STANDARDS FOR SCIENTIFIC AND ENGI

NEERING SYMBOLS AND
ABBREVIATIONS

THE decision to undertake the standardization of scientific and engineering symbols and abbreviations. as a national enterprise was made at a general conference called by the American Engineering Standards Committee and held in the rooms of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers on February 13, 1923. Three organizations, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, made the original recommendations which resulted in the calling of this confer

ence.

Official representatives of national organizations attended this conference and after a full discussion they voted unanimously that this project should be undertaken, and that the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Research Council, the Society for Promotion of Engineering Education and the U. S. Bureau of Standards should be requested to accept joint sponsorship. Later the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers were invited to become joint sponsors.

The sectional committee on scientific and engineering symbols and abbreviations now consists of thirty members representing thirty-seven national organizations. It has organized nine subcommittees to which have been assigned the following divisions of the subject, (1) Symbols for Mechanics, Structural Engineering and Testing Materials, (2) Symbols for Hydraulics, (3) Symbols for Heat and Thermodynamics, (4) Symbols for Photometry and Illumination, (5) Aeronautical Symbols, (6) Mathematical Symbols, (7) Electrotechnical Symbols including Radio, (8) Navigational and Topographical Symbols, (9) Abbreviations for Scientific and Engineering Terms. The reports of these subcommittees will be prepared and issued separately.

Mathematical Symbols. The proposed standard for Mathematical Symbols was developed by Subcommittee No. 6, of which Mr. Edward V. Huntington, professor of mechanics, Harvard University, is chairman. A draft of this subcommittee report was considered at a meeting of the executive committee of the sectional committee in January, 1927, and was approved, with slight amendments, which subsequently were introduced into the report by the subcommittee. The report was submitted to the members of the sectional committee on April 25, 1927, and received its approval. A few minor suggestions for modification were submitted by individuals, but it has been considered inexpedient by the sectional commit

tee to reopen the whole matter for consideration of these few individual suggestions.

They are, therefore, included as an "Appendix" to the report, with the recommendation that when the report shall be reconsidered for revision they shall receive due consideration. The proposed standard is now before the five sponsor bodies for their approval and transmission to the American Engineering Standards Committee for approval.

Aeronautical Symbols. Subcommittee No. 5, Professor Joseph S. Ames, the Johns Hopkins University, chairman, has taken advantage of the early work of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. The list of approximately 100 letter symbols which it now proposes for criticism and comment have for the most part been in use by the National Advisory Committee for the past few years.

This report of the subcommittee was approved by the executive committee of the sectional committee, January 22, 1927, subject to possible modification by the executive committee after consideration of conflicts and duplications in symbols. The attached statement of conflicts and duplications in symbols was considered by the subcommittee, after which the original report was reaffirmed on April 19, 1927. The subcommittee report is now issued in tentative form with a request for criticism and suggestion from all concerned. Communications may be directed to Preston S. Miller, secretary of the sectional committee, Eightieth Street and East End Avenue, New York, N. Y.

FLOOD CONTROL BY REFORESTATION IN MISSISSIPPI

AN extensive survey under which will be brought together all available information upon the location and area of forests needed on the Mississippi watershed as a part of flood prevention and control has been started by the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and will be completed by early fall.

"The survey," says Col. William B. Greeley, chief forester, "will define the main tributaries of the Mississippi to be treated as units, and for each of these tributaries data will be brought together on the acreage, the amount and character of the precipitation, the more essential or more common soil classes, features of physiography, including ruggedness of topography, natural reservoirs, etc., the general character of the vegetative cover, and a rating of the value of the protective cover as a means of flood prevention and control."

The object of the survey is to bring out on this enormous drainage basin the area or watersheds where, on account of rainfall, character of soil, topog

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Considering especially character of soil, steepness of slope, and character of precipitation, a rating will be given the protective value of forest cover as an element of the particular watershed. The plan is to eliminate watersheds where on account of these factors the maximum protective influence that a forest might exert would have a comparatively minor effect upon stream and flood conditions, and to locate the areas where, because of soil, topography and precipitation, the effect of forest cover would be important.

A somewhat similar rating of the protective effiT: ciency of the existing forest cover on the Mississippi system's watersheds is proposed. The plan contemplates putting all this data as far as possible on a set of maps for ready consultation in the formulation of comprehensive plans for flood prevention and control in the Mississippi Valley. The data obtained by the Department of Agriculture through the Forest Service will be correlated with that of the War Department and other agencies for the construction of reservoirs and other engineering methods of flood control.

E. A. Sherman, associate forester, has been named the direct the survey.

THE FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL
HISTORY

EXTENSIVE engineering changes are being made in Field Museum of Natural History. As a result of this work, fourteen large additional halls will be made available for museum exhibits, and the heating of the new Shedd Aquarium, the stadium in Soldier Field and the museum itself will be centralized in the Field Museum's heating plant. For more than a year past the museum has been supplying heat to the stadium, and an arrangement was recently entered into between authorities of the projected Shedd Aquarium and the museum to supply heat to the new institution.

Of the halls gained for public exhibits in the museum by the changes being made, eleven will be devoted to anthropological collections, and three to zoological subjects. The work is being rushed in the hope of completing it by October 1. Shortly after that date, it is expected, operations for installation of collections in the new halls will begin, and as soon as each hall is arranged with its exhibits it will be thrown open to the public. The entire fourteen new halls probably will not be in use until a considerably later date.

The continued development of Field Museum as an institution of world importance, and the constant flow

departments-anthropology, botany, geology and zoology-through expeditions sent out by it, and through gifts of its friends, have made more space an absolute necessity.

The halls to be gained are on the ground floor of the building, and will constitute about two thirds of the 245,000 square foot area of this floor. All pipes and other obstructions, which have made this space unavailable for exhibits in the past, are being removed. Steam and water pipes, now running along the ceilings, will be carried through underground trenches and tunnels, increasing the headroom of the halls and bettering their appearance. The pump room on the ground floor will be depressed.

The new halls will enable the museum to have a well-ordered geographical and scientific arrangement of the anthropological collections. Among exhibits planned for these halls are those from Melanesia, the Philippine Islands, Malay Peninsula and Malay Archipelago, Polynesia, Micronesia, Madagascar and East Africa, North, West and South Africa, India, Egypt and Mesopotamia. Their installation in the new halls will make it possible to devote the entire east wing of the main floor exclusively to North, Central and South American archeology and ethnology. One of the new halls will be devoted to exhibits illustrating the progress of prehistoric man, for which Henry Field, assistant curator of physical anthropology, is now collecting in Europe. Another hall will be devoted to physical anthropology.

A special significance is attached to the use the department of zoology will make of the space allotted to it in the new halls, as it will place the lower orders of animals, chiefly denizens of the sea, on this lower floor, while the higher orders of animals will remain on the main floor. A feature of the new halls will be one devoted to large marine mammal habitat groups such as whales, walruses, seals, sea lions, porpoises and so forth. Another hall will hold systematic collections of fishes, and the third will be devoted to marine invertebrates, such as starfish, mollusks and similar creatures.

Removal of these collections from the general zoological collections in the west wing of the main floor will make possible opening there a new hall of Asiatic mammal habitat groups, the nucleus of which will be the collections made by the James Simpson-Roosevelt Asiatic Expedition of the Field Museum, conducted in 1925 under the leadership of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt. It is expected that about January 1, 1928, the first two groups will be installed ready for exhibition. These will consist of the famous Ovis Poli sheep, named for the great explorer Marco Polo, and the

ibex, of which the Roosevelts secured a world's record head.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER, Sage professor of psychology at Cornell University, died on August 3, aged sixty years. Dr. Titchener was born in Chichester, England, and was called to Cornell University in 1892.

THE seventieth birthday, occurring on August 8, of Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, was celebrated on July 28 by the presentation of a Queen Anne cup made by Thomas Folkingham in 1711, and an illuminated book of resolutions containing the signatures of his colleagues and friends from all the world over. These signatures were made on individual slips of vellum and included nearly a thousand names. The design and decorations of the book were executed by William E. Belanski. The presentation took place in advance of Professor Osborn's birthday owing to the fact that he was obliged to be in the west on August 8. The committee in charge of the celebration have also invited Professor and Mrs. Osborn to be the guests of honor at a reception to be given on September 29, on which occasion the balance of the fund raised by his friends, amounting in all to nearly seven thousand dollars, will be presented to him for his research work.

DR. HENRY S. WASHINGTON, of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, has been nominated by the Italian government an officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy and has received from the Italian ambassador, Baron de Martino, the cross of the order in recognition of his work on the rocks and volcanoes of Italy.

DR. F. B. MUMFORD, since 1909 dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the experiment station of the University of Missouri, and his brother, Dr. H. W. Mumford, since 1922 dean and director of the Illinois College of Agriculture, recently received the honorary degree of doctor of agriculture from the Michigan State Agricultural College, where both were graduated thirty-six years ago.

THE University of South Dakota at the recent commencement exercises conferred upon Dr. L. S. Hulburt the honorary degree of doctor of laws. Dr. Hulburt is professor of mathematics, emeritus, in the Johns Hopkins University. Before going to the Johns Hopkins University in 1892 he was for four years professor of mathematics in the University of South Dakota.

MRS. ZELIA NUTTALL has been elected a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain

and Ireland and a corresponding member of the Geographic Society of Philadelphia to fill the vacancy created by the death of Sir John Scott Keltie.

DR. R. RUGGLES GATES, of the University of London, received the doctorate of laws in absentia, at the commencement exercises of Mount Allison University, Sackville, N. B.

M. LEONARDO TORRES-QUEVEDO, engineer of bridges and roads of Spain, has been elected foreign associate of the Paris Academy of Sciences to succeed the late H. Kamerlingh Onnes.

THE Hanbury Memorial Medal, which is given for excellence in the prosecution or promotion of original research in the chemistry or natural history of drugs, has been awarded to Dr. T. A. Henry, director of the Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratories.

M. PIERRE SALET, of the Observatory of Paris, has been promoted from adjunct astronomer to astronomer, to succeed M. Bigourdan, who recently retired.

CARLOS G. BATES, recently director of the Rocky Mountain Forest Experiment Station of the Forest Service, has been appointed director of a new section in the Forest Products Laboratory, at Madison, Wis., which will work on biological problems.

DR. JOSEPH JASTROW, since 1888 professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, has retired and has been made emeritus professor of psychology.

THOMAS A. EDISON visited the Department of Agriculture in Washington on July 26 to discuss questions of rubber culture. He conferred with Drs. W. A. Taylor, chief, and Karl F. Kellerman, associate chief, of the Bureau of Plant Industry. A representative of the War Department attended this conference. Mr. Edison was accompanied by one of his assistants. He also conferred with officials of the Department of Commerce on the subject of rubber.

W. L. MCATEE, in charge of the division of food habits research of the Bureau of Biological Survey, recently returned from Europe, where he was from the middle of March to the middle of June on official business connected with the work of that bureau and the Bureau of Entomology. He investigated methods of propagation of waterfowl and other game birds, many of them the same species that occur in the United States. This work was carried on at nine establishments in France, Holland and Great Britain.

DR. GEORGE KEMMERER, professor of chemistry in the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. W. H. Rich, of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, are making this summer a scientific study of the water of the lakes on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Professor Kemmerer has

assisted Dr. E. A. Birge, of the University of Wisconsin and the State Geological and Natural History Survey, in the studies he is directing of plant and animal life in Wisconsin lakes, and the ability of the lakes to sustain such life.

DR. CHARLES WARDELL STILES, chief of the division of zoology of the Hygienic Laboratory, Washington, D. C., has been appointed delegate from the United States to the tenth International Zoological Congress, to be held in Budapest, Hungary, September 4 to 9. Dr. Stiles also will attend meetings of the International Committee on Zoological Nomenclature, which will convene in Budapest on August 28, and will be in session until September 4.

W. C. PARKINSON has left Peru to return to Washington after having completed the work he was engaged upon as consulting magnetician at the Huancayo Observatory.

PROFESSOR WARREN D. SMITH conducted the annual summer camp for geology of the University of Oregon in the Wallowa Mountains from June 15 to July 15, during which time he combined teaching with his personal research on some of the interesting problems of that region. In August he will be engaged as consulting geologist for the Reclamation Bureau on the Owyhee Irrigation Project Dam near Adrian, Ore., and still later in the summer will be occupied with special work in Lake County in connection with a suit concerning artesian water conditions.

THE topographical department of the Danish General Staff despatched a survey expedition to Greenland on May 25 of this year. It is under the command of Captain F. C. Jörgensen, and is based on Disko Island. The projected program of survey work will probably take thirty years to carry out. In addition, the expedition will supervise the construction of seismographic and wireless stations at Scoresby Sound.

DR. W. M. JARDINE, secretary of agriculture, gave the principal address on August 1, before the East Lansing meeting of the Country Life Conference.

SIR JOHN BLAND-SUTTON will present, on behalf of the Royal College of Physicians, London, an address of congratulation to the University of Toronto at the commemoration, on October 6, of the centenary of the granting of the charter of King's College, Toronto, now the University of Toronto.

SIR JOHN MACPHERSON, professor of psychiatry in the University of Sydney, New South Wales, has been nominated for Maudsley lecturer for 1928.

WHILE returning from work in the field in the vicinity of Salem, Ky., on the geology of the Smith

land Quadrangle, Dr. Stuart Weller, professor of paleontologic geology for many years at the University of Chicago and assistant geologist on the Kentucky Geological Survey since 1920, died suddenly on August 5 in the automobile of a friend. Dr. Weller was fifty-seven years old.

A BRONZE plaque commemorating the life and work of Jacques Loeb, to be placed in the entrance of the auditorium, next to the tablet erected to Dr. C. O. Whitman, the founder of the laboratory, was unveiled at Woods Hole on August 4. Ten-minute addresses were made by Dr. Frank R. Lillie, president of the board of trustees and until 1926 director of the laboratory; by Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Rockefeller Institute, of which Dr. Loeb was a member at the time of his death, and by Dr. Hardolph Wasteneys, of the University of Toronto, who was one of Dr. Loeb's students.

THE Society of Sciences, Letters and Arts of l'Aveyron has erected a monument in memory of the botanist, Hippolyte Coste.

Popular Astronomy, quoting from Ciel et Terre, reports that on the occasion of the distribution of prizes to the students in the Seminary and College of St. Catherine, where Donati received his education up to the time of his entrance to the university, the life of this noted astronomer was commemorated. The authorities of the city, Cardinal Maffi and a number of distinguished citizens assisted in the ceremonies. On December 16, through the aid of a committee of citizens of Pisa, a bronze tablet was placed on the house where Donati was born, and on the same day the one hundredth anniversary of his birth was celebrated. On this occasion Professor Marco Salvadori, of the College of St. Catherine, reviewed his life.

EDWARD S. HARKNESS has given the sum of $250,000 to Memorial Hospital, New York City, for the purchase of four grams of radium, doubling the supply now possessed by the hospital.

AN International Congress of Neurologists and Alienists opened on July 26, under the patronage of President Doumergue, at the Château of Blois, Paris, Professor Raviart, of Lille, presiding. The congress, which will last for five days, is being attended by four hundred delegates from seventeen countries.

THE combined meeting of the Section of Neurology of the Royal Society of Medicine and the American Neurological Association was opened on July 25 by a reception at the Royal Society of Medicine; guests were received by Sir James Berry, president of the society, and Lady Berry. Sir James Purves-Stewart, president of the section, gave an address on "Mount

Athos, a Survival of the Middle Ages." The Hughlings Jackson lecture was delivered by Dr. Charles L. Dana. During the afternoon demonstrations on pathological subjects were given, followed by a dinner in the evening.

A TOUR of delegates to the third World's Poultry Congress has been arranged so that European and other delegates may visit some of the more important educational marketing and poultry raising sections of the eastern United States. The party left Ottawa on August 4 and after visiting a few places in Canada proceeded to Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. Later the poultry and egg markets of New York City will be visited and the delegates will proceed through New Jersey to inspect the more important poultry raising sections of that state. Finally a visit will be made to the United States Department of Agriculture, where the visitors will be made acquainted with the work carried on by the Bureau of Animal Industry and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.

THE International Conference on Flour and Bread Manufacture, postponed last year on account of technical difficulties, will definitely take place in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in September, 1927, under the auspices of the Czechoslovakian government. The exact date and full details of the program are yet to be determined. The preparatory committee has the following officers: Chairman, Jan Jolinek; Editor, Francis Hruska; Secretary, Karel Krtinsky.

A STATE clearing house of information on problems of delinquency and juvenile criminology was planned at a recent meeting of ten leading Wisconsin social workers sponsored by the Wisconsin Conference of Social Work. A plan for holding child guidance clinics in some 30 Wisconsin communities was also approved. Professor Kimball Young and Professor Robert West, of the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. R. E. Bushong, director of the Milwaukee County Mental Hygiene Clinic, were appointed to map out the work to be done by these clinics.

THE first National Fuels Meeting sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers will be held at St. Louis, from October 11 to 13.

Industrial and Engineering Chemistry reports that at the annual dinner of the American Welding Society held in New York City recently, President F. M. Farmer announced the donation of an award, the gift of Samuel Wylie Miller, to be presented by the society annually in appreciation of work of outstanding merit in advancing the art and science of welding. The award is a gold medal, which will be known as the Miller Medal.

R. H. FINCH, of the Lassen Volcanic Observatory,

informs us that a museum to make better known the natural history of Lassen National Park was opened with a formal dedication ceremony on July 4. It is situated on the shore of Manzanita Lake near the northwestern entrance of the park. The museum was erected by Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Loomis as a memorial to their daughter Mae and they plan to turn it over to the National Park Service as soon as the boundary of the Lassen National Park is extended to include the area in which the museum is located. A pictorial history of the recent activity of Lassen Peak is the most striking part of the exhibit, though the wild life and the different kinds of lavas in the park are well displayed.

WE learn from the Journal of the American Medical Association that for two years about fifty members of the faculty of the University of California and assistants have been investigating the cause of pyorrhea. The Carnegie Corporation and various dental societies furnished about $100,000 to carry on this work. Some of the experiments seem to show that in animals and man a condition approximating pyorrhea can be induced by "slight upsets in the acid-base balance of their diet." On account of this seeming "tangential direction" which the research took, the stomatologic research committee of the university requested the Carnegie Corporation to send the following men to California for consultation on this problem: Dr. Lafayette P. Mendel, Sterling professor of physiologic chemistry, Yale University; Dr. Elmer V. McCollum, professor of biochemistry, the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, and Dr. Edward H. Hatton, professor of pathology and special research investigator, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago. Dr. Mendel first made the trip, and Dr. McCollum went late in July. Dr. Hatton was expected to arrive early in August. Heretofore, research into the cause of pyorrhea has been largely through the approach of bacteriology rather than of nutrition.

THE departments of the University of Georgia Medical Department, Augusta, that were affected by the recent school fire are being renovated; the roof, the only part that burned, is being restored. The damage was estimated at $16,000. Space in the south wing, heretofore unused, is being converted into quarters for the department of experimental surgery with a large operating room, three rooms for research and an office. The space formerly used by the surgical department on the first floor will be taken over by the department of public health. The medical department is appealing to the legislature now in session for an increased appropriation of $20,000 a year for maintenance to replace a similar amount that