SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20380, 11 April 1928, Page 7

SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE. MANY ACTIVITIES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 17. The report of the committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research for the- year 1926-27 has just been published in the form of a White Paper. The main activities of the department fall under three headings:— (1) Researches undertaken for national purposes and for the general benefit of the community. (2) The encouragement of industrial scientific research through the formation of co-operative research associations, and in other ways. (3) The encouragement of the work or individual scientific workers and the training of research workers to supply national and industrial needs. The report foreshadows that work is about to be undertaken on the possibility of detecting underground minerals by new methods depending on the determination of the force of gravity, the electrical conductivity of the earth, and other phenomena which are know'll to vary according to the nature of the deposits below the surface. These methods have been used by private companies with reported success, but no reliable published data is available for the information of interested persons. The results obtained hitherto by the geological survey are very promising. FUEL RESEARCH.

In connection with the work of the Fuel Research Board, attention is called to the loan guaranteed by the Government to a subsidiary company of the Gas, Light, and Coke Company to enable them to erect on a commercial scale a low temperature carbonisation plant, using retorts of the design developed at the department’s fuel research station. The plant will be capable of producing 100 tons of smokeless fuel per day, besides a considerable yield of gas of high calorific value, oils, and tar. The scheme should provide facta on which a sound judgment can be based of the commercial success, on a large scale, of this low temperature carbonisation process.

The report recalls the arrangements entered into with Dr Bergius and the British Bergius Syndicate, by which selected British coals have been treated by the Bergius process for the conversion of coal into light petroleum products. The results of the experiments show that a large proportion of- the coal substance can be converted into liquid fuel, but that it is not yet possible to assess the commercial value of these developments. TRANSPORT OF FOOD.

In connection with the department’s investigations on the storage and transport of food, the Empire Marketing Board has made a grant of a sum not exceeding £35,000 to enable the Low Temperature Research Station at Cambridge to be enlarged. The development of the work on the storage and transport of fish, and on the treatment of fish by-products has been prevented by lack of funds, but as a result of special grants from the Empire Marketing Board, active work on these subjects will soon be resumed. The report summarise'. bricilv the result'- of investigations undertaken on the storage of ham and bacon, the freezing of tissfies, and the transport of fruit and vegetables. The work carried out on the recommendation of the department’s co-ordinat ing boards and committees dealing with engineering, physics, chemistry, radiotelegraphy, and illumination research, etc., is mainly initiated at the request of the fighting services and other Government departments on the understanding that the results will bo made available for industry in due course. Full information placed before the Advisory Council by the Admiralty and War Office, it appeared that the production of sound steel castings mft much to be desired. The matter is obviously one of considerable importance to the service departments and industry in general, and arrangements have accordingly been made for the Engineering Research Board to undertake a full investigation of the causes of and the methods of preventing flaws in the castings. The increasingly high temperatures at which modern machinery is required to work has led to the Engineering Research Board carrying out, in co-oppration with industry, investigations of the properties of existing materials at such temperatures, and also investigations likely to lead to the discovery of new alloys suitable for withstanding the stresses applied at high temperatures.

SIR E. RUTHERFORD’S WORK. Among the more important grants made bv the department to assist individual research workers, mention may be made of that to Sir Ernest Rutherford to enable him to carry out research at Cambridge on the production of intense magnetic fields. By means of a specially designed dvnamo, the use of magnetic fields of the order of 320,000 units over a volume of 2 cubic cms. has'been made possible. It coils can be designed to withstand the tremendous forces produced, fields up to nearly 1,000,000 units can be produced by the machine. Such magnetic fields are about 10 times more intense than any previously produced by any apparatus in the world. The great importance of such Intense fields in the continuation of research on atomic physics was emphasised bv Sir Ernest Rutherford in his recent presidential address to the Royal Society The grant to the Royal Institution in support of Sir William Bragg’s '™rk on the analysis of crystals by means of X-ray has been continued. His methods have pu into the hands of scientists a means of studying the internal construction o£ l " materials to an extent not possible by the older methods of chemical analysis. The report also records a grant of approximately £ISOO for three years to enable the Imperial College „o appoint re search assistants to rrofcssor Bone work on chemical reactions at high pre. sures. Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., are supplying the college ivdh the expen sivo equipment necessary. use "high pressures in chemical manufactur is rapidly extending, and it is important, in the opinion of the Advisory Council, to encourage at least one university centre to organise scientific research in directions which promise such great industrial advances.