THE BATTALION
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1980
Page 7
Frozen zoo'may offer help Love-trio killer convicted
^ United Press Internatinn»l broker who lived next door to Jacob- Jacobson was not hom«
for endangered species
‘t there nj.1
thryiie LH: United Press International
'liege,Pen DIEGO — Try to imagine
o qualifv he woolly mammoth, a prehistoric
nd of pljjfleaturc extinct for more than 10,000
'ears, suddenly springing to life
spmiL Jr ■ ,
he' s “no!^' ie ic l ea * s fantastic,
indcon ^ >r - Kurt Benirschke, re-
^ av y W( . earth director of the San Diego Zoo,
combat ays't is possible. He is curator of the
dintere vorlc l’ s onl y “frozen zoo.”
ti vi The frozen zoo is actually a small
Eisenho Mi meta l container in the zoo’s re-
)do iC ' ear( l* laboratory. It is about the size
>f a small refrigerator.
more jol< h this container are the living
Mess coolftp bom more than 400 species of
room.’ 1 wials, stored in liquid nitrogen at
me met 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Soon, it
ibat eiilifiM will include living embryos, se-
larecapallPeh and eggs.
s great l:t Eight now, the primary work of
d on an ire he “frozen zoo” is to keep a ware-
rouse of living cells on hand “to
I as the t>hec k the future progeny and ances-
gresstor- rylof the endangered species at the
moment :oo Benirschke said.
, , For example, if a lowland gorilla is
'Bn with a genetic defect, the cells
)fi[s parents can be thawed out and
" he c hromosomes examined to find
1 " , )ut why. The process has also led to
u 111 discovery of genetic differences be-
' ween animals that were once consi-
lered to be alike.
appost g ||t more f an tastic projects are on
ombat, hhT
the horizon. They include embryo
transplants, artificial insemination
and even cloning.
There are cases on record in which
nearly perfect specimens of the
woolly mammoth have been disco
vered in the snows of the frozen tun
dra of Siberia. Benirschke said it is
within the realm of possibility that a
mammoth could someday be reco
vered with living cells intact.
“If you had such intact cells of a
mammoth,” Benirschke said, “one
could dream of ultimately taking an
elephant embryo, injecting into it
cells of the mammoth, implanting
the embryo back into the elephant,
and producing a mammoth at the San
Diego Zoo.
“It’s a dream. The problem is that
it is very, very unlikely that you can
find mammoth cells that are undam
aged. The natural freezing process is
so slow that ice crystals would most
likely form that would destroy the
nucleus of the cells. When we freeze
cells here, we use protectants to
guard against formation of ice crys
tals.”
Benirschke is reluctant to talk ab
out such sensational ideas as bring
ing extinct species back to life.
“Why do you talk about the mam
moth?” he asked. “The purpose of
our research, and what is possible, is
preventing the extinction of en
dangered species.”
The researcher cited a prediction
by Dillon Ripley, secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, that three-
quarters of the animal species living
today will be extinct in 25 years be
cause of man’s encroachment on
their natural habitats.
“You need to be in a position to
have self-sustaining colonies of anim
als that you wish to save,” he said.
“You have to draw up a list of 200 or
500 species that you know are going
down the tubes.”
The researcher envisions a master
plan in which zoos and animal pre
serves around the world would take
on the responsibility of sustaining a
breeding colony of a certain species.
The “frozen zoo” would play a ma
jor role in such an international
effort, he said. Frozen animal
embryos and semen could be easily
shipped from zoo to zoo, thawed,
and placed inside females of a spe
cies. In the case of embryo trans
plants, even stand-in mothers of
another but similar species would
do, such as a lion being given the
embryo of an endangered snow
leopard.
The transplants, along with artifi
cial insemination, would guard
against in-breeding of a zoo popula
tion, achieve maximum reproduc
tion of its stock, and help replenish a
species depleted by natural disaster,
such as a flood, he said.
or
cot
Computers still
hot understood
United Press International
NEW YORK — Twenty-five years
nd subji ifter the inception of the electronic
erschiekjomputer, the data processing de-
<1 Htments in many companies still
■nw^pe^te like runaway locomotives,
y of State ^ ys J° se P h E ' Izzo -
]• - Izzo runs a consulting firm with
1 a s y offices in Los Angeles and Chicago
I ^ t | t that specializes in acute data proces-
r hani s,n £ headaches and outright disas-
'elatSk h * s l ess likely,” he said, “that the
nerica’s ^ or runawa Y locomotive syn-
y drome rests with the computer oper-
I ations people than with the top man
agement of a company. ”
' Top executives, Izzo said, being
)y a niar(fUnfarniliar with the computer tend to
> supporl be afraid of it and lack confidence in
jycott Ik their ability to control its operation
’s invasii the way they control the rest of the
business.
r In consequence, he said, many
data processing departments are
overstaffed and underproductive. A
i few are inefficient because they are
/ 2 tl (understaffed.
^ •. “Too often top management is
* watching the wrong part of the EDP
iflOfcperation — the hardware instead of
the people,” Izzo said. “When things
vanja pj §° wrong, they are tempted just to
order new hardware and ignore the
real problem, which is their own fai-
ine delijlure to learn about the system and its
Bush t personnel.”
. Failure of top management to
‘ iyu \ come to grips with the need to
’ 1)11 understand and control the compu-
;roup « r ter department can lead to all sorts of
jabsurdities, Izzo said.
I MU' “j t ’ s not uncomm0 n under such
circumstances, he said, “to find the
EDP executives living in a little
world of their own and spending
■555 their time on development of reports
and systems, that are of little use to
management and may not have
much to do with the company’s
actual business.
As a result, you find such oddities,
he says, as a company believing its
EDP department costs $5 million a
year, when the real cost is above $10
million. Or the case in which the
EDP department worked three
months on a project to cut five days
off the production cycle of one of a
company’s product lines only to be
told when they finished that unless
10 or 15 days could be cut, the com
pany would have to give up the busi
ness.
There are three conventional ways
of dealing with acute or chronic com
puter sickness in a company, Izzo
said. One is to sell the equipment to
a computer operating firm and then
buy service from that firm. Another
is to contract with a firm like Izzo’s to
come in and take over the complete
operation until the problem is
solved. This may take a year to 18
months, he said. The third is to hire a
competent consultant to give advice
and fight the battle yourself with his
help until things are straightened
out.
Naturally, Izzo thinks his method
is the cheapest in the long run and
the most certain to succeed. The
least desirable, he said, is just
washing your hands of the computer
room and turning it over to an out
side operator permanently.
“During the years ahead,” he said, (
“only those companies are going to !
get by whose top managements stop ;
being afraid of the computer and |
learn to control the data processing
department themselves just as they
do any other operation.
“Those who don’t will find all their
operations bogging down like a Cali
fornia company I encountered not
long ago whose management
couldn’t understand how they had
accumulated a two-year backlog of
undelivered orders.”
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Last Nov. 21, veterinarians at the
San Diego Wild Animal Park re
moved an embryo from a Cretan goat
and implanted it into the womb of a
Barbados sheep. At the same time,
two pigmy goats received Cretan
goat embryos, and as a control ex
periment, to check procedure, a
Cretan goat embryo was implanted
into a like species. All of the embryos
were live and not frozen.
“Early pregnancy is promising,”
said Dr. Barbara Durrant, who
heads the project.
The embryo transplants are the
first ever involving zoo animals of
different species. In an earlier pro
ject, Durrant removed a rat embryo
from a pregnant female, froze it in
liquid nitrogen, then thawed and im
planted it into an adult female, lead
ing to the birth of Crystal.
A future embryo transplant may
involve the scimitar horned oryx that
Durrant hand-raised from birth at
the zoo. She is looking for an Arabian
oryx, the animal responsible for the
unicorn legend, as a donor. Also
planned is an embryo switch be
tween the Przewalski horse from
Mongolia, now extinct in the wild,
and a domestic horse.
“Obviously what can be done with
people or mice or cattle can be done
with endangered species,” Benirs
chke said.
How small is it?
United Press International
SARNIA, Ont. — Scientists at
Dow Chemical of Canada Ltd.,
trying to explain the concept of one
part per trillion, have conceived of
an awesomely dry martini.
One part per trillion, the scientists
say, would be roughly equivalent to a
drop of vermouth in 250,000 hogs
heads of gin.
Dow’s researchers also proffered
“the relationship of one flea to
360,000,000 elephants” to lend scale
to the ratios with which they work.
One part per trillion would also be
equivalent to one second in 320 cen
turies, a pinch of salt on 10,000 tons
of potato chips, one misspelling on
all the front pages of2,000 newspap
ers publishing daily since the inven
tion of the printing press.
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United Press International
NEW YORK — Howard “Buddy”
Jacobson, once the leading horse
trainer in the nation, Saturday was
found guilty of murder in the slaying
of his rival for the affections of cover-
girl Melanie Cain.
The jury found that Jacobson, 49,
had murdered John Tupper, a res
taurateur with whom Cain, 24, had
been living.
Earlier, the jury heard the testi
mony of Leslie Hammond, a stock
broker who lived next door to Jacob
son on the seventh floor of his Man
hattan apartment building. Tupper
lived down the corridor on the same
floor.
Hammond’s testimony corrobo
rated Cain’s testimony that Jacobson
was there shortly before the slaying,
and discounted statements by a
doorman in the building next door
who said he saw Jacobson leave at 9
a.m.
The defense had maintained
Jacobson was not home at the time
Tupper was murdered and claimed
that the restaurateur was killed by
drug dealers over a narcotics sale.
Cain moved out of Jacobson’s
apartment and into Tupper’s two
weeks before the murder. She testi
fied for 9 days as the key prosecution
witness and the credibility of the
model’s account appeared to be a key
issue for the jury of nine men and
three women.
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