WAR ADVANCES APPLIED TO PEACE; MORE PURE RESEARCH
Davis, Watson
War Advances Applied To Peace; More Pure Research By WATSON DAVIS Director, Science Service THE year 1946 will be crucial for science and technology applied j to a world at peace. There will be...
...DURING 1946 there will be the first applications of atomic energy for industrial power if the legal and policy difficulties of releasing atomic energy for such use are solved...
...Television further advanced and_ seeing more effectively in near-darkness.may be announced and put into use...
...The large amounts of scattered real estate that we have had to take over, especially in the Pacific, will be a challenge and an opportunity to field scientists all the way through the alphabet, from anthropology to zoology...
...This will make possible in universities, laboratories, and other institutions the sort of earnest and hardhitting research that directed at war has brought such significant results...
...There may be a widespread tendency to train foremen and supervisors by newly developed techniques to consider the human needs of their employes in placing them so as to make best use of their abilities, in arranging working groups in such a way as to avoid frictions, in encouraging participation in planning of work and in arranging working conditions so as to avoid unnecessary nervous strains...
...Only the short-sightedness of factions of scientists if they continue to insist upon a certain kind of administrative setup for the Government support will seriously delay this most important step in science's reconversion...
...Although less useful in peace, radar will be used as an anti-collision device...
...will come into general use, as manufacturing facilities are released from military demands...
...Restoration of European agriculture and livestock industry will be helped by shipments of seed and breeding stock from U. S. A. and other war-spared lands...
...Greater vigilance will be necessary to try to prevent this...
...Industrial machines as well as automobiles and airplanes will be designed so as to be more suited to the men and women that operate them...
...Air transportation may begin to bring in some of the tropical fruits and other products our men had a chance to get acquainted with overseas, like mangosteen, cherimoya, etc...
...BETTER and more easily developed color photography will be released for amateur and professional use, while important developments in removing much of the personal element from printing three-and four-color photographic processes may be announced...
...overseas sources of other goods, such as Manila hemp, Chinese tea, tung oil, also from China, copra and all the palm oils, camphor from Formosa, will be making their bid for restoration of normal markets...
...During the year a practical oj...
...Streptomycin, the newer antibiotic, is likely to come into larger commercial production for use on kinds of infections that are not effectively treated by the sulfa drugs and penicillin...
...There will be announcements, as there have I been in several instances in past years, of significant steps toward I the conquest of important diseases or introduction of new techniques | of industrial importance...
...Using its developments and production for war, industry should during 1946 bring forth many new devices, machines, products and processes...
...Medical care and the promotion of health among the people is a major unsolved problem, made more difficult by the vested interest atti-' tude of the medical profession and its opposition to any plan for pay-"•i" for preventive and curative r""1' ¦'-<¦> by the social security method...
...This will result in a lessening of fatigue and nervous irritation...
...Military walkie-talkie experience will be applied to a citizen's radio service which uses short-range portable radio combined transmitters and receivers to keep moving vehicles and boats and remote locations in communication with other such apparatus or linked into regular telephone lines...
...One great class of disease causes, the viruses, have as yet not been checked by chemotherapeutic agents and among the many new drugs being explored there is the hope that during 1946 one that has promise of virus disease control in human beings will be found...
...Upon drawing boards and in experimental models there will be the beginnings of commercial as well as military craft that will fly faster than the speed of sound at high altitudes...
...New sciences for the study of the psychology and mental illnesses and discords of nations, groups, and social classes may be born...
...A National Research Foundation that will give fundamental research in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, psychology and other fields the moral and financial support of the people through Congressional enactment will in all probability be established early in the year...
...Even the atom bomb will have its effect on industry even if atomic energy is not used industrially or bombs do not wipe out civilizations...
...Much more research will have to be done on these: (1) to learn their most effective use...
...Here again, vigilance against pests and diseases will be needed...
...FROM the electronics of the war will come more techniques for the use of automatic machinery in factory and home...
...3) to discover thresholds of safety for contact with human beings, domestic animals, wildlife, harmless or beneficial insects...
...The immense amounts of radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the manufacture of plu-tonium, one of the atomic elements, will present new possibilities of treating cancer and other diseases, and there will also be ample amounts of radioactive tracer elements to use in the exploration of the nature and origin of many other diseases and physiological processes...
...Prediction of radio transmission conditions, dependent upon sola*1 phenomena and earth atmospheric conditions, will allow practical forecasts several months in advance...
...ruthless and costly extermination campaigns must be carried out if a major pest does get in...
...Even more important in the long view will be the accelerated and enlarged resumption of pure and applied research in many fields neglected during the war when all the energies of scientists and engineers were devoted to war...
...With the return to civilian life of psychologists and psychiatrists and the release of formerly classified information, we may expect new developments useful to industry and public mental health...
...THERE will be at least a beginning of restored trade in war-scarce tropical commodities, especially rubber, drugs (especially quinine), and spices (especially black pepper...
...Air passenger service will benefit from the development of bombers and transport planes that was accelerated by the war and many new or reconditioned planes of large capacity will become available...
...giving better medical service to all, with government supervision, may be enacted by Congress...
...I New insect pests and plant dis-I eases may break through our quarantine barriers, due to increased air travel...
...THE colleges and universities of the nation will be filled to overflowing with veterans and war workers who are returning to get science and technology training needed so urgently by our industries and laboratories...
...The connection between ordinary fatigue, nervous exhaustion, and mental illness will be explored and may result in finding some chemical factor in mental breakdown...
...Very small radio tubes such as used in the proximity fuse make possible radio sets of small size which may be commercially available about the middle of the year...
...The world systems of air transport for passengers and materials built during the war will go into peacetime service and the interchange of peoples between previously remote portions of the world wi^ be accelerated...
...The advances made in technical methods during the atom bomb development have made available thousands of improvements to industry...
...This may point the way toward a new treatment...
...The release of atomic energy and the many problems that it has presented to a startled and fearful world will during 1946 continue to be a matter of major concern...
...List also on the medical timetable of the future the possibility of better chemical treatments of tuberculosis as the result of some of the new drugs under development...
...Copyright, 19U5, Science Service...
...The proved fruit-fulness of science will attract to scientific studies even larger numbers of college students...
...The matter of universal military training may not be resolved until Congress and the nation as a whole have had a chance to integrate the military preparedness of the country with the necessary peacetime education and training which, because of the whole-people aspects of any future war, becomes as important as conventional military training...
...Further installations of soilless gardens will be made on desert islands where Americans will have to be stationed to take care of military and civil airfields...
...Further steps in the development of jet and rocket propulsion for aircraft will be taken in research laboratories, with the consequence that many of the most advanced types f' fighters and bombers used in the war will begin to become obsolete...
...Plants devoted to airplane manufacture can be expected to give birth to new kinds of assembled houses and new makes of automobiles...
...2) to find their limitations...
...Exploratory expeditions in all fields will begin to take the field again...
...Bulk tropical commodities like sugar will return as shipping becomes available...
...The radio location network, known as loran, that allows ships and planes to determine position by receiving special timed radio impulses, will be continued after its war installation to guide peacetime traffic...
...Pesticides (DDT, ANTU, 1080 2-4-D, etc...
...FROM intensive research now in progress, expect some important developments in our understanding of cancer...
...How successfully this situation is handled from an international standpoint will largely determine whether the world will have another war in 10 to 25 years...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 52
