196 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 11, NO. 8 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



At a meeting of the Board of Sun^eys and ISIaps held on Februar}^ 8, the 

 following officers were reelected: Chairman, O. C. Merrill of the Federal 

 Power Commission ; Vice-Chairnian, William Bowie of the Coast and Geo- 

 detic Survey; Secretary, C. H. Birdseye of the U. S. Geological vSurvey. 



The "Washington Chapter of the American Society for Steel Treating met 

 at the Bureau of Standards at 8 p.m. on March 18. Dr. G. K. Burgess of 

 the Bureau spoke on The properties of metals at high temperatures and their 

 relation to heat treatment. 



A "Personnel Research Federation" was organized on March 15 by a general 

 conference which was held under the auspices of the National Research 

 Council and the Engineering Foundation. The Federation has been organ- 

 ized to bring about the interchange of research information among the nu- 

 merous organizations which are engaged in personnel research. In its mem- 

 bership it includes scientific, engineering, labor, management, and educational 

 bodies. Temporary officers were elected as follows: Chairman, Robert M. 

 Yerkes, representing National Research Council; Vice-Chairman, Samuel 

 GoMPERS, American Federation of Labor; Treasurer, Robert W. Bruere, 

 Bureau of Industrial Research; Secretary, Alfred D. Flinn, Engineering 

 Foundation ; Acting Director, BeardslEy Ruml, assistant to the president of 

 the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 



The Petrologists' Club met on March 14 and discussed the following papers: 

 F. C. Schrader: Exomorphism at a contact with calcareous rocks; F. C. Calk- 

 ins: Endomorphism at a contact with calcareous rocks; Sidney Paige: The 

 Baltimore gneiss; E. G. ZiEs: Fumaroles of the Katmai region. 



Mr. R. S. Botsford of Petrograd addressed the Washington Section of the 

 American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers on ISlarch bo on 



Mining in Russia and Siberia after the War. 



A section of the Chinese Educational Commission to Europe visited some 

 of the scientific institutions of Washington in March. The members of the 

 party were Yum He Eo, Kea Fung Tsung, F. C. Wu, N. T. Tsiang, and C. S. 



TSIANG. 



Dr. Carl F. Alsberg has resigned as Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, to accept the directorship of the newly es- 

 tablished Food Research Institute at Feland Stanford, Jr., University. The 

 Carnegie Corporation of New York has appropriated $700,000 to maintain 

 the Institute for ten years. The purpose of the Institute is an intensive study 

 of the problems of the handling and distribution of food products. 



Col. E. Lester Jones, director of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 was appointed commissioner on behalf of the United States in the Interna- 

 tional (Canadian) Boundary Commissions just before the close of the last 

 Congress, as successor to E. C. Barnard, deceased. The work of the U. S. 

 section of the Boundary Commission has been placed under the administration 

 of the Coast and Geodetic Survey and its offices have been removed from 

 719 Fifteenth Street to the vSurvey. 



At the last meeting of the American Anthropological Association Dr. John 

 R. SwANTON, ethnologist of the Bureau of American Ethnology, was elected 

 editor of the American Anthropologist. 



