vSCIENTlFiC NOTES AND NEWS 



According to a ruling of the Comptroller of the Treasury, the newly- 

 established Federal Power Commission is without authority to build 

 up its own organization, and is dependent for its personnel upon such 

 help as may be loaned by the War, Agriculture, and Interior Depart- 

 ments. No provision for the employment of personal services, with 

 the exception of the salary of the Executive Secretary, was made in 

 the act appropriating funds for the Commission. 



A projection of the whole sphere on an equivalent, or equal-area 

 system, devised by Aitoff, has been issued by the U. S. Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey. The sphere is represented within an ellipse with 

 major axis twice the minor axis. The network is obtained by the 

 orthogonal, or perpendicular projection of a Lambert meridional 

 equal-area hemisphere upon a plane making an angle of 60° to the 

 plane of the original. As used for a map of the world, this projection 

 is well adapted to replace the Mercator projection in atlases of physical 

 geography or for statistical purposes, and has the advantage over 

 Mollweide's in that its representation of the shape of countries far 

 east and west of the central meridian is not so distorted, because merid- 

 ians and parallels are not so oblique to one another. 



Through the Chamberlain bequest the Department of Geology of 

 the U. S. National Museum has been able to purchase a beautiful 

 series of cut stones and crystals which have for several years been on 

 deposit in the gem and mineral collection. 



At the request of the National Park Commission, tests are being 

 made at the Bureau of Standards to determine the best surface treat- 

 ment for sandstone to prevent its disintegration by weathering, with 

 special reference to the preservation of ancient inscriptions on a mesa 

 near El Morro, New Mexico. 



The section of photography of the National Museum has received 

 apparatus used by Edward Maybridge, "the grandfather of motion 

 pictures," in his experiments in 1872. 



Simultaneous nightly tests by 50 radio stations on the fading of 

 radio signals were conducted from June i to July 17 by cooperative 

 arrangement between the Bureau of Standards, the Naval Air Service, 

 the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington, and the American Radio Relay League. Further 

 tests will be run in October, January, and April. 



Recent appointments to the geologic force in the U. S. Geological 

 Survey have been made as follows: Chester R. Long well and 

 Gail F. Moulton, assistant geologists; Harold S. Cave, Waldo 



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