SCIENCE NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 71, 2 July 1910, Page 9

SCIENCE NOTES

PHOTOGRAPHING THE HEART. Photographs of a beating heart have been made possible by an invention enabling X-ray snapshots to be taken. The long exposure—hitherto the greatest difficulty in radiographic work—is now unnecessary, as the "sunic screen,'' as the new invention is called, reduces the exposure to a twentieth of what it would otherwise be. A three seconds exiposure, instead of a minute, will be used in ordinary work, whilst instantaneous snapshots are easily obtainable with powerful modern X-ray apparatus. Blurred photographs, due to patients moving or breathing during the long exposure formerly necessary, are thus a thing' of the past.

••APPENDICULAR GASTEALGIA," A fresh series of indictments was recently 'brought against operating physicians and against appendix as a cause of human suffering at a meeting of the Royal College of Medicine, London. Twenty-four operation cases, in which the chief symptoms were stomach pains due to an unrecognised disease of the appendix,- were described. In five cases the operation was undertaken for a supposed ulcer, either in the stomach or m the adjoining intestine, only to find that these parts were normal, while the appendix was diseased. Dr. Herbert J. Patterson, who read a paper on the subject, suggested the name appendicular gastralgia for the new disease on ac-

count of its most prominent symptoms, a stomach pain due to a disease of the appendix.

NOTHING NEW.

It appears that the penny-in-the-sloj; machine, which in a score of forms has spread all over the civilised world, is not a modem invention, after all. Heron of Alexandria, in the third century 'before Christ, described a sacrificial vessel which flowed only when money was introduced. This vessel, it seems, was vase shaped, with a slit at the top. A coin dropped through the slit "fell on a plate attached to a lever. As the plate ' descended' under the weight of the coin the lever raised a plug, which allowed liquid to How from a spout near the bottom of the vase until, the coin having slipped off, the lever was released and* the plug reinserted in its place.

Nine persons out of every ten, with a cinder or any other foreign substance in the eye, will instantly begin to rub it with one hand while hunting for a handkerchief with the other. This is all wrong. The right way is not to rub the eye with the. cinder in it, but to rub the other as ; vigorously as you like. A few months ago I was riding on the engine of a fast express. The engineer threw open the front window of the cab, and I caught a cinder in my eye which gave me intense pain. 1 began to rub the eye desperately, when the engineer called to me: "Let that eye alone, and rub the other one." '

Thinking he was chaffing me, I only rubbed the harder. "I know the doctors think they know it all; tout they don't, and if you let that eye alone and work on the other you will soon have the cinder out," shouted the engineer. I did as he directed, and soon felt the cinder down near the inner canthus, and made ready to take it out. "Let it alone and keep at the well eye," again shouted the engineer. I did so for a minute longer, and then, looking into a small/glass the engineer handed me, I saw the offender on my cheek. ' I have tried it many times since, always with success. —'New York Sunday Magazine.

Sir Charles Rivers-Wilson, former president of the Grand Trunk Railway, has announced that in less than two years a train ferry will be .running between Dover and Calais, and that a similar service will be established between Folkestone and Boulogne, as well as other •ports on the main lines of travel between England and the Continent. Sir William White and Sir John WalfeBarry, prominent engineers, are hard at work on the plan. "Englishmen exclaim, 'lmpossible,'"' says Sir Charles. "On-the contrary, it is 'entirely possible. At least seventy-two train ferries are in operation in Canada and the United States, not to mention the service between the Scandinavian peninsula and Germany, enabling travellers to cross stretches of water while peacefully slumbering in their sleeping berths. To be sure," the English Channel is rough sometimes, but so is Lake Michigan, Where I have travelled on the train ferry in perfect comfort for a long distance. The chief engineering difficulty of the plan is to overcome the difference of 24ft between high and low tides, 'but this will, be possible by means of hydraulic and electric power and inclined planes. The trains will be cut ill two, and will stand side by side on the ferries, with ample chain gangway room in which the passengers can walk about if they like. Imagine how t:.T.vists will enjoy getting into their carriages at Charing' Cross in London and keeping their .places straight through to Paris or any other city on the Continent. The French see the advantage clearly enough. The only trouble we have found is in arousing the necessary enthusiasm in England."

A great deal of interest is being caused among those in Canada and the UnJtoLl TSTOUBB vvuio disinterested in suga/™"fl and a now P'<\'^ r , 'sugar manufacture 1; „ mvil - ■'"'• Mc-Uu - lm process. Thv «u.. -.;: iIk ■= a.v shredded, the pith separated u-jui the woody fibre, dried on belts over heated.steaml.pipe until bone dry, and with no m-1 crsion ol contents; then eoml ™"l into iirichs, and shipped to the I ? .li'nerv. The residue, after the niasa- ;;:,! out of the suaar. is a valuable cellulose, the ipithy cellulose being vorth from 40dol (some say (lOOdol) per ton, for the use in the manufacture! of _ni tifl,ial silk and hiirh-grade paper, bng.u !i s by this process made a- to-pjo-diu-t 'of paper-making.