Issues

The intricacies of automatic computing methods have been popularized by pictures, visual and verbal, of complicated wiring diagrams, great banks of electron tubes, and dramatic control boards, as well as by certain romantic analogies between the machines and the human brain. There remains, however, a need for defining the limits of computing machine operation, as well as its promise.

Not knowing what made good cathodes good never prevented their extensive use nor has it halted the development of vacuum tubes. Now explanations are catching up with effects and the art of fabrication may become a science.

With radioisotope shipments from Oak Ridge alone now running well over three hundred per month, an increase of approximately 500 percent in two years, the need for a comprehensive set of regulations which might be adopted by all carriers was imperative. The National Research Council has worked on the problem of setting up safe standards. The material for this article is taken from a report prepared by Robley D. Evans, the full text of which will be available at a later date from the National Research Council.

Conference on teaching, aims, methods, and problems

Bureau of Standards reports progress

San Diego test

New process slows aging

Symposium on statistical mechanics

Eclectic; New Dutch journal; Higgins Scientific Trust; Low temperature work at Ohio State; Award offered.

Symposium on x‐rays; Nucleonics and medicine; Society of Rheology.

Fund in honor of A. G. Worthing