Evening star., 1941-02-27
OF Sturs, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Laboratory, Field
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

the cause of one of mans greatest
SOURCES.
A revolutionary concept of cancer came
today from South American physician,
DR.. Juan Jose Samaniego of the Univer-
sity Of Quito, Ecuador, in a communica-
ton to the Pan-American Sanitary
Bureau here, clearing house of Western
Hemisphere medical research.
His thesis, Dr.. Samaniego says, explains
all the paradoxes of cancer encountered
in other lines of research and offers an
entirely new approach to the battling
problem-including an explanation Of
the apparent success of the frozen sleep"
treatments recently started in the United
States.
The process of living, he explains in
his communication, is continual balance
between building up and tearing down.
During the first Is years of life the
building up process is predominant.
Food is built into new cells and the
slOWo 4lICll SOlllCS 4Oll6
process of balance. Cells die and new
ones are produced in about equal num-
ber, and there is no growth. In senility
the tearing down process begins to be
predominant the end being death.
Nobody knows why the growth of youth
should stop at certain fixed points de-
termined by the heredity Of the species
he rNpiY1tc is nj,
terized by the same thing that charac-
terizes youth, especially before birth
unrestrained growth. Certain tissue,
which may be located anywhere in the
body suddenly begins to grow wildly,
and out Of proportion to the neighboring
organs.
This can be explained. he says, by the
thesis that there are youth -secreting cells
somewhere in the body whose job is to
secrete into the blood stream minute
amounts of chemical substances known
as engines whose function is to act
as basic growth promoters. They are
absorbed by various body cells in child
hood, and are essential for combing the
amino acids, into which food is con-
Ncl GCu ny u4SCSIlOu AlUO pIOIclIlS, VI
which the body Is built up. Naturally
they would be extremely active and
absorbed by the cells freely in youth.
But as age advances, DR.. Samaniego
says, some barriers must be set up against
them, so that barely enough are absorbed
to keep up the balance between life and
death of the cells 1t then can be
,al he hot hor
is broken down by only one of the score
of known causes of cancer. Once more
an infantile or embryonic rate of growth
is set up. It is not shared, however, by
the other cells of that part of the body
and the result is an unregulated, dis
ordered growth which will prove fatal
to the victim.
"It may be said" he says. that the
tumor cells have resulted from the fun
damentally metabolic phenomena of
eternal youth"
The earth constantly is being bonn
barded by streams of bullets fired from
cloud artillery on the surface Of the sun,
revolving like the turret of battleship.
1t long has been suspected that there
is more or less constant P (particle)
radiation, none of which presumably
penetrates to the planets surface Fur
ther information has just been reported
by the Department of Terrestrial Mag
netiSm of the Carnegie Institution Of
Washington.
Hitherto it has been suspected that
claude nf
ticles at the earth, following explosions
of some sort on the suns surface, and
that the impact of these on the earth S
upper atmosphere interfered with radio
transmission.
The bombardment is described as
coming in clouds of particles" of various
sizes from mere wisps to diameters many
times the earth's radius, which form a
more or less continuous stream, perhaps
of the structure of string of pearls
and in shape like the arm of a spiral
nebula. They are fired from hypothet-
ical m regions" distributed over the
suns surface.
Light, both visible and invisible, travels
with a speed of about 10000 miles a
second, requiring about eight minutes to
reach the earth from the sun. The
ultraviolet and other invisible waves
strike the atoms in the outermost reaches
of the atmosphere, knock electrons from
them, and thus establish an electrical
ceiling for the earth which prevents
radio waves from escaping into space
and makes long distance radio transmits
sion possible. Because of the speed of
light, it can hit very little except the day
side of the earth, turned towards the
sun, although the electrical ceiling it
creates persists during the night.
The radiation consists of actual ma
terial particles. Their speed, depending
on the force of the explosion with which
they are fired, may be very much less
than that of light. They are being shot
out from the sun in all directions. Con-
sequently the night side of the earth
constantly is running into streams of
them which have much the same effect
as light in ionizing the upper atmosphere.
They are also believed to be largely
responsible for the phenomenon of the
northern lights which increase greatly
at the time of maximum numbers of
sun spots-titanic cyclones on the face
of the sun.