Pacific division meets in san francisco.

Evolution, human sexuality, pets and people, Chinese medicine, and urban entomology were but a handful of the subjects presented and discussed at the 1984 annual meeting of the AAAS Pacific Division. Meeting participants heard a lively debate, between Yale University paleontologist John Ostrom and Columbia University ornithologist Walter Bock, on the evolution of flight. Ostrom presented the theory that birds began as ground-runners and developed power as flyers. Bock insists that the primitive birds, living in trees at the time of dinosaurs, learned to fly by falling or jumping from trees. While neither school of thought convinced the other, it made for an interesting afternoon. In two other sessions, attention was focused on two very different kinds of animals. "Pets and People" highlighted the medical and psychological benefits to be derived from having a pet-cat, dog, bird, even fish, while "Urban Entomology" featured such unwelcome companions as fleas, flies, lice, mosquitoes, and spiders. The meeting's final session was a daylong retrospective on Jacob Bronowski. Jonas Salk, Clifford Grobstein, Gerald Holton, and others recalled their work with "Bruno," and described how Bronowski influenced their careers. A highlight of the meeting was a standing-room-only public lecture by Linus Pauling. Pauling, a former president of the Pacific Division, discussed human nutrition and his personal adherence to a megavitamin regimen. Other sessions included those on Cochlear Implants, Comparable Worth, El Nifio, Sexual Differentiation of the Brain, Human Origins, and Chinese Medicine. In its first such action, the Council of the Division endorsed a resolution expressing concern for the health and welfare of Andrei Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner. The resolution urges the Soviet government to end the isolation of Academician Sakharov and Dr. Bonner, to allow them to seek medical care of their own choosing, and to allow them to travel abroad. More than 1100 people attended the 65th annual meeting of the Pacific Division, which was held on the campus of San Francisco State University, from 10 to 15 June. The 1985 meeting will be in Missoula, Montana, from 16 to 21 June. Copies of the meeting program, including abstracts of most of the papers, are available for $3 (plus tax for California residents) from the Division. In addition, audiotapes of the Pauling lecture and 12 symposia also are available for purchase. To purchase the program, or for further information, contact Alan E. Leviton, AAAS Pacific Division, c/o California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California 94118. JOAN WRATHER Office of Communications