Newscripts by K. M. Reese UN sets up in Kenya "Spaceship Earth" aficionados were doubtless cheered by the occurrence of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment last year and by the General Assembly's subsequent formation of an Environmental Programme. Now there's more good news. The secretariat for the environmental effort will have a first-year budget of $2 million and will be located in Nairobi, Kenya, right in the pulsing heart of things.
How to melt icebergs The note here on towing icebergs to water-short coastal areas (C&EN, July 16, page 32) elicited a response from Edwin F. Meyer of De Paul University, in Chicago, who had been fiddling with the subject in his class in "chemistry for nonscientists." The impetus was an item in a Chicago daily that said an iceberg 900 feet thick, 1 mile wide, and 2 miles long would supply a city the size of San Diego (720,000) with fresh water for at least a year. Thus challenged, Meyer and his students set out to calculate the energy needed to melt an iceberg that big. Then they wanted to know the area required to collect enough solar radiation to melt a one-day supply of ice for San Diego in one day.
The energy for melting, they found, comes to about half a billion kwh. per day, which, conservatively, is about 100 times the amount the city uses now. Factoring in the rate of incoming solar radiation at Argonne National Laboratory (probably a bit low for San Diego), Meyer and his skeptics figure a solar collector of 36 square miles would be necessary to provide that much energy. (What one wants, of course, is to drill a big hole in the center of the iceberg and spray it with gin, from a helicopter, perhaps. Ice cubes melt in about five minutes in these conditions. Keeping everything in proportion, an iceberg should turn in a similar performance, even ignoring the economies of scale.) In the course of this exercise, at any rate, Dr. Meyer was reminded of the time he quoted to his class the maximum rate of metabolism of alcohol per pound of body weight. He was challenged at once by a student who claimed that his brother surely put away more than that while painting the house. "I let him give me the amount of beer drunk," Meyer goes on, "his brother's weight, the per cent alcohol in the beer, and how long he painted, and we calculated exactly the rate I had just quoted! I felt a little guilty— first, for getting away with such a notoriously dumb stunt as doing an unrehearsed calculation in front of 80 students; and, second, for misleading them so about how reliable 'Science' is."
Letters Credit to Teeter and Gallegos SIR: Re "Animal contribution to petroleum proved" (C&EN, June 25, page 13): Unfortunately, in this article the methods of instrumental analysis and the collaborators associated with them were inadvertently omitted by C&EN. Dr. R. M. Teeter, who has been associated with the project for several years, is the group's expert in mass spectrometry of acid derivatives. Dr. E. J. Gallegos, the team's expert in gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry, was able to propose structures of individual steroid acids by comparing labeled and unlabeled acid-derived hydrocarbon mass spectra. Thus, the results achieved were clearly those of a true team effort exemplifying the power of combining classical with modern methods [see JACS, 94, 5880 (1972)]. Wolfgang _K. Seifert Senior Research Associate, Chevron, Richmond, Calif.
Kenan on petroleum SIR: The recent report (C&EN, June 25, page 13) of Dr. Wolfgang K. Seifert's evidence for an animal origin of petroleum prompts the following historical observation in connection with William Rand Kenan, 40
C&EN August 6, 1973
New trail for blind The Honeysuckle Trail, a selfguiding nature trail for the blind, has been designated a National Recreation Trail by Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton. The trail was built last year in T. O. Fuller State Park, Memphis, Tenn., by the Memphis Queens Chapter of the National Campers and Hikers Association and the Tennessee State Parks Department with help from Boy Scout Raleigh Troop 335. The half-mile circuit trail is designed for daytime use by persons with sight as well as by the blind. It is the 40th Recreation Trail to be designated in the National Trails System. The Honeysuckle Trail is made suitable for the blind by a gravel strip, 8 inches wide, that parallels one side, of the trail, serving as a guide for blind hikers' canes. Braille markers posted at intervals interpret natural features like tree bark varieties, lichens, ferns, mosses, and a tree riddled by woodpeckers.
USAF funds bird maps The U.S. Air Force is lending a hand with the publication of the results of the Christmas Bird Count, which has been going on since 1900. The data ordinarily are published in American Birds, the ornithological journal put out by the National Audubon Society in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Now, under an Air Force contract with the Fish and Wildlife
Jr., for whom our new, recently dedicated laboratories were named. In 1894, at the graduation ceremonies of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Mr. Kenan presented his graduation thesis on the artificial production of petroleum. He had recently participated with Dr. Francis P. Venable in the discovery and identification of calcium carbide-as the product of the electric furnace operated by Maj. J. M. Morehead at Spray, N.C., and the study of its reaction with water to produce acetylene. In his thesis he discussed the history and occurrence of petroleum and in particular its origin. From a consideration of the available data and theories, he concluded that, "from a chemical standpoint, the formation of petroleum from animal remains has the greatest probability, as we are now able to transform every animal fat into petroleum" (William R. Kenan, Jr., "Incidents by the Way, More Recollections." Privately printed, 1949). It is striking that Dr. Seifert's experimental proof for the animal origin of petroleum coincides with our recent dedication honoring Mr. Kenan. Philip E. Rakita University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Nutrition for med students SIR: I am delighted to see that I was wrong in stating that not one medical school in the U.S. requires M.D. candidates to study nutrition. In John R. Richmond's letter
Service's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Md., the data will be converted to map form. The Air Force's interest is in helping pilots to avoid areas made hazardous by large concentrations of birds, especially big birds like ducks and geese, cranes, pelicans, and others. The Christmas Bird Count is conducted by teams of observers who report the numbers of each species found in more than 1000 "count areas." In 1972 they reported about 72 million birds from 770 species, and the resulting "count issue" of American Birds runs 558 pages. Editor Robert Arbib and other involved officials started two years ago to seek volunteers who would make the data more manageable by turning out maps showing the wintering grounds of each species. It was low-budget work and went slowly until the Air Force turned up. The throttle jockeys will pay for materials, editing, and publishing maps for about 125 species.
Department of obscure information • Beverages account for more than 20% of the total refined sugar in the U.S. diet. • The United Nations Fund for Population Activities has received a total of $103 million from 63 governments since 1967. • The net income of 94 selected Class 1 motor carriers in the U.S. rose 10.3% in the first quarter of 1973.
(C&EN, June 25, page 36), he says that the University of Illinois college of medicine, school of basic medical sciences, now requires its students to take a course in nutrition. It is to be hoped that other schools will follow this forward-looking example. I am concerned that readers may doubt the importance of this. It is literally a personal matter of life and death to each person who reads this. There is now convincing evidence that some of our most deadly diseases, such as coronary thrombosis and cancer of the colon, are caused by changes in the American diet during the past 70 years. See, for example, "Nutrition Against Disease," by R.J. Williams (Bantam Books, Inc., 1973). Dr. Williams is a Past-President of ACS. William J. Ambs Senior Research Chemist, Air Products & Chemicals, Inc., Marcus Hook, Pa.
Lancet and Journal-Lancet SIR: Re Clement D. Vellaire's letter (C&EN, June 25, page 36): Journal-Lancet was published in Minneapolis until Vol. 88 in 1968 when it ceased publication. Lancet, the British publication, has published two volumes a year since 1823. Virginia Humnicky Extension Services and Inter-Library Loan Librarian, Indiana University, Indianapolis
