British at Leicester

Obscured in the world Press, as other scientific meetings have been this year by financial and political events, was the 102nd meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, last week at Leicester, England. Yet the Leicester meeting presented many a useful fact and theory. Science v. Work. British scientists are awake to the charge that they are throwing men out of work by inventing too many new processes and machines. To answer critics became the duty of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, biochemist, Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, president of the Royal Society and president of the British Association. Sir Frederick tried no statistical answer or detailed argument. There are, said he, "eight to ten individuals in the world now engaged upon scientific investigations for every one so engaged 20 years ago. . . . Whatever the consequences, the increase of scientific knowledge is at this time undergoing a positive acceleration." Only in its diversion to war is this increasing knowledge destructive, he went on. It gives men leisure, and men can be educated to use their leisure pleasantly. Sir Frederick believes that British Broadcasting Corp., a government licensed monopoly, will take charge of such education. Sir Josiah Stamp, economist, was altogether pessimistic on the subject. Science, argued he, should be curbed. It is producing new goods which destroy the demand for old. That process tends to wipe out old industries, causes economic waste. There should be a referee system to control the exploitation of new "direct discoveries" and stimulate the production of "derivative discoveries" which established concerns can use in their business. One method of control would be to force the price of a new article high enough to pay for the manufacturing equipment in a few years. The price would impede the sale of the article, make new manufacturers think long before throwing something new into the market. Meanwhile old concerns with slowly depreciating equipment to amortize would have opportunity to revive, or to die gently instead of abruptly. But, deplored Sir Josiah, his idea of a referee is tenable only if all classes become socially and economically minded. "An Ideal Diet cannot yet be defined," observed Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins speaking as a professional biochemist, because "factors still unknown contribute to normal nutrition." Garbaged Farm Lands. To provide more arable land for England, Francis Maurice Gustavus Du-Plat-Taylor, dock and reclamation engineer, urged that London's house refuse and sludge from sewage disposal plants be deposited upon marsh and mud lands. London sludge, which now is hauled out to sea, amounts to three million tons yearly. House refuse reaches 1,500,000 tons yearly. Tooth Crystals. X-ray analysis showed J. Thewlis a close analogy between the structure of tooth enamel and the fertilizing mineral apatite. He hopes that further study will show how to prevent tooth decay. Enamel and apatite consist of fibres made up of hexagonal crystals in which precisely the same elements (calcium, oxygen, phosphorus) have precisely the same atomic arrangement. In tooth enamel some of the fibre-axes are inclined 20 degrees to the tooth surface, others 10 degrees. (In dogs' teeth the fibre-axis is at right angles to the enamel surface.) According to the degree of fibring, there are three kinds of normal enamel. One kind resists decay. The other kinds are susceptible and establish the problem of prophylaxis.

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