Evening star., 1954-04-27
.2-Bi||ion-Year
.LifeCyc|es
AreDescribed
Scientists Hear
Abelson Report
At Session Here
By Thomas R. Henry


The so-called amino acids are
the bricks" of life and they are
all compounds containing nitro
gen. Most of them also contain
sulphur. They must be obtained
from food. The body combines
them to make proteins from
which the cells are built. Some
Of the amino acids can be man
ufactured by the body itself but
many of them must be obtained
from the outside. For the hu-
man being II are considered
absolutely essential.
They enter into all organic
structures from the shells of
clans to the hearts and eyes
of men. It has been assumed
that they break up into their
constituent elements after the
death of an individual and are
returned to the general reservoir
of nature. This is true, DR.. Abel
son found, but for some of them
the breakup proceeds at a very
slow and steady rate.
Trees of TrilObites.
About the earliest animals to
leave any fossil traces on earth
were the crablike trilobites who
existed on shallow sea bottoms
in enormous numbers and great
profuSion of species as much as
a half billion years ago. From
the fossil shells of trilobites who
lived 800 million years ago in
the so-called Ordovician stage
of geological time DR.. Abelson
obtained three of the amino
acids considered essential to life:
alanine, glutamic acid and va
line. He recovered the same
three from the bones of a dino
saur which lived about 200 mil
lion years later. He found them
also in the shells of recent clans,
oysters and tropical snails.
These, and other amino acids,
constituted from i to 2 per cent
of such shells. The other acids
were missing, however. from
shells and bones of the older
animals although they presum-
ably had been present at first.
They apparently were quite un-
stable in time after death of
the organism
Tested DisintegratiOn.
DR.. Abelson tested the rate at
which the stable acids disin-
tegrate into their constituent
molecules at very high temper
atures and from this data was
able to deduce the rate of dis
integration at ordinary temper
atures to which they presumably
have been subjected throughout
the ages.
Sine of the most notable ac-
complishments to date in the
new field of radio astronomy,
which is vastly extending mans
knowledge of the structure of
the universe, were shown acad-
emy members today in an ex-
hibit arranged by the Radio
Physics Laboratory of Sidney.
Australia, which has played a
leading part in this field from
the pioneer researches starting
just after the war.
Among these accomplish
ments of the Australian scien-
lists is the first location of the
supposedly forever hidden nucle-
us OF the Milky Way galaxy,
the great conglomeration of all
the visible stars This nucleus,
apparently an enormous con-
centration of stellar bodies
which lies in the direction of
the constellation of Saggitarius,
has been concealed by an ap-
parently extremely vast black
cloud of cosn1ic dust through
which the visible light it emits
cannot penetrate.
The great dust cloud, the Aus
tralian exhibit showed, is no OBJ
stacle to 400 megacycle radio
waves which can be considered
a sort of invisible light. The
Australians have explored the
black cloud region and located
the point where the radio ennis
sion shows the greatest increase,
which now can be considered the
veiled center itself.
Prizes Awarded.
At a public meeting last night
medals were awarded by the Ma
tional Academy to three distin-
guished scientists.
The John j. Carly medal and
$4,000 were given to DR.. VAN
nevar Bush. president of the
Carnegie Institution of Washing
ton and organizer of the Office
of Scientific Research and De-
velopment during the war.
The Comstock Prize, a medal
and $4,000, went to DR.. William
Shockley OF the Bell Telephone
Laboratories for his major part
in the development of the tram
sitor. tiny bits of metal which
rapidly are replacing the far
more bulky and fragile vacuum
tube in the electronics industry.
The Daniel G. Elliot medal was
presented to DR.. Raymond C.
Osborne, emeritus professor of
zoology at Ohio State University,
for his work in classification of
the bryozoa, a little known group
of tiny. worm like marine
animals, sometimes called moss
animalcules" from their habit of
spinning moss-like sheets over
rocks.