SCIENCE and INVENTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18103, 11 February 1922, Page 3 (Supplement)

SCIENCE and INVENTIONS.

SHALL RADIO TIME SETS. Fifteen hundred small wireless outfits have been installed in Paris jewellery, watch' and clock 6tores to enable the jewellers to catch the correct Greenwich meridian time as it is sent daily at ten o'clock by the Eiffel Tower, Formerly tho exact time had to be obtained from tho observatory by telephone. The installation is simplicity itself. The outfit, about nino inohes in diameter, is hung on a nail in the wall. A copper wire run down to the cellar or along a water or ga s pipe serves as a " ground wire," while tho removal of the bulb from a nearby electric light and the insertion of a contact plug take the place of antennae. It can bo done in five minutes. Tho outfit can bo rogulated to hear everything that J is sent out from tho Eiffel Tower.REMOVING A MOUNTAIN. Eleven engineers who are going to move a mountain out of the citv of Rio de Janeiro and dump it into the sea sailed for Brazil reconlly from New York. With tho party was Robert 0. Hayward, of the banking firm of Dillon, Read and Co., who floated the £2,500.000 loan with which tho mountain-moving project is to bo financed. According to Mr. Hayward, the city of Rio de Janeiro has been anxious to gel, rid of the mountain for ten years. It is called Morro de Castello, and occupies a large acreago in the best part of the city's business district. The American engineers will l'cmovo 50 per

cent, of tho mountain by hydraulic dredging and tho remainder by truck excavation.

VIVISECTION UPHELD

Dr. Calmette, director of the Pasteur Institute, has taken up tho fight against anti-vivisection, declaring that its advocates are preparing the way for the medical and scientific world just as England's prestige was lost several years ago by a law limiting experiments. "Perhaps," he says, " visitors to the Pasteur Institute may find a basis for complaints that the animals suffer because cholera and typhus microbes have been injected into them. But if we had not locked up rats infected with bubonic plaguo with healthy rats we uttjuld never have discovered the now serum, which would be France's salvation should the Russian epidemic spread this far west. Surely the life of millions of human beings is worth more than the life of a few thousand animals. Whether we are the masters of creation or not we are compelled to observe tho law of the species; therefore, if wo aro to fight against death, we must reveal the secrets of life bv removing the glands and healthy organs from the lower animals." Antivivisectionists are said to have raised a fund of several million francs for propaganda in France, Austria, and Italy.

WIRE FENCE TELEPHONES. Barbed wire fence telephones are being installed in two communities in South Dakota that have never had a telephone. Corson county, 87 miles long and sparsely settled, had little telephone service until Mr. 0. M. Osborne, the county agent, thought of using tho fence lines. To-day the majority of its farmers are connected, although there aro still some, in tho central part of tho country six to eight miles from any 'neighbour, not on the line. Worn out inner ttibes have been utilised for insulation. The cost for each farm home, for instruments and line, averages about £4. Each line has a general call which enables the farmers in an entire community to hold what amounts to a round table discussion on problems affecting tho community, the county agent reports. Ono of the great results of these telephone systems from the standpoint of agriculture is that they tie the newly organised farm bureau community centres more firmly together. The county agent is enabled to make announcements of meetings, etc., as he never was before. The community is also able quickly to get in touch with the county agent in case of an outbreak of insect pests, such as army worms or grasshoppers." FLEXIBLE METAL HOSE A now form of all-metal loading hose for oil tankers has recently been put on tho market in tho United States. Tankers taking on cargo from Toxas ports aro often obliged to anchor some distanco out at sea, due to inadequate docking facilities. Loading is then accomplished by laying a ten-inch pipe along the sea bettom to the point where tho tanker is to load. At this point a heavy rubber hose, long enough to como up over the side of the ship, is attached. When loading is finished the hose is dropped overboard and the spot marked by a buoy. The life of this hose is comparatively short, being about six or seven months, and it requires constant attention. The cost of the new all-metal hose is a trifle more than twice as much per foot, but its life is measured in years. In fact, it is guaranteed for ten years. The weight per lineal foot is comparatively tho same. The metal hose is as flexible as, if not more so than, heavy rubber hose. With 120 feet of the hoso one and one-half complete turns can be made. By reason of the ingenious locking device embodied in the design of these joints the line may be instantly disconnected at any part of its length. A special bronzo having remarkable cor-rosion-resisting properties is used in tho construction of those joinle, <