WHAT BABIES THINK ABOUTWhat are baby's secret thoughts? Babies understand what is said long before they are able to speak, psychologists have discovered. Wherefore, parents are reminded to think before they talk in front of even very young infants and to count to 10, or 110, before indulging in a family tiff while the baby looks on."Blissful as a babe" may not be so blissful as commonly supposed, some of the modern evidence shows. If the babe in mind happens to be less than a month old, the chances are especially against his being a really contented creature, for the moment, Prof. Charlotte Bu...

SMALL CHANGES OF SUN'S HEAT CONTROL WEATHER ON EARTHThe sun when it radiates heat and light to Earth also broadcasts information that can be used to foretell the weather here on Earth.Dr. C.G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, after more than two decades of solar observation, announced today through the medium of a scientific publication entitled "Weather Dominated by Solar Changes" that: "Contrary to the prevailing view, the weather appears to be governed by variations in solar radiation."His discovery seemingly presages a day when we shall be able to tell what the weather will...

AN AMERICAN ROMANCE IN STEEL AND STEAMThings mechanical offer the photographer an unlimited field for the exercise of his talents, and the locomotive--romantic and symbolical as it can be made--is especially attractive to him.On the front cover of this week's SCIENCE NEWS LETTER, Photographer Rittase of Philadelphia has chosen the Boardwalk Flyer of the Reading Railroad as the subject of a fascinating study. The Boardwalk Flyer runs from Camden to Atlantic City and is considered one of the world's fastest trains.This fact makes us look at the picture a second time. But the photographer might h...

ROBBER FLY MASQUERADES IN BUMBLEBEE'S CLOTHINGThe villainous-looking hexapod that glares at you from the cover of this week's SCIENCE NEWS LETTER is as bad a citizen as he looks. He is a robber fly, who should by rights be called an assassin fly, for his practice is to pounce upon other insects in the air, pierce them with his sharp beak, and bear them away to his cannibal feasting place.The robber fly is not only an assassin; he hides his deadly trade under a disguise borrowed from a formidably armed but law-abiding member of a quite different insect family, the bumblebee. Only a closer exami...

LITTLE WATERWHEEL DOES BIG POWER JOBFortunate are those countries that have small rivers falling rapidly, rather than huge, slow-moving streams. Electricity can be generated for these nations easily and cheaply.To make electricity for Korea from the 2,000-foot fall of a mountain stream will be the life work of the Voith impulse water wheel shown on the front cover. Though its greatest diameter is just a little more than 11 feet and it weighs only 11 and a half tons, when turning at 260 revolutions per minute, this simple wheel of steel develops 50,000 horsepower.To produce 57,000 horsepower in...

EINSTEIN DISCUSSES REVOLUTION HE CAUSED IN SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT — By Dr. Albert EinsteinFrom far away I have come to you, but not to strangers. I have come among men who for many years have been true comrades with me in my labors. You, my honored Dr. Michelson, began with this work when I was only a little youngster, hardly 3 feet high. It was you who led the physicists into new paths, and through your marvelous experimental work paved the way for development of the theory of relativity. You uncovered an insidious defect in the ether theory of light, as it then existed, and stimulated the ideas ...

ANTHROPOLOGIST IS ELECTED NEW A.A.A.S. PRESIDENTDr. Franz Boas, noted anthropologist of Columbia University, was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 1931, during the Cleveland meeting. Dr. Boas is one of the leading figures in the field of anthropology. He has been engaged in this work throughout a very long and active career.THEORIES OF UNIVERSE SHAKEN BY DISCOVERIES AT HARVARDWanted: a new theory of the universe.Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory, reported to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in C...

STRANGE SEA FLOWERS BLOSSOM ON REEFLong ago some observant writer remarked that in the sea, many of the plants look like animals and many of the animals, like plants. Support for this view can easily be found in the strange sea urchin pictured on the cover of this issue of the SCIENCE NEWS LETTER. It grows on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia; the photograph of this specimen was supplied by Melbourne Ward, an Australian zoologist who has done much work in the naturalists' paradise of the antipodes. The species is known locally as the "slate pencil sea urchin" because its thick ...