Frederick P. Schn~itt, in
Gulf Stream Oceans (May-June 1978), Oceanic Soci- ety, Fort Mason, San Francisco, Calif. 94123.
Ben Franklin, America's Renaissance man, was the first person to map the waters of the Gulf Stream, gleaning data on the great "ocean river" from his own scientific observations and the whaling experience of a Nantucket sea captain.
Franklin's interest in the "Gulph Stream," writes Schmitt, curator of the Whaling Museum at Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., was...
PERIODICALS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Nantucket whaling
captains gave Ben
Franklin the data to
prepare this 1769 chart
of the "Gulph Stream."
Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society
to determine exactly when they entered or passed through the stream.
Franklin found 18th-century mariners reluctant to take advice from a
landsman. Modern day scientists, Schmitt observes, recently employed
satellite photographs-not Franklin's charts-in a study aimed at per-
suading capta...
Jon B.
rtful Origins Eklund, in Chemical and Eneineerine
News (June 5, 1978), American Chemical
of Knowledge Society, 1155 16th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036.
As a general rule, "pure" science discoveries are later elaborated engineers and other technicians as "applied" science. However, says Eklund, curator of chemistry at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History and Technology, the reverse is often the case; a broad body of empirical knowledge is developed...
Calvin Martin, in Natural History
(June-July 1978), Box 6000, Des Moines,
Iowa 50340.
The wre-modern American Indian is widelv viewed as a noble savase
"
who lived in harmonious balance with nature, taking from it only what necessity demanded and respecting animals and plants as fellow spiritual beings. A new look at the historical record Martin, a Rut- gers historian, shows that at certain periods the Indian perceived his relationship with nature to have gone awry and engaged in a fearful...
Calvin Martin, in Natural History
(June-July 1978), Box 6000, Des Moines,
Iowa 50340.
The wre-modern American Indian is widelv viewed as a noble savase
"
who lived in harmonious balance with nature, taking from it only what necessity demanded and respecting animals and plants as fellow spiritual beings. A new look at the historical record Martin, a Rut- gers historian, shows that at certain periods the Indian perceived his relationship with nature to have gone awry and engaged in a fearful...
Richard A. Kenchington, in Environmental Conserva- tion (Spring 1978), Elsevier Sequoia, S.A.,
P.O. Box 851, 1001 Lausanne 1, Switzer- land.
Inadequate research, poor sampling techniques, and the eagerness of the news media for a sensational story combined to create the great crown-of-thorns starfish "menace" of the late 1960s and early '70s.
So says Australian marine biologist Kenchington, who suggests that the advent of scuba-diving technology led to greatly increased explora- tion...
human tam- pering with the environment. Subsequent surveys, which were inade- quately financed and hampered the extent and remoteness of the rich coral cover, did little to discourage speculation by the news media and environmentalists that the Great Barrier Reef would eventually collapse, exposing the entire Queensland coast to the erosive force of the Pacific Ocean.
In the absence of effective means of dealing with the menace (hand collecting and chemical treatment proved either impractical or...
the U.S. fleet to 0.26 per ton in 1977. This death toll is low enough to permit porpoise populations to increase, and, while the matter may continue to be debated in emo- tional terms, the authors cautiously conclude that porpoise deaths are "perhaps no longer a major ecological problem."
"The Real Meaning of the Energy Crunch" bv Daniel Yerein, in The New
Conservation York ~irnes~a~azine
(~une.4, 1978), 229
W. 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036.
A serious real energy crisi...
Steve Law- son, in Horizon (June 1978), 381 West Center Court, Marion, Ohio 43302.
A "Third Wave" of audacious and innovative British playwrights is beginning to make its mark on the English theater. These writers- Stephen Poliakoff, Barrie Keefe, Snoo Wilson, Steve Gooch-were spawned in small, makeshift theaters that have sprung up in Edin- burgh, Glasgow, Sheffield, and Liverpool as well as in London.
"Young, committed, and astonishingly prolific," the Third Wave dramatists,...
Steve Law- son, in Horizon (June 1978), 381 West Center Court, Marion, Ohio 43302.
A "Third Wave" of audacious and innovative British playwrights is beginning to make its mark on the English theater. These writers- Stephen Poliakoff, Barrie Keefe, Snoo Wilson, Steve Gooch-were spawned in small, makeshift theaters that have sprung up in Edin- burgh, Glasgow, Sheffield, and Liverpool as well as in London.
"Young, committed, and astonishingly prolific," the Third Wave dramatists,...