Veritas, Vol. 17, No. 03, September 7, 1976

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Archives
NOAA-UM to Fund Biscayne Bay Study
UM Sea Grant scientists will continue their studies~into the causes of recurrent fish kills in Biscayne Bay and its associated canal systems under a $306,800 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In announcing the grant, Sea Grant Program Director Dr. Eugene H. Man noted that an additional $183,300 in matching funds will be provided by the University to support a variety of activities.
UM researchers at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, the School of Medicine and the School of Law are seeking reasons for major fish and shellfish diseases and are attempting to develop new or improved techniques for the diagnosis, prevention, treatment and control of these diseases.
Sea Grant investigations are coordinated with city, county and state pollution control, natural resources and public health agencies. Findings are reported to these agencies for action when it is suspected problems are caused by improper industrial waste disposal practices, agricultural processes, sewage treatment or excessive algal growth.
Another facet of the work is a review of selected legal problems concerning marine resource and shoreline utilization.
UM’s efforts in providing specialized training in ocean and coastal laws, Dr. Man said, has produced a growing number of specialists who hold key positions in state and federal agencies, academic institutions, foundations, industry and private practice.
The first meeting of the Faculty Senate will be held Sept. 13 at 3 p.m. in the Brockway Lecture Hall of the Otto G. Richter Library. Agendas for the meeting will be mailed in advance to department chairmen.

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Campus Drive Launched For United Way
The 1976 United Way campaign was launched at UM August 24 at a luncheon keynoted by United Way’s Dade County Chairman and member of the Florida State Board of Regents, Marshall Harris.
UM drive chairman Robert Fuerst, assistant dean of the faculties, announced a goal this year of $90,000 for the University community. The drive will run through Oct. 30.
The campus community contributed $86,955 to United Way in 1975, Mr. Fuerst said, $47,000 of which was returned to the campus in research grants and a $30,000 donation to the UM Canterbury Child Care Center.
“Key personnel” have been named to head the United Way drive in each University division. Divisions may request showings of the eight minute United Way film “Black Friday,” starring actor Robert Shaw, by calling Donna Hippman in the academic affairs office, 284-3356.
A pilot showing of the film to staff of the Richter Library, Mr. Fuerst said, drew contribution pledges of $850.
Mr. Fuerst quoted President Henry King Stanford’s expression of concern that the UM community recall that it is part of a greater community with an obligation to support the United Way effort.
LJniversity
OF MIAMI
Coral Gables, Florida
50 Years of
1925-26/1975-76
Bowman Foster Ashe
First President / University of Miami / 1926-1952
Team Completes Lunar Study
Dr. Sidney Fox	,	_
. . and moon dust
A UM research team has reported what it considers to be the final piece of evidence that amino acids recovered from Apollo 17 moon dust are indigenous to the moon and not the result of contamination.
Project director Dr. Sidney W. Fox, director of the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution, said this conclusion, taken with discoveries of amino acids on meteorites, sheds new light on the mechanism of chemical evolution which preceded the emergence of life in this solar system.
The research team’s findings have been published in a paper titled: “Amino Acid Precursors in Lunar Fines: Limits to the Contribution of Jet Exhaust,” in the September issue of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Co-investigators with Dr. Fox were UM biochemist Dr. Kaoru Harada and Dr. P.E. Hare of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
Specifically, this work concludes that amino acid precursors recovered from the landing site of the Apollo 17 lunar module were not the result of contamination from jet fuel exhaust.
Calling the jet exhaust paper the research team’s “capstone scientific article on lunar amino acid research,” Dr. Fox noted that earlier publications by his and other groups established the presence of amino acid precursors in lunar samples and ruled out the possibility of human contamination.
Dr. Fox advances the hypothesis that amino acid precursors were implanted on the lunar surface by the solar wind, a phenomenon defined as the emanation of material from the surface of the sun.
He suggests that molecular evolution on the moon was arrested at the amino acid precursor stage, proceeding further on Earth because of the presence of water.
The levels of amino acid precursors in lunar samples, compared with levels found on meteorites which have crashed to earth, indicate, he said, that carbon compounds on the moon and the meteorites arose by similar cosmochemical processes.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which in turn are necessary molecular constituents of living organisms. Three groups of scientists working independently since 1969 on samples from six Apollo missions have recovered four to six amino acids through simple chemical treatment of lunar dust.
“While others have suggested it before,” Dr. Fox said recently, “the lunar amino acid studies present the first hard evidence that the course of Continued on page 2
Historian Heads Indian Research Center
Dr. Bruce A. Lohof, a specialist in American studies and chairman of the history department, has been named director of the American Studies Research Centre in Hyderabad, India.
Dr. Lohof has been granted a one-year leave of absence to assume the position and will hold a Fulbright-Hays
appointment during his stay in India.
The Centre was established in 1964 to assist Indian scholars, universities and other institutions of higher learning in India to carry out significant research in American subjects appropriate to various disciplines represented in Indian higher education.
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