A. A. A. S.

A scientist's holiday is to come out of his classroom or laboratory and discuss his specialty before a meeting of his peers. Groups of scientists met last week all through the land to discuss another year's developments in all manner of sciences. Astronomers pondered huge things at New Haven. Bacteriologists gossiped about small things in Cambridge. Geologists at Toronto heard greetings from President Hoover, himself a charter member of the Geological Society of America. Rheologists told at Easton, Pa. what news they knew of flowing liquids. Psychologists chatted in Iowa City of habits, instincts. In Manhattan psychiatrists discussed the Unconscious, and the unhappy home life of humans.

The most complete, comprehensive summing up was accomplished at Cleveland where 5,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science gathered for their 87th annual convention. Two thousand scientists read papers ranging in subject from the size & shape of the universe to the sex expression of cucumbers. They adopted a resolution protesting against the bill before Congress to prohibit the use of dogs for vivisection in the District of Columbia. For the first time, a well organized exhibition of research projects was included in the meeting so that scientists could see what they heard. Many were disappointed because their retiring president, Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, chairman of California Institute of Technology, did not bring his friend Herr Doktor Albert Einstein, now in California, to tell them about Relativity. Incoming president for 1930-31 is Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, director of biological laboratories at Caltech.

Some important scientific facts, theories, suggestions of 1930:

Big Ten. Short, diplomatic Dr. Millikan, 1929-30 president of the Association, rocked back and forth on his toes, reasserted his belief that cosmic radiations replenish earth's energy loss, referred to his scientific opponent Sir James Hopwood: Jeans, British astronomer who believes the world is dying. "If Sir James Jeans prefers to hold one view and I another no one can say us nay. The one thing of which you may be quite sure is that neither of us knows anything about it." Dr. Millikan reviewed 100 years of scientific thought and labor, named what he esteemed as ten most important contributions :

1) Formulation of the principle of conservation of energy -- the first law of thermodynamics.

2) Formulation of the principle of degradation of energy -- second law of thermodynamics.

3) Discovery of the facts of evolution.

4) Discovery of radioactive substances.

5) Discovery of the age of the earth, sun, stars.

6) Development of evidence of the interconvertibility of mass and energy.

7) Discovery that all elements are built up from hydrogen.

8) Evidence of the annihilation of negative & positive electrons in the interior of heavy atoms.

9) Precise measurements on the relative masses of atoms.

10) Discovery of cosmic ("Millikan") rays.

Toward Emptiness. Many physicists are talking today about an expanding universe. The "red shift" observed in starlight has been interpreted by some to demonstrate that the stars of the universe are rushing away from each other like a panic-stricken crowd (TIME, Oct. 6, Jan. 5). Last week Dr. Albert Einstein told newsgatherers in Pasadena that he was anxious to talk to Mt. Wilson astronomers about their observations of the red shift. At the same time in Cleveland, Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of Harvard Astronomical Observatory, reported some data about the expanding universe which he expects to repeat later to Dr. Einstein. Harvard astronomers have just completed a survey of one-tenth of the sky in an attempt to extend Man's knowledge of the universe. Dr. Shapley found 18,000 new galaxies, 1,900 new variable stars. He noticed that stars in space are scattered non-uniformly, much as people are scattered over the U. S. There are immense stretches of space uninhabited by stars, occasional congested districts, super-galaxies, like the Milky Way which consists of 40 billion stars. Said Dr. Shapley: "What is the new picture this gives us? We must conceive of the whole universe as expanding endlessly . . . the galaxies and super-galaxies scattering all the time. We even have figures on the rate of this expansion during the last 2,000 million years. ... It is reasonable to assume that it [the universe] will continue increasing in dimensions at the same rate and 2,000 million years from now it will be scattered over twice the area it occupies now. . . . There will come a time when there will be nothing but emptiness left."

Plumbers & Aristotle. Sociologist William Fielding Ogburn, University of Chicago chairman of President Hoover's Commission on Social Trends, had much to say about the future of civilization: "More probably in the future there will be seen fewer attempts to learn it all and more attempts to learn only a part. . . . Society of the future will be one of greater and greater change . . . morality will have no place . . . right & wrong will give way to social expediency. . . . The units of organization will be larger . . . despite the set-back occasioned by the Treaty of Versailles. . . . Democracy will not be so successfully applicable. ... A declining population is altogether a possibility. . . . There has often been discussion of how far the birth rate will fall . . . the answer is that the production of babies, like the production of potatoes, will be governed by demand now that the supply can be controlled. . . . The spread of higher education will be more rapid than the growth of vocational opportunities . . . the common laborer will be well versed in philosophy and plumbers will discuss Aristotle."

Anemic Plants. Plants yellow-white because they are deficient in chlorophyll perk up like anemic people when treated with liver extract, said Dr. Oran Lee Raber, botany professor at Roman Catholic Immaculata College. Immaculata, Pa.

This proves the close chemical and physiological resemblance between human red blood cells and plant chlorophyll cells, is an evidence of common origin. When listening scientists wondered that evolutionary data should come from a Roman Catholic institution, Dr. Raber explained: "We are allowed to teach evolution in Catholic schools so long as we do not teach evolution of the soul."

Genius. After carefully measuring every corner of the skulls & skeletons of 2.500 humans and of 240 chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, the Charles F. Brush Foundation, founded two years ago in Cleveland (TIME, July 2, 1928), announced that a genius is one whose mind grows faster than his bones.

Sex Detector. By a new X-ray photographic method called amniography, Dr. Thomas Orville Menees of Blodgett Memorial Hospital, Grand Rapids, Mich., has been able to detect the sex of an unborn child three months before birth. An injection of harmless strontium iodide, opaque to X-rays, makes it possible to identify the structure of the unborn child. Another important use of amniography: to determine cases where a Caesarian section is necessary for safe delivery.

Singing Cities. Dr. William Braid White, director of research in acoustics for American Steel & Wire Co., Chicago, reported that he had taken ''sound portraits" of the largest cities for the Chicago Noise Commission. Using the Westinghouse osiso which photographs sound. Dr. White found that 15 stories above ground the numerous small city jangles blend into a definite form, a characteristic ground tone. Each city sings differently, depending upon the number and arrangement of its skyscrapers, trolley wires, tracks, lamp posts. Said Dr. White: "The pitch of London's voice is low C. New York's is like the singing of a wire that carries a 60-cycle alternating current. Chicago's is like the hum of an automobile running without engine knocks."

Synthetic Life. When last month news slipped out that George Washington Crile, Cleveland medico-scientist, had created living cells, laymen gasped, scientists doubted (TIME, Dec. 22). Last week, scientists had a chance to see for themselves. Brain fats, proteins and ash from apparently dead body cells, placed in water containing normal body salts, formed minute structures which multiplied by dividing in two. Many still doubted synthetic life, spoke of a new scientific tool.

Earth's Curve. Exhibited to the Cleveland scientists by Charles Edward Kenneth Mees, director of research of Eastman Kodak Co., was the first photograph ever taken showing the earth's curvature. Snapped in one-fiftieth of a second from an airplane in South America by Captain Albert W. Stevens, U. S. Army photographer, the picture shows a stretch of 300 miles of pampas beyond which rise the Andes. The distant horizon line of the pampas is curved slightly downward at one end. The picture was taken on film made sensitive to red and infra-red rays (not scattered by earth's atmosphere like the shorter wavelengths) by the addition of kryptocyanine, a photo-sensitizing dye.

Astronomical photography, said Dr. Mees, has led to the development of more sensitive film than Captain Stevens used.

This film, already utilized in photographing sporting events at night, was designed primarily for astronomers to photograph very dim stars. Using film treated with neocyanine the solar spectrum has been photographed up to 11,634 angstrom units, far beyond red at 8,000 angstrom units, the longest visible wavelength.

$1,000 Paper. Dr. Merle A. Tuve, physicist of the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism, read a paper worth $1,000, the annual Association award for outstanding address of the meeting. With three fellow physicists, Drs. L. R. Hafsted and Odd Dahl of Carnegie Institution and Dr. Gregory Breit of New York University, he worked for several years to develop a two-million-volt tube which produces X-rays equivalent to the gamma rays of 182 million dollars worth of radium. Laboratory significance : scientists by using these powerful rays may be able to burst the atom nucleus. Practical significance: X-rays from high voltage tubes resemble cancer-curing gamma rays, may possibly be used as a radium substitute.

New President. To preside over their next year's meeting (in New Orleans) the scientists chose able Dr. Franz Boas, anthropologist of Columbia University. Born in Minden, Germany, 72 years ago, Dr. Boas became interested in ancient man at the Universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Kiel. In 1887, three years after he returned from his first exploration, at Baffin Land, he married Marie Krackowizer of New York, has had three children. He has been a member of the anthropology department of Columbia for 34 years, belongs to 31 scientific societies.

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