VOL.3, No. 6
FOUR-, FNR-,
AND
SIX-YEAR CURRICULA
715
neers or whether they be graduate students, they will still keep coming. The need in industry is very great. To sum it all up. 1. There is greater and greater need for highly trained men in the chemical engineering field. 2. These men should come from either or both, special extended curricula for chemical engineering at particular institutions or, 3. From graduate work in chemical engineering. 4. The industry needs beginners a t chemical engineering, whose training will he completed in industry. 5. The four-year curricula will furnish the hulk of these men.
VITAMINS IN FOODS ' T h e Dcpartm~ntof Industrial Ian of Norway has just made public two patents for the addition of vitamins to food fats like butter, marg:uine, lard, dive oil, and other fats and oils, and t o many other kinds of foods such as chocolate, milk products, meat extracts, cream, honey, etc.," says the Institute of Margarine Manufacturers. "Vitamins are so widely distributed in our food supply," says the Institute, "that many industries do not feel that i t is necessary to add vitamins t o their products. The nutrition eaoerts of the world have not vet recommended such a practice. The significance of the patents lies in the fact that the vitamin content of butter or of margarine, for examole.. can a t a nominal cost he inmessed m a w times without changing the appeamnce, texture, or flavor of either product. No one knows t o what extent this scientific discovery may affect the production of these two products."
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Course of Uric Add Traced. What becomes of uric acid? This is a question that Prof. Withraw Morse of Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia has set himself to answer. I n a paper before the recent meeting of the American Philosophical Society a t Philadelphia he discussed some of the aspects of this vital physiological problem. "The dietary factor," he said, "operates t o increase uric acid troubles in Europe more than in this country. This is due somewhat t o the fact that here we take less alcohol with our meals." "Uric acid has," be continued, "an interest more than p u d y medical because i t represents the end-product of chemical changes in the cells concerned with sex and heredity." Recent work has shown that while a little uric acid is camed off by the organs of excretion much of i t is destroyed in the hlwd. By means of a color test, Prof. Morse has demonstrated that one of the products into which i t resolves itself can he found in the blood of same animals hut not in others. For instance, the blood of herbivorous animals contains none of this substance, which is called allautoin, hut that of humans has a very slight amount. Prof. Morse is now working on a method by which he can determine just how much of the uric acid products can be found i s body fluids.-Science Service
