- Email: [email protected]
Seven fat years followed lean
CURRENT TOPICS. Commerical Radar on American Owned and Operated Merchant V e s s e l . Initial reports on the first commercial radar installed on an American-owned and operated merchant vessel have revealed that after five months operation, it has materially helped in maintaining sailing schedules with resultant savings in time and expense, according to officials of the American South African Line. The General Electric electronic navigator aboard the line's flagship, the SS. African Star, was installed and placed in operation on the ship's maiden voyage. Encountering fog and storms on runs between the United States and South Africa, the navigator helped materially to maintain the ship's sailing schedules, according to Captain C. W. Schmidt, master of the SS. African Star. Captain Schmidt cited a typical case in which the electronic nagivator proved its effectiveness. "On a voyage from Port Elizabeth to Capetown, South Africa, heavy fog was encountered before rounding the Cape of Good Hope. In spite of this, with the radar operating, a speed of about 17.5 knots was maintained, and we arrived off Capetown breakwater at 4:00 P.M., the time previously radioed to our agents. Consequently all arrangements made as to gangs, immigration, and port authorities were not upset by a late arrival, and stevedores did not have to be paid for time awaiting ship's arrival." The eMctronic navigator on the African Star is a model MN-1A, 10-cm. surface search radar specifically designed for use on merchant ships as a surface obstacle detector and navigational aid. Radio microwaves emanating from the rotating antenna of the navigator, traveling at the speed of light, will detect through darkness, fog, and storm, surface objects such as buoys, lighthouses, other ships, and land masses. The relative position and range of these surface obstacles are accurately plotted, electrically, on the viewing screen located in the pilot house. A picture of the ship's surroundings is quickly and easily obtained through the simple operation of a minimum number of dials and switches conveniently located on top of the console and adjacent to the viewing screim. Range selection of 2, 6, or 30 miles radius is provided so that surroundings may be viewed on an extended or small scale basis d~pending upon the waters being navigated. R. H. O. Seven Fat Years Followed Lean.--Experience in the United States has run just contrary to the Egyptian chronicle of the seven lean years following the seven fat years of the Pharaoh's dream which Joseph interpreted. Here the seven "fat" years of high production have followed instead of coming before the seven "lean" years preceding (1933-39). However, as a result of the change in demand--both national and w o r l d - w i d e the farm situation in the "lean" years was characterized by a threatening and persistent "surplus" problem. In the "fat" years, the parade of record-breaking crops has not been able to match the war-created requirements, and "shortages" have accompanied bumper crops. 9o
Jan., 1947.]
CURRENT TOPICS.
91
These contrasts appear in U. S. Department of Agriculture tabulations of crop production. By using the August Crop Report figures for the seventh fat year, and official estimates for previous years, simple addition" shows a production of more than 21 billion bushels of corn for the seven years of 1940 to 1946. For the seven previous years the "lean" production was 15.4 billion bushels. For wheat, the figures show almost 7 billion bushels in the seven fat years and 4.8 billions in the lean period. For oats, the record stands at more than 9 billion bushels compared with 6.5 billion. The record reveals that for these crops, production in two "fat" years have been nearly equal to three of the "lean" years. And the United States has experienced seven successive fat years of good crops! Crop experts agree that the weather is a principal item. They mention, as other elements in the picture, hard work and planning by farmers, improved machinery, and better cultural practices that include such items as use of fertilizer, hybrid corn and improved varieties of other crops, and control of erosion. From the standpoint of human nutrition, substitution of machines for horses as farm power has released much acreage for food growing. R. H. O. Long Chain Chemistry.--"Recent development in long-chain chemistry have opened new vistas to the scientific mind," says Dr. T. L. Swenson of the U. S. Department of Agriculture in discussing advances in the application of fundamental scientific theory to research on agricultural products. Applying both chemical and physical methods, scientists at the Western Regional Research Laboratory at Albany, Calif., have learned new ways of manipulating large molecules of protein substances into much larger and longer molecules of the long-chain type. Side chains on these long molecules are then induced to make chemical bonds with other side chains. These operations resemble in m a n y ways those that the silk worm follows in creating the silk fiber. These inter-connected long molecules may then be forced through a spinning device comparable to the silk worm's and they emerge as a fiber of the same general type of construction as the silk fiber. The silk worm stretches the natural fiber as it hardens, and scientific fiber makers have found that stretching also improves the strength and quality of synthetic fibers. "New fiber," says Dr. Swenson, wh~ is director of the Western Laboratory, "which may vary widely in properties and may have many useful properties, are within the range of possibility. We need only to look, for example, at Rayon and Nylon to see the possibilities that exist when appropriate means are available for the manipulation of long-chain molecules.' We have Rayon, Nylon, Vinyon, and glass fibers, but each has its own characteristic properties. Similarly we have the natural fiber each well adapted to certain uses. And we are attracted by the possibility of the discovery of artificial protein fibers that have new and special properties not found in any other fibers. R. H. O. Bamboo Substitutes for Dinner BelL--In the Ecuador highlands a 5-foot trumpet made from one internode of a thin-walled native bamboo serves as a counterpart of our dinner bell or conch shell in calling farm workers to dinner or to end the day's work, Dr. F. A. McClure of the Office of Foreign Agricul-
Jan., 1947.]
CURRENT TOPICS.
91
These contrasts appear in U. S. Department of Agriculture tabulations of crop production. By using the August Crop Report figures for the seventh fat year, and official estimates for previous years, simple addition" shows a production of more than 21 billion bushels of corn for the seven years of 1940 to 1946. For the seven previous years the "lean" production was 15.4 billion bushels. For wheat, the figures show almost 7 billion bushels in the seven fat years and 4.8 billions in the lean period. For oats, the record stands at more than 9 billion bushels compared with 6.5 billion. The record reveals that for these crops, production in two "fat" years have been nearly equal to three of the "lean" years. And the United States has experienced seven successive fat years of good crops! Crop experts agree that the weather is a principal item. They mention, as other elements in the picture, hard work and planning by farmers, improved machinery, and better cultural practices that include such items as use of fertilizer, hybrid corn and improved varieties of other crops, and control of erosion. From the standpoint of human nutrition, substitution of machines for horses as farm power has released much acreage for food growing. R. H. O. Long Chain Chemistry.--"Recent development in long-chain chemistry have opened new vistas to the scientific mind," says Dr. T. L. Swenson of the U. S. Department of Agriculture in discussing advances in the application of fundamental scientific theory to research on agricultural products. Applying both chemical and physical methods, scientists at the Western Regional Research Laboratory at Albany, Calif., have learned new ways of manipulating large molecules of protein substances into much larger and longer molecules of the long-chain type. Side chains on these long molecules are then induced to make chemical bonds with other side chains. These operations resemble in m a n y ways those that the silk worm follows in creating the silk fiber. These inter-connected long molecules may then be forced through a spinning device comparable to the silk worm's and they emerge as a fiber of the same general type of construction as the silk fiber. The silk worm stretches the natural fiber as it hardens, and scientific fiber makers have found that stretching also improves the strength and quality of synthetic fibers. "New fiber," says Dr. Swenson, wh~ is director of the Western Laboratory, "which may vary widely in properties and may have many useful properties, are within the range of possibility. We need only to look, for example, at Rayon and Nylon to see the possibilities that exist when appropriate means are available for the manipulation of long-chain molecules.' We have Rayon, Nylon, Vinyon, and glass fibers, but each has its own characteristic properties. Similarly we have the natural fiber each well adapted to certain uses. And we are attracted by the possibility of the discovery of artificial protein fibers that have new and special properties not found in any other fibers. R. H. O. Bamboo Substitutes for Dinner BelL--In the Ecuador highlands a 5-foot trumpet made from one internode of a thin-walled native bamboo serves as a counterpart of our dinner bell or conch shell in calling farm workers to dinner or to end the day's work, Dr. F. A. McClure of the Office of Foreign Agricul-