July 19, 1921 scientific notes and news 319 



wide demand for radio equipment will develop, the Bureau has under way- 

 plans for the study of commercial apparatus and the preparation of specifica- 

 tions as to the behavior and usefulness of radio sets designed for general 

 use. 



The cases containing the exhibit of radium ores and radioactive minerals, 

 prepared incidentally to the visit of Madame Curie to Washington, have 

 been removed from the Art Gallery of the National Museum and now form 

 a permanent exhibit at the east end of the Mineral Hall of the Natural His- 

 tory Building. 



Scales for the measurement of length are now being constructed directly 

 from the fundamental wave lengths of light without the use of any inter- 

 mediary standard such as the standard meter bars. For example, the Bureau 

 of Standards has recently completed the rulings on a 6-inch standard 

 scale for a manufacturing concern, using light waves from a neon tube as 

 the length standard. 



Dr. J. M. Aldrich, associate curator of insects at the U. S. National 

 Museum, left Washington in May for a two months' study of the insects, 

 and particularly the Diptera, of central Alaska, along the line of the new 

 Alaska Railroad between Seward and Fairbanks. 



Vice-President Calvin Coolidge has been elected chancellor of the Board 

 of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to succeed the late Chief Justice 

 Edward D. White. 



Dr. F. G. CoTTRELL, chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical 

 Technology, National Research Council, sailed for Europe in June to make 

 a survey of current applications of oxygen and helium in European countries. 

 He also expected to attend the meeting of the International Union of Pure 

 and Applied Chemistry in Brussels on June 27. 



Mr. S. T. Dana, assistant chief of the research branch of the U. S. Forest 

 Service, has resigned to become land agent and forest commissioner of the 

 State of Maine, with headquarters at Augusta. 



Mr. Robert C. Duncan, physicist at the Bureau of Standards, has re- 

 signed to accept a position with the Bureau of Ordnance of the Navy Depart- 

 ment. 



Mr. F. C. Fair, formerly Washington representative of the American 

 Standardizing Bureaus, an organization having supervision of the manufac- 

 turing of pharmaceutical products for several associated companies, has 

 become chief chemist of the Central Railway Signal Company at Hammond, 

 Indiana. 



Mr. Charles S. Hawes, in charge of the Bureau of Research and Statistics, 

 War Trade Board Section, Department of State, died suddenly on Friday, 

 April 22, 1921, in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Hawes joined the War Trade 

 Board in 1918 and remained with the new section when the old Board was 

 dissolved. As head of its Bureau of Statistics he had been chiefly concerned 

 of late with the importation of dyes, chemicals, and coal-tar products and 

 had compiled a recently published report on dyes. 



Mr. Carl L. Hubbs, curator of fishes in the Museum of Zoology, Univer- 

 sity of Michigan, has been studying the lampreys and lancelets of the Nat- 

 ional Museum collections, having been extended laboratory facilities for 

 the purpose. 



