TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19816, 21 February 1936, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

American Science Congress A description of sound waves powerful enough to crush steel, given by Dr. L. Thompson, American naval proving ground expert, was only one of a series of startling revelations made before the ninety-seventh annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A spot in the Arctic, where the cold, dry air is such an excellent conductor of sound that ordinary speech can be heard for 10 or 15 miles, was revealed by Dr. Vern 6. Knudsen, of the University of California, at Los Angeles. And a prediction that the next decade would see development of mathematical robots, revolutionising this branch of physical science came from Dr. Vannevar Bush, vice-president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Two inventors from the Radio Corporation of America announced that they had perfected an eye by which man can see in the dark. This eye, looking like an oversized light bulb, is really a vacuum tube on which infra-red and ultra-violet rays, invisible to natural sight, form an image that the observer may see by looking into a lens at the small end. Scientific Research “To-day everyone realises the practical advantages that have come from scientific discovery. But many fail to see the intimate and necessary connection between pure and applied science. The manufacturer who regards the professor of chemistry as a remote or needless luxury is not extinct. We can agree with the philosophers that science never leads us to ultimate causes. At most, by research ami argument, the man of science discovers sequences of change from which other sequences can be inferred. We can say that the sequences arc duo to laws of Nature, for under artificial conditions they resemble the consequences of invariable laws to which Nature is subject. 1 would emphasise that the supply of benefits that science brings (o the community cannot be expected to continue unless pure research flourishes. The man of science in a university laboratory pursuing knowledge for its own sake is essential to progress. 1 would go so far as to contend that even the pure mathematician lias his uses. Just as a community must be well educated it! its standards of life arc to ho raised, so it must maintain men who will by research increase knowledge. Universities and scientific societies are essentials of civilisation." —Dr. Barnes, Bishop of Birin ingha m-