Page 4 University Daily Kansan Thursday,Dec.7,1961
Science Still Has No Definite Death Answer
By Delos Smith UPI Science Editor
NEW YORK — What a pity it is, said a scientist specializing in the life processes of vegetables, that after almost 2000 years science still is unable to answer the question St. Paul put to the Corinthians which was: "Oh death, where is thy sting?"
Dr. A. C. Leopold, a professor of vegetable physiology at Purdue University, was hinting the question was unanswerable because
death whether occurring in animal or vegetable, serves a worthwhile purpose in that it permits all living things to adapt by evolution to their environments.
HE SPOKE OF "SURVIVORSHIP" of animals and vegetables in a lecture at a regional meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Take "an organism such as man," he said. Up to the retirement age, the mortality rate is relatively low. After that there is "a rapid decline in survivorship.
"This type of survivorship pattern is common to many animals, and again probably to many perennial plants," he continued. "We can safely assume that there are some internal biological mechanisms which bring about decline in viability and increase in vulnerability in such populations."
"THE SUDDEN AND SYNCHronous death of literally millions of individuals of the same population is an ordinary sight in the wheat fields of the nation's plains or the cornfields of the Midwest," he said.
Now, take nearly all the plants which are annuals. All members of their populations die at once and in unison. There are no survivors.
The signal for mass hari-kari, so to speak, for all members of these enormous populations is such a fantastically dramatic physiological event that it seems most singular that plant physiologists have not given more attention to the matter."
Since he is a specialist in vegetable life, Prof. Leopold did not presume to speak authoritatively, of animal life, but he pointed out that animal life specialists consider aging and death to have only negative values. It is a means of "sloughing off the older components of populations, limiting the size of the population and removing, as in the case of man, the individuals with the most learning."
The vagabond, when rich, is called a tourist.—Paul Richard
STUDY IN SOUTHERN FRANCE FRENCH LANGUAGE and LITERATURE EUROPEAN STUDIES
An academic year in Aix-en-Provence for undergraduates.
Classes in English or French satisfying American curriculum requirements.
Institute students enrolled at the University of Aix-Marseille; founded in 1409.
Students may live in French homes.
KU Prof. Co-Authors Language Manual
Frances Ingemann, associate professor of English at KU, is the coauthor of a book just published by the Indiana University Press: An Eastern Cheriemis Manual. Her collaborator is Thomas A. Sebeok, professor of linguistics at Indiana.
This monograph is volume nine of a series with the over-all title, Studies in Cheremis.
Tuition, trans-Atlantic fares,
room and board, about $1,850.
For further information, write
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Cheremis-or Mari—is Volga Finnis language and is spoken by over a half a million people living in scattered communities in the east central European regions of the Soviet Union.
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