Word: currents
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Every muscular function of the human body is triggered by a small electrical current transmitted to the muscles through the nerves. Doctors have long assumed that a chemical reaction at the synapses (the junctions between nerves) causes the impulses to flow through the nerves until-through junction after junction-they reach the muscles. But the chemistry of impulse transmission along the nerve fibers was not known. Last week Colum bia University announced that Dr. David Nachmansohn and his colleagues in the university's Department of Neurology had found new evidence to support his 20-year-old theory...
...length of the nerve. When a nerve is stimulated, a chemical called acetylcholine is released within the nerve. It combines with the receptor protein, causing an interchange of sodium and potassium ions. The ions in turn trigger release of more acetylcholine a bit farther along the line, letting the current advance. To turn off the signal, an enzyme, cholinesterase, is released that instantly destroys the acetylcholine in the nerve...
Brooking no interference from advertiser or broadcaster during its seven seasons, the first five subsidized by the Ford Foundation, Omnibus saw a shifting list of 16 blue-chip sponsors (including the current one, Aluminium, Ltd.) pay for an average of only 70% of its time, and the program jockeyed uncomfortably between the three networks. The years also saw some memorable shows: Peter Ustinov playing "The Life of Samuel Johnson," Leonard Bernstein describing "What Makes Opera Grand," Joseph Welch pondering "Capital Punishment." The program had lived up to the credo of its imaginative producer, Robert Saudek: "I don't believe...
...exported overseas and seeded among Western intellectuals with an entirely different cultural background. "They tried hard to obey its command: 'Let your mind go and become like a ball in a mountain stream'; the result was a punctured tennis ball surrounded by garbage, bouncing down the current from a burst water main...
...editor of Moscow's Komsomolskaya Pravda (Truth of Communist Youth, or "Pravda Jr.") called two reporters into his office. Said he: "Set all your current work aside and take an assignment into the 21st century." So the reporters, Sergei Gushchev and Mikhail Vasiliev, interviewed 29 Soviet scientists and wrote a Communist book, obviously meant as a major Soviet showcase: Russian Science in the 21st Century. Now published in the U.S. by McGraw-Hill, the book offers a glimpse at the little-known world of Soviet science. And an unexciting world it seems...