SCIENCE NOTES & NEWS

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 80, 2 May 1918, Page 4

SCIENCE NOTES & NEWS

LANGUAGE BY GRAMOPHONB A combination of the gramaphona with a moving strip showing the word* that are spoken has been invented by a Frenchman as a device for teaching foreign languages. As the record pronounces the sentence in the language which is being studied, the written words pass before the student. WE OWE THE LIFT TO SAVAGES. We seldom realise how many article* •f supposed modern invention have been handed down to us fx’om savage tribes. The lift, for instance, is not generally known to be of savage origin. Then the Indians of Central and South, America have for many centuries past 'effected cotton-weaving by means of a loom almost as highly finished and as elaborate as our own. Yarn or true cotton fibre is made by the Indians of Guiana and woven into hammocks of most lovely hues and patterns, which! have been copied by us. Felt was made by Polynesion savages. They manufactured coverings for their houses, blankets, carpets, and many other household articles so excellently that our felt goods have never yet surpassed them. From the inner bark of a certain kind of tree the Hawaiian natives produced material so soft and ■fine that garments could easily be made of-the same. The people of Tahiti invented mortar by bringing up lump* of coral from the sea, burning! it, and mixing the lime obtained with sand and water. This mortar was then found by the ingenious savage to be an excellent substance for plastering up the holes and crevices in the rocky walls of his house. Panama hats, water-tight baskets, tobacco pipes, and ploughs are numbered among the many useful articles that owe their origin to th« ingenuity of the savage.

/THE STORY OF A FAMOUS INVENTION. 'A railway accident that wrecked th« train in which rode George Westinghouse, an alert young American, set him thinking liow such accidents could be averted. As he watched the train hands struggling with the inefficient hand-brakes the idea flashed into his mind, “If there were only some way by which the driver could brake thi train.” For months he thought of little else except this question. One hot day, as ho was sitting at his desk, a little girl timidly approached him with a request that the would subscribe to a magazine. Young Westingliouse, busy and absorbed, but incapable of speaking roughly to a child, purchased a copy and turned to his work. But the end of the task was at hand, for in the magazine at his elbow lay the phrase that .was to solve the problem of the air-brake. His model for his famous brake had been completed, but the operating power was unsatisfactory. In idly turning over the pages of the magazine, Westingliouse saw an account of tunnel-building in which the work was done by compressed air. In a flash he had found the solution of his problem. Chance, accident, fate had gent a child into his life to point out the way to a great name and great wealth. Although young Westingliouse realised his indebtedness to the little magazine agent, and tried hard to find her, he never saw her again. A NEW THEORY OF SLEEP.

That we sleep, not because we are exhausted, but in order to avoid being exhausted, is the way in which the Geneva physiologist, Claparede, formulates a new theory. According to this conception, which has been further elaborated by Tromnor, sleep is not the result of fatigue, but an impulsive selfdisinfection process, which the body from time to time conducts against itself, so to speak, in order to get rid of waste products before they have a chance to become injurious. Dr. Adolf Koelsch draws attention to the fact that just as combustion of fuel for the production of heat and energy is always attended by lashes and slag, so the slow combustion which! produces heat and energy in the body by means of metabolic changes, is likewise attended by waste. He says: “Since the senses never come to rest voluntarily or shut themselves off from the outer world, a point would eventually he reached when the organism would perish’ as a victim of general nerve exhaustion. In order to hinder this, Nature arranges betimes, i.e., before exhaustion can seriously injure the organism, to set in motion that opposition current which we term sleep.” {Again, “The sight-endowed animal t(inds to take its sleep at night, since Ipie stimuli which govern the animal’s jtital activities are then cut off.” For BmJmals endowed with special senses, not with sight, the night is not SO great a factor. “These can only jblocade stimuli to the senses either by ©toeping into some secluded spot or by the action of Nature in causing an opportune production of a substance ! '(a sort of hormone) which acts as an in entering the nerve path and 'deadening sensibility. There ar§ indications that the latter is what actually takes place.” It is Believed that a sufficient degree of satiation is one of the influences which create sucli an obstruction, but the whole subject is in need of extended .investigation. Keolsch has also studied y confirmatory results.