480 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1031 



The Britisli Board of Trade has made rules 

 under which a German or Austrian patent 

 may be entirely suspended. 



Encke's comet was rediscovered on Septem- 

 ber 17 on photographs by Professor E. E. 

 Barnard of the Terkes Observatory. The 

 comet's position was right ascension 3h 43m 

 40s, declination north 37 degrees, 46 minutes. 



The Eoyal Academy of Medicine of Turin 

 offers its Niberi prize of $4,000 for scientific 

 research in medicine. The conditions may be 

 obtained from the secretary, 18 Vie Po, Turin. 



The Chadwick trustees announce their in- 

 tention to award at the close of this year the 

 Chadwick gold medal and £50 each to the 

 naval and military medical officer, respectively, 

 in the British service who shall have distin- 

 guished himself most in promoting the health 

 of the men in the navy and the army. 



The commission of the Society of Russian 

 Medical Men, founded in memory of N. L. 

 Pirogov, for the study of malaria in Russia is 

 completing the index of the Russian literature 

 of malaria up to the end of 1913. In future 

 the indexes will be issued yearly, together with 

 short abstracts of the articles, including, if 

 possible, all the literature of malaria for the 

 preceding year. The commission wiU shortly 

 edit works on leishmaniasis and other diseases 

 due to protozoa and would therefore be grate- 

 ful to authors of articles relating to this branch 

 of medicine as well as veterinary medicine and 

 phytopathology, if they would send printed 

 copies of their works to the commission. 

 Authors who send two copies of their works 

 will receive the bibliographic index edited by 

 the commission. All communications should 

 be addressed to Dr. E. I. Marzinovsky, Hopital 

 de I'Empereur Paul I, Moscow, Russia. 



The Journal of the American Medical Asso- 

 ciation says the campaign against hookworm 

 in Jones County, Miss., was brought to a very 

 successful conclusion toward the end of Au- 

 gust, over 2,500 cases having been treated. 

 Hookworm was found in over 60 per cent, of 

 all cases examined, the largest percentage being 

 found in children. The people showed much 

 interest and cooperated in the work. Many 



schools were found in which all the teachers 

 and pupils were infected. Much infection in 

 country schools is attributed to the ingestion 

 of the eggs of the parasites in drinking-water 

 obtained from springs near the schools. 



Mr. Benjamin F. Groat, hydraulic engineer 

 of Pittsburgh, has secured an unusually high 

 degree of accuracy in discharge measurements 

 on the tests of the large hydro-electric units 

 at Massena, New York, by the use of chemicals 

 introduced into the feed water. The use of 

 chemicals was suggested by Schloesing in 

 France (1863) and has since been employed 

 in England by Stromeyer and in Europe by 

 others in measuring small quantities of water. 

 But by the chemical procedure devised and 

 inaugurated by Groat, very large quantities 

 of water may be measured with a margin of 

 error well within one tenth per cent. Three 

 hundred and sixty tons of common salt and 

 one pound of silver nitrate were employed as 

 reagents during the course of nearly one hun- 

 dred tests. 



According to the Electrical World, an elec- 

 trical device which will indicate the approach 

 of a thunderstorm several hours before any 

 clouds appear is being used successfully by an 

 electric-service company in New York City to 

 give ample time to provide for increased illu- 

 mination when the thunder clouds darken the 

 sky. The storm-detector apparatus, which re- 

 sembles wireless receiving equipment, is oper- 

 ated by faint impulses from electrical dis- 

 turbances in the vicinity. Receiving antennas 

 intercept the impulses, which cause a relay to 

 close an alarm-beU circuit. At first the signals 

 are far apart, but as the electrical disturbance 

 approaches the bell rings more frequently. 

 From an hour to half an hour before the storm 

 breaks, depending on the intensity thereof, 

 the bell will ring continuously. In the mean- 

 time steam may be raised to operate generators 

 which are placed in readiness to supply addi- 

 tional energy when the demand increases. 



With the cutting off of importations of 

 many mineral products the United States 

 Geological Survey's list of mineral producers 

 becomes an important source of public infer- 



