From the June 23, 1928 issue.

MODERN MAYAS TREASURE ANCIENT GLORIES

Although many secrets of the origin and development of the great Maya civilization must have died when its political structure fell to pieces about a century before the discovery of America, and although the coming of a new race and the introduction of a new religion has polluted much of the pure tradition that remained, there is still today a wealth of information in the everyday lives of modern Yucatecans. Human nature outlasts temples, and there is as much to read in living faces as in carved rocks.

 

SEA ANIMALS HOLD LIGHT SECRET

Man will face new and important ways of controlling nature when he succeeds in demonstrating the mechanism by which tiny organisms of the sea produce light without appreciable heat, Dr. Charles A. Kofoid of the University of California declared in his presidential address before the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Kofoid described the occasional outbreaks of luminescence in the ocean by night, when each breaking wave is accompanied by an outburst of flaming light, and the path of a vessel becomes an illuminated trail across the water. By day the water of the luminous sea is rusty red and mottled with patches of color. The luminous outbreak brings death and destruction to tons of sea creatures and has baffled attempts of scientists to plumb the mystery to its exact source.

The epidemics of light have been definitely traced to tiny sea animals with the long name of dinoflagellata, which sometimes develop and multiply with what seems like an astonishing ambition to cover the ocean. But what causes such enormous flares of growth is still to be explained.

 

STUDIES SUNBURN RAYS

The numbers of spots on the sun are now decreasing and with them will decrease the amount of ultra-violet rays in the sun’s light. These are the rays that cause sunburn in large quantities and cure rickets and other diseases when the body is exposed to less of them.

Studies made at the Mt. Wilson Observatory during the last four years show that the intensity of the ultraviolet rays and the numbers of the sun spots are in striking agreement, said Dr. Edison Pettit. His measurements were made by comparing the amount of sunlight transmitted through a filter of thin gold to that through a similar silver filter. In certain months, the average ultraviolet radiation from the sun was 50 per cent greater than in other months.

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