294 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



year, including $545,729 from the alumni fund, which has 8,000 

 subscribers. 



M. E. Deutsch de la Meurthe has given ten million francs to the University 

 of Paris to provide for a University quarter where students may live at a 

 moderate cost. Columbia University has received a donation of one million 

 dollars for a similar purpose, namely to provide living accommodation for 

 five hundred foreign students. 



Medical education in the States continues to receive vast donations. Thus 

 in 19 19 the General Education Board provided four million dollars to the 

 Vanderbilt University, out of which sum a medical department is to be built 

 and equipped. The Carnegie Corporation and the General Education Board 

 have now provided another three million dollars for the endowment of this 

 most fortunate department. By comparison, the $500,000, donated to the 

 Western Reserve University by Mr. Samuel Mather for building a Medical 

 College, seems insignificant. 



The fourth Report of the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies shows that 

 the Board has received evidence that scientific investigation is being seriously 

 hampered by the heavy cost involved in the publication of results. An 

 exceptional number of papers are being communicated to the Scientific 

 Societies, including many held up during the war, while the resources of the 

 Societies, which have not increased, are insufficient at present prices to 

 publish even the normal pre-war number. The country is thus in danger 

 of being seriously handicapped at a time when re-habilitation of industry 

 is in most serious need of scientific assistance. 



Much of the Report is occupied with a short abstract of the third Report 

 of the Committee on the Water Power of the Empire. It is shown that too 

 little is being done to ascertain the total resources, or to secure uniformity 

 in investigation and record. It is urged that steps should be taken to convene 

 an Imperial Water Power Conference in London at which the various 

 Dominions and Dependencies of the Empire should be represented. The 

 outcome of such a Conference might well be the creation of an Imperial 

 Water Power Board with extensive powers to carry out a comprehensive 

 policy for stimulating, co-ordinating, and, where necessary, assisting develop- 

 ment throughout the Empire. 



The Board has also dealt with questions relating to the formation of 

 National Research Committees, in connection with the International Research 

 Council formed in 19 19, with the collection of scientific data in the former 

 German Colonies, and with instruction in Technical Optics. The research 

 on glues and other adhesives, initiated by the Board as a war measure, at 

 the instance of the Air Ministry, has now been taken over by the Department 

 of Scientific and Industrial Research. 



On April 11 last the Japanese Parliament passed a law making the use 

 of a metric system compulsory in that country — its use has been legal since 



1893. 



Messrs. J. N. Bronsted and G. Hevesey, of the Polytechnic Institute of 

 Copenhagen, who last year claimed to have effected a partial separation of 

 the isotopes of mercury, now state {Nature, July 14) that they have been able 

 to obtain a partial separation of the isotopes of chlorine by the same method. 

 They evaporated a strong solution of hydrochloric acid at — 50° C. in a 

 high vacuum, condensing the vapour formed on a surface cooled with liquid 

 air. The condensed part of the hydrochloric acid was found to contain a 

 larger proportion of the lighter chlorine isotope than that which remained 

 unevaporated. This conclusion was reached by transforming the two 

 specimens of the acid into sodium chloride and determining the density of a 

 saturated solution of the salts so formed. 



Sir Ernest Shackleton has just started from Southampton on a new 

 expedition to the Antarctic in a 200-ton Norwegian wooden ship known as 



