New Text STEAREATE Sweetness on the Desert A i r
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Plastic "flowers" are in bloom this summer in the dry, barren stretches of Arizona. The artificial blossoms, developed by A. W. Woodrow of the Department of Agriculture's Southwestern Bee Culture Laboratory at Tucson, are being set out, along with bee colonies, in isolated areas. US DA bee specialists are using them in bee feeding experiments. T h e y hope to find out what makes real flowers attractive to bees in order t o solve pollination problems. They also are using the artificial flowers to determine the influence of weather, insecticides, and hive placement on pollination and the amount of nectar a bee will collect. Many studies have been made of caged bees, USDA scientists point out, but these do not provide good enough information; bees are social insects
who do not l e a d a normal life when caged. I n sucH situations the bees are deprived of a queen, must get along on an enforced diet, and are restricted in their movement. But by using artificial b>looms, bee men can study bees in t h e wild and at the same time control thieir diets; few other sources of nectax are available in the Arizona areas cliosen for the experiments. Woodrow's fkrwers are Lu cite blocks with holes drilled in them. Sirup for the bees to sip instead of nectar is placed in a shallow dish and covered with the plastic "block. The holes permit t h e bee to reach the sirup with its proboscis, just a s it would take nectar from a flower. The larger flowers are connected to a reservoir so that the sirup—a mixture of honey and water which can he varied to determine food preferences—is kept a t a constant level; a recorder automatically graphs the amount of sirup gathered by the bees.
Slur?
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A data processing system designed by t h e Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation has been licensed to Minneapolis-Honeywell to manufacture and sell. The electronic brain is called the Instrumentation Digital OnLine Transeriber-or, more tersely, Idiot II.
Ethics in Chemistry
USDA PHOTO
Bees on a plastic flower are tagged. with paint to determine how long they take to get to the hive a n d bade
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Finishing up a course in freshman chemistry, an instructor at one of our eastern universities asked his class to suggest topics for him to review. O n e student asked: "Explain normality and morality."
COMING N E X I
WEEK
A Young Company Needs M o n e y Titanium Zirconium shows how o n e c o m p a n y help f r o m W a l l Streeh in raising c a p i t a l
got
C&EN Q u a r t e r l y Report on Prices Including a special section on detergents a n d surface active agents
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C&EN
JULY
I,
1957
