THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK

RESEARCH FUNDS:

No Grants for Granted "At this moment the whole financial and administrative structure of higher education and research in the U.S. is in considerable danger. If students are disagreeable and politically un­popular, may not Congress be tempted to force the transfer of research con­tracts from universities to more secure sites? In the short run this is quite likely. The research world cannot afford to take this support for granted any longer."

So said Don K. Price, dean of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, l i e spoke at the annual meeting of Midwest Research Institute, in Kansas City, Mo., where he received the MRI citation. "Only if university faculties can take effective action to make it clear that they propose to defend universities as centers of learning and rational inquiry can they protect the academic and research community from serious political reprisal."

If the reprisals do come, "The rest of the research world will lose as heavily as the universities," he points out. "For the style, the attitudes, the sense of freedom, the obligation to share basic concepts for testing and criticism that are fostered in the self-governing university faculty are the fundamental protections of scientists.

"We should really worry less about the student rebels and more about the issues that their elders have per­suaded them to raise," dean Price says. "I am inclined to think that both have chosen the wrong target. They should concentrate their fire not on universities or science or technol­ogy, but on the administrative and political system that supports and di­rects it."

This would be consistent with their demand for relevance, he explains. "We do need to see that our science and technology are made relevant to contemporary problems." What the rebels need to learn is that relevance can be attained in modern society only by responsibility, he says, and responsibility can be achieved only by organization, discipline, and self-control.

Speaking of the system that now exists in the U.S., dean Price says, "Nowhere before have scientists and scholars been in such a favorable posi­tion to influence policy decisions while retaining a secure base of sup­port for their work. This system, which has made it possible for gov­ernment to intervene in the solution of social and economic problems with­out assuming the ownership or de-

Don K. Price Education and research in danger

stroying the autonomy of our academic or business institutions, may help us avoid the apparent necessity of choos­ing between socialism and old-fash­ioned capitalism." If the rebels really want academic science to be relevant to social issues, he says, they should applaud opening the crucial issues for public discussion.

The rebels of the New Left say that by getting deeply involved in current problems, the scientist has sacrificed his position of complete de­tachment from the system and for­feited his status as an independent moral censor, dean Price says. "But the dilemma of the New Left is an absolute one. It is not possible to be relevant without also becoming re­sponsible. Absolute purity in politics means absolute irrelevance," he says.

"If we in the universities are to be responsible as well as relevant, we are going to have to make a more effective union between the work of the technological and scientific com­munity and the administrators,'' dean Price adds.

COMPUTERS:

The Associative Memory Bread—butter; Winter—snow. "As­sociation" is a word game most people have played. "Such 'Associative Memory' is the basis of a new com­puting device under development at Goodyear Aerospace Corp. for the Rome Air Development Center, Rome, N.Y.

The "brain" is being used cur­rently by Air Force data processing experts, Rome project engineer James L. Previte says, to evaluate the ad­vantages of associative processing techniques. And, though neither

Goodyear Aerospace nor the Depart­ment of Defense is talking about it, the system may well be suited to tracking incoming missiles and dif­ferentiating nuclear warheads from missile-spawned junk.

Other uses Goodyear anticipates for its system include air traffic con­trol, reconnaissance and surveillance systems, electronic warfare systems, in­ventory control, and information re­trieval systems.

The latter two uses—those from which the chemical community might derive the most direct benefit—may be marginally economical at the present time, Goodyear Aerospace's manager of computer engineering Jack Rudolph admits. Associative process­ing, he notes, costs the user 35 cents a bit, while conventional systems run about 25 cents a bit. Offsetting this at least partially, however, is the fact that the Goodyear system requires only 60% as many bits to do the same job done by larger conventional computers and the Associative Mem­ory system does it up to 1000 times faster.

The concept of Associative Memory hinges on what Goodyear calls, in classic Pentagonese, content addres­sability and parallel search capability. "The operation is analogous to a mixed audience responding simultane­ously to a command from a speaker to stand up if their last name begins with the letter A," Mr. Rudolph says. "The analogy for the conven­tional computer would be for an usher to go from seat to seat examining name tags to make the same identi­fication.

"Obviously," he continues, "our sys­tem is most cost effective where speed is at a premium. In logistics or in­ventory control slower systems can be more easily tolerated. In air traf­fic control, however, delay can re­sult in loss of human life."

AIR POLLUTION:

Quality Information "The Air Quality Act of 1967 out­lines a mechanism for dealing with air pollution problems on a regional basis. That mechanism is now in motion. Keeping it running and mak­ing it work requires coordinated action at all levels of Government and by industry and the public."

So says Dr. John T. Middleton, commissioner of the National Air Pol­lution Control Administration, in the preface to a booklet "Guidelines for the Development of Air Quality Stand­ards and Implementation Plans" just issued by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Purpose of the publication is to make air pollu-

12 C&EN JUNE 2, 1969

tion control work by informing the states of what they are required to do under the act and by furnishing "how-to-do-it" information on establishing and enforcing air quality standards.

The booklet is essentially divided into two parts. The first part ex­plains the details of the 1967 law— the steps that state governments are expected to take—and lists the factors that HEW will consider in review­ing air quality standards and imple­mentation plans. The second part contains recommendations to help state governments develop air quality standards consistent with the provi­sions and intent of the act.

NAPCA's Middleton Mechanism now in motion

In part two, for example, NAPCA gives the official position on how standards should be developed for air quality control regions where air qual­ity varies considerably from one part of the region to another. This prob­lem has generated considerable de­bate.

NAPCA notes that air quality within a region normally is not uni­form. "To expect that air quality in urban-industrial core areas can be as good as it is elsewhere in the air quality control region is not rea-sonaole," NAPCA says. But it is reasonable and it is the intent of the act, the agency says, to provide throughout every control region air quality which, at a minimum, is ade­quate for the protection of the public health. However, other factors be­sides protection of public health may be used in setting standards for a par­ticular area of the region. As a result, NAPCA says, in addition to setting a minimum air quality standard based on concern for public health, states may want to establish more

stringent standards for those parts of a region where higher levels of air quality are desired.

Therefore, in NAPCA's opinion, the desire of a state to set differing levels of air quality, as necessary, does not violate the intent of the Air Quality Act of 1967.

POPULATION:

Research Toward Control A single, research-heavy program for population control greater than all existing efforts has been mapped out for the United Nations by a panel of a private group—the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA). The $100 million proposed effort, to be headed by a commissioner for population, would entail "substantial resources" for population research.

This research would involve greatly increased "basic research in repro­ductive biology as well as applied re­search into physical, chemical, and immunological methods of contracep­tion," the panel envisions. Other re­search would be addressed to defining optimum population policy for coun­tries and the world, finding incentives for population control, and discover­ing the effects of high fertility.

The new plan comes in a report by a UNA-USA National Policy Panel on World Population headed by John D. Rockefeller, III, chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation. Financing for the panel's work was provided by a Ford Foundation grant.

The panel's proposal would out­strip the total worldwide commitment for population control last year, which the panel estimates at $80 million.

Arguing for a multilateral program, the panel proposes a new commis­sioner for population under the United Nations development program. The commissioner would have the central role in planning U.N. assistance to countries. He would handle funding through the existing Population Trust Fund, set up in July 1967 but weakly supported to date ($1.5 million).

The report calls population control measures to date "ludicrously small" and cites the astronomical projection of 7.5 billion persons due by the year 2000. With concerted action, the count might be held to 5.5 billion, the panel says.

In any case, U.N. progress up to now has been lacking, in the panel's view. Calling the U.N. "reluctant," the panel says, "Though the popula­tion cake has been sliced this way and that in an endless series of co­ordinating meetings, very few crumbs have as yet fallen into the lap of a hungry world."

HORMONES:

Two from the Pituitary Science is making great progress in understanding human growth and re­production, according to Dr. C. H. Li of the University of California's Hormone Research Laboratory in San Francisco. Speaking as the first an­nual Albert Lasker Award lecturer at Salk Institute, Dr. Li described his own recent work on some of the vital growth and fertility hormones pro­duced by the body's pituitary gland.

The new lectureship, established last month by the Salk Institute and the Albert and Mary Lasker Founda­tion of New York City, will be given annually to scientists who have won the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, called by some the American Nobel Prize. Dr. Li won the award in 1962 for the isolation of several pituitary hormones.

Two of the pituitary secretions studied by Dr. Li are essential to re­production. The knowledge of how they work may find major applications in the control of fertility.

One of these brings about die re­pair of interstitial cells in gonads of rats whose pituitary glands have been removed. It is called the interstitial cell-stimulating hormone ( ICSH).

The second is a follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in the male. It takes part in the production of sperm.

These two substances act synergisti-cally, Dr. Li finds. Neither alone can stimulate the secretion of sex hor­mones or help germ cells to mature.

Together, they can stimulate the production of estrogen in rats without pituitaries, can bring about develop­ment of follicles, and can even bring on ovulation if administered at the right time. ICSH and FSH are in­volved in germ cell and sex hormone production in male and female.

FSH from sheep and from humans have been purified. Chemical data indicate that they are different, al­though both are proteins.

ICSH from sheep and humans are also proteins and are also different, Dr. Li says. The sheep's ICSH con­sists of two nonidentical subunits, each about 15,000 molecular weight. Physical and chemical properties of the subunits are entirely different, and separately they are not biologically active. Combining them again re­stores the ICSH activity, however.

Dr. Li and his coworkers have also done considerable work on the human growth hormone (HGH) which is in­volved both in promoting growth and in stimulating lactation. They estab­lished the sequence of the molecule's 188 amino acid residues and found only one tryptophane residue and two disulfide bridges.

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