National Academy

Last week there congregated in Washington many a heavy thinker for the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Half a peanut an hour, the thinkers were told, would furnish sufficient calories to sustain their heaviest mental work; thus a small bag of peanuts each would have seen their brains through the three-day sessions of the Academy.

Dr. Francis Gano Benedict of the Carnegie Institution was, with his wife, Cornelia Golay Benedict, the author of this peanut theory. They reached their conclusions after a series of tests on six subjects, observed under the following conditions: 1) in a state of mental vacuity; 2) with their attention being called periodically by electrical signals; 3) solving complex problems without aid of pencil or paper (multiplication of 43 x 87 was one problem).

The conclusion reached by Dr. & Mrs. Benedict was that the popular notion that the calory demand of the brain is proportionate to its labor, is false. An oyster cracker or a half-peanut would sustain Albert Einstein's brain while doing intensive work on his field equations for one hour, the same number of calories would furnish a parlor maid only energy enough to dust a desk for five minutes.

Dr. Francis Ferdinand Lucas, Bell Telephone Co. researcher, told of a new microscope of his invention, so powerful that it will divide a cell 1/3,000 inch in diameter into a 30-story apartment-house-like structure. The lenses have a magnifying ratio of 5,000 : 1. Starting at the top of a cell it can take a picture, be moved down 1/100,000 inch at a time to take cross-section views.

In photographic work the cell is illuminated with cadmium light (beyond the upper reach of the visible spectrum) which gives a trueness of detail on the plate unobtainable with ordinary light containing a variety of wavelengths.

Karl von Frisch of the University of Munich believes, he said, that fish can hear, have the ability to learn. He told how he had stood beside his small aquarium, blown a whistle, scattered food to the minnows. Soon, he said, they learned what the whistle meant, would rush to the top with gaping mouths whenever it was blown. Later he procured another whistle of lower tone. He would blow this, then spank the rising fish with a glass rod. Soon they learned the meaning of the new whistle, would cower at bottom when it was blown, but still come gaping to the surface when the food whistle blew.

Dr. William Berryman Scott, patriarchal Princeton paleontologist, described a dinner party held in Ecuador some 1,600 years ago. A group of Indians sat watery-mouthed while mastodon steaks were sizzling over their fire. Beside the fire were laid their fine Mayan dishes. As the banquet was about to start, woe, in the form of a clay bank, descended upon the party, preserved the bones and pottery for posterity. Uncovered in 1927 by German archeologists, the find redated the reign of the mastodon. Until lately the mastodon was generally thought to have died about 20,000 years ago.

Dr. Ernest William Brown, Yale mathematics professor, joined the growing ranks of Planet X doubters. He said he had checked the calculations of the late Astronomer Percival Lowell, the planet's predicter, had discovered inaccuracies.

Accidental, said Yale's Brown, was the finding of X in the part of the sky predicted by Harvard's Lowell. A few years ago it would not have tallied with calculations. In 1900, X would have been 40DEG from the predicted path, in 1875 90DEG away. Basis for the Lowell calculations was the fact that the path of Uranus was being warped by some outside influence which was attributed to the predicted planet. X, said Dr. Brown, is too small to exert such a pressure. Siding with Dr. Brown in the doubting column are: Dr. William Duncan MacMillan of University of Chicago, who maintains that X's path is hyperbolic, not elliptical; Professor H. E. Wood, astronomer for the South African Union, who gives X a size 1/30th that of Earth; Fernand Baldet, associate astronomer at the government observatory at Meudon, France; Professor Harold Lee Alden of Yale's South African Station, who sides with Dr. Brown, claims X is too small to influence Uranus; Dr. Frank Schlesinger, Director of Yale Observatory; Dr. Armin Otto Leuschner, astronomy professor at University of California. Chief among X supporters is Dr. Vesto Melvin Slipher, director of Lowell Observatory, whose brother. Astronomer Earl Carl Slipher, last fortnight gave out the following calculations on X :

Distance from Earth: 3,813,000,000 mi.

Size: about that of Earth. Length of X's year: about 3,200 times Earth's.

Orbit: elliptical, with long diameter ap proximately 144; billion miles.

Other X supporters: Dr. John Jackson of Greenwich (England) Observatory. who at first was a doubter; Dr. John Anthony Miller of Sproul Observatory, Swarthmore College.

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