Texture Panel Options In my texture panel I have several red and white checkerboard Icons. What they  have appeared there for I am not certain as they have no assignment?  Is there a way to delete them as I do not believe they are doing anything? Or maybe they are? How could I tell?
Those icons show the different textures that have been created for your materials. In this example all of them are empty, meaning that no textures have been created yet.



There is no way or need to delete them.

Once you add some textures, the window will show a list of all the available textures.

To know which ones are enabled for a particular material check the boxes on the right.