by Κ. Μ. Reese
Newscripts The girls in the dorm
EVANS
THIOL· ACETIC
Space scientists on trail of motion sickness
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48
C&EN Dec. 6, 1976
A story about coed coal mining (C&EN, Nov. 1, page 40) reminded David Todd of Shrewsbury, Mass., of an anecdote involving William Allan Neilson (18691946), who was president of Smith College from 1917 until 1939. Todd says he heard the tale from his mother, a friend of Neilson's, so it must be true or at least close. A deputation of local ladies turned up one day in Neilson's office at Smith, Todd recounts. "What can I do for you ladies?," the president asked. The spokeswoman identified the group as residents in the neighborhood of the Smith dormitories in Northampton, Mass. "We have come," she went on, "to ask that you speak to the college girls about the desirability of drawing their shades at night before they prepare for bed. The scene is tending to—ah—distract our husbands." Neilson pondered a moment, smiled, and replied, "Ladies, why don't you pull down your own shades?"
Scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston are busy studying motion sickness, whose causes are imperfectly understood. Lately they've been measuring the effects of changes in the gravitational field, a factor in motion sickness, on the Hoffman reflex in humans. Neurophysiologists consider the reflex a good indicator of the effects of gravity on reflex activity in general. Information from U.S. and Soviet space flights also is contributing to the work at Johnson, a unit of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration. The measurements of the Hoffman reflex were made on subjects strapped to a couch aligned parallel to the flight path in an aircraft. The plane maneuvered to create periods of hypogravity (weightlessness) and hypergravity. To monitor the reflex, an electrical current is applied to a nerve behind the subject's knee, and the electrical output from the calf muscles is measured. It turns out that the Hoffman reflex is potentiated—the electrical output from the calf muscle rises—during periods of weightlessness and attenuated during periods of hypergravity. Besides the electrical measurements, the subjects were questioned after each flight to see what symptoms of motion sickness, if any, they had experienced. The Johnson scientists are evaluating the results of the aircraft tests to see if they can relate differing reflex patterns to individual susceptibilities to motion sickness. In the same vein, the NASA people hope, the
results may help to predict susceptibility to motion sickness. A predictive ability would be useful: Data from the three Skylab missions of 1973-74 show no apparent correlation between an astronaut's susceptibility to motion sickness on the ground and his susceptibility in space. Some crewmen experienced symptoms of motion sickness during their first few days in space. After 14 days, however, all of them became very resistant to the ailment. The body maintains its normal posture as a result of several interrelated inputs. The eyes define the local vertical envi ronment; the semicircular canals and otoliths in the inner ear sense angular and linear acceleration or deceleration and the presence or absence of gravitational force; muscle sensors monitor posture. The body responds reflexively to these inputs— normally, that is, one maintains one's balance without conscious effort. The experts believe that motion sick ness reflects the brain's response to un usual inputs from one or more of the three sensing systems that maintain balance. The ailment is not considered an adaptive response because it makes things no bet ter—worse, in fact—as a cough, for ex ample, helps to remove debris from the throat. Little is known precisely of how the three sensing systems interact. The otolith apparatus in the nonacoustical part of the inner ear, however, is believed to provide the most direct information on gravity and thus many of the inputs that cause motion sickness.
Words out of context "But concern over poor writing does not guarantee that the problem can be cor rected, and a number of academic re searchers throughout the country have begun searching for new approaches to the teaching of writing. One of the most successful thus far is Prof. A . . .he has developed a course . . .that, by looking at the process of writing in a new way, could turn out to be the rhetorical equivalent of the 'new math.' " Hurrah.
Department of obscure information • Annual consumption of canned foods in the U.S. is about 150 lb per capita. • The University of Minnesota holds more than 100 patents. • The ears of the jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) represent about 19% of the surface area of its body. • Surgeons in this country average 170 operations each per year. • The world's average annual death toll from earthquakes is about 10,000 per sons.
