973

A better anatomical result, it was found, could usuallybe achieved by this method; and, although the anatomicaland functional results do not correlate completely, it maybe possible by this means to avert some of the grosspermanent displacements which are associated with con-siderable deformity and disability.

AGRICULTURAL PROBLEMS INDEVELOPING COUNTRIES

ABOUT two-thirds of the world’s population is inade-quately fed. Most of these people live in developingcountries in the tropics. It is probably no accident thatfew of these countries have reached the levels of economic

development found in mid-latitudes, for undernourish-ment limits capacity for work and increases the incidenceof disease. Great efforts have been made since the endof the war, both by national Governments and by inter-national agencies, to improve the standard of living inthese countries by raising agriculture from a subsistenceeconomy to a commercial economy. Good progress hasbeen made; but an enormous further increase in food

production could result from a wider application of

present-day knowledge, as was emphasised by Prof.R. G. Baskett in his introductory remarks as chairman ofa Nutrition Society symposium on Oct. 13. Prof. L.

Dudley Stamp gave an illuminating account of theclimatic limitations to development in the tropics. The

outstanding problem, he said, is the control of water,particularly its conservation in the arid regions. Prof.A. H. Bunting considered arable cropping, Mr. T. J.Lansbury livestock production, and Mr. R. S. Rack

fishery development, each in the light of first-hand

experience. Plans drawn up by F.A.O. for increasinganimal production were discussed by Dr. J. C. Shaw.The problems of arable cropping are generally more

easily tackled than those of livestock production, and inthe past decade the world output of arable crops hasincreased by more than 50%. This increase has beenachieved mainly by raising the yield per acre, though thearea under cultivation has been enlarged by about 10%.Not all countries have benefited equally: whereas theincreases in output in China have been particularly strik-ing, the yields in India have remained low. Professor

Bunting believes that further improvements shouldfollow the wider planting of improved crop varieties, theapplication of better production methods (including theuse of fertilisers), and the more widespread use of agri-cultural chemicals to control pests both in the growingand in the harvested crop.Livestock and fish are important as dietary sources of

much-needed protein of high biological value. The

predominant livestock in these regions are cattle, sheep,and goats; these ruminant animals compete less directlyfor human food than pigs or poultry, which, however,have their place where suitable feeds are available andwhere waste products can form a part of their diet.Cattle provide a means of producing human food fromlarge areas that would be otherwise unharvested, but atpresent cattle production is seriously limited by wastingthrough shortage of food and water in the dry season.The introduction of European breeds appears to offerlittle advantage, for satisfactory production can beobtained with the native breeds when they are adequatelyfed. The real need, as both Dr. Shaw and Mr. Lansbury

pointed out, is for more research on the nutritional

requirements of cattle in tropical countries, on the

improvement of pastures and the conservation of fodder,and on the value of non-protein nitrogen supplements topoor-quality roughages. Much progress has been madein the control of disease; and, although there is moreto be done, the main factors now limiting production arenutritional.

It was made abundantly clear that the useful applicationof modern methods of husbandry in the developingcountries must go hand-in-hand with higher educational

standards and technical training, and it is here that themore highly developed countries can make their greatestcontribution.

NOBEL PRIZEWINNER

THE 1961 Nobel prize in medicine has been awarded toDr. Georg von Bekesy for his outstanding contribution toour knowledge of the transformation of mechanical energyinto neural energy in the cochlea.von Bekesy has been a senior research fellow at the

psycho-acoustic laboratory at Harvard since 1947. He isa physicist who was born in Hungary in 1899 and studiedat the Universities of Berne and Budapest. His earlierresearches from 1924 to 1946 were carried out in the

Royal Hungarian Institute for Research in Telegraphy inBudapest. After this he spent a short period at the RoyalInstitute of Technology at Stockholm. As early as 1928he had produced a hypothesis based on new observationswhich, as Wever rightly states, inaugurated the modernera of travelling-wave theories of vibration of the basilarmembrane.

Largely because of the smallness of the middle ear andcochlea and the difficulties of making accurate measure-ments, many theories have been proposed to account forthe phenomena of hearing. Bekesy’s contribution was toproduce further facts, realising that it was useless to

theorise about how the ear discriminated pitch withoutknowing how the vibrations produced by a sound weredistributed along the length of the basilar membrane. Oneof his most successful methods of research has been the

making of the models for which he has become famous.Sometimes these were the size of the human cochlea, butat other times large-scale models were constructed in theway that large ships are built from small models.

Bekesy showed that each of the four major theoreticalvibration patterns of the basilar membrane could beobtained by varying two elastic properties of the mem-brane and that the opposing theories shaded into oneanother more than had been realised. If the two variablesare adjusted to their numerical values in the cochlea of aliving animal or a fresh preparation of the human ear,travelling waves are observed along the membrane whichhave a flat maximum that shifts its location along themembrane with a change of frequency, the place ofthe maximum determining the pitch. Experiments usingthe sense of touch indicate that such flat maxima can

produce quite sharp local sensations by a nervous

inhibitory reaction.Bekesy’s genius is shown not only in his ability to select

the significant problem and his ingenuity in evolvingmethods to solve it, but also in a rare gift of lucid exposi-tion, apparent in the numerous papers now fortunatelygathered together in his Experiments in Hearing. Thischoice as Nobel prizeman will give great satisfaction toeveryone concerned with the problems of hearing.