Word: gerarde
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Seat of Memory. Some of the biggest mysteries lie in man's own brain. Dr. Ralph W. Gerard of the University of Illinois College of Medicine asks: "What is memory?", and then gives himself an unsatisfactory answer. No one knows how the brain stores its information. It contains about 10 billion neurons (brain cells), but if they worked like the vacuum tubes of electronic computers, there would not be nearly enough of them to store the information in the average, well-furnished brain...
...theory holds that remembered items are stored in the brain as electrical impulses flowing endlessly around closed circuits of nerve cells. This cannot be true, says Dr. Gerard, because animals whose brains have been chilled to stop all electrical activity can still remember. He believes that the brain has some "static" method of storing memories. Perhaps changes in the synapses (nerve endings) between the neurons build up a pattern of information. Then, when the brain wants a bit of information, it may "scan" the synapses electrically and extract the knowledge it needs...
...Gerard is not sure of any of this, but he has a rather frightening project. "I think it is realistic," he says, "to hope for an understanding of memory precise enough to permit experimental modification...
...race committee mulled over what contests the winds would permit-speed or distance contests, round trips, one-way flights or triangular-course races. The committee decided on a 62-mile triangular route. Into his French-built Air 102 glider stepped a foreign contestant, France's youngish (25) Gerard Pierre. As he checked his instrument panel, ground crewmen raised his single-wheeled craft's grounded wingtip and clamped a tow cable to its fuselage. Nearly a half-mile downwind, a 115 h.p. winch roared up and began to reel in the long steel cable, slowly at first, finally...
Fanfan the Tulip. A witty French spoof of the typical movie swashbuckler; with Gerard Philipe, Gina Lollobrigida (TIME...