Page 4 The Battalion Thursday, March 23,1989 AGGIE HOSTESSES Organizational meeting for Aggie Hostesses! If you would enjoy helping Texas A&Af football recruit pro spective athletes please join its on Monday^ March 27 7:30 p.m. MSC Room 225 Applications or information avaiCabCe at footbaCC office, 9th floor Rudder Tower. 845-1241. Don’t You Hate this Bryan/C.S. Water? Municipal Water Users and Bottle Water Users ATTENTION We will provide you a 7 day Free Trial using our Water Treatment System ^Removes chlorine, bad taste, odor ^Reduces undissolved particles Cflnhibits bacteria growth (within the unit) Call Today For Your Free Trial or More Information Nature’s Way 846-4540 Hair & Tanning Salon 846-8663 846-7993 European Tanning Beds $39 95 Perm & Cut Ur>ntologist« 'ire r^luct^nt to look at fhe= v'«nal and auditory signals as seductive or attractive,” Bakker said. But rapid reproduction and growth are important to rapid evolution, he said. “If you look at the fossil bone record of a dinosaur and compare it to a cold-blooded tortoise, which takes 40 to 50 years to mature, you will find that a dinosaur grows and matures much, much faster,” he said. “In the physiology of growth, dinosaurs have dense vasculari zation that occurs only in warm-blooded, large mam mals today.” Bakker said dinosaurs such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex had snake-like eating habits, swallowing prey up to one-fifth of the animal’s 10,000-pound weight. This re futes the previously held beliefs that the Tyrannosau rus ripped it’s prey with razor sharp teeth. “The T-Rex could expand it’s head and jaw like birds and snakes,” Bakker said. “And snakes are the fastest evolving creatures on earth.” Dinosaur footprints show bird-like patterns with quicker speeds than previously believed, he said. The fleet-of-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex could reach speeds of 40 miles per hour. Footprints also show adults con stantly surrounding their young, indicating maternal investment. Birds are the only creatures with a separate optimal canal, present also in the skull fossils of the T-Rex. “Dinosaurs are in fact not extinct because the birds are their relatives,” Bakker said. A scientific lecture, “Suboptimal Evolution,” will be given by Bakker at noon Thursday in Room 601 Rud- Continental: Attendant’s strike not disrupting flight schedules HOUSTON (AP) — Continental Airlines officials preparing for heavy Easter travel dismissed the ef fects of a flight attendants’ strike Wednesday, saying the walkout is not disturbing service despite union claims of delays and cancellations. The company also claims the strike was called at the request of the Eastern Airlines Machinists, who went on strike over contract disputes March 4. Miami-based Eastern, which has filed for bankruptcy pro tection, has been virtually shut down after its pilots and flight attendants honored the Machinists strike. Both Eastern and Continental are owned by Houston-based Texas Air Corp. For the second time in three days, Lewis Jordan, Continental’s chief operating officer and executive vice president, called a news conference to refute claims made by the Union of Flight Attendants. “We believe that the traveling public during this busy holiday sea son has a right to know the truth,” said Jordan, who maintained that the strike which began Monday morning is not disturbing service. He provided a chart indicating the carrier has had an average 27 da ily cancellations out of 1,400 total flights system-wide from March 1-19 and an average of 12 cancellations daily Monday and Tuesday. “I hasten to add that is for all of our cancellations whether it be a me- r or all of our cancellations. . . not one of (them) is as a result of a shortage of a flight attendant or crew member.” — Lewis Jordan, Continental CEO chanical cancellation, a weather cancellation or any other cause,” Jor dan said. “And not one of those cancellations is as a result of a short age of a flight attendant or crew member.” Philip Hobbs, a spokesman for the flight attendants union, however, contradicted Jordan’s statistics say ing there have been numerous cancellations and delays caused by the walkout. “Obviously, they’re going ahead and saying that any flight cancelled is not because of crews,” he said. “E- verything is being coded as a me chanical delay,” said Hobbs, who could not provide any figures for the number of delays and cancellations caused by the three-day strike. Jordan also boasted the Houston- based carrier registered a 99.3 per cent completion rate Monday and Tuesday on its scheduled flights, better than their usual goal of 98.3 percent. But Hobbs, a Continental flight attendant for six years, questioned the company’s completion rates. “It’s hard for me to believe,” he said. “Under normal operations it has never been at that rate. 1 can’t remember us being in the high 90s in normal situations.” Continental and union officials also differed drastically on the num ber of attendants not reporting to work. Hobbs claims 1,200-1,300 atten dants have walked off the job, while Continental said only 180 were strik ing. Doctors re-evaluate profit-sharing system EL PASO (AP) — A partnership of about 140 doctors that owns two El Paso hospitals is re-evaluating the way it shares profits with doctors for referring privately in sured patients to the hospitals. El Paso Healthcare System’s arrangement allows doc tors to profit directly by referring patients to Sun Tow ers Hospital, Vista Hills Medical Center, three MedPlus clinics and two medical laboratories, all of which the partnership owns. Under the company’s profit-sharing plan, doctors could get more money for ordering unnecessary tests at the medical labs, and they were discouraged financially from referring non-insured patients to Sun Towers and Vista Hills. At a meeting with the doctor-partners last week, El Paso Healthcare System’s president, Russell Schneider, discussed altering the profit-sharing plan in light of a new statement on ethics by the Texas Medical Associa tion. “He said we’re going to revise it to conform with the TMA,” said Lorenzo Monsivais, business manager for his brother, Dr. Jose Monsivais. “If it’s unethical, I know there’s a whole bunch of (doctors) who are going to pull out.” The Texas Medical Association’s ethics statement earlier this month was a clarification and did not rep resent a change in the group’s position, spokesman Lisa Stark Walsh said Tuesday. The association added one sentence to its guidelines on doctors’ ownership of hospitals and clinics, stating that profit-sharing “should be based on capital invest ment” and not on referral of patients. The amplifica tion is a restatment of the American Medical Associa tion’s position on the ethics of referral fees and kickbacks. Donald “Rocky” Wilcox, chief counsel for the Texas Medical Association, said he has discussed the need for changes in the profit-distribution system with an attor ney for Columbia Hospital Corp. of Fort Worth, of which El Paso Healthcare System is a subsidiary. “It’s very possible they will attempt to restructure their arrangement,” Willcox said. Willcox said he has advised the El Paso County Medi cal Society to investigate the ethical aspects of the profit-sharing arrangement, and that the state medical association will if the county medical society doesn’t. Robin Weinman, executive director of the society, said the society’s Board of Censors is studying the issue. More than 20 percent of El Paso’s 650 doctors are limited partners in El Paso Healthcare System. Half the doctors get profit shares based on individual referrals to the hospitals, labs and clinics. — A&M creating math program with Costa Rica By Ashley A. Bailey STAFF WRITER Dr. Juan Esquivel, Director of the Research Institute for the Im provement of Costa Rican Educa tion, visited Texas A&M for four days this week to further the de velopment of the Costa Rica- /Texas A&M University Program, COSTAMU. Dr. James R. Boone, A&M mathematics professor and founder of the COSTAMU pro gram, said the program will es tablish ongoing enhancement and support activities in math ematics which will involve A&M and various organizations in Costa Rica. “Scholarly visits and research exchanges of a collaborative na ture with Costa Rican scholars,in positions of leadership in educa tion and research in math, will constitute the majority of the pro gram,” Boone said. Boone said it is essential lor the economic and political future of Costa Rica that a mathematical, scientifically and technologically literate population be main tained. “This program is designed to assist these efforts by providing active direct links between leaders in mathematics from both coun tries,” he said. Program activities were se lected during a needs-assessment visit to Costa Rica that Boone made last May. The activities are in direct response to needs that were identified by several Costa Rican mathematics leaders, he said. The initial phase of the C0S- TAMU program, consisting of the mathematics project, is the cornerstone project for the exten sion of this program, Boone said, because math knowledge is an in tegral part of the sciences. Ultimately, the program will include science and technology education, scientific collaborative research projects with short-and long-term visits and graduate studies, he said. Esquivel said three major areas of mathematics and science edu cation need improvement. “We desperately need an inser vice training program for el ementary and secondary tea chers,” Esquivel said. “We need to make a great effort in that area. “It is expensive, but the Min istry of Education just founded a center for inservice teaching, which is working with the univer sities on the inservice effort. We need to do a lot more, though." The second area needing im provement is the collegiate levels of math and science education, he said. “We need to have new young people come to the United States or other countries to get graduate degrees in science and math edu cation,” Esquivel said. “These people are the ones who are going to prepare new teachers, so the role of Texas A&M and other universities in helping Costa Rica is important.’’ The final area of needed im provement, Esquivel said, is in the long-term solution for better math and science research. “It is in the future of course,” he said. “It will take a long time to prepare the people, hut through the initial projects in the COS TAMU program it will be possi ble.” Boone said, “If we’re (A&:M) going to be involved in Central America in a productive way, it’ll be in Costa Rica because the peo ple are recept ive, and they have a progressive and enlightened view of the world and their own situa tion.” Boone will return to Costa Rica in May to finalize plans for the COSTAMU program. Investment (Continued from page 3) the Bahamas and $61,500 to share. A&M’s first place winner, Greg Van Buskirk, a senior marketing major, closed at $641,904 and ranked 358th. He earned a 28 per cent return, converting to a 112 per cent annual return. Van Buskirk said his success came from targeting two or three stocks and thoroughly understanding them. “At the beginning, I tried to hold a varied portfolio of stocks,” Van Buskirk said. “After the first month, I noticed that some students were putting all their money in one or two stocks and getting lucky. “I ended up keying in on two or three stocks and getting to know them well. Most of it (my success) was in really understanding those few stocks and not trying to do ev erything at once. I also looked out for mergers and acquisitions. I made most of my money with Reebok. “During the first few months, I went down $70,000 in one day. But once I got on a strategy that worked with me, it worked out pretty well.” A&M’s second place winner, Da vid Leboe, a senior accounting ma jor, closed at $623,536 and ranked 449th out of the total participants. He earned a 25 percent return, con verting to a 99 percent annual re turn. Chris Wilkes, an A&M business graduate student, won third place among the 50 A&M students partici pating, closing at $611,625 and ranking 534th out of the 11,900 stu dents who played. He said the game provided a good opportunity for business students. “A lot of business students won der if they can make money through investments,” Wilkes said. “This game gives students an opportunity to perform quite well. “Some students bombed. One A&M student lost over half of his money and some students from other universities went bankrupt. However, the top winner earned more than $2 million. “If you can earn $ 1 for every $5 in four months, in just over a year, you can double your money. The diffi culty is that we did it for four months, but could we do it for an other four? We made some good de cisions, but a whole lot of it was luck.” Wilkes said he earned a 22 per cent return during the game, which converts to an 88 percent annual re turn. His strategy was to invest in what he saw to be takeover stocks, meaning if those companies were managed differently, they would perform better. Wilkes said he invested in three stocks: RJR Nabisco, West Point Pepperel and Hospital Corporation of America. He bought RJR Nabisco stock at $89 per share and sold it last month at $109 per share. Similarly, he bought West Point Pepperel at $42 per share and sold it at $57 per share. Hospital Corporation of America stock remained virtually the same, increasing by only 75 cents through out the four months. Wilkes said a difference between playing the game and investing ac tual money was evident. “When you’re interested in win ning this game, you want to gain quickly,” he said. “It’s a lot of high risk for short-term gain. However,a true financial analyst would think more toward long-term gain at lower risks.” Van Buskirk said he enjoyed play ing the game. “I’ve always been interested in the stock market, but this is the first time I’ve done anything like this,” he said. “By the time the Challenge was over, I had graphs of stocks all over my wall. “One of the big things I learned was keying in on stocks that sell for under $10 because any little movement, even one-eighth of a oint, can make $20,000 or 30,000.” Van Buskirk said participating in the game provided him with valu able practical experience. “I understand the stock market so much more than I did before,” he said. “You don’t get that kind of un derstanding in the classroom.” ThurJ soc ence MSC cepti MSC INTE defor HILL at Hil ALPI from SOC ing T BET; the H TAM Rude VIET 601 F RHA TAM OFF Static TAM at7p CATI suppi AME noon AGO avail. RECI Read ment meet MAN in 1P CATI Jesu: HILL Hillel. 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