Word: clams
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Research on the beating of clam hearts may provide a clue to the cause of schizophrenia, according to John H. Welsh, Director of the Biological Laboratories, which is trying to discover the effects of different chemicals on the heartbeats of quahog clams...
...findings on how two chemicals, serotinin and LSD, affect the beating of the clam heart, appear to have a direct relationship to psychosis in humans...
Welsh has found that both LSD and serotinin, which is also found in the human brain, stimulate the clam heart to beat with larger and faster beats...
Welsh has also found evidence that serotinin is secreted by nerves running to the clam heart. If this proves true, it means that serotinin is the normal exciting agent for the clam heart, and that LSD is able to make the clam heart beat faster than it would under normal stimulation...
Japan's Emperor Hirohito, a sometime poet (TIME, Jan. 14) and marine biologist, was hailed for a pioneer bit of research in his scientific pursuits. A clam shell sent to him last fall from the Amami-Orshima Islands (between Japan and Okinawa) was painstakingly identified by the Emperor as none other than a Benishibori-Minomushi bivalve. Significance: never before, claimed the Imperial Palace, had this clam been found so far north. Japan's news agency gave an unrestrained banzai: "Through his personal keen interest in marine biology, His Majesty turned up a new discovery on the living habits...