O ST opened on Jaunary 22, by Dr. M. T. MacEachern, of Chicago, who is in Australia surveying the hospitals. The new laboratory has nine rooms. THE secretary of the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research announces that the department has recently established a small research laboratory at Dudley House, Endell Street, in the vicinity of Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market. The laboratory will work in close connection with the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge, which is the headquarters of the fruit and vegetables section of the department's organization for food investigation. The object of the laboratory is to bring the station into closer contact with the trade in fruit and vegetables, and with the practical aspects of the problems of their transport and storage. ABOUT $35,000,000 is spent annually by American manufacturers in research work, and probably $500,000,000 annually is saved as a result of such researches, according to estimates given by the United States Chamber of Commerce. Describing some of the principal research activities now in progress, the chamber said that the majority of trade associations were spending above $20,000 each annually in cooperative research, while expenditures by large corporate units are much more. The National Canners' Association reported $120,000 as its yearly research budget, while the Portland Cement and National Lime Associations each accounted for $100,000. Large permanent investments in laboratories also were reported. THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that the new state serologic institute at Utrecht was recently dedicated. During the ceremonies, Professor Aldershoff gave an account of the activities of the institute, which consist in inducing antidiphtheritic immunization by the use of the toxin-antitoxin mixture; immunization against scarlet fever; the crusade against asthma, in which Dr. Pondman is engaged, by means of a polyvalent autovaccine; the preparation and study of pertussis vaccines, and the new findings of Calmette and Guérin concerning vaccination against tuberculosis with BCG. Following the dedicatory address, Minister Aalberse gave the history of the sh institute, which was founded originally as a private enterprise of Dr. Spronck, before it became the annex, that it now is, to the central laboratory and to the University of Utrecht. esda A CAMPAIGN is under way to raise $5,000,000 for a new university in Kansas City to be known as the Lincoln and Lee University. The trustees contemplate breaking ground this fall, and the beginning of class work one year from that time. DR. OSWALD VEBLEN, professor of mathematics, has been appointed the first incumbent of the Henry Burchard Fine professorship of mathematics at Princeton University. Dr. James W. Alexander and Dr. Tracey Yerkes, National Research Fellow at Princeton, have been made assistant professors in the same department. DR. HENRY C. HARTMAN, professor of pathology at the University of Texas, has been appointed acting dean of the medical school, to succeed Dr. William Keiller, professor of anatomy, who has remained on duty since tendering his resignation a year ago. ROBERT DE COURCY WARD, professor of climatology, and Dr. Ralph Barton Perry, professor of philosophy, have been appointed the professors from Harvard University for the year 1926-27 under the interchange agreement between Harvard University and the western colleges. DR. W. F. SHENTON has resigned his position at the United States Naval Academy to become professor of mathematics and head of the department at the American University, Washington. PROFESSOR E. T. BELL, now of the University of Washington, has been appointed to the staff of the department of mathematics of the California Institute of Technology. DR. J. H. TAYLOR, of Princeton University, has been appointed assistant professor of mathematics at Lehigh University. DR. B. P. WATSON, professor of midwifery and diseases of women at the University of Edinburgh, has accepted the chair of obstetrics and gynecology in Columbia University, and the directorship of the Sloane Hospital for Women. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE ISOLATION OF INSULIN Ar a meeting held on January 20, 1926, of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine1 a paper was presented on the isolation and analysis of a compound of insulin with Naphtolgelb S ("Flavianic acid"). This preliminary paper, which was sent from Warsaw in December, 1925, to assure his priority in the field, can now be augmented by the following data. 1 Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 23, 281, 1926. A purified insulin preparation gives with flavianic acid a compound of constant composition. This compound was converted into insulin flavianate-picrate, then into picrate, hydrochloride and finally pure insulin. The composition of all these five compounds, which can be recrystallized and are often obtained in a form of spherolytes, shows a chemical composition on analysis which agrees one with each other. It can be reasonably assumed, therefore, that the insulin obtained in this way represents a chemical entity. The most simple empirical formula for insulin obtained from dozens of analyses is C9H102022N18S, and the molecular weight therefore is equal to 1,565. The structure of the compound will probably be one of a polypeptide composed of about fifteen aminoacids. It must be conceded, however, that dealing with such high molecular substances the analytical results agree almost as well with the formula Cr4H114N20O24S, with a molecular weight of about 1,700. It is of little importance at the present time to know which of the two formulas is right, as the synthesis of the substance appears to be far off. The convulsive dose for rabbits of pure insulin obtained in this way is about 0.08 mg and therefore the old clinical unit equals 0.026 mg. On heating pure insulin a crystalline sublimate appears which is now being investigated. The practical benefit of the work presented here is greater uniformity of action of insulin compared with the usual insulin makes and the possibility of standardization of insulin by weighing the substance without the use of animals. The method has been also applied with success for preparation of insulin directly from pancreas without the use of alcohol. Results so far obtained yielded an insulin preparation with a clinical unit equal to 0.06 mg and it is very probable that pure insulin can be obtained in this way. The method is being applied to the isolation of other hormones of similar structure to insulin. I NOTICE in the press that a peak in the King's Kern Divide in the High Sierras in Tulare County has been named Mount Jordan. Some thirty years ago a peak farther north, the second highest in the state, one of a series called the Palisades, was called Mount Jordan, by Professor Bolton Coit Brown, of Stanford University. This name went on the maps until Dr. John N. LeConte, in making a map of the region, discovered that the early Whitney Survey had called the mountain in a general way the North Palisade, not exactly as the name of a peak but as that of a mountain ridge. The Lieutenant Wheeler Survey which followed gave this particular crest of the mountain the name of North Palisade. The stream at the foot of the mountain flowing into the San Joaquin, I believe, is still called Jordan Creek. Some years after, a number of us from Stanford climbed one of the high peaks of the King's Kern Divide and named it Stanford University Peak, or in short Mount Stanford. Adjoining this is a very rocky point early called Gregory's Monument, and a third peak of some 12,000 feet has remained unnamed. Dr. John N. LeConte and Mr. Francis P. Farquhar, a mountaineer prominent in the Sierra Club and chairman of the committee on names, have named this peak Mount Jordan, having the name put on the maps of the U. S. Geological Survey. Mr. Farquhar observes: "We feel that you will be particularly pleased at the selection of a peak in the region where you spent some time in 1899 and which was the inspiration for your admirable book on the Kings-Kern Divide." I can stand it if the mountain can and I feel honored to be connected anywhere with one of the giants of the Sierras. In view of your widely appreciated academic services I have taken the liberty of submitting your name for the distinction of membership in the Academy of Letters and Sciences at Naples, a body of eminent persons, originally started by forty-six "founder-academicians,” almost all professors in the Royal University of Naples. Professor Dr. Pietro Amoroso, Duke of Rijéka, the President-General, advises me that your possible candidature will prove acceptable to the Academic Senate. It may interest you to learn that Woodrow Wilson formally accepted honorary membership in the Academy. Thomas A. Edison, as well as Chancellor E. E. Brown of New York University, and President N. M. Butler of Columbia University, are among the distinguished American members. Kindly inform me whether you will accept election, in which case your diploma and the academic medal will be posted to you directly from Naples, registered. Expressing the hope that you will lecture before the ri Academy, when passing through Naples, I felicitate you upon this well-merited distinction from abroad, and remain, and I do myself the pleasure of inclosing herewith bankdraft on Paris in dollars (or bills) for the amount in question, in the expectation, that you will cause my diploma and medal to be forwarded registered to the above address as soon as convenient after election. I enclose a visiting-card, and print below the manner in which I desire my name and titles to appear in the diploma, and I express through you, Excellency, my thanks to the officers and members of the Academy of Letters and Sciences. Faithfully yours, EUGENOTHENICS PROFESSOR HERBERT S. JENNINGS, in his timely little volume "Biology and the Advancement of Man," points out that "Heredity and environment have proven so inextricably mingled in the result that in practically no case can we claim with certainty that either alone is responsible." Since it is next to impossible to isolate the effect of heredity from that of environment, or vice versa, there is developing a great demand for a word which will apply to both fields of study. Since the term eugenics is usually construed to mean the science which deals with the improvement of the human race by selecting better hereditary qualities, and euthenics the study of race improvement by the regulation of the environment, neither of these terms is applicable when both fields are being considered. The term eugenothenics (u-jen'o-then'-iks), which is merely a combination of the terms eugenics and euthenics, seems to supply the long-felt need. Eugenothenics, then, is the study of race improvement by the regulation of both heredity and environment. Many so-called courses in eugenics deal as much with environmental factors as they do with hereditary principles. They are in reality eugenothenical courses. One who is well versed in the science of eugenics and euthenics, and especially in their relationships, is a eugenothenicist. WILLIAM M. GOLDSMITH QUOTATIONS RESEARCH AND TEACHING On the importance of promoting scientific research in America there can be no serious difference of opinion. There may, it is true, be doubts as to whether it can be "promoted," in the popular sense of the term. Certainly the qualities of mind which make research fruitful can not be manufactured to order, nor can the physical equipment which money will buy be substituted for the intellectual and spiritual gifts of nature. But such doubts furnish no ground of argument against doing all that it is possible to do. Money can not create genius, but it can give genius its tools and its opportunity. The proposals of the new "National Research Endowment," announced on February 1 by a board of trustees of which Secretary Hoover is chairman, and of which Professor A. B. Lamb, of Harvard, is a member, will, it is hoped, receive a wide and effective support. Although the published "declaration" was limited to general principles, it is said that the trustees of the endowment intend to raise a fund of $50,000,000, and that it is a part of their plan to endow research professorships at American universities. The Milton Fund for Research at Harvard, whose distribution for the next academic year is announced in our present issue, serves a similar purpose. It enables members of the faculties at Harvard to secure the time and the means of conducting research while continuing as members of an institution for higher education. There have been signs in recent years of a tendency to establish independent agencies for research, and thus to divorce research from teaching and from the university environment. There is reason to believe that such a tendency, if carried far, would be a serious mistake. The university is the natural breedingground for scientific interests. In the long run the teachers will have to be relied upon to furnish the scholars, both in their own persons and in the pupils to whom they impart their spirit and method. To build up a new personnel for research would leave the teaching profession as overburdened as ever, and would cut off one of the principal hopes of relief. To accentuate the division between teaching and research would be equally bad for the mere teacher and for the mere man of research. The former would lose in freedom and incentive and in the power to impart the spirit of creative inquiry. The latter would lose his contacts with the great intellectual tradition, with his colleagues in allied branches of knowledge, and with students who furnish both criticism and discipleship. The university is the proper center of scholarly endeavor, where are focussed the influences of history and culture, and where the achievements of maturity are renewed by the enthusiasm and forward-look of youth. It is quite true, as asserted in the declaration of the National Research Endowment, both that facilities for research are inadequate, and that the demands of teaching and administration in American universities are excessive. It is to be hoped that both the problems will be met at the same time, and that the public interest in promoting research will be so directed as to improve the lot of those whose duty it is to teach and administer.-Harvard Alumni Bulletin. SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS AND A MODIFIED CONSTANT-LEVEL REGULAT- ABOUT a year1 ago a satisfactory device for maintaining a constant liquid level in any open vessel AN IMPROVED MCLEOD GAUGE THE writer recently had occasion to install a McLeod gauge in a production unit. Having, in the past, experienced some trouble with the usual flexible tubing type and having learned from experience that the average workman is incapable of handling the Bailey1 model, a modified form was made. This gauge has the advantage of being all glass, does not require an aspirator and is simpler to operate than certain other models. Referring to the figure, the gauge proper is of the usual construction. A is a reservoir containing sufficient mercury to completely fill the gauge. The distance B is made about thirty-one inches, slightly more than atmospheric pressure. A B B such as a beaker was described. Employing the same principle the construction may be simplified so as to 1 Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 17, 466 (1925). In operation, the mercury is forced into the chamber, C, by the application of air pressure through a three-way stop-cock (not shown) attached to pipe D. In the present instance the low pressure air supplied in the factory was used with a reducing valve. In order to preclude any possibility of mercury being forced into the system being exhausted, open arm manometer E was designed to act as a safety valve. 1 Austin Bailey, Phys. Rev., Vol. 15, No. 4, page 314, April, 1920. EXCITATION POTENTIALS OF THE A PAPER now being written by the author gives some critical potential data obtained by a new method. The photo-ionization produced by the radiation from a thermionic discharge was measured by the effect of the photo-ions on the space charge in a second thermionic unit in the same tube but electrically shielded from the discharge. The present note covers only the results bearing on the excitation of the rare gas spark spectra. Argon showed three sharply defined increases in photo-ionization at 32.2.2, 34.8.5 and 39.6.5 volts. The first point measures a spark excitation potential, the second gives the work required to remove two electrons (each from a 3, orbit), while the third point probably measures the work required to remove one 3, electron. Spectroscopic studies by Dejardin2 and others show that the second spectrum of argon appears in a low current discharge, near the second point. With higher currents this spectrum is excited near nineteen volts, the difference being equal to the first ionization potential. This furnishes definite evidence that the second spectrum is a first spark spectrum and gives the basis for the above interpretation of the critical potentials. Photo-ionization measurements in neon showed two critical potentials at 48.01 and 54.9±1 volts. For the interpretation of these points it was important to know the excitation potential of the neon II spectrum. Merton3 discovered this spectrum and it has since been studied by L. and E. Bloch and Dejardin, but it has never been observed under conditions of controlled voltage. I have photographed the thermionic discharge in a simple three electrode tube using currents of a few milli-amperes and a pressure 4 1 Published by permission of the director of the National Bureau of Standards of the U. S. Department of Commerce. 2 Annales de Phys., 11, pp. 241-327, 1924. of .05 mm. The second spectrum is absent at 54 volts and distinctly visible at 55. The conspicuous lines as shown by a quartz spectrograph are between 3,700A and 3,300A. I conclude that 54.9 volts measures the work required to remove two 2, electrons. The first ionization potential is 21.5 volts; hence, the ionization potential of the ion is 54.9-21.5 33.4 volts. The 48 volt point probably measures the work required to remove one electron and displace another to a 3 quantum orbit of energy 26.5 volts. A 3 quantum electron in a hydrogenic ion has an ionization potential of 6 volts while the value derived from the observed potentials is 54.9 48.0 6.9 volts. The 3 quantum states are probably the final states for all the lines between 3,700 and 3,300, while the strongest spark lines, with final state 22, will lie in the far ultraviolet between 470A and 370A. There will presumably be no lines of this spectrum between 1,800A and 470A. My results fail to give evidence as to the 2, level of neon, but lines associated with excitation from this level are to be expected in addition to the known arc spectrum and the first spark spectrum. F. L. MOHLER BUREAU OF STANDARDS SAND FLOTATION IN NATURE EARLY in July, 1925, the writer visited the Ohio River ten miles above Cincinnati. A strong, warm breeze was blowing across the dry sand and mud flats and out upon the river. To my surprise the windward third of the river's width bore films of floating sediment, each of minute thickness but several at least one foot square. The ratio of covered to exposed water was about as 1 is to 16. The floating material proved to be sand with a few flakes of dark mica, the grains roughly 0.025 centimeters in diameter. Each patch rested in a very shallow meniscus on the water surface. No oily films were seen, which might have aided in this unusual mode of transport. As I watched more and more material was brought downstream in the same manner. This phenomenon has been recorded by Graham, Simonds and Hovey.1 Graham found the sand floated by splashing waves against a bar in the Connecticut River. Simonds attributed the setting adrift of the sand to the undermining of sand beds bordering the stream-in this case the Llano River. Similar instances are recorded in which the sand was washed off bars on islands by tidal currents. In the case here described the writer believes the sand was blown out upon the water surface by the wind, but evidence is not conclusive. 1 Graham, J. C., Am. Jour. Sci., III, 40, 476, 1890; Simonds, F. W., Am. Geol., 17, 29-37, 1896; Simonds, F. W., SCIENCE, XI, 510-512, 1900; Hovey, E. O., SCIENCE, XI, 912-913, 1900. |