SCIENCE NOTES.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 101, 9 April 1907, Page 3

SCIENCE NOTES.

The pipe-line conveying petroleum from Baku to the Black Sea has been completed. It is 550 miles long, and is capable of passing 400,000,000 gallons of oil yearly. | Another important oil pipe-line has been built for transporting Texas and California petroleum across the Isthmus of Panama. It is Bin m diameter and fifty-ont-miles long. The use of special steels for rivets was the subject of a communication to the Paris Academy of Sciences lately by M. G. Charpy. A systematic study of the thermal and mechanical properties of various alloys of steel has led to the use of a chrome nickel steel for rivets, the strength of which is 2.5 times that of the metal usually employed for this purpose, and this without the. need of any special precautions m practical use. - * Maps for military and general field use are produced by Dr O. H. F. Vollbehr, of Halensee-Beiiin, as microscopic transparencies, each about l_in by 2in m size. These form slides for the micro-photoscope, a special instrument having a hand mirror shaped frame, to which is attached a slideholder, with a movable lens over it. The lens slides m two directions, about seventy square miles being shown m each position. In Central Arizona thqre exists a remarkable hill called the Coon Mountain. Rising only 150 ft from the surrounding sandy plain, its interior consists of a circular crater three-quarters of a mile m diameter and 500 ft deep. Scattered around the hill are blocks of sandstone, which diminish m size as the distance from the crater increases, whilst close m round the rim are many lumps of metallic iron containing microscopic diamonds. Recent research has led to the supposition that the crater was formed by the impact of a huge iron meteorite, perhaps nearly a third of a mile m diameter, large enough to be called a minor planet, and moving prob ably with a speed of about eight miles a second. The crater is at present being actively bored by enterprising Americans for meteoric iron. * "The queerest house m the world," said a zoologist, "is undoubtedly the famous Bone Cabin m Wyoming, near the Medicine Bow River. This cabin's foundations are built of fossil bones. Bones of dinosaurs — jaws of the diplodocus, teeth of the brontosaurus, knuckles of the ichthyosaurus, vertebrae of the camarasaurus, chunks of the barosaurus, the cetiasaurus, the brachlosaurus, the stegiosaurus, the ornitholestes, or bird-catching dinosaur — all entered into this wonderful cabin's foundations, making it the most curious and the most costly edifice, not excepting the Pennsylvania Capitol, m America. This hut was built hy a Mexican sheepherder, who had happened by chance on the grandest extinct animal bed m the world. This was a plot about fifty yards square, wherein lay m rich profusion the bones of all the animals of the Reptilian age. The heaviest and the lightest, the largest and the smallest, the most tranquil and the most ferocious, lay side by side. The place was evidently once a 'river bar, and the dead bodies that floated down the stream were here arrested, to lie for hundreds of thousands of years, till a sheepherder came along, and, rooting among bones as big as boulders, set about the building of the world's queerest cabin." Writing m 'Nature,' Professor Joly, after stating some facts which dispose him to doubt whether radium was a native constituent of the rocks forming the earth's crust, says: — By a process of exclusion, if for no other reason, we are, I think, justified m considering the possi bility that the radium is picked up by the earth m its motion through space. The probable source would be the sun. There are, m point of fact, many arguments m support of this view besides that by exclusion. The fairly uniform distribution over the earth's surface at once finds explanation. The picked-up radium probably floats m the atmosphere for a long time, and ultimately is helped downwards to the surface by rain and snow and other meteorological conditions. Once upon the surface of the land, percolating waters will carry it to all depths to which such waters penetrate. It has many thousands of years for its travels before its radio-activity dies out. We would expect that the more impervious mineral substances would show the least amount. Quartz is without i*adium, as the Hon. R. J. Strutt shows by his determinations. There appears to be no improbability that matter m minute quantities might reach us from the sun. Here_we are observing the most minute traces. If the observations are correct as to the velocities of solar ejections, it would take but a few days to bring solav matter into the orbit of the earth. * * Details of a highly important discovery of a new anti-toxin treatment for dysentery were given by Dr Doon, an army surgeon, at a meeting of the Imperial Medical Society m Vienna. Dr Doon, m conjunction with Professor Krause, has been engaged for several years m sero-thera-peutic research, and has at >length succeeded m infecting rabbits with the particular form of dysentery bacillus discovered by Shiga and Krause. From this source Dr Doon and Professor Krause obtained their new serum. Their experimental treatment of soldiers of the garrison of Cracow m 1904 proved highly successful, as have also their later experiments m Bosnia and Roumania. It is expected that the new serum will also be valuable as a prophylactic. x • • Dr Senn attributes the comparative immunity of +he South Sea Islanders from attacks of appendicitis principally to their diet, which is laxative, easily digested, and not liable to cause fermentation m ■he stomach and digestive tract. Appendicitis does occur m these islands, but this disease is extremely rare as compared with the frequency with which it is met m Europe, and more especially the frequency with which it is seen m the United States. The Americans, as one of their own medical journals recently pointed out, jre the most injudicious and reckless eaters m the world, which goes far m explaining the prevalence of gastric and intestinal disorders among them. It is to an accidental invention made by an Italian chemist named Sobrero fiftynine years ago that the world of to-day owes a surprisingly large proportion of the material progress made since that time. After the manner of most, chemists of his time, Sobrero devoted a good deal of energy to original investigations. He was constantly making mixtures and compounds of various substances, just to see what Avould happen, and without any definite expectation as to the results. One day Sobrero got glycerine, strong su? phuric acid, and concentrated nitric acid together. The result was the violently txplosive liquid now known as nitroglycerine. He does not seem to have had any serious mishaps with it, though a list ! of men who have been blown to atoms by it since his day would be an appalling one.