The Academy

They were the vanguard of U. S. Science, the 100 who met last week in Washington. They assembled as the 4 National Academy of Sciences to consider news from unknown fields. For her exploration of blood cells, they received into their ranks the first woman member of their company, Miss Florence Rena Sabin, physiologist at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Came the reports, on subjects large . and small. Some members reread the papers they had presented before the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (TIME, May 4).

Bananas. Early in their session, the scientists were invited to assign the banana to its original home. It had long been agreed that southeastern Asia deserved the honor. Fossil seeds (probably Oligocene) from Colombia, however, argued that the banana is essentially an American fruit--Dr. Edward W. Berry, Johns Hopkins.

Voice Pictures, A photographic process made visible the breath of genius that distinguishes opera singers from the bulls of Bashan. A mechanically perfect singer, resting precisely on every note, would give a chart in straight lines. McCormack, Case, Melba, . Farrar and peers, singing Annie Laurie, produced charts in wavy lines, undulated by pitch and intensity--Dr. C. E. Seashore, Iowa State University.

Germs' Breath. How, what, do bacteria breathe? The animal organism that causes sleeping sickness needs oxygen but died of an overdose. The plant organism that causes tuberculosis also needs oxygen, died when deprived of it. The latter was thought to grow slowly in its human host not because it gets no oxygen, but because it gets very little.--Drs. F. G. Novy and M. H. Soule, University of Michigan.

Sex Metabolism. In autumn and winter, the thyroid glands of pigeons enlarged and the pigeons' eggs were predominantly male. In spring and summer, small thyroids, female pigeons. One female, after hatching many clutches, actually turned male, sired a brood. (The significance of this research was that the thyroid principle, thyroxin, appeared to be more fundamentally connected with sex determination than the sex-cell chromosomes--Dr. Oscar Riddle, Carnegie Institute.