SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20402, 2 November 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

ARTIFICIAL' VOCAL CHORDS. The deaf can now hear and the dumb can speak. Those who have lost control of their vocal chords because of paralysis or other causes can now speak with the aid of modern science, writes the Daily Express science correspondent. This statement, and a demonstration of the electrical marvels that make it possible, have been made iii Los Angeles, California, by Mr. Sergius P. Grace, the assistant vice-president of the Bell Telephone laboratories. lie is an electrical engineer of note and has been associated with the Bell laboratories for 50 years. " Through a man-made larynx and a mechanical lung, merely by shaping words with their lips, the dumb are given the power of speech. And by means of an electrical vibratory apparatus impulses received in the fingertips allow the deaf to hear," Mr. Grace has explained. The talking device, vaguely reminiscent ] of a bagpipe, is a bellows affair with a j mouthpiece. Mr. Graco pumped up the bellows, placed the mouthpiece in his mouth,' and formed, " Hello, how are you? " with his lips. The sentence came forth clear and distinct, though resembling the first efforts at voice reproduction on phonograph records. A special sending and receiving apparatus that scrambles sight and sound until they arc meaningless was also demonstrated. It is known as the " speech inverter." Messages sent over this device can only be decoded through the use of the " kev frequency." The device is attuned to the_ correct frequency and a meaningless jumble like " l'aicoopa Pan/a " is spoken into the microphone. "'I opeka. Hansas comes out of the receiving end clearly and intelliaibly. " Sikadgie " returns as " Chicago." TWO HUNDRED-MILE SKY ROCKET. Dr. E. 11. Goddard, provided with funds furnished by the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, is perfecting a rocket which he says'he hopes will ascend at least 200 mile's to the limts of the earth's atmosphere—if not beyond. An

experiment •which he made recently near Worcester, Massachusetts, •with a newly compounded propellant, resulted at an undetermined height in an explosion of the rocket which he had fired from a tower by night. That gave rise to the reports that the rocket had been designed to reach the moon. Dr. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, explains that no such wild project is contemplated. What is being sought is to find a method of gathering meteorological and atmospheric data in outer space which man cannot reach by aerial navigation or balloons or kites. When completed the rocket will be equipped with a parachute, containing delicate instruments by which it is hoped to obtain samples of the upper sir for chemical analysis, measurements of temperature and pressure, camera spectrographs of the sun beyond the ozone layer—which now shuts out the ultraviolet—and eventually measurements of conditions of the atmosphere for aircraft. REDUCTION OP HEAT. Aluminium paint and anti-actinic window glass have been used in the construction of the new observation cars for the Southern Pacific (Californian) railway to keep their interiors cool during the hottest st iet dies of summer travel over the desert. Aluminium paint keeps out 20 to 25 per cent, of the sun's heat, and the anti-actinic glass cuts off about 80 per cent., but transmits about 65 per cent, of the light. BLOOD RHYTHMS TESTS, Blood rhythms, the changes in the activities of the white cells in the blood during the day, are the subject of experiments carried out by Dr. Cliristianna Smith, of the Long Island Biological Laboratory. It appears that the white cells, which are the body's soldiers in its continual war against invading diseases, vary in activity from one hour to another, so that at one time of the day or night the resistance of the body to disease is less than at other times. To perform the experiment, the investigators had to test their own blood at all hours of the day and night.