Science: Earth & Man

Regularly every Christmas-New Year week, at a time when school holidays release scholars for a brief period, the American Association for the Advancement of Science conducts a complex circus of 17 rings labeled from Anthropology to Zoology. Just as regularly at the end of each school year, at a time when scholars head for vacations. A.A.A.S. corrals as many as possible for a summer meeting. Then, however, A.A.A.S. wisely avoids a single big show, is content with one modest meeting somewhere east of the Rocky Mountains, another modest meeting somewhere along the Pacific Coast. Last week the Pacific division of A.A.A.S., with its collective mind primarily on Earth and its quakes, met in Los Angeles. Simultaneously the major body of A.A.A.S., with its collective mind primarily on Man and his wellbeing, met in Minneapolis.

Prime points in Los Angeles:

Earth to Burst? Old Dr. Bailey Willis, 78, of Palo Alto, who loves to scare the wits out of “seismophobic” Southern Californians, presented a picture of Earth’s history and structure which disquieted many a long-range imagination. The Earth, Dr. Willis suggested, originally was an aggregation of cold substances which gravitation pulled into a tight little planetary mass somewhere between 50 million and two billion years ago. Ever since, radioactive elements in Earth’s material have been driving energy towards its centre until today the core of Earth is a hot fluid mass of iron, nickel, radium and other heavy elements 4,000 miles in diameter surrounded by a rocky shell 2,000 miles thick. As eons pass, “the persistent release of atomic forces continue, and will continue to supply heat and melt the surrounding shell with the result that Mother Earth may eventually take her place among the stars.”

Raw Spot. Seeking a logical reason for the frequency of earthquakes along the shores of the Pacific, Dr. Beno Gutenberg of Pasadena presented a thesis that the Pacific Ocean represents a vast area from which Earth has lost 20 miles of outside skin. That “raw spot in Mother Earth’s side promises to explain the true nature of Earth’s disturbances, the crustal movements appearing to extend along the edges of the skinless areas. We shall never be able to predict the day on which an earthquake will occur. But it is possible that we shall be able to set the date to within a year or so.”

Balm. To Californians who fear earthquakes Dr. Owen Cochran Coy of Los Angeles offered this balm:

“In the history of California, there have been only 176 earthquakes, but only those of San Francisco (1906), Santa Barbara (1925) and Long Beach (1933), in recent times, have been serious.”

And George B. McDougall of California’s Department of Public Works announced: “Two-thirds of our school buildings have been reconstructed so as to avoid the dangers of a quake to their pupils.”

Prime points in Minneapolis:

Giantizers. An extract of thymus gland (sweetbread) which, when fed to several generations of white rats, makes precocious giants of the current litters has been applied to defective children. Dr. Arthur Steinberg, Philadelphia associate of Dr. Leonard George Rowntree who managed the original research, reported giving thymus extract to a 5-year-old child who had never spoken. At the end of two months the child talked normally. Another child grew six inches in six weeks after treatment. Dr. Adolph Melanchton Hanson of Faribault, Minn., who developed thymus extract originally, said that the U. S. Bureau of Animal Husbandry by means of extract has succeeded in bringing rabbits to full growth and maturity in a few days, now plans to see what happens to calves whose mothers get doses of thymus extract.

Wilford on Brains. The pierced and broken condition of bones recently excavated from Indian mounds in northern Minnesota led L. A. Wilford of Minneapolis to conclude that, while these early redskins may not have eaten the flesh of their dead, they did drain the marrow from bones, the brains from skulls for food. A Belgian scholar named Maisin thinks such brain food might be preventive of cancer.

Blood Gauge. By ingeniously applying the principle of the steam gauge on a boiler to an artery, Drs. William Ferguson Hamilton & Robert A. Woodbury of Athens, Ga. “secured some of the most valuable information in medical history concerning the correlation of blood pressure and heart disease.” Into an artery they pushed a sterile hypodermic needle connected to a very responsive gauge. Every fluctuation in arterial pressure jiggled a silver diaphragm in the gauge which by means of a reflected beam of light squiggled every jiggle on a permanent photographic film. The hypodermic manometer revealed that the blood pressure of a 1-oz mouse is equal to the blood pressure of a full-grown man, that the blood pressure of a man suffering from cardiovascular disease practically doubles. Dr. Hamilton & associates have taken the blood pressure of unborn rabbits. If opportunity presents, they will try for the blood pressure of an unborn baby to learn more about the catastrophe a baby goes through in being born.

Lenticular Streamlining. Let experts in airplane streamlining and cannon shot trajectories heed the common shape of 6,000 meteor specimens which he has studied, advised Meteorologist Harvey Harlow Nininger of Denver. Those meteors commonly are shaped like a thick double lens and travel broadside through the stratosphere at something like 20 mi. per second. Fish-shapes may be excellent for speed in water and thick air. But in tenuous stratosphere, through which Germans bombarded Paris during the War and through which Flyer Wiley Post has been trying to scoot, lenticular streamlining seems to be the only thing.

Harmonic Therapy. Based upon 14 years’ analysis and experimentation, Drs. Willem van de Wall & Clara Maria Liepmann of Manhattan set forth the theory that criminals and madmen can in many cases be cured by music. Therapeutic is community singing in jails. Best topics for jail songs are occurrences within the prison walls.*

Curdle in F #. By running milk in a thin sheet over a steel diaphragm which was vibrating to the musical pitch of F #, Dr. Leslie A. Chambers of Philadelphia put the milk in such shape that when it curdled in the stomach of the frailest infant, the curds were so fine that the infant could digest them.

Blue for Babies. Josephine M. Smith of Iowa City flooded fretful babies with blue, green, yellow and red lights, found that blue soothed them best of all. Fretting reached its peak in complete darkness.

Catholic Birth Rate. Professor Samuel A. Stouffer of Madison, Wis., one of the statisticians who shocked the country by showing that persons on Relief have more babies than those who have to support themselves (TIME, April 8 et ante), is surprised “to find a declining Catholic birth rate, contrary to what would have been expected in view of the efforts of the Church to discourage birth control.” During the past 16 years the birth rate of Catholics in Milwaukee fell off 15%, against a 5% decline for Protestants. In the rest of Wisconsin the falling-off was 14% for Catholics, 11% for Protestants. Said Professor Stouffer: “Whether Catholic families are using birth control or are resorting to continence cannot be proved from my evidence.”

Love Among Birds. By injecting concentrated urine of pregnant mares and ewes into birds, Professor Emil Witschi of Iowa City made the birds propagate at any time of the year he pleased. “Best results have been obtained with sparrows and finches,” said he. “Female sparrows are prone to lay four or five eggs and decide to quit. If the eggs are removed as she lays them, however, she will go on laying up to 50 or more. Whether she counts the eggs by eye or feel isn’t clear.”

*Currently popular and available on a Decca phonograph record is a sad ballad called “Bruno Hauptmann’s Fate.”