VMI Cadet. September 30, 1988

              Go Big Red, Beat Furman!
She l l . i a i J . (Eaiiet
"One of Anirrioa s Oldest (lollem* i^ewspapers"
VOLUME LXXVIII Virginia Military institute, Lexington, Virginia Septemt>er 30,1988 NUMBERS
Settle Automates
EPA
International Scene:
More Violence In Soviet Union
Two local chemistry profes-sors
are assisting scientists from
the National Bureau of Standards
and the Environmental Protec-tion
Agency (EPA) in automat-ing
the preparation of a variety
of sample types for analysis by
instrumental methods.
Col. Frank A. SetUe, Jr., of
Virginia Military Institute, and
Dr. Michael A. Pleva, of Wash-ington
and Lee University, have
been working on "expert
system" computerized analyses
for several years. Now, a new
grant to the VMI Research
Laboratories of $71,000 from
the National Science Foundation
will allow undergraduate stu-dents
to participate in the
project.
Dr. Settle has directed VMI
research to automate the increas-ing
number of samples to be
analyzed for EPA, but now the
efforts will turn to automation of
the preparation of the samples to
increase sample thoughput and
Soviet Union: Soviet troops
have again been used to quell
ethnic violence in the Azerbaijan
republic. The trouble started
when Azerbaijani attacked a bus
load of Armenian students, and
it soon spread through out the
regional city of Slepanabert. It
was called the worst outbreak of
violence since 32 people died
last February in riots in Are-menio.
Lebanon: The Lebanese
President Amin Gemayel will
end his six-year term at midnight
Thursday. Both the Christian
and Muslims cannot agree on a
candidate to succeed him. Ger-mayel
hoped that Army Com-mander
Michel Aoun would lead
a transitional government of six
military officers, but three Mus-lim
appointees refused to parti-cipate.
Burma: Violence continued to
plague Burma this week. Oppo-nents
of the ruling Burma socia-lists
program party named re-tired
Brig. Gen. Aung Gzi as
president of the newly formed
League for Democracy. The
League demanded the abolish-ment
of the ruling party's one-party
dictatorship and free and
fair elections. Rumors were
widespread that government
troops were executing anti-government
protesters and low
level anti-government leaders.
Isreal: Israel joined the United
States, the Soviet Union,
France, Japan, China, Britain
and India as only the eighth
country to send a satellite into
space. The satellite, Ofek-1, is
designed to collect data on space
conditions and the earth's mag-netic
field.
to assure that all samples are
processed in the same manner.
The system will consist of a
laboratory robotic work station
and a microwave dissolution
unit. The robot weights the
sample in a container, then adds
the acid necessary to dissolve the
sample, and places the container
in the oven for rapid heating.
When the sample is dissolved,
the robot removes it from the
oven, and, after cooling, it can
be analyzed by one or more
chemical techniques.
The robot and the microwave
unit will be controlled by com-puters
operating under the direc-tion
of an expert system pro-gram.
It contains knowledge
about the conditions required to
dissolve samples of interest to
EPA. Once a sample type has
been identified by the analyst,
the expert system will provide
the robot and the microwave unit
with the information necessary
See Settle Cont'd pg. 10
John Adametz '89 sacks Richmond QB.
INSIDE:
Keydets Continue to Fight
But Fail to Win pg. 7
Girls of Summer pg. 3
Thumbs Up Weekend pg. 8
Domestic Scene:
Navy To Reduce
Presence In Gulf
By DanFranzen
Neither George Bush nor
Michael Dukakis came away
with a clear victory in their de-bate
Sunday night. Polls taken
after the debate show that voters
felt neither candidate delivered a
knockout blow to the other,
though Bush spent much of the
debate on the defensive. Political
analysts feel that Dukakis made
a small gain by holding his own
against Bush, who has more ex-perience
with national publicity.
However, the debate is not ex-pected
to sway many voters
either way. The candidates will
debate again on October 13th or
14th; the Vice-Presidential
nominees, Quayle and Bentsen,
will debate on October 5th.
The countdown began on
Monday for the liftoff of the
space shuttle Discovery. The
shuttle was scheduled for launch
at 9:59 a.m. on Thursday at the
time of this writing. This will be
the first shuttle launch since the
Challenger disaster on 28 Jan-uary
1986. The shuttle has been
redesigned and extensively
tested since then.
President Reagan's spokesper-son,
Marlin Fitzwater, announ-ced
that the Navy will be reduc-ing
its presence in the Persian
Gulf soon. The number of ships
in the Gulf will be reduced, and
the ships will play a surveillance
role rather than their current
close-support role. The decision
to reduce the Navy's role fol-lows
the Iran-Iraq cease fire
agreement.
A filibuster by Republican
senators defeated a Democratic
effort to raise the minimum
wage from $3.35 to $4.55 per
hour. The Republicans opposed
the idea because they felt it
would raise unemployment and
reduce the number of jobs avail-able
in America. Democrat Ed-ward
Kennedy of Massachus-setts
announced that another
effort will be made to raise the
minimum wage, maybe in the
next Congress.