SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19720, 20 August 1927, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

ELECTRICITY AND BRAINS. Professor Stophano Leduc, an electrical savant of Nantes, has announced the results of his experiments combining electricity and brains. In himself, and in many different kinds of animals, he says ho has found that alternating current can induce a sort of trance, during which rather definite involuntary dreams may bo forced upon the subject. Ho therefore predicts the transference of thought by wires, and even by wireless, for the future. One would put on a head-gear and think of his wife at home with her family. That would be all that is necessary. No postcards, no telegrams. The thought would have reached her, and she could reply, if she too had tho comparatively simple apparatus. The apparatus, however, has not yet been devised. WASTED ELECTRICITY. Every lightning flash represents enough wasted electricity to light a home for forty years and more. Ono flash, on the average, represents about 30,000 kilowatt hours electric power. Throughout tho world something like 2000 thunderstorms are going on all the time. In their lightning flashes, the earth is continually wasting more than four billion horsepower—nearly a thousand times more than all tho electric power now generated in the world. These figures were recently announced by Professor C. T. R. Wilson, of Cambridge University. ANTS WITH PARASOLS. A colony of parasol ants have arrived at tho London Zoo from Trinidad. After constructing their underground chambers and tunnels, they will proceed to cut off, with their sharp, scissor-liko jaws, circular pieces of, leaves, which, after being carried below to a special bed, are nibbled into small fragments and packed so that they will ferment and produce a irop of small mushrooms. Sprays of rose and privet, as well as the pith of orange-peel, have been provided for the purpose. It is the ants' method of transpqjting the leaves which has earned for them their popular name, the circular pieces, while gripped by the jaws, being carried over the head as though as a shield from the sun.

STUDIES OF PAST AGES. Archaeologists have found traces of early inhabitants in Norway dating back to the third century 8.C., on the small island of Utsira on the west coast. Professor Brogger maintains that the invasion of Norway by the race from which the Norwegians of to-day sprang, occurred 6000 or 8000 years ago. The Norwegian geologist, Mr. Nummedal, recently found palaeolithic domiciles in Norway, evidencing domiciliation here 70,000 to 90,000 rears ago. The ice age possibly lies between the periods represented by the two finds mentioned. *

PHOTOGRAPH TEST FOR DIAMONDS A method by which it is claimed the quality of diamonds can bo definitely determined and imitations detected has been discovered by 3\l. Malaval, chemical head of the police laboratory at Lyons, in collaboration with Professor Locard. The stones are photographed under the light of ultraviolet ravs filtered through a screen, sunlight "being too-diffused for the purpose. Diamonds of the first water make a brilliant image, while inferior stones tinged with yellow make a fainter imago on the photographic plate, and false stones are merely shadows. QUALITIES OF HUMAN HAIR. Tho normal human head has from 100 to 130 square inches of hair covering the scalp. Numerically the number of hairs on tho avcrago head runs from 100,000 to 250,000 varying with the texture of the hair. While in babyhood the male child grows the best hair the adult woman produces a much finer quality of hair than the man. Human hair grows at the rate of one half-inch per month and from five to seven inches a year. Its average weight is 4.40z. Contrary to the general notion it is strongest, near the crown of the head, and weakest round the scalp edges. Chemically the composition of human hair is remarkably similar to wool, and it behaves just like wool—for example, it shrinks.