From the January 28, 1933, issue

COMET PRINTS

The dark, oblong areas pictured on the front cover are all that remain of a pre–Ice Age collision of cosmical magnitude, the smattering of a part of what is now the southeastern United States with fragments of a comet. This is the belief of Profs. F.A. Melton and William Schriever of the University of Oklahoma. The photograph emphasizes the great area covered by these depressions, for each little dot is a tree and there are thousands of dots in some of the ovals.

NEW BARLEY VARIETY AWAITS RETURN OF BEER

A new type of barley that is more disease resistant, that will yield more, and that incidentally will make a finer and more potent brew for beer has been perfected at the University of Wisconsin by Prof. B.D. Leith. It was one of the five crops awarded a place in the hall of fame of the International Livestock Exposition at Chicago.

INFRARED RAYS BLAMED FOR STUFFY FEELING IN HOT ROOMS

Sir Leonard Hill, the noted English physiologist and writer on public health subjects, finds that certain heat rays (infrared rays) given off by dark or dull-red sources of heat cause the nostrils to contract and thus interfere with breathing. He believes that this is the chief reason for the sense of stuffiness that we experience in an overheated room.

In a lecture given at the Public Health Congress, London, he showed that this effect is not due to a direct action of the heat upon the nostrils, but that it is a reflex effect from the sensory nerves of the skin. He describes the particular heat rays that give this effect as nose-shutters.

Their action is especially marked in persons whose breathing is already partially obstructed, those with a deflected septum of the nose, for example, or a person suffering from catarrh, asthma, or hay fever.

The effect can be neutralized by fanning the skin of the face with an electric fan, or by the action of certain other rays, which he speaks of as nose-openers, that are given off especially by luminous sources of heat. They may also be absorbed by water vapor, and he suggests that this is the explanation of the efficacy of a bowl of water placed in front of a heater in relieving the stuffiness of a room.