Brown and White Vol. 99 no. 31

              t he brown and white lehigh university bethlehem pennsylvania tuesday march 1 1988 215 758-4181 v01.98 n0.31 lafayette grad seeks to steal seat from lehigh's rep ritter byjohnmasonis brown and white news writer congressional elections for the 15th district which are to be held this fall could move the age-old lehigh lafayette rivalry to another level of competition if democrat edward reibman a lafayette graduate were to defeat democrat richard orloski in the spring primary election he would become the party's candid ate in the fall congressional elections reibman would then be seeking to defeat republican rep don ritter a lehigh graduate and former lehigh administrator ritter 61 graduated with a bachelor's degree in metallurgical engineering and then went to the mas achussetts institute of technology for his master's and doctorate degrees ritter who returned to lehigh in 1969 was the assistant to the vice president for research and an assistant professor in metallurgical and materials science before taking a leave from lehigh in 1978 he became the manager of research and program develop ment reibman has been relatively confident that he will defeat orloski and become the democratic candidate reibman's campaign has been extremely productive in the past months i have already raised two and a half times more than any other candidate who has opposed don ritter in the past reibman said eighty-eight percent of it is from local individuals only 500 has been from political action committees overshadowing reibman's fund raising is con gressman ritter's campaign that has raised 184,590 in contributions in response to hearing of ritter's 8&w photo by dave sacks jazz vocalist bobby mcferrin wowed broughal audience see story page 11 city council will hold incinerator vote tonight bethlehem city council plans to hold its final vote on the incinerator proposal tonight at 7:30 p.m marking what may be the end to a three-year controversy over whether or not to approve the project some members of the area's business community have maintained throughout debates on the project that the facility will make the area better able to compete with other communities in attracting businesses but others including some lehigh students and professors continue to argue that the environmental risks posed by the construction outweigh any business gains to be made possible by it according to junior peter moore an ad hoc group against the incinerator will present petitions with about 1,160 signatures to protest construction of the facility member ship in the ad hoc group includes representation by lehigh's progressive student alliance lepoco lehigh-pocono com mittee of concern psa's committee for environmental awareness several lehigh professors and moravian college students the final vote was originally scheduled for the council meeting feb 16 but was postponed.until tonight atlss engineers probe pittsburgh oil spill by josh wilson brown and white news writer acting as consultants to the pen nsylvania department of environ mental resources der several engineers from lehigh's advanced technology for large structural sys tems atlss center have been inves tigating the jan 2 oil spill which polluted the monongahela and ohio rivers near downtown pittsburgh pa the spill contaminated the north west region of the city and spread southward into west virginia and southern parts of ohio john bower deputy director of the engineering research center of atlss eric kaufmann materials sci ence and engineering research assoc iate and alan pense associate direc tor of atlss materials science and engineering are the lehigh engine ers assisting in the investigation the der task force created by pennsylvania governor robert casey to investigate the spill hired the lehigh professors as consultants said atlss researcher john wood the consulting team's job he said is to double check the task force's work especially in areas such as hydraulics examining how the oil spilled from the tank and non-destructive testing using x-rays to examine the tank's structure while investigating and verifying some of the task force's findings the consulting team has already visited the site of the collapse and worked with fellow investigators at the battel le memorial institute in columbus ohio wood said â–  the task force is made up of people from various state agencies pense explained the atlss consultants were asked to pro vide technical advice and observe the investigations basically we're looking over the shoulders of the investigators pense said what he described as a brittle fracture occurred in the side of the tank the tank completely unwrapped as if it were a cut rubber band collapsed and the entire contents spilled out wood said the problem was that the tank should never have been used we have to make recommendations and make certain that this doesn't happen again the team is state-appointed he said but the spill's effects and the ramifications of the investigation will be much more widespread likins addresses scientists by brian cooke brown and white news writer lehigh university president peter likins spoke on global competitiveness and the economy feb 14 at the american association for the advancement of science aaas annual convention in boston likins said researchers should focus on the economic benefits of their work to attract funding and explained the new science and technology centers which president reagan directed the national science foundation nsf to establish this year the new centers use the technical expertise of the nation's colleges university professors and students with the financial support of u.s industry the concept has been criticized as a shift toward commercialization of science as research topics are typically chosen by indust ry likins said he understands the view that research topics should be chosen by the experts but added this argument won't win many budget debates in washington he said lehigh is the site of one of the nsf's engineering research centers the advanced technology for large structural systems atlss center at the mountaintop campus the largest research program on the lehigh campus two other university-industry cooperative centers the center for innovation manage ment studies and the center for chemical process modeling and control are also at lehigh likins chairs a committee on new direc tions in nsf engineering and participates in the national research council's reviews of the engineering research center program the aaas annual conference held from feb 11-15 was attended by hundreds of scientists engineers science policymakers educators and journalists several lehigh students attended the conference as part of the university's journalism-science writing pro gram the conference included sessions on medic ine and health ecology and the environment computing and engineering social science arms control science education and interna tional cooperation on large-scale space ven tures one of the leading general scientific societ ies in the united states the aaas was formed in 1848 it has some 132,000 individual mem bers and and almost 300 affiliated science and engineering societies and scientific academ ies the association publishes the weekly journal science see rivalry page 5