werful quake
Vol. 80, No. 61 12 pages
University Park, Pa. 16002
Po
rips
EL CENTRO, Calif. (UPI)'- A
powerful earthquake followed rby hun J
dreds of aftershocks shook southern
California . and northern Mexico
yesterday, causing widespread damage
and injuries to scores of residents.
There was an unconfirmed report of
one death!
The worst damage was reported in.
: Calexico and El Centro near tht»
Mexican border, 100 miles inland from’
the Pacific Coast.
j Communications were cut off from the
' Imperial Valley towns, but University of
| California! seismologists in Berkeley
said there was an unofficial report of one
person killed in El Centro.
More than 40 people were hospitalized
in El Centro, a farm community, within
30 minutes after the quake struck at 4:18
p.m.PliT (7:18 p.m.). .
, The California Institute of Technology
! at Pasadena said the quake measured
! 0.4 on the open-ended Richter scale. The
Berkeley scientists said it measured 6.5
I to 7 with seven aftershocks all of
. lesser intensity.
I The major quake activity was followed
by swarms of further aftershocks
i numbering in the hundreds,
! seismologists said.
■ Power lines were knocked down and
.water mains were snapped in the
disaster area, and the Berkeley
seismologists said there were fires in the
two communities.
Witnesses said from the .scene in El
Centrb that glass from broken windows
littered the streets. The city’s five-story
, county Social Services Building suffered
major pylon damage, and the entire
structure sank three to four feet.
Student financial aid
rises, director says
By CHERYL BRUNO come was less than $25,000 were eligible
Dally Collegian Staff Writer to receive interest-free loans.
'An estimated $65.53 million in while ““ ® E °£ and . the '«£*
financial aid will be given this year to responsible for $l7 million of the $2l
students enrolled at the University, said m ‘ lhon oshmated increase mLnancial
* John F. Brugel, director of the Officeof a ‘ d awards - the SE ?£ and . CWSP als °
Student Aid show an increase of $4 million in aid to
. .•'■/■■■ ... . , . students.
This is an estimated increase of $2l Through these two programs, money
million over the $43.94 million that was allocated to the University from the
given last year through 44,286 awards, office of Education in Washington, D.C.,
, Approximately 60,400 awards are to be j s awarded to students chosen by the
7-' given this year, Brugel said. University based on their financial aid.
The six major financial programs Every year the University must file arr
■"StutieliiS^reth®
- “Pennsylvania, Higher Education - jn aid money th'i'S year is
Assistance Agency (PHEAA), the Basic related to the Office of Education's new
Educational Opportunity Act (BEOQ), national standardized approach of
the Guaranteed Student Loan.(GSL), the analyzing an institution’s needs by the
. National Direct Student Loan (NDSL), number of the student population and
" the Supplemental Educational Op- relative income distribution of the
portunity Graht (SEOG), and the. students. The former system , relied
College Work Study Program (CWSP). more heavily on an institution’s estimate
Brugel said the increase in the amount of its own need,
of aid given this year can be attributed to Brugel said there is a 40 percent in
-5 the Middle Income Assistance Act which crease over last year in the volume of
was passed by Congress last November, student aid applications received and. a
. This act directly affects student access 33 percent increase in the, number of
to the federally funded BEOG and GSL. students seeking federal aid assistance
By its provisions, the eligibility through the University.
requirements for these two forms of Students interested in applying for
assistance were liberalized, allowing financial aid can pick an application in
middle income families, who had the Office of Student Aid in Boucke
previously been denied, access-to the Building. The office is responsible for
programs. awarding assistance to students who
The same act also removed income show the most need,
stipulations so/any student can now “All students at Penn State who have
borrow money for allowable education demonstrated need, by filling out a need
expenses, interest-free. Formerly, only analysis document, have been offered
students whose parents’ adjusted in- assistance,” Brugel said.
Americans win science Nobels
take chemistry, physics prizes
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) Two Americans and a
Pakistani, who took lip where Einstein left off in searching
for a key to the universe, won the Nobel Prize in physics
yesterday, and an American and West German who found
ways to produce new drugs, pesticides and other important
organic compounds were awarded the chemistry prize.
It made 1979 another year of U.S. domination of the three
Nobel science prizes. Four of the seven laureates are
Americans, the same proportion as in 1978.
But the happiest winner may have been chemistry
laureate Georg Wittig, an 82-year-old retired professor at
West Germany’s Heidelberg University.
“When the phone call came from Stockholm the Herr
Professor did not want to believe it at first,” his
housekeeper told a reporter. “He once hoped for the prize
many years ago but had given it up long ago. ”
The physics winners were two Harvard professors,
Sheldon L. Glashow and Steven Weinberg, both 46-year-old
New York City natives, and Professor Abdus Salam, 53, a
physicist working in Britain and Italy who is the first
Pakistani to win a Nobel.
Wittig’s co-winner in chemistry was Professor Herbert C.
Brown, 67, a London-born U.S. citizen teaching at Indiana’s
Purdue University.
The selections were made by the Swedish Royal
Academy of Science. Each prize carries a stipend of
$190,000 to be shared among its winners.
The three physicists were honored for highly theoretical
work on a fundamental aspect of science the forces that
hold matter together.
They have sought to find out “what makes the world
tick,” Weinberg told a reporter yesterday in
Massachusetts.
“The particles of nature are held together by four dif
ferent forces, of which one is gravity,” Glashow explained.
“The other three are weak, and electromagnetic.”
He said the prize-winning research was aimed at demon
strating that electrogmagnetic forces and “weak in
teraction” forces Within the atom’s nucleus are unified.
bindery
if 202 PAtTEE
Porches on older wooden houses in El
Centro were partially collapsed. .
Renee Berkner in El Centro said, “In
my home there were lamps falling,
things tipping off shelves and I’ve got
four feet of dirt from plants scattered.
“Outside, the water canal is caved in,
so the streets are flooding. There are
roads caved in, windows downtown are
shattered and there are car wrecks all
over.”
Fred Vaughn, a spokesman for the San
Diego Gas and Electric Co., said he
talked to an employee in El Centro who
reported, “The top floor of the county
administration building is sagging.”
Vaughn said he had reports of utility
lines down and that the quake caused
“half of the water in a swimming pool to
jump right out.”
At the damaged courthouse in the
county seat community, a judge
“brought the participants outside' the
building to continue the proceedings,”
Vaughn said.
In Mexicali, Mexico, just across the
border from Calexico, there were
reports that gas lines were ruptured and
dozens of persons were injured by falling
debris from old buildings.
The quake and aftershocks were felt in
Phoenix, Ariz., 200 miles to the east of
the epicenter, and Las Vegas. Highrise
buildings in Los Angeles and San Diego,,
more than 100 miles from the epicenter,
swayed.
A man in the 50-story Arco Tower in
downtown Los Angeles said, “We’re
rocking lilce crazy up here.” But there
were no reports of damage in the
metropolitan area.
4 3 CQP.IBB
Glashow said he believes that a single force underlies all
three, and that they are simply three ways in which .it is
manifested.
Salam and Weinberg published papers in 1967 postulating
the electromagnetic-weak interaction link.
These findings were a “real breakthrough,” bringing
nearer the prospect of a unified theory of physics, said Dr.
Christopher Isham, a colleague of Salam’s at London’s
Imperial College of Sciences and Technology. It
represented the first unification of two basic natural forces
since electricity and magnetism were shown to be con
nected more than a century ago, he said.
Isham said the theory would help scientists understand
the astrophysics of stars and how the universe originated.
“Einstein spent the last 20 years of his life trying to do
what Professor Salam has done, without any success. It is a
great achievement,’’ Isham said.
Brown and Wittig, the chemistry winners, were
recognized for pioneering work in developing boron-and
phosphorous-based compounds as reagents chemical
tools for the synthesis of complex organic compounds.
Such complex compounds have many applications, from
medicine to pesticides.
. “Organoboranes,” the Brown-developed boron reagents,
have been used, for example, in finding a non-polluting
method for bleaching paper.
Wittig’s phosphorous-based reagents have, among other
things, facilitated production of vitamins and helped
combat malaria mosquitoes and other pests by making it
possible to synthesize new kinds of pesticides to which they
have not developed resistance.
Since the Nobel Prizes were establish in 1901, Americans
have comprised about 40 percent of the laureates, and in
recent years the proportion has been higher.
The economics prize is to be announced today, and the
literature and peace prizes later this week and next week.
President Garter has been nominated for the peace prize
for his mediation of the Camp David accords between
Israel and Egypt.
Down in the valley
The sleepy town of Coburn rests snugly in the gap cut through First Mountain by Penn’s Creek, flowing from Penn’s Valley in the distance. Fall foliage is beauti
ful from vantage points like this one called Penn’s View.
First-come, first-served system
advocated by ARHS president
By LORRAINE CAPRA
Daily Collegian Staff Writer
The Association of Residence Hall
Students is no longer considering a
lottery system to allot dorm contracts,
ARHS President Steve Osborn told the
USG Senate last night.
“We’re advocating a modified first
come, first-served system where
students would turn in their contracts
and deposits to Shields in January or
February,” Osborn said.
< The University would then know how
many spaces to allot and could provide
enough areas for students to turn in their
receipts, Osborn said.
“The lines were so long last year
because Bursar’s can only accept money
from three areas,” he said. “With our.
plan, students turn in their money to
Shields so we might be able to set up 10
areas.”
No student now living in a dorm will be
assigned to temporary housing, Osborn
said.
He also said that 60 percent of the
students who answered a dorm
assignment survey said they favored a
first-come, first-served system.
Branch campuses make the
University’s housing problem different
from other universities, Osborn said.
“Other campuses don’t have 10,000
people coming in from branch cam
puses,” he said.
The senators gave their support to
ARHS’s tentative plan.
Rep. Gregg Cunningham, R-Centre,
asked the senators to help him recruit
students to intern in the executive and
judiciary branches of the state govern
ment.
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“They wouldn’t have to be political
science majors,” Cunningham said.
“For example, we’re trying to pull in
people who are in hard science and
economics majors, ’ ’ he said.
Cunningham said most state
legislators think University students are
only concerned with decriminalization of
marijuana and lowering the drinking
age.
But, he said because he has lived in
State College, he knows that students are
concerned with other issues.
He also said he wished he had been
consulted on the University’s decision to
increase tuition for next year.
“Had I been asked before the fact, I
probably would have counseled against
it,” Cunningham said.
He urged the senators to attend his
town meetings on campus every week.
In other business, Jim Morrison,
director of USG Department of Political
Affairs, said 40 percent of the students
who answered a marijuana
decriminalization survey said they
currently use marijuana.
“That means that 40 percent could be
called criminals by the laws of the
state,” Morrison said.
Morrison announced that he is
resigning his post, but did not give a
reason. Vic Dupuis, a USG vice
presidential candidate .last spring, will
take over Morrison’s duties.
The Campus Loop ad hoc committee
said the University said USG’s Loop
survey cannot compare this year’s
ridership with last year’s because it did
not look at weather conditions.
The University said ridership in-
Published by Students of The Pennsylvania State University
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creases when it rains, Centre Halls
senator Allison David said.
She said she called the University
Weather Tower and-was told that it
rained twice as much this year as last
year.
“Therefore, the Loop decrease in
ridership can be attributed only to fare
increase and in no way to better weather
conditions because the weather so far
this fall is worse than the weather of last
year,” David said.
The athletic ad hoc committee will
conduct a student survey on seating at
Beaver Stadium, West Halls senator
Fawn Coleman said.
“This survey more than the Loop
concerns students,” South Halls senator
Merle Baseman said. “We want com
ments, more than just answers to a
survey and I think this is the best way to
doit.”
Pollock-Nittany senator Joe Healey
said his rape prevention ad hoc com
mittee will hold an open meeting tonight
to get student input for a map detailing
areas that need more lighting.
“We will hand out a form and ask
students to put an ‘X’ where they live
and draw a line to the most frequently
traveled places to their homes,” Healey
said.
Welcome warmth
Partly sunny and mild today with a
high of 63. Mostly cloudy tonight and
tomorrow with the chance for a shower
by tomorrow evening. The low tonight
will be 46 and the high tomorrow will
reach 64.
Photo by Chip Connelly