THE WORLD OF SCIENCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14584, 5 February 1921, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE.

ATLANTIC PETROL PIPE. Petrol "tubed" from America to England by means of a pipe line under tlie Atlantic is the extraordinary plan put forward in the Paris journal Revu Scientitique. The author of the scheme, Mr Murphy, proposes to sink a tube of soft steel, flexible, ami with a metal protecting envelope capable of resisting internal and external pressure. The cost of the pipe line is estimated at from 2,*io to 300 million francs. By its use it is claimed thai the cost of transport would be reduced to something like one-hundredth part of the present ligure. MOLASSES. Molasses has become of more and more interest to the chemist as new ways for its use and the use of its own products have been devised. It is probably the most important, by-product of the sugar industry and forms the subject of a bibliography Compiled by 0. J. West and published by Arthur D. Little, Inc. The average composition of cane molasses is given as water 20 per cent., suerosc 3d per cent., invert sugar 32 per cent., asii G per cent., organic non-sugars 12 per cent. Molasses is the final mother syrup obtained in crystallisation of sugar and carries all the soluble impurities of the original juice which are no!, removed in the process of purification. The sugar present is that which refuses to crystallise out iu the presence of the impurities and from 15 to 25 per cent, of the sugar present in the original juice is usually to be found in the final molasses. In addition to some 3G pages of bibliography divided under six general headings, the bibliography discusses

briefly six important uses of the molasses. These include the recovery of sugar, the production of alcohol which runs into millions of gallons annually, its use as a food both for human and animal consumption, its use as a fuel, as a fertiliser, and miscellaneous applications as in the leather industry where dressings and shoe blacking consume a certain quantity. In animal feeds, molasses is used to supply carbohydrates and to impart an attractive taste. It is usually absorbed on some such material as peat, bran, beet, pulp, alfalfa, sphagnum moss and various kinds of metal. TAKING THE BURN OUT OF THE X-RAY. The burning and blistering effects of the X-rays can now be eliminated, claims M. Pech, a French scientist. He employs infra-red rays to neutralise the 'X-rays, reports Experimental science, when the cathode or X-ray tube is in operation. The infra-red r.'.ys will also neutralise the destructive ultra-violet rays, which are in predominance about the mercury vapour and arch light. His method of eliminating the burns will he investigated experimentally by the French Acadejny uf Sciences under (tie direction of M. Bethelot, It is the practice now to protect the operator from the X-rays by means of a sheet of lead glass, metallic lead, or even clothps impregnated with lead chemicals, the lead in either case being impervious to the X-rays. TO USE BACTERIA FOR SAUSAGE SKIN. Sausage skins are usually made of entrails, hut parchment paper and denitrated wood pulp have also been used. Xow conns the proposal, reported in Popular Science, to make them of bacteria. The particular specimens of bacterium employed is called xilinum and is found in vinegar. Xilinuni has been the dread of the vinegar-maker anil manifests itself in an objectionable slimy scum. Some years ago a process was patented fur converting xilinuni bacteria into leather, and now a Dr. Wuostenfeld would use them in the. making of sausage skins. Xilinuni skin is obtained, of course, only in Hat sheets. No one lias succeeded in inducing xiliniufn to breed tubes. Tile sausage meal must be wrapped in the skin and then sewn up. COUGH (WAY ORIGINATE IN THE STOMACH. In the Bulletin de la Societe Medical, of Paris, Mr G. G. Haven describes a patient, a man of fifty-three, who for twenty-flvc years had had vague d-sepeptic disturbances for which he had taken pounds of sodium bicarbonate and other drugs in Ihe course of the years. During Hie last six years he had been tormented with a cough and spilling uf thick mucus from the 'stiimach. I'jndcr treatment iff 'the dyspepsia by lavage of the stomach and dieting, the cough disappeared. Hayen reiterates the necessity for seeking latent stomach disease with a puzzling cough, and also the necessity with chronic gastritis to restrict to two meals a day, with a nine-hour interval.