Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1910 — Science AND Invention [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Science AND Invention

Continuing his researches, begun with the ordinary ultraviolet rays, Bil-lon-Daguerre in France has recently experimented with still shorter rays of the spectrum, measuring down to 1,000 units, for the sterilization of all kinds of liquids. He finds that the very short rays are 25 times as effective as the longer ones in their sterilizing power. He uses quartz vacuum tubes, immersed in the liquid, and lluminated with currents much more feeble than those required for the mercury vapor lamps at first employed. One of the pressing problems in aerial navigation is that of producing automatic stability. Some investigators think that a way may be found to cause an aeroplane so to adjust itself to atmospheric vagaries so that its balance will be maintained without interference. Others are doubtful, believing that stability must always be obtained very much in the manner in vjfhich it is acquired by a bicycle rider, that is, by unconscious adjustment. Birds, the best of fliers, it is remarked, do not possess mechanical stability, but maintain their balance tn gusty weather by action which has become 10 hatritual that it is unconscious. Thus the element of intelligence is involved, although by virtue of long practice it is applied without conscious exertion of the will.

From 1900 to 1906 L. S. Berg carried on investigations round the Sea of Aral, and the results have been published in Russian. They lead to the conclusion, contrary to that reached by others, that therd is no general drying up of this inland sea, but that periodic changes of its water level occur, and that the level has been rising contlnualy since 1880. Berg finds the salinity 10.75 per 1,000, as against more than 12 per 1,000 about 1870. The sea has now a superficial area of about 24,000 square miles, but is very shallow, the mean depth being about 220 feet. Its total volume of water is only about one-tenth of that of the Lake of Baikal, which bas but little,

more than half its area. The water is supplied wholly by the rivers Amu and Syr, which together deliver, on the average, 1,500 cubic meters per second. The water is derived from melting mountain snows. Titanium steel rails for railroads were first made experimentally in 1907. The results that they showed led to their manufacture by several steel companies in 1908, and during 1909, according to the Engineering and Mining Journal, their manufacture entered upon the commercial scale. Experiments on the New York Central have confirmed those made elsewhere in showing that these rails wear several times as long as those made of ordinary Bessemer steeb Titanium has a great affinity for nitrogen, and since it is believed that considerable nitrogen remains as an impurity in ordinary steel, the good effects of an alloy of titanium are ascribed to its acting as a flux, thereby removing impurities and increasing the solidity of the steel. The increased cost is put at $3.50 per toh of rails.