Lights & Lesser Animals

Every spring, about the time the cherry blossoms open in Washington, the National Academy of Sciences there opens its great bronze doors. George Washington University and the National Bureau of Standards, with other Government bureaus, play host to the nation's scientists. Last week hundreds of them met for their annual round of scientific gossip:

Northern Visitors. Dr. Carl W. Gartlein of Cornell told the physicists how he'd taken spectrograms of auroras (northern lights) and found that some of their light comes from hydrogen ions (protons).

Scientists have known for a long time that auroras are connected with sun spots and other eruptions on the sun. They were pretty sure that particles of some sort, driven out of the sun, touch off the northern lights when they hit the earth's atmosphere. But they did not know what the particles were. Dr. Gartlein is sure that they are solar protons hitting the outer fringes of the atmosphere at about 300 miles per second. When they capture electrons from atmospheric atoms, they give off a little light. Most of the aurora's light, however, comes from oxygen and nitrogen atoms which the solar protons have jarred into luminescence.

Mountain Vacations. Drs. Carl R. Moore and Dorothy Price of the University of Chicago told the National Academy of Sciences how they sent some rodents on purposeful vacations. They assembled congenial groups of rats, mice, guinea pigs and hamsters and let them live for a while at pleasant mountain resorts. The idea was to test the theory that high altitudes have an adverse effect on sexual activity. Even at 14,260 feet, all the rodents multiplied with unimpaired efficiency. This altitude, concluded Moore & Price, does not diminish fertility--for rodents, anyway.

Shocked Mothers. The rat mothers that worked for Dr. Calvin P. Stone of Stanford did not have so pleasant a time. He gave electroconvulsive shocks to recently bred females. Some produced young, but did not know what to do next. The shake-up apparently destroyed their instinctive knowledge of how to build nests or suckle their infants. They "exhibited no maternal behavior," and acted as if the whole thing had been a dream.

Placid Cats. Drs. Philip Bard and Vernon B. Mountcastle of Johns Hopkins told of experiments with half-brained cats. Some years ago they discovered that when its whole forebrain was removed, a cat became uncontrollably ferocious, reacting with outrage to the slightest provocation. Apparently the lower brain, the seat of anger, was dominating the cat in the absence of the forebrain.

Recently the doctors removed only certain parts of restraining forebrains. With the neocortex cut out, the cats became utterly placid. Nothing would get them mad. Even when their tails were burned, they responded only with gentle, tolerant spitting. The peacemaking parts of the forebrain were in complete control.

Besides listening to these and many other papers, the Academy presented an award in absentia to Dr. Alexander G. Vologdin of the U.S.S.R. for work on Pre-Cambrian algae. Dr. Vologdin, who wrote that he could not come to receive the award, explained that he had "a bronchial ailment."

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