NUTRITION LABORATORY.! 



Francis G. Benedict, Director. 



In common with all educational and research institutions, the Nutri- 

 tion Laboratory has been obliged to curtail its activities, owing to the 

 threefold effect of increased cost of maintenance, depletion of staff by 

 important withdrawals, and the almost prohibitive cost of normal 

 human subjects for observational purposes. Under these conditions 

 and with a budget remaining constant for nine years, material rear- 

 rangements of plans have been imperative. Larger projects, such as 

 the study of muscular work, and particularly the extended alcohol 

 program, to which a certain proportion of the Laboratory activities 

 have been devoted, necessarily had to suffer. That the scientific 

 output has not greatly decreased in spite of these handicaps is due solely 

 to the interest, loyalty, and capacity for work shown by the staff 

 members. At a time when inefficiency and non-production are too 

 generally the rule, this capacity for increased accomplishment is all the 

 more to be commended. While the two factors of increased efficiency 

 and assumption of new responsibilities on the part of practically every 

 staff member have in the past offset to a large degree the three great 

 handicaps, this year, with the withdrawal of two senior members of 

 the staff, Professor H. Monmouth Smith and Mr. Warren E. Colhns, 

 readjustments can be made only with the greatest difficulty and a 

 curtailment of scientific activity is inevitable. 



ADDITIONS TO EQUIPMENT. 



Static control recorder. — It is common clinical practice to test the 

 stability of a patient's coordinating mechanism by having him stand 

 wdth eyes closed and then noting roughly the amount of sway. An 

 obvious refinement in such a test for static control is to provide a 

 graphic record, traced on smoked paper by a stjdus extending from a 

 helmet worn by the subject. A member of the Laboratory staff, when 

 visiting Colonel Melville, of the Army Medical School, London, 

 observed such a technique. Dr. Miles used a similar arrangement 

 when working with the aviation candidates in 1917. An attempt to 

 convert such graphic records into a quantitative score gave no satis- 

 factory results, except for a simple statement of the maximum distance 

 covered in the movement, forward, backward, and sidewise. 



On the basis of previous experience, an apparatus was devised em- 

 ploying four movement-adders. Each adder accumulates the amount 

 of sway in one particular direction, and the total for that direction can 

 be read in millimeters of body movement. The action is noiseless and 

 can be started or stopped instantly. The apparatus provides also a 



^Situated in Boston, Massachusetts. 



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