cognitive state of perfor
mance, Shea said.
A computer program is limited to
repeating only functions that it has
been programmed to do, he said,
whereas, with the use of physiolog
ical electrical acitivity, the robot can
be watched and movements can be
altered.
“Man needs the machine’s size,
strength, endurance and resistance
to hostile environments, while the
machine is brought to life by man’s
perceptual and cognitive ability to
provide flexible and adaptive con
trol,” he said. “It’s a symbiotic rela
tionship.”
)tudy provides statistics on enrollment
Student numbers rank highest at A&M
By Lee Schexnaider
Staff Writer
Texas A&M had the state’s largest
icrease of enrolled students from
977 to 1986, according to a report
leased last week.
The report, presented at the
exas Higher Education Coordinat-
Board meeting Friday af-
moon, shows that between the fall
If 1977 and the fall of 1986, 21
|exas universities had an increase in
rollment, while 10 universities ex-
rienced a decrease.
A&M’s enrollment increased 21
rcent over the nine-year period —
om 28,848 in 1977 to 34,940 in
86, These figures do not include
rollment in the veterinary and
edical graduate programs.
The growth of 6,092 students at
!&M represents the largest number
crease in the state, but not the larg
est percentage increase. The largest
rcentage increase was 71 percent
rLamar University at Port Arthur,
here enrollment increased from
Ip to 1,448 students.
■ Enrollment at the University of
iexas increased from 41,660 to
46,140 in the nine years — an in-
Pease of 11 percent. The average
Icrease for universities was 28.3
Icrcent, according to the report,
ihich was presented by Dr. Bill San
ford, the board’s assistant commis-
Pner for university and health af
fairs.
Universities that showed only a
small increase or decrease were clas- trends that we could observe in the
sified as stable, said Janis Monger, enrollment patterns in higher edu-
the Coordinating Board’s director of cation,” Sanford said,
public information. Monger said the board’s staff also
“As a preparation for doing that (enrollment caps), the
board asked us to first report to them on the trends
that we could observe in the enrollment patterns in
higher education. ”
— Dr. Bill Sanford, assistant commissioner for
university and health affairs
The “stable” figures included six
universities, where increases ranged
from a 5 percent increase for Texas
Tech University to 1 percent de
creases for East Texas State Univer
sity at Texarkana and the University
of Houston at University Park.
Of the 10 institutions classified in
the enrollment decrease category,
Texas A&M at Galveston had the
smallest decrease at 8 percent — its
enrollment dropped from 572 to
524 students.
Sanford said the study was done
because of provisions in House Bill
2181 that indicate the Texas Higher
Education Coordinating Board may
put enrollment caps on senior insti
tutions in Texas.
“As a preparation for doing that
(enrollment caps), the board asked
us to first report to them on the
is going to contact other states with
capped enrollment to find out how
they went about it.
“In the near future the Commis
sion of Higher Education is going to
appoint an advisory committee with
representatives from the different
institutions of Texas,” Monger said.
“They will recommend to the board
what criteria to consider and what
timetable to consider when ap
proaching the whole issue.”
Sanford said he has received in
formation regarding enrollent from
Massachusettes and Maryland but
has not yet analyzed the informa
tion.
“We will be definitely talking to
those folks and find out how they
did it,” he said. “We want to see if
our plans or our thoughts about how
we might do it track their experien
ces.”
He said studies on enrollment
forecasts are done every few years
and the present figures he is using
are from 1986 and will be updated
in 1988.
“We will have up-to-date fore
casts, which I suspect will change
somewhat since the economy has
changed,” he said.
Sanford said many Texas institu
tions are probably going to grow
rapidly, while at the same time oth
ers will decline in enrollment. That
pattern, he said, causes the state
some problems.
“Institutions that are growing rap
idly ask the state for a lot of additio
nal money, millions of dollars in ad
ditional money, for new buildings
and resources to support those new
students,” he said. “At the same time
those (institutions) that are declining
are having to mothball existing
buildings and get rid of faculty
members and other folks they can’t
support.”
Sanford said he does not know all
the reasons for changing enroll
ments, but not enough information
is available to decide on how the
Coordinating Board should act.
“We have something of a jump in
enrollment on a lot of campuses this
year, which is probably related to the.
economy,” he said. “Because it is a
traditional pattern that when the
economy is bad and people are out
of work, many of those folks will go
back to college. But that doesn’t
mean they will stay there . . . we
don’t know if the numbers are going
to be a trend.”
A few reasons why some of the
schools are losing students is simply
because of where they are located,
Sanford said. Population shifts in
the state have shuffled college stu
dents away from some campuses and
toward others, so some institutions
are straining at the seams.
“There has been a lot of growth in
campuses in the state over the last
several years and we are over
grown,” Sanford said.
The problem of the disproportio
nate enrollment in universities was
addressed by the Select Committee
for Higher Education, Sanford said.
“The Select Committee for
Higher Education was the blue rib
bon committee that operated in the
interim period between the last two
legislative sessions,” he said. “They
took a very hard look at that (enroll
ments). But when they proposed to
close some campuses, the political
and citizen response was so strong
against it they backed off from that
and did not take to the Legislature
any recommendations to close any
specific campuses.
“So I would have to guess it is very
difficult to close a campus. I person
ally would predict that they probably
will not be closed. If they are closed
it will probably not come from ac
tions at the state level because the
pressure is simply too great.”
fudge acquits 97.7 percent of accused drunken drivers
| HOUSTON (AP) — During a six-month
riod this year, a judge acquitted 97.7 per-
nt of all the accused drunken drivers who
appeared before him after opting to waive
■ial by jury, records show.
I Forty-three defendants chose to be tried by
the judge alone and 42 of them were found
ijinocent in proceedings the police call “mock
■ials,” the Houston Chronicle reported.
II In many of the 43 trials, prosecutors were
denied the option of calling witnesses, the
newspaper said. Intoxilyzer tests, regardless
of how strong the findings, were disregarded
by the judge, whose verdicts are based almost
exclusively on videotapes made of defendants
after their arrests.
In September, County Court-at-Law Judge
Bill Ragan not only acquitted a man who
flunked an intoxilyzer test after leaving the
Astrodome, he criticized the arresting offi
cers for “killing (the) American tradition” of
drinking beer at a ball game, the Chronicle
reported.
Criticism of Ragan’s novel approach to set
tling DWI court trials doesn’t faze the judge.
He has faced considerable heat on numerous
subjects during his 22 years of presiding over
such misdemeanor cases.
Of 72 people who opted during the March-
August period to be tried by juries in Harris
County’s 14 misdemeanor courts, only 10
were convicted.
No other court-at-law judge comes close to
Ragan’s record. Compared to his 42 acquit
tals, only Court-at-Law Judge Don Hendrix
approached the record with 18 acquittals and
no convictions.
The Houston Police Department’s 14-
member DWI Task Force calls Ragan’s court
proceedings “mock trials” and “moot court
competition.”
The breath-test strikes Ragan as such an
odious instrument that, he said, he tries to
disregard it altogether at DWI trails, pre
ferring instead to rely on videotaped images
of the defendant’s actual behavior.
Congress:
Publicity jobs
for Contras
were illegal
WASHINGTON (AP) — An
office within the State Depart
ment engaged in an illegal, covert
“white propaganda” effort to
generate support for the Reagan
administration’s policies in Cen
tral America, according to con
gressional investigators.
Since it was created in 1983,
the department’s Office of Public
Diplomacy for Latin America and
the Caribbean at times arranged
news media interviews for leaders
of Nicaragua’s Contra rebels and
generated opinion articles oppos
ing Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista
government for placement in ma
jor media outlets while carefully
concealing its own role in the
publicity effort, according to in
vestigators for the General Ac
counting Office, Congress’ inves
tigative arm.
For example, a March 11, 1985
opinion column in the Wall Street
Journal on the offensive threat
posed by Soviet attack helicopters
in Nicaragua was attributed to
Rice University Professor John F.
Guilmartin Jr. GAO said Guil-
martin’s status as a paid consul
tant to the public diplomacy of
fice and the office’s collaboration
on the article apparently were not
disclosed to the newspaper for
the article.
The GAO concluded that the
activities “were misleading as to
their origin and reasonably con
stituted ‘propaganda’ within the
common understanding of that
term,” and violated a legal ban on
use of federal money for propa
ganda not authorized by Con
gress.
The six-month GAO investiga
tion also turned up documents
seen by investigators as relevant
to Congress’ Iran-Contra probe,
but which were not turned over
by the White House under a
sweeping request for all docu
ments that could have a bearing
on the Iran-Contra investigation.