March 13, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



391 



welfare workers and a stimulation for the 

 activities of the city for the year 1915. This 

 Portland 1915 conference will be similar in 

 scope and method to the Reed College confer- 

 ence on the conservation of human life held 

 last May. 



A NEW edition of " Les observatoires astron- 

 omiques at les astronomes," first published in 

 1907, is in course of preparation, under the 

 direction of members of the Royal Observa- 

 tory of Belgium, with Professor P. Stroobant 

 as chairman. He will be glad to receive in- 

 formation from directors of observatories and 

 private astronomers concerning their work 

 and publications. 



Pkofessor O. Perron, of Tiibingen, has 

 accepted the professorship of mathematics at 

 Heidelberg, as successor to Professor L. 

 Koenigsberger. 



UNIVEESITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 

 The College of Agriculture and the Me- 

 chanic Arts of North Carolina is preparing to 

 celebrate on the first three days of October 

 the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first open- 

 ing of the college. A tentative program has 

 been adopted at a meeting held in the office of 

 Governor Locke Craig, who is ex officio chair- 

 man of the board of trustees and at the head 

 of the advisory committee which is cooperating 

 with the committee of arrangements. In order 

 to make the quarter-centennial celebration a 

 complete success, efl^orts will be made to have 

 in connection with it reunions of the twenty- 

 two classes which have so far been graduated. 

 There will also be social meetings, addresses 

 by some of the distinguished men who took 

 part in the founding of the college, and other 

 interesting features. The celebration proper 

 will take place on the morning of October 3, 

 with the principal addresses, but the other 

 meetings will not be at all lacking in interest. 

 Guests who will be held in special honor 

 throughout the celebration will be those who 

 took part in the movement which resulted in 

 the founding of the college. 



The faculty and students of the University 

 of Pittsburgh held a banquet on February 25. 

 At the end of the current college year. Dr. 

 Albert Benedict Wolfe, head of the department 

 of economics and sociology, will withdraw 

 from the Oberlin faculty in order to accept 

 the headship of the department of sociology 

 and economics in the University of Texas. 



DISCUSSION AND COBEESPONDENCE 



STANDARD UNITS IN AEROLOGY 



In Science, January 2, 1914, p. 31, it is 

 stated that Blue Hill Observatory would use 

 the new units for atmospheric pressure and 

 temperature, i. e., the units proposed by 

 Koppen at Monaco in 1909 and again by V. 

 Bjerknes at the Vienna meeting of the Inter- 

 national Commission for Scientific Aero- 

 nautics, 1912. In this system, pressure is 

 expressed in bars or decimal parts thereof, such 

 as decibar, centibar and millibar. One million 

 C.G.S. units constitutes a bar. 



Professor A. E. Kennelly, visiting this ob- 

 servatory, called attention to the inconsistency 

 of such use of the term "bar." Unknown to 

 meteorologists at home or abroad, apparently, 

 the bar has been defined and used with a 

 different value. Professor T. W. Richards in 

 1903,1 suggested that the pressure of a dyne 

 per square centimeter be called a bar;^ and 

 while investigation shows that somewhat 

 similar suggestions had been made by others, 

 Richards's was independently made, original 

 and legitimately deduced. Kennelly^ and 

 others following Richards have used the bar 

 in this sense. It has therefore priority of defi- 

 nition and usage and is moreover the logical 

 and appropriate unit of pressure. For the unit 

 proposed by the aerologists, a more fitting 

 designation would have been " aer " or 

 " atmos." 



Unless some protest be made against the 

 proposed bar of the aerologists, we add to the 

 confusion of units and terms already existing 

 in meteorology. It is important too that we 



1 Publication 7, Carnegie Inst., 1903, p. 43. 



2 ' ' New Method of Determining Compressibil- 

 ity," T. W. Richards and W. N. Stull, Jour. Am. 

 Chem. Sod., Vol. XXVI., April, 1904. 



3 ' ' Convection of Heat from Small Copper 

 Wires," A. E. Kennelly, C. A. Wright and J. S. 

 Van Bylevelt, Transi. Am. Inst. Elec. Engineers, 

 June, 1909. 



