N The Battalion
ATION
^iay • December 2, 1997
pa approves second spacewalk
space-station equipment
PE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) —
stronauts will go on a second
walk Wednesday to conduct
d space station tests that had
scrapped because of last
3 satellite rescue.
iSA managers on Monday
>ved the five-hour space-
for the crew of space shuttle
nbia. It will be NASA’s last
iwalk before construction
isliext summer on the in-
tional space station,
we don’t take advantage of
Tportunity here, the next time
) it we’ll be doing it for real,”
v’slicting chief of spacewalk
cts Gregory Harbaugh, told
:ew earlier in the day.
nong other things, the space
cy weighed the risk inherent
y spacewalk and also looked
iether the mission might have
; extended to allow enough
for the extra work. As it turns
an additional day was not
ed.
\SA says it needs all the space-
ing experience it can get be-
attempting to build the in
itio nal space station. It will
five years to assemble; once
pleted, it will be almost as long
idjwider than a football field
will weigh 1 million pounds,
merican astronauts will have
induct more than 1,150 hours
of spacewalks to assemble and
maintain the station during the
first five years. Russian cosmo
nauts will perform half that
amount.
“It sure would be nice to take
advantage of being up here now
with guys who have already
worked with the equipment before
we have to do it on station,” said
shuttle commander Kevin Kregel.
The No. 1 priority for Columbia’s
spacewalkers will be to conduct more
tests with an extendible, 17 1/2-foot
crane, a prototype of what will fly on
the international space station.
Astronaut Winston Scott had
trouble latching a large box onto
the end of the crane during his Nov.
24 spacewalk with Japan’s Takao
Doi. He ended up having to
squeeze the two objects together
like a sandwich — a technique that
may not always work on the in
ternational space station.
“We want to come out of this
mission with a clear understanding
of whether we have a design prob
lem ... or whether we have a system
that we just needed to learn a little
bit more about how to use,” Har
baugh explained.
Scott and Doi never got a
chance to lift a relatively small ob
ject with the crane or try out a free-
flying robotic camera, also planned
for use on the international space
station. They will try to squeeze in
both during Wednesday’s outing.
The crane—especially important
to station construction and mainte
nance —- was supposed to be tested
by another set of spacewalkers in No
vember 1996. The hatch on Colum
bia jammed, however, and the astro
nauts never got outside.
This time, a runaway satellite
interfered.
Scott and Doi had to catch the $10
million Spartan science satellite be
fore conducting any station tests. The
satellite never got a key computer
command before being released from
Columbia on Nov. 21 and promptly
malfunctioned. To make matters
worse, the crew’s attempt to capture
the satellite with the shuttle robot arm
sent the craft into a slow spin.
After grabbing Spartan with
their gloved hands, Scott and Doi
spent what was left of their seven-
and-one-half hour spacewalk
working with the crane and a large,
batterylike object, and conducting
some other station experiments.
The tests left space station de
signers hungry for more.
“We feel like there is some more
money to be made here,” Harbaugh
told Columbia’s six astronauts. When
he asked whether they thought a sec
ond spacewalk would be worth “all
this time and trouble,” they replied
with a definitive yes.
tCHITECTURE
:inued from Page 1
IKS Architects believes very
igly in the close link between
Drofessional side and acade-
and tries to maintain a men-
ig relationship with stu-
s,” Skaggs said. “For years, we
; had ongoing projects with
College of Architecture. We
t the class with a client.
)ugh such projects, the stu-
Tearn teamwork and strong
imunication skills, since they
to identify and meet the
needs of an actual client.”
George J. Mann, the Ronald L. Sk
aggs Endowed Professor of Health Fa
cilities Design at A&M, directed the
project which brings students togeth
er with possible employers.
“The students worked hard,”
Mann said. “They learned teamwork
and to help each other. The hospital
gets ideas from the students and the
architecture firm identifies students
for future employment.”
LouAnn Kirkpatrick, a senior en
vironmental design major, said her
group spent around $500 on the
project, including $ 100 on pictures.
“When it’s all said and done,
you forget how much you paid,”
Kirkpatrick said. “Fve learned it
really doesn’t matter the design
process you go through to com
plete the project. The final result
is what counts.”
Dr. Kaname Yanagisawa, a post
doctoral fellow in the College of Ar
chitecture, helped the students on
the medical facility design.
“The project is huge and com
plicated,” Yanagisawa said. “I
think it is a challenging project
and a good opportunity for stu
dents. There was a great effort
from students, and they did an
excellent job.”
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SEASON!
Boll-weevil biology continues
to baffle farmers, researchers
AUSTIN (AP) —They are rather
comical-looking, these quarter-
inch-long insects of song and sor
row. But they are more likely to
move Texas cotton farmers to
tears than to laughter.
Big-bottomed and long-snouted,
the cotton boll weevil looks too un
gainly to fly. Yet there is evidence that
the yellowish-brown or gray mem
bers of the beetle family can fly high
enough to hitch long-distance rides
on prevailing winds.
Mary Ann Rankin speculates the
unknown migrate ly patterns of these
tropical pests that destroy millions of
dollars’ worth of cotton each year in
the Americas could be a main reason
periodic claims of their impending
eradication have proved premature.
Rankin, a University of Texas
professor of entomology and dean
of UT’s College of Natural Sciences,
is a pioneer in the physiology of the
bugs, which are believed to have en
tered the United States through
Texas, flying across the Rio Grande
from Mexico in 1892.
Despite decades of research into
controlling them, Rankin says their
migratory patterns, life cycle and re
production, and their relationship to
each other remain poorly understood.
“Very little had ever been done
with that,” she said. “We had to start
from scratch.”
Chemical pesticide-based erad
ication programs from North Car
olina to southern California — and
increasingly in Brazil and other
South American countries — large
ly ignore or dismiss the possible role
of migration in boll weevil popula
tion dynamics, Rankin said.
She has found that it may be par
ticularly important in midsummer
when weevil population densities
are high and their urge to migrate
seems to be strong.
But cotton growers have to focus
on their immediate problems.
“Either you get rid of (them), or
you get out of the cotton business,”
said John Norman, a Texas A&M
University entomologist.
Adult weevils relentiessly destroy
cotton by boring into its seedpods,
or bolls, and laying eggs in the hole.
Hatching weevil larvae feed on the
“Either you get rid of
(them), or you get out of
the cotton business.”
JOHN NORMAN
TEXAS A&M ENTOMOLOGIST
bolls from the inside.
North American cotton produc
ers lose an estimated $350 million a
year in reduced yields and in spend
ing on insecticides and other pesti
cides. Even heavy use isn’t always ef
fective, sometimes triggering new
outbreaks of crop destruction by
killing natural enemies of other pests.
Some weevils also have evolved re
sistance to the sprays.
Investigating weevil biology to
find ways to use it against them is
an increasingly popular scientific
alternative.
Scientists at Texas Tech Universi
ty in Lubbock, for instance, are ex
perimenting with insect viruses that
kill boll weevils by arresting their de
velopment from larvae into adults.
This fall, the Texas Advanced Re
search/Advanced Technology pro
gram, an annual statewide compe
tition for up to $60 million in
research money, awarded Rankin
$181,447 to continue her research.
She plans to work with special
ists at Texas A&M University and
the University of California to
clone boll weevil genes that regu
late the production of an enzyme
called juvenile hormone esterase.
Using the cloned gene to make
more of the enzyme than can be
obtained from the bugs them
selves, she will pursue evidence
that it is critical to boll weevil re
production and, possibly, long
distance flight.
Her goal is to find ways to reduce
the 10 percent or so of the bugs now
estimated to survive each winter in a
form of insect hibernation called dia
pause. Their reproduction in the
spring begins the annual assault on
cotton crops.
Because juvenile hormone es
terase plays a major role in diapause,
Rankin wants to develop a test for its
presence. A test would help target the
insects most likely to survive dia
pause to explore the use of proteins,
hormones and growth regulators to
disrupt their ability to reproduce.
But her research suggests that
whatever method works best, it will
have to be universally applied. Con
trol of boll weevils in one place may be
impossible as long as potential weevil
migrants are thriving elsewhere in the
hemisphere.
“They’ll just re-infest us each
year,” Rankin said.
Editor
Continued from Page 1
“When I started, The Battalion was printed on cam
pus,” she said. “We had to do paste-ups in the back.
Cartoons and ads were not done on computers then.”
Inbody also has been night news editor and man
aging editor at The Battalion.
Clancy, who worked with Inbody on the night news
desk in Fall 1996, said Inbody is easy to work with, or
ganized and confident.
“She’s one of the few people I’ve seen that hasn’t lost
her cool,” Clancy said. “No matter what is going on
around her, she’s always calm and collected.”
Dr. Charles Self, head of the journalism depart
ment and chair of the student publications board,
said Inbody has strong ideas about the future of
The Battalion.
“She will help The Battalion move forward in a good
direction,” he said. “She has good leadership qualities.
She inspired confidence in the board.”
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