Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 26, 1963)
MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, OREGON THURSDAY. DECEMBER 26. 1961 Scientists Seek Computer To Edit 'Gabby' Satellites Bv JOSEPH L. MYLEIl I only when they have something! Such gabbiness means waste communication links between from 000 to 999. It can best be the reading is around 72 do-, inches of meaningful data. made of the earth's weather but In the simplest case c United Press International worth saying. nf timo talent and monev spacecrafi and earth. I explained for the layman by I grees, say, he is satisfied and i Engineers at the G o id d a r d only those which showed hurri- repair, if one circuit . goi A .3 WASHINGTON (UPI) -Satellites arc loo gabby. bo scientists arc looking lor only when they have something! Such gabbiness means waste worth saying. 0f tjmc taicnl alK money. A single overly articulate sat- M si h djo ellite can transmit enough data ! , i ,i to earth to keep magnetic tape l,um " ""' u "". some way to make them talk I recorders busy 24 hours a day. crable burden on the limited Oregon State Research Aid in Making Safe Pesticides CORVALL1S Research, at Oregon State University on how insects protect themselves from poison sprays may soon aid sci ence in reaching a long-time goal of making selective pesti cides safe to man and wildlife, livestock and beneficial insects, but effective against harmful insects. A recent grant to OSU of al most $150,000 over the next five years from the U.S. Public Health Service will allow the biochemistry research team of Leon Terriere, Robert Schon brod, William Philleo and Rich ard Boose to continue the study started in 1958 of the dedica tion mechanisms in insects.. The problem, according to Dr. Terriere, is to discover how insects change poisonous sub stances into harmless materials. The research team has been searching for the "defense mech anism" within insects which help make them immune to cer tain potent insecticides. A Dctoxication Process OSU scientists found that the Insccts's defense is a detoxica .; nmross which transforms chemically toxic, water insoluble compounds into non-toxic water soluble compounds which are able to pass from the body. The molecules of a toxic substance are modified into a different nnn.mxic structure, according to Terriere. Research to date on how in sects resist chemical sprays has resulted in several important discoveries, Terriere said. Using house flies as expori- mental subjects, OSU scientists have been able to locate the smallest particles yet discover ed in the cells. These tiny frag ments, called microsomes, can be seen only with an electron microscope. They are separated from cell particles and other tissues hy using speed centri fuge which produces more than 100,000 times the forces of grav ity. With these active tissues, sci entists are now able to study dcloxication within test tubes in stead of using live insects. Dctoxication has been studied for more than 100 years, Dr. Terriere said, but it has been only within the last 15 years that the public has been increas ingly concerned with the effects of vast numbers of chemicals to which man and animals have been exposed. Much of the Oregon State Uni versity study of the dctoxication mechanisms in insects has been with house flics. Dr. Terriere explained that house flies were used because they have about as many defense mechanisms against poisonous materials as does man. Also, flics are easily reared under laboratory condi tions and they have been one of man's persistent pests. The research team fed the house flics napthalene the common mothball chemical. Napthalene was chosen because it could be made radioactive cheaply for study within the fly, because scientists have previous experience tracing napthalene and its reactions in rats and rabbits, and because it repre sents several kinds of insecli- cides. Flies injected with radioactive napthalene neutralize and ex crete the toxicant a few hours after injection. OSU scientists also found that the house fly was able lo neutralize the nap thalene in a way similar to the higher animais. Other insects have shown a remarkable ability to build up resistance to certain chamicals, Terriere said. Insect resistance to DDT shows how chainical sci ence has kept only a few paces ahead of pests before the in sects' defense mechanisms ad just and neutralize the chemical. Dr. Terriere said that in environment contaminated spacecrafi; and earth. What is wanted gineers are trving lo develop, is a space-borne editor to screen I reason is obsessed by tempera- But if on one of his hourly out repetitious chil - chat and j ture radings. Every hour on the visits to the window he saw the and what en-, analogy. makes In the simplest case of self repair, it one circuit goes out. no notes in his record ' Space Flight Center of the Na- canes or other storms in various the computer re-routes its op tional Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have calculated for some years into idle gossip k i transmitted. 1 W The editor will have lo be a J light-weight, long - lived, high- speeu computer possessing great powers of discrimination and judgment. It may take five years to y ' sllrh vital AYPflltivA wm-lt hut insecticides, the insect with the engineers say it is both possi best detoxication process will ble and necessary, survive, pass this inheritable Use Numbers Code trait to his offspring, and start Information - gathering satel a process where detoxication j lites use a numerical code in methods are concentrated. The , making their radio reports, resulting populations are thus They talk, so to speak, in "data able to detoxify lethal amounts I points." A data point in satel- j villi vnui imu imi- ""'"i"' " J wwt v i I viaiia IU lilt V IllUUn llvTuunuib'i , , . . , , before they are hour he leaps from his chair to thermometer reading had he'ul!"'e, the V(T!!e, of d see what the outside thermome ter says. He is operating at the rate of one data point per hour. But a gifted satellite, like the geophysical observatory to be put in orbit late next year, can transmit 10,000 data points per second if not curbed in some way. Actually, ground stations simply refuse to listen to much more than a tenth of what such a satellite has to say. Much Is Useless In that tenth, however is a lot of stuff conveying no useful meaning. Much of it is mere of insecticides." He pointed out that the detox ication process in man, animals and insects is not always a guarantee of protection against poisons. Detoxication capacities vary, the OSU scientist stated, from species to species, individ ual to individual and even to sex and age. Your Money's Worth By SYLVIA PORTER Cpyrlf kr, Hill Syndicate, Inc. repetition. Go back to the man lite language is expressed in j who is so interested in the out tnree decimal digits anything I side temperature. As long as t WXlTACIW liWIBM-"' '. nil jumped to 85 degrees, he would " . ", be concerned and would record . cn'lflc sa'e lltes lone- towara me ena oi r.m.j, wun the change. That suggests one way in which the space-going editor might function it would in struct experimental devices aboard the satellite to report only the changes in whatever conditions they were observing. That alone would eliminate a lot of monotonous repetition. To understand the magnitude of the job of processing and analyzing satellite reports it is necessary to understand that data and information are not necessarily equivalent. Miles of magnetic tape may contain only relatively few lites in orbit. epinntifip eatnl. this traffic! phases of development. Can Self Train This presupposes that com puters can be made which are capable of self-training. Accord ing to scientists of NASA's of fice of advanced research and technology, this has been proved crations through other circuits. For the long future, scientists foresee satellite control comput ers capable of operating with complete trustworthiness, unat tended and without failures, for dozens of years. no OftA i At.ti..j. r-M . t.jyv n. nuiivtni (LA 1 Synchronous Orbit 'jr.tf! X wax Firemen Called to Plane Fire Today A small fire broke out in the engineers compartment of a pri vate plane at the Mcdford Air port this morning, but no dam age was reported. The Mcdford Fire Department was called out at 11:08 o'clock this morning. Firemen said an nil leak was the cause of the fire, which was noticed as the craft was preparing to lake off. The plane belonged to Bob , Rude of Seattle, Wash. 1 Girl Falls Off Sled; Killed by Dad's Car DUNDEE, N.Y. (UPD-Ralph Ilollendeck ran over and killed his 11-year-old daughter, Rhon da. Wednesday night during a Christmas sledding party. Police said the girl fell off her sled while sliding down a hill and her father, following in a car, was unable to stop in time lo avoid hitting her. SHOULD WE 'GO METRIC? (This Is Ihc Last in a Series of Three Columns) Should we, in the United Stales, abandon our "tangled spa ghetti" system of measurements in pounds and ounces, feet and inches, fathoms and fractions and convert to the sleek, beauti fully simple Metric System, now used in 88 countries containing more than 90 per cent of the. world's population? The odds are the best in years that a bill to lay the base for the historic conversion will pass in the next session of Congress. At the convention of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in Cleveland this Saturday, leaders of science, industry and education will urge the changeover as soon as feasible. Top scientists maintain that our system of measurements is outrageously obsolete, unwieldy and breeds disastrous errors. Top industrialists emphasize the towering difficulties and unnecessary costs involved in conducting international trade in two separate laneuaces "Metric" and "English." Top educators almost unanimously feel that the confusion of our system makes learning it an arithmetic ordeal for school children whereas the entire Metric System can be learned in less than an hour. But, as reported Tuesday, a changeover here would pose tcr rifyingly formidable obstacles. Opponents emphasize these three: C'osl: General Motors estimates conversion would cost $26 bil lion General Electric estimates the cost to it alone would run to $200 million. A confidential survey by the Stanford Research Institute puts the cost of a changeover to the nation at $11 billion. "The cost of a shift would be astronomical," says an automobile industry spokesman. "It would court economic disaster." rnt..cinn- Mnst It S rnmnrations are firmly wedded to our i,.aiiinnal .uoiohts ami measurements. To change all these would require industries to keep double inventories of products and parts lor decades in oow meiriu hhu ciiumi iumbuiw. Rc-cducation: All of us would have to re-learn measurements of distances, weights and volumes in the now unfamiliar terms of meters, grams and liters. The task of re-educating engineers and machinists would be staggering, the auto industry (a main opponent to conversion) argues. Why then, is pressure mounting so relentlessly for conversion. A key retort made by boosters of Ihe Metric System is that the obstacles are being grossly exaggerated because any change over would NOT take place overnight but would instead be spread over decades. .... u During the prolonged period of conversion, industries cou d wait for equipment to wear out before substituting Metric scale equipment. While surveys indicate 75 to 90 per cent of scientific and industrial concerns would welcome the changeover, all indus tries would not be compelled to convert - particularly if it meant crippling costs. As for costs, Ihe Stanford Research Institute concludes that its own estimate of an $11 billion cost lo the nation would be more than covered over a period by increased business and productivity. Savings bolh tangible and intangible would come from' faster calculations by engineers and scientists, belter understanding among businessmen and scientists every where, reduction of expensive errors during conversions from one system to another. Engineers in certain fields spend six hours" each month just converting English lo Metric meas ures and back. Some Industries notanty tnc pnarmdccuu cal industry are so impatient that they already have made the conversion. The time-saving in schools would be immense, in oriHiiinn In the advantages of precision, efficiency and sim plicity at home, the Metric System would enhance our position in world trade markets, for nations on the Melnc System under standably prefer to shop in nations offering goods in metric moaiirpmenls. The fact that Russia is on the Metric System is an enormous trade advantage to the Soviets, will be an increasing handicap l Eventually, we will go Metric. Then, in the words of the Civil Such monstrosities as proper fractions, improper fractions, least common denominators and greatest common divisors could be laid to rest with the celluloid collar and the oxcart." V TALK TOO MUCH Space scientists, who maintain that satellites talk too much, are trying to develop a computer that will keep them from giving repetitious or unimportant "SYNCOM" HIOH AiriTUOE COMMUNICATIONS -.SATIUITI messages. Here, in an artist's conception, the "Syncom" high altitude communications sat ellite beams some of its voluminous data back to earth. (UPI) amounted to seven million data points per day. NASA plans in the next four years to launch about 63 more scientific satel lites. In 1967, the engineers figured, the radio traffic will average some 350 million dala points a day. Just lo store that much data on the ground would lake 70 reels, or 35 miles, of mag netic tape. If it were printed on business machine sheets, the paper pile in less than 10 days would tower as high as the Washington Mon ument. So clearly something has to be done. Engineers estimate that on-board computers could reduce needful satellite trans missions to a tenth or a hun dredth of the calculated 1967 volume. Must Store Data But Ihe computers can't be given too much authority to throw dala away. This is be cause experimenters are looking for the unknown and never know when or how it will show up. So some provision must be made aboard satellites to store, for periods of perhaps weeks, data to which the computers had attached little significance. Thus if an experimenter found a fact that ncedcil to be put in context it would be possible lo tell the satellite lo cough up amplifying data from its elec tronic memory units. This necessity would not arise in the case of so-called application satellites which are put in orbit for specific and well-anticipated purposes. Weather satellites of the fu ture, for example, may carry computers capable of recogniz ing cloud patterns of interest to mcteorologisls and ignoring the rest. Satellites so governed would not send all photographs feasible. In ground experiments, a computer was exposed to a large number of photographs taken by the Tiros weather sat ellites. It quickly learned to recognize whether hurricanes were or were not depicted. Engineers expect to perfect satellites with much longer use ful lifetimes than those now fly ing. The computers used to com press and control their trans missions must have equally long lifetimes. SHIP IT LASME to or from Oakland, San Fran cisco, Los Angeles and other California points. Call Jack Fitzgerald 773-7761 rsat 553 Nik' ' Plinc.Q .Parti 3 1 t i lathi b i atti i - - i OFF TO A HAPPY START! Get the new year oil lo it happy sUrl with an casy-lo-give party At its festive best. You'll baby yourself and guests when the Hallmark New Year Baby lends a helping hand with napkins, horns, noise makers, serpentines and cen terpieces. We resolve to help make your party the best ever Libbcy bar glasses, ice buckets, bar accessories, candles. 217 E. MAIN MEDFORD ICE SKATES SALE RENT ICQ Check in time day 9 A.M. OPtN 1 A.M. TO I P M. No Phont CjIIi PIcjm JOHNSTON STORES Mtdlord Shopping Confer MIRROR INVENTORY Close Out! All Sizes! All Styles! PADGHAM GLASS COMPANY 1309 Court Street Medford , I Downtown Medrord , I II TOMORROW VIURE -A S III Spande completely surrounds the dainty lace N' III cups; stretchea around you lor (lawless com- " DELILAH" 1 1 'V tort. iu a: neguiony pnieu i Feminine, lajhionable girdles wun iois oi X. NOW 3.99 TOMORROW bra control power. Made with nylon and I ClflSIIC niOSM OIUUMU u wu-i UnCOVereO LyCrO-V Sponuo. .J ran,,. X. to (it each tide ol you teparately. 23-34: Regu- Ury prlcwj at $8 95, NOW 6.99. (Not shown) I X ruiPF7F BRIEF larly priced at $2.50. NOW 1.99 546 long leg pantie: Regularly priced at C A II C X Briefest pant,, tor foundation wear. In rayon. $10.95. 8.99. (Not .hown) 544 g,rdle: JMlL W X 106: Regularly $1.25 box 0(2, NOW 99. Regularly $7.95, NOW 8.99. 25 1 ) Vs Mil- I WARNER'S ONCE-A-YEAR It happens only once a year! Your favorite name bras and U JiJJo girdles by Warner's, specially priced for the budget-wise. Stock up today-limited quantities. YOUR CHARGE ACCOUNT INVITED Three Graduate Corsetieres To Fit You to Perfection Ride 'n Shop Member OPEN FRIDAY UNTIL 9 P.M. M'.ir.ndBar.'le..'s.ree.$ Downtown Medford
