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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1088 



The College of Physicians of Philadelpliia 

 announces that the Alvarenga prize for 1915 

 has been awarded Dr. Joshua E. Sweet, 

 Philadelphia, for his essay entitled " The Sur- 

 gery of the Pancreas." 



M. Paul Painleve, professor of mathematics 

 in the University of Paris and professor of 

 mechanics in the Paris Polytechnic School, 

 has been made minister of education in the 

 new French cabinet. 



The French minister of war has appointed 

 a consulting committee of experts on military 

 aeronautics which includes M. Appell, who 

 occupies one of the chairs of mechanics at the 

 Sorbonne; M. Deslandres, director of the 

 Meudon Observatory, and M. Kling, director 

 of the Municipal Observatory. 



Surgeon W. McCoy, now in charge of the 

 leprosy investigations at the hospital at Mo- 

 lokai, Hawaii, has been appointed director of 

 the hygienic laboratory of the U. S. Public 

 Health Service, succeeding Dr. John F. 

 Anderson, who recently resigned. 



Dr. Sigismund S. Goldwater retired this 

 ■week from the post of health commissioner of 

 New York City and is succeeded by Dr. 

 Haven Emerson, deputy health commissioner. 



Mr. p. Baracchi has resigned as state as- 

 tronomer of Victoria, and it is said that no 

 appropriation will be made by the government 

 for the Victorian Observatory at Melbourne. 



Professor John Ferguson has retired from 

 the regius chair of chemistry in the Univer- 

 sity of Glasgow, to which he was appointed 

 in 1874. 



Professor Pollitzer, of Vienna, the dis- 

 tinguished otologist, has celebrated his eight- 

 ieth birthday. 



Professor Ernst Neumann, formerly di- 

 rector of the pathologic institute in Konigs- 

 berg, and a well-known authority on diseases 

 of the blood, celebrated the sixtieth anniver- 

 sary of his doctorate on September 24. 



D. J. Guzman has been appointed director 

 of the Institute of Vegetal Pathology in Sal- 

 vador, Central America, as organized under 

 the ministry of agriculture of that govern- 

 ment. 



Dr. J. S. Caldwell, plant physiologist of 

 the Alabama Experiment Station, has been 

 appointed to a position as specialist in fruit 

 by-products investigations at the Washington 

 Experiment Station, State College of Wash- 

 ington, Pullman. 



Dr. J. N. Rose, research associate of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, has re- 

 turned from a five months' exploration trip 

 along the east coast of South America, where 

 he made extensive botanical collections, espe- 

 cially of cacti, ferns and mosses. His collec- 

 tion consists of herbarium, formalin and 

 greenhouse material, supplemented by nu- 

 merous photographs. 



Another expedition to Japan and Korea 

 has been undertaken by Associate Professor 

 Frederick Starr, of the University of Chicago, 

 who sailed from Tacoma by the Mexico Maru 

 on October T. His photographer and helper 

 on the expedition will probably be Hambei 

 Maebashi, of Tokyo. The expedition is 

 planned to cover six months' time. Professor 

 Starr expecting to return to the university in 

 time for the opening of the spring quarter in 

 April, 1916. 



Professor Henri T. Hus, of the botanical 

 department of the University of Michigan, 

 has been granted a three years' leave of ab- 

 sence from the university, beginning with the 

 present college year, in order to enable him to 

 accept a position with the United States Rub- 

 ber Company in Sumatra. Professor Hus will 

 take charge of experimental plant breeding 

 work on the island. 



The expedition under Captain Vilkitski in 

 the ice-breakers Taimur and Vaigach, which 

 last year started from Vladivostok to renew 

 the attempt to reach Europe by the Arctic Sea 

 north of Asia, and which wintered in 100° E. 

 longitude off the Taimur peninsula, reached 

 Archangel during September, having thus for 

 the first time accomplished the complete north- 

 east passage in the reverse direction from that 

 folowed by the Yegg. 



We learn from Nature that the council of 

 the Chemical Society, London, has arranged 

 for three lectures to be delivered at the ordi- 

 nary scientific meetings during the coming 



