Science: Inventions

At Dehra Dun, India, experts of the Forest Research Institute announced the perfection of a process for making white paper out of bamboo pulp; predicted that India could soon supply a large percentage of the world’s paper demand. (A bamboo forest grows to an average height of 20 to 60 feet. The largest species reaches a height of 120 feet.)

Correspondence from the Düsseldorf meeting of the Association of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (TIME, Oct. 4), described: in Berlin, the construction of two complete railway trains out of aluminum alloyed with lithium, which weighs one-fifth as much as aluminum and adds tensile strength; in Amsterdam, the isolation and administration of a specific hormone (ductless gland secretion) responsible for the physiology of female animals, by Professor Edward Laqueur, who called his find “menformon.” The effect upon female laboratory animals: restored typical mating reactions in spayed (sterilized) specimens; enlarged organs; sped up physiological reactions. Administered to males, it did not affect physiological reactions but shrank organs, this effect continuing for months after injections were stopped. Significance: a potential potency elixir.

In Washington, the Apple Growers’ Union announced the introduction of a contrivance with horizontal revolving rollers and 500 flapping pieces of canvas, to wipe apples. Importance: to allay the impression that poisoning results from arsenic residue left on apples after spraying.

At Gibson, Ind., in a huge freight yard of the Indiana Harbor Belt R. R., Bell Telephone Co. engineers installed and announced perfect a radio telephone transmitter in the yard-master’s signal tower and receiving sets with loud speakers in switch-engine cabs, the antennae being placed on the rear of the tenders. So perfect was the communication that engineers received their orders farther from the tower than their answering whistles could be heard.