Academicians

High lights of the National Academy of Sciences convention last week in Washington:

Electric Animals. Anatomist Harold Saxton Burr of Yale last week showed motion pictures of himself spinning an embryo salamander on a turntable. He was not spinning it in order to make the unborn salamander dizzy -- but to show that its tiny body possessed a sort of electrical shadow, that it could be used like a piece of electrical apparatus. The spinning salamander induced a feeble electric current in a wire, just as a big steam generator creates a big current.

In human beings many body functions are accompanied by electrical activity --nerve impulses, heartbeats, menstruation in women, healing of wounds, even the blinking of eyelids. Dr. Burr added up the evidence, concluded that every living organism is surrounded by an electrodynamic field. Its electrical pattern develops along with its physiological structure. Dr. Burr further reported that the electrodynamic field of mice is altered by incipient breast cancer -- an important addition to the hope chest of early cancer diagnosis in human beings.*

Solar Prophet. Studying the sun as a variable star, Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot of the Smithsonian Institution has found a number of cyclic variations in the amount of sunshine bathing the earth which affect its weather. Last week he announced finding a new short cycle of 16 days. This is closely correlated with wide temperature swings on earth -- swings of 15 and even 25DEG. The pattern of temperature change following the 16-day cycle varies from place to place and from month to month, but Dr. Abbot believes that the value of 16-day temperature prediction to industry and agriculture would be well worth the trouble and expense of making month-by-month prediction charts for each interested locality.

Submarine Canyons. Modern methods of exploring the ocean bottom by echo-sounding have disclosed several huge undersea canyons. One of these submerged gorges, lying off the Hudson River's mouth, is 130 miles long and its lower end lies under 7,500 ft. of Atlantic Ocean. One theory has it that submarine canyons were cut during the Glacial Age by surface rivers. This could have occurred only if the sea level was then nearly two miles lower than it is now -- a presumption difficult to account for, even allowing for water drawn into the great Glacial Age ice sheets. Geologist Douglas Johnson of Columbia University last week announced an easier explanation: "sapping" by submerged springs. The Glacial Age rivers deposited great masses of sediment on the sea floor; water was forced through the sediment by hardening or by pressure and oozed out at the seaward face; this process cut the canyons.

* For other cancer news, see p. 49.

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