YOUNGEST BABIES HELP SOLVE OLD PROBLEMS

Psychologists are calling on the very youngest babies to help solve one of the old, unsolved riddles of life: Which is more important, heredity or environment.

The youngest babies, who have not had a chance to step out into the world, are sought because they are the best evidence of what heredity makes of a human being before environment takes a hand at changing him. After a while, the same baby can be given more tests, and it will be possible to compare his achievements "before and after" and thus show what his environment is doing to him.

The idea sounds simple. But carrying out the plan is just becoming possible, because an infant's mental development is not easily observed and understood.

Only recently, Dr. Mandel Sherman made experiments at the University of Chicago showing that when a baby cries it is just a matter of chance that an adult who comes into the room will read the baby's expression aright. A baby's facial signals when he is angry, frightened, or has a pin sticking into him are all, as the experiment showed, confusingly similar to the average onlooker.

POSITION OF TRAFFIC LIGHTS IMPORTANT

Automobile drivers who are color blind or color weak will be less likely to get into trouble when traffic signs and signals are standardized.

A report just completed by the committee of the American Engineering Council on traffic signs, signals, and markers, advocates standard usage throughout the country. While color blind people are not mentioned in the report, the adoption of many of these standards would obviously give a color blind driver additional clues that he could depend on.

When traffic lights at an intersection are arranged vertically, for example, the committee advocates always placing the red light at the top, below it the yellow light, if a yellow light is used, and at the bottom the green light. If the lights are set up in a row, the red should be at the left, the yellow in the middle, and the green on the right.

ANCIENT PLANTS IN PACIFIC ISLANDS

Seeds of American plants, or parts of plants with the seeds still clinging to them, probably made a long emigrant voyage southward by water millions of years ago, and their descendants are still growing in the islands of the South Seas.

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