NEUTRALIZES CANCER VIRUS
Another advance has been made toward the solution of the cancer problem.
Dr. Margaret R. Lewis of the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Dr. Howard B. Andervont of the Johns Hopkins University have just succeeded in establishing that the unidentified organism that causes the Rous chicken sarcoma can be rendered inactive by means of small quantities of aluminum and calcium salts. The significance of this work lies in its possible application in the treatment of human cancer. An immense amount of research will have to be done before any such result is likely to ensue, but these recently learned facts point the way to a new direction for cancer research. If it is found that calcium and aluminum compounds, either given by mouth or injected into the blood stream, will have an adverse effect on cancer in chickens, it may lead to results of great benefit in treating human cancer because these compounds are more or less inert with little capacity to harm body tissue
RIDDLE OF HOPPERS’ PARASITES
A new angle in the already complicated puzzle of the cause of sex in animals has been uncovered by the researches of three workers in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dr. N.A. Cobb, Dr. G. Steiner and Dr. J.R. Christie. Stated roughly, they have found that crowded quarters, possibly complicated by short rations, tend to produce males, while more room and better living conditions generally tend to produce females, in certain parasitic hairworms that infest the bodies of insects.
Their discovery was the result of an effort to play the old game of the fighting entomologist, turning one small creature against another in man’s unending warfare on the devouring hosts that threaten his crops. In the present instance, they were trying to find how many eggs of the hairworms a grasshopper would have to eat on his natural diet of leaves to become so heavily infested that he would die without descendants. An average of less than fifty, they learned, would produce a fatal family of hairworms in the poor hopper’s insides. A few less, and the hopper lived, but could produce no offspring.
RAYS MAKE NITROGEN GLOW
"Ice" of frozen nitrogen gas, which becomes solid at a temperature of 166 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, glows with a brilliant greenish light under the influence of cathode rays. This is one of the results obtained by Prof. J.C. McClennan, of the University of Toronto, in experiments made with the cathode ray tube developed recently by Dr. W.D. Coolidge, of the General Electric Co.
copyright 1997 Science Service