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Show Thursday. October I Zoologist Mulls r Possibility of Homing Humans 4-- SO. 1980. THE HERALD, Provo, Utah-P- age a 17 I uX m Tt - WASHINGTON (UPI) A British researcher says human beings may have senses similar to those that allow birds, fish and other migratory animals to find their way home over long distances. R. Robin Baker, a zoologist at Manchester University, said in a report in the Oct. SI issue of Science magazine that his experiments also suggest that, as with some other animals, magnetism may have something to do with the ability of people to sense direction. Baker, using blindfolded college students, bused them along twisting routes up to 30 miles from the university. Then he asked each volunteer, still blindfolded, to guess the direction back to the starting point. Later, he repeated the experiments with high school students for a local television station. All together, the experiments involved 10 trips and 106 volunteers. The results: some volunteers were right. Most pointed within 45 degrees of the correct direction, and only a very few were completely disoriented. Although none of the correct guessers said they remembered the route to the release point, some did say they were able to orient themselves by feeling the sun on their faces. Baker said most of the correct guessers were surprised they were right. And there were as many correct guesses on cloudy days as on sunny days. He then ran a second group of experiments in which some of the volunteers had bar magnets attached to their blindfolds. The others were given identically sized pieces of brass, but all thought they had magnets. The volunteers with the magnets did significantly poorer than those without. Graphs show relatively equal numbers of them pointing literally in all directions. But the students without magnets were as accurate as those in the previous experiments. Baker said the results seem to show the ability to find directions apparently involves sensing the surrounding magnetic field, because the ability is impaired by wearing a magnet. But he said the results are inconclusive because the magnets were not of uniform strength and, although they were originally aligned so their north poles pointed in the same direction, many of them slipped in the elastic blindfolds during the drive. Baker's experiments follow a report earlier this year by two California researchers who found evidence homing pigeons may find their way over long distances by sensing, magnetic fields. Other research has indicated that some fish, and even some microorganisms, have the ability to use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation. Baker noted that other homing experiments have been conducted on lobsters, snails, honey bees, amphibians, rodents and bats. But, he said, no one ever tested humans before. Persian Gulf Defense Needs Billion $25-3- 0 - WASHINGTON (UPI) The United States probably will have to spend between $25 billion and ISO biiiion during the next five years to improve its ability to intervene in a serious Persian Gulf crisis, administration sources say. The sources predicted defense spending will continue to rise no matter who wins the 1980 presidential election. The United States, the sources asserted, must prepare for a "one and two halves" war strategy: a major conflict in Europe with the Russians, and lesser confrontations in Korea and the Persian Gulf. The $25 billion to $30 billion expenditure would go largely toward building a fleet of cargo aircraft and ships to rush America's heavy military equipment to the Persian Gulf or other trouble spots. Part of these funds would go for ammunition, stockpiled spares, and for improvements to airfields and naval facilities in Kenya, Oman, Somalia and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. ; The biggest U.S. difficulty in defending Western access to oil in the Persian Gulf, the scutes acknowledged, is the ability to get there in force and to stay there. These sources, who declined to be identified, largely confirmed comments attributed to Gen. Vofney F. Warner, commander of the U.S. Readiness Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, published by The Washington Post Tuesday. 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