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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 11, 2002)
Aggieufe: On the road again • Page 3 Opinion: Drug testing violates rights • Page 9 1 BATI: 1 am rare cial dr ng for 'Ctions onditior, of tk day u Paul \ir Forc s onl) or :k maria i 5 "tKti!: g a fowli ® ird. itat I rhif'Ai" 11 :asfr*l 1 ow i | I Ik * penalty! lose coffl heft inf -' i/entu clot 1 nan 5' VenWt 2 eatme 111 proble 111 er mot e ;|e, 5 alC ood .. oodsP'l 3V, vv0 C . He subfl ry phy 5i 1 ling c3 '-' in in te [j Volume 108 • Issue 165 • 10 pages 108 Years Serving Texas A&M University www.thebatt.com Thursday, July 11, 2002 A&M group chosen to lead NASA experiment By Christina Hoffman THE BATTALION Texas A&M University has been chosen to lead NASA in a new University Research, Engineering and Technology Institute with projects aimed at advancing aircraft and aero space science. A team of 30 people, 10 from A&M, will mainly focus on building nano and bio structures for air and space crafts. The 20 other members are from the University of Houston, Rice University, Prairie View A&M University, Texas Southern University and the University of Texas- Arlington. The project stems from Richard Smalley, a professor of chemistry and physics at Rice University and his Nobel Prize winning work on carbon nanotubes. Smalley will serve as chief scientist of the institute. “[One of the] primary focuses is to develop new materials from carbon nanotubes,” said Dr. John Junkins, director of the institute and a distin guished professor in aerospace engi neering at A&M. “It would be a very important new material because it would be extremely strong, strong as steel, and lightweight.” Dimitris Lagoudas, associate director of the institute and professor of aerospace engineering and associ ate vice president for research at A&M, said the goal is to develop the chemistry of carbon nanotubes into See NASA on page 2 Functionalized Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes Single Wall Cross! inked Nanotubes Functional zed Nanotube Composite MuMOfunctional Structural Supercapacitor Multifunctional Aerospace 10' 10 m- 10*fn Functionalization to integration to create new materials architectures for nanocomposite smart materials systems that have multifunctional properties COURTESY OF DIMITRIS LAGOUDAS Goertz shares wisdom By True Brown THE BATTALION Leo Goertz isn’t your nor mal 9-to-5 worker. But then again, having your work seen by over 500,000 people during the course of a year doesn’t qualify as normal. Goertz has been A&M’s ath letic fields maintenance manag er since 1996 and is the man in charge of maintaining Kyle Field, Olsen Field, the Aggie Soccer Complex and every other outdoor venue used for A&M athletics. While the crown jewel of his job is Kyle Field, his career began across the street at Olsen Field where he was a student manager for the baseball team in 1978. “Back then there.wasn’t a grounds crew that took care of everything,” Goertz said. “It was the coaches and the student managers that did that. I had done some maintenance in high school, so when I got here (for mer coach Tom Chandler) told me I was going to be in charge of that.” Goertz’s groundskeeping caught the eye of former A&M baseball player Pat Olsen, (the field’s namesake), who later played for the New York Yankees. “When I got ready to gradu ate, Mr. Olsen said he would do whatever he could to keep me around,” he said. “And I haven’t left yet.” Since then, Goertz has seen A&M’s natural grass facilities go from the baseball field and a football practice field — about BRIAN RUFF • THE BATTALION Leo Goertz, A&M athletic fields maintenance manager, has groomed every outdoor athletic venue since 1996. Goertz graduated from A&M in 1985 with a degree in agricultural economics. six acres by his estimate — to approximately 15 acres, includ ing the softball field, soccer field, track and the grass sur face on Kyle Field. Despite not graduating with a degree in turf management — he has an agricultural econom ics degree — Goertz has won awards for his care of Olsen Field (in 1985 and 1987), the Aggie Softball Complex (in 1997 and 1999) and the Aggie Soccer Complex (in 2000). “(Not having a turf degree) doesn’t really hurt in this kind of business,” Goertz said. “This is a kind of job where you take what you already know and adjust it and apply it to each individual situation. What works one day may not work the next day so there are con stant adjustments. There are books that tell you how things work, but there’s not a book that tells you how to make things work.” In Goertz’s case, making things work includes keeping the grass green after it has been trampled by 300-pound line men for three hours or been torn up by baseball spikes for nine innings. In the days leading up to a football game, for example, Goertz and his crew go into high gear. Monday and Tuesday are usually devoted to mowing and edging the field, but Wednesday marks the begin ning of the stretch run when the crew paints the lines, logos and emblems. “The painting takes about a See Goertz on page 2 Automated trouble reporting system implemented By Ruth Ihde THE BATTALION College Station Utilities has put an Automated Trouble Reporting System (ATRS), into effect to better serve the community when reporting water and power outages. Augie Palmisano, a College Station utilities dispatch opera tions superintendent, said a company called Automated Consulting introduced the sys tem. The company is based in Pensacola, Fla., and has sold the technology for about 15 years and markets the product to utility companies all over the country. ATRS is linked to College Station Utilities from a data base to a billing system, which catalogs and organizes the calls, by using criteria such as a mapping system and electri cal circuit, through the caller’s keyed-in phone number, Palmisano said. When a customer calls in, the system uses the caller’s home telephone number to identify their service location. The dispatcher can see where the call is coming from and monitor the situation as the problem is being worked on. In the past. College Station Utilities used a three line sys tem, which a dispatcher would answer and then report the problem to a worker who would go out to the problem area. Palmisano said customers could rarely get through to report a problem or would get a busy signal. Now when a caller calls the utilities company, a map of the customer’s location is brought up, making it easier to find the location and find out if similar problems are happen ing in that area. ATRS has 14 phone lines that are automatically answered and displayed on the dispatcher’s screen. “The city has gotten bigger and this system allows better contact,” Palmisano said. Even if all lines are being used, the caller is transferred to an answering machine. A record is kept of all phone calls that enter the system and a dispatcher checks every message so they can address the situation. Palmisano said that some one who calls in will not speak with an actual person, but that this system is only implement ed during crisis situations. “Some people don’t like talking to machines, but it is better to get into the system than not at all,” she said. Kelley Cole, public com munications and marketing director for the City of College Station, said there was no real system in place before and the ATRS will save time and help dispatch. College Station Utilities customers who want to report problems such as water or power outages and interrup tions in service should call (979) 764-3638. Marketing professor stresses importance of health care By Melissa Sullivan THE BATTALION The most important service to consumers is the service of health care because we are directly affected by it every day, said Leonard Berry, a dis tinguished professor of marketing in the Lowry Mays College and Graduate School of Business. Berry recently returned from a five month research sabbatical at the Mayo clinics in | Rochester, Minn., and Scottsdale, Ariz. where he studied health officials at their jobs and rode in the emergency response helicopter. “I was there as a visiting scientist and observed problems with the ideal service experience.” Berry said. “I studied the perspective of the patient, physician, nurse and allied health staff.” Berry has been researching, teaching and writ ing about service for the past 20 years. In his recent book. Discovering the Soul of Service, Berry emphasizes what kind of values strengthen the health care service experience. “I am not focusing on the skills, but rather is the provider a humane, kind, compassionate, empathetic care giver, which is important in addi tion to training,” he said. During the study. Berry, with the help of a col laborator, interviewed 1,000 people, asking them See Berry on page 2 jNew food processing system created By Melissa McKeon THE BATTALION Texas A&M’s Rosenthal ■ Meat Science and Technology JCenter is involved in testing a ■ new food processing safety sys- yem, called SENTRY9000. The Texas Agricultural jExperiment Station and JFoodHorizon, a leading I provider of executive informa- |hon and performance support systems for the food manufac turing industry, have agreed to experiment with the new sys tem at A&M that will involve testing, research and teaching activities. Development for SEN- TRY9000 started at A&M’s Research Park four years ago, said Jose Quintana, chief tech nology officer for FoodHorizon. The food safety system is a remote computer system that uses hardware and software applications. It can monitor var ious food safety programs for food processing plants. One of the advantages pro vided by SENTRY9000 is its ability to provide production data for executives, supporting critical decisions based on real time production line events. Personnel have the ability to See SENTRY on page 2 Scare efforts continue to alleviate bird problems By Mariano Castillo THE BATTALION With their noisemakers and flashing lights, the crews that regularly patrol the A&M cam pus, scaring off, the roosting bird population, have become a familiar sideshow to many stu dents. The days of returning to your car, only to find it deco rated white and brown with bird droppings may be gone, but the A&M Physical Plant considers the bird population a long-term problem, and crews will continue work into next year. Texas A&M Physical Plant officials said the number of birds on cam pus has decreased significantly since March, when an outside firm was contracted to rid the campus of the birds, but that it is definitely an ongoing problem. On campus, the usual sus pects are blackbirds, brown headed cowbirds and grackles. Current efforts are focus ing on recent outbreaks of large populations of birds north of Cain Hall and north of the Memorial Student Center, said Physical Plant Pest Control Supervisor Ralph Leisy. “The blackbird population, because of the live oaks, is par ticularly worse because the thick branches give the birds good harbor,” he said. The Rockwall based Avian Flyaway Inc. signed a one- year contract with Texas A&M on March 8 to rid the campus of the birds. Christine Harris, Avian Flyaway field supervisor, said the crews are concentrating on the population of purple mar tins, which arrived during the first week of June. Harris reported a signifi cant decrease in the bird population at A&M and said that in the first month of the See Birds on page 2 Reduction of Bird Problem began March 2002 and will continue for a vear G r a c k I e W a f 10 000 Cowbirds 17,000 Starlings 8,000 Sparrows 2 00 N o w 1 .3 0 0 1,200 3 50 50 TRAVIS SWENSON • THE BATTALION
