Vales & Swales

Not all scientists are suited by temperament and intellect to keep vigil on the heights where paradoxes flourish in the wind of metaphysics and knowledge fades into the unknown--to clock the flight of star clouds, chop the atom's nucleus into mathematical hash or chase the primordial life-germ through a thicket of test tubes. Some workers must patrol the vales & swales where humbler things may be found beneath any stone. Such upturned stones during the past fortnight disclosed the following:

P: In Cincinnati Vice President Thomas A. Carothers of National Marking Machine Co. described his company's device which prints invisible laundry marks. The invisible ink used comes to view only under the light of a mercury vapor lamp.

P: In Manhattan Ichthyologist Christopher W. Coates of the Aquarium received from the General Electric laboratories in Schenectady a potentiometer for measuring the voltage of electric eels. Mr. Coates inserted the electrodes in the water, agitated the eel, read the voltage. Eels developed from 170 to 300 volts.

P: In Paris M. Raoul Michel-May suggested to the French Academy of Sciences a new method of exterminating mosquitoes in open ponds. At present a favorite method is to spread a thin film of oil on the water. When the mosquito larvae, which breathe through tubes in their tails, thrust their tails out of water to get air, oil clogs the tubes and the larvae suffocate. M. May recommended sprinkling the water with talcum powder impregnated with a compound of chlorine and ethane which would choke the larvae to death but would not harm human beings.

P: At University of Rochester Dr. Wallace Osgood Fenn and his associate, taking advantage of the fact that when the human eye moves it generates a slight electric current, invented a metre which bridges the face from temple to temple, makes a record of eye movements. They found that a subject moves his eyes about five times while reading a line of print, keeps his gaze fixed when shaking his head, moves his eyes before he moves his head when looking to the side.

P: In England Dr. Edward Arnold Carmichael of London conducted volumetric experiments which convinced him that when a person hears a loud, sudden noise his arms and legs shrink in size. Reason: noise, like cold, pain, fright or excitement, releases nerve impulses which contract the capillaries, diminish their blood content.

P: In Paris Mlle Jeanne Levy explained to the French Academy of Sciences why bicarbonate of soda helps hangover sufferers. Her experiments on alcoholized rats persuaded her that it was not a matter of acid-alkali balance. The carbonated rats breathed faster than normally, and rapid, deep breathing is known to pass alcohol quickly out of the body by way of the lungs.

P: Finding little information in anatomical literature on the tensile strength of human tendons, Alfred Eugene Cronkite of Stanford University took 294 tendons from corpses, stretched them between two receding clamps, noted the reading on a beam balance when the tendon broke. Experimenter Cronkite could find no clear correlation between tendon strength and age, cause of death or function of the tendon. In general the strength varied between 9,000 and 18,000 Ib. per sq. in. of cross section. One tendon from an 85-year-old man stood up under nearly 30,000 Ib. per sq. in., about 10% of the tensile strength of steel piano wire.

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