The Baffling Mystery of Frozen Life
| Reviving “Dead”
| Creatures with Radio
Waves to hind a
\ _.
| New
1 Way of
Killing
the Germs
of All
Deadly
Diseases.
l)iR Kins I li e
Body of it Pro
Ill-toil, Mon
ster Oul of itn
Icrlirrg W here
It lln« l.iiin
Perfectly Pre
served in It
frigid Tomb
for M> riadi of
Centuries.
t-ouru*j of PopuUl
HOW much freezing ran life
stand? Perhaps the most start
ling answer to this question
came out of Germany recently in con
nection with the proposal that the ice
fields of northern Siberia or of the Arc
tic islands be explored for a mammoth
preserved in the ice. Some authorities
are of the opinion that it may not be
impossible for extinct creatures „to exist
in frozen preservation, for some of the
ice in the polar regions is of trreat age.
Mammoths have been found imbedded in
the soil of Siberia, sonic of them stand
ing erect, with fleshy parts and hairy
covering still adhering to the bones. But
to expect that radio waves, oxygon in
jections, or any other stimulus can re
call lift* to a thousand-year-old carcass
is—in the opinion of all the biologists
who would discuss so fantastic a subject
-*s*'highty improbable."
The fact .hatcold can be endured by
runny creatures with a very high degree
of immunity is indicated by the follow
ing incident which is related in Popular
Mechanics: An instance is on record in
which a boy found a frozen snake on an
icy road. He picked it up. used it. as a
walking stick, and when he arrived
home, set the “cane" in a corner of the
kitchen, tlulf an hour later the warmed
serpent was sluggishly dragging itself
across the floor.
Quite apart from the ordeal of cold is
the ordeal, of hunger. The bear, the
groundhog, the hedgehog and the dor
mouse grow exceedingly fat during sum
mer, and it is this surplus food stored up
in their body tissues that sustains them
Where Women Are Wooed
With Human Heads
A “Beauty*' of the Taiwan IVibc that live* on the hbmi of tor mo* a. Mie I*
*■ tligiblf to Become n Prir?«l^>* and I* Vt earing an l nuvuul Headdress Designed to
Attract Attention. I he Trice of Ijjcr Maud l» a (•nodi* dumber of Human Head*
U heads are wutr man one.
according to an old maxim. This
adage is especially applicable to
the young men of the Putwan tribe,
which is one of the many tribes tha*
dwell on the island of I'Vrmosa
When a Paiwan youth goes a-wooinj.
he needs more head* than his own. if he
ia to have any success in winning the
affection* of his adored one In fact, he
must present to his lady love a goodly
number of human head*, as evidence of
his bravery und ability tu vanquish h -
foes.
The women Of the 1'aiwan tribe are
held in very' high esteem, as the;
can become members of the priest
hood amt are reverenced accordingly
These women wear a headdress like that
shown tn the accompanying illustration
of * 1‘aiwan "beauty It is. sure to at
tract attention and the sight of its
wearer never fails to send many a
Paiwan %-noef in quest of heads with
which to > in his bride
during the long winter sleep. When they
revive in the spring, they have lost frotr
a third to nearly a half of their weight
Dr. W. R. Whitney, director of the
Denoral Electric research laboratory at
Schenectady, put some weevils in a glasb
tube and turned on a thirty-meter radii:
wave. In less than a minute they were
dead. Then lie let some grain fall rapidly
through an intense radio field. To the
insects the radiation was indeed a death
ray. Inspection .showed (hat all were
hilled, and germination tests showed
the wheat had not been injured. But in
a few days baby weevils hatched out in
the treated grain. While the insects
were easy prey to the /ihort waves, the
dormant life of their eggs was not seri
ously affected.
‘‘And so,” concluded Doctor Whitney,
"the real problem is not solved.”
That problem may be summed up in
the questions How much can life stand?
It is a very practical question to breeders
seeking to improve'the quality of live
stock, to milk producers and fruit and
meat packers and medical men fighting
bacteria, to farmers and orchardists and
foresters fighting destructive pests,
A government bureau was anxious to
test the behavior of insects under unu
sual conditions—in an atmosphere of
hydrogen, in a vacuum, and in an in
tense radio field. It submitted the prob
lem to Doctor Whitney. He put a cock
roach in a glass tube, sealed the tube
airtight and then pumped it as near a
vacuum as possible. ,
The bug swooned and lay motionless.
For a full minute it was left in that
airless world, but when the tube was
opened and the air gushed in, it quiv
ered, stretched its legs, stood up and ran
away.
“I repeated the experiment." related
Doctor Whitney, ‘‘increasing the time
to two minutes, five minutes and finally
to a full hour. In each case the cock
roach apparently died and came to life.
"Then we put the insects in a tube
tilled with hydrogen at normal pressure.
They soon lay down and rested. When
'hey were brought into the air again
they woke up and crawled away.
' Nitrogen gas was tried next, and
here we found that insects would wander
aropnd for two days without suffering
anv fatal or serious effect."
But how do the insects behave under
Above: Popping (urn b*
itadio. The Crain I* Placed
Between a Pair of Ice Elec
trodes (Cla«s Jars) Con
nected to a lligh-Frequeues
Heater. The lee in the Jars
I* Not .Melted b* the I lent
That Pops the Corn.
Left : I hree Examples of
Frozen Life. A Frog Can
Stand 20 Degrees Fahren
heit. Snails t looted to 140
Degrees Do Not Die, While
a Carp. Will Die at 10
Degrees Fahrenheit.
ihe influence of radio waves? Doctor
Whitney took some fruit flies and put
them in a large glass tube. The tube was
closed, but so connected that it was pos
sible to circulate acurrentof airthrough
it. He began to lower the temperature of
this air, and the insects huddled on the
glass floor, an apparently f rozen mass.
When the winter temperature had
prevailed for some minutes, the thirty
meter radio generator was started. It
is the same powerful vacuum tube that
had been found to bring on fever in men
working near it.
The question was: Could it recall life
to the frozen insects or would it kill
them outright?
After the tube had been working
about one minute, oscillating at the rate
of ten million times a second, the frozen
mas.- gave a feeble stir. In another min
ute some were crawling, and soon they
were flying or buzzing their wings. The
freezing breeze was still blowing
through the tube, but the radio waves
had heated them inside to fever temper
ature and they felt no cold.
In another experiment corn was
popped by ice that did not melt. The
corn was popped by radio with a high
frequency heater. The grains were
placed between two electrodes consisting
of a pair of glass jars filled with ice
and connected to the heating device. The
heat generated t.o pop the corn did not
melt the ice in the jars.
The results of these experiments, sug
gest also that radio waves can be used to
study the mystery of suspended anima
tion or hibernation as it occurs in nature.
Where Dogs
Are Kings
T HE dog rules as king of an un
known race of white men four
hundred strong who, almost iso
lated from the rest of the world, live
in the farthest north of the frozen land
of Siberia, on the shore of the Arctic
Ocean.
The; full story of these strange peo
ple and their wonderful dogs is told
for the first time in a book, "The Road
to Oblivion," by Vladimir Zenzinov, a
Russian political exile who, escaping
from imprisonment in Siberia, found
hi* way to the Indigirka River and set
tled down in this strangely preserved
little Russian world of the far North,
These men are possibly descendants
of the marooned Arctic navigators of
‘he sixteenth century, who were !o*t
while questing for tho northern route
to India. They can neither read nor
write: have no bread and no means of
baking it. The have never tasted milk,
■'butter, vegetables, fruits or beef, for
•tows and cattle are unknown. They
have never seen deer, horses or fowl—
not even a rat.
Their one domestic animal is the dog.
Nowhere else on earth is the dog more
important or held in higher regard. For
without* the sled-dog, life would be ut
terlv impossible to these men. Dogs and
(heir masters live mainly on frozen fish.
Even in summer it has but to be buried
a foot deep in the earth to freeze.
In the white wilderness of the tundra
of the coats even reindeer cannot live.
Hut the dog can lie fed on the fish caught
in the Indigirka River, along the course
f which the settlement extends.
Every family has a team of three or
four dogs, and the better-off have teams
of from ten to eighteen. They draw
the sleds which carry deadwood for fuel
and ice from the river, and without them
hunting and trapping would be impos
sible.
No whip is used in driving, but the
driver keeps his team keen by continu
ous cries : “Norakh-norakh — to th*
left; "Poz-za—poz-zzT"—forward.
The dogs have greater endurance
than the reindeer, and can draw a sled
fifty miles in a day. Races are some
times held, anti a team will gallop a
short distance at twenty-five miles an
hour. Once the dogs have been over the
ground, they never lose their way.
Origin of Grapefruit
Grapefruit, which is now sum
a popular article of diet, was de
veloped by the Chinese some 3,
00ft years ago from one of the wild cit
rus trees with which their country
abounds, nnd whose natural fruits are
small and hardly edible.
In tho eighteenth century it was taken
by an Englishman, Captain Shaddock, to
the West Indies and grown there with
success. Thence it spread to the United
States, whose fruit-growers have given
it much attention, and have improved it
eonsidprahiv.
Testing the Breath With a ^Football**
A RUBBER football, together
“with a water heater and a half u
doien glass tubes containing
chemical liquids of various colors, are
combined to form a novel means of test
ing the breath of a drinker.
When the driver of a motor car, for
example, is suspected of having had just
a drop too much and thereby is a menace
to lives, he is aske'' to blow up a rubber
football. Then the air front the Inflated
football is transferred by a rubber tube
to a glass tube in which there is a re
agent in the form of dichromatic-sul
phuric acid. When a sufficient amount
of air has entered the tube to determine
the degree of alcoholism of the *‘pa
tient,” by the intensity of concentration
of the alcohol, the glass tube is placed
in a small water heater for several
minutes.
Right here is where the magic begins,
for—presto! The contents of the tube b<
comes colored and thereby hangs a tali
—or possible a fine and a jail sentence.
The color of the contents of this tube
is compared with the colors of the cor,
tents of the other six tubes, which re
sults in the correct diagnosis qf the sub
ject’s breath and indicates the degree of
drunkenness.
The Wjve-Lengths of Vitamins
A » hi> very much like those of
radio have been found by two
British scientists, L)r. F, B. Bow
den and Dr C. 1* Snow, working in the
laboratory of Physical Chemistry at
Cambridge, England, to be the means
by which any of the four vitamins can
'•e built up in the body, while substances
armful to health ran be eliminated.
Just as every broadcasting station has
us wave-length, these scientists explain,
mi vitamins A. R. C and f) have theirs.
I'he wave-lengths of vitamins A, B and
D have already been found, and that of
G may follow shortly Vitamin B keeps
lie nerves in good condition. C prevents
scurvy, while I> Is Nature's safeguard
against rickets and other diseases of the
bones and teeth
When substances containing these
vitamins are subjected to-waves of the
correct length, the vitamins at once be
come lively and increase rapidly Two
important results may follow One is
that it will be possible to produce foods
containing the exact amount of the par
tie trig r vitamins required by the patient,
the other, that he may be made to pro
duce the .vitamins in his own body bv
treatment with the special waves
Some tears ago a great stir was made
over what was called Abram's Box
This was an appliance for treating pa
tients with rays of certain wave-lengths,
and the Inventor claimed that wonderful
cures had been accomplished After
something like a battle-ro>al between
the doctors, only a few remained who
believed in the contrivance, but it now
seems that the inventor had been work
ing on the right lines.
The way in which vitamins do their
work in the body is perhaps best seen
from the story of vitamin f). RVfccf;.
bad teeth, and weak bones are caused bv
a deficiency of two substances- -calcium
and phosphorus. Without a sufficient
supply of these the bony parts of the
body become soft or brittle. In a healthy
person these substances are taken from
the food and carried by the blood stream
to the bones. When disease sets in. the
blood stream drains away the calcium
and phosphorus.
Scientists have not yer been able to
find out exactly what vitamins are. al
though it is certain they are essential
to health. A wonderful “health milk”
has been produced by treating ordinary
milk with ultra-violet ray- These were
found to cause an immense increase in
the vitamin known as A which i* re
sponsible for genera! health
flM |)RlUlt% 1m ! f •?
Demonstrating the
l *e of the I not ball
Ilf' i« Designed to
lest » Drinker’s
Rrealh for Alco
holic (Content. It
I (insists of a Hub
her Football, a
Water Heater and
Half a Dozen bias*
I ubes Containing
Chemicals of Dil
ferenl Colors to
Shoo >is Rear
lions When lo
Hated. The llreath
Is Passed Through
i Chemical Solu
lion Vi hieh Change*
Color Wording to
the Degree of
Drunkenness