Word: becking
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...sense least understood (not counting humor) is the sense of smell. Its subtleties baffle scientists and enrich perfume compounders. Last week Yale's Drs. Lloyd H Beck and Walter R. Miles, after long and thoughtful scratching of their scientific noses, presented the National Academy of Sciences with a brand-new theory. The nose, they said, is not, as commonly believed, a laboratory which identifies odors by chemical analysis. More likely, its smeller is an instrument or measuring infra-red (heat) rays absorbed by odorous vapors...
...long been known that many gases and vapors transparent to visible light absorb certain wavelengths of infra-red This fact is used industrially in identifying gases; chemists shoot infra-red rays through a vapor and note what wavelengths are absorbed, and how strongly. Why, reasoned Beck & Miles, should the numan nose not do the same...
...does the nose do the smelling? The "smell receptors," patches of specialized cells in the upper nose, lie across air passages from tissues which are normally cooler than they are. Therefore the cells radiate heat waves across the air stream. Beck & Miles theorized that when pure air is passing through the nostrils, the cells give no signal; they are getting rid of their heat at the standard rate. But when an odorous vapor is present in the air stream it absorbs certain wavelengths of the heat which the cells are radiating. The cells can feel the change and the stimulus...
...Squash Courts." Though the U.S. and British zones have been merged since last winter, there has not been time enough to erase national idiosyncrasies. In some aspects the British zone is as British as Weston super Mare. Approaching the medieval city gate of Lübeck, one can scarcely see the gate for the sign on it: TO THE SQUASH COURTS...
...plane began a steady climb. Puzzled, Pilot Beck adjusted trim tabs on the plane's control surfaces to bring the nose down. Then, still undetected, Sisto released the gust lock. The plane immediately went into an outside loop. Both Sisto and Beck, neither of whom had fastened his safety belt, were thrown from their seats. Two things saved the plane. Sisto struck buttons which feathered the prp-pellors of three engines. Copilot Melvin Logan, who was securely belted in, was able to roll the ship right side up, a bare 300 to 400 feet from the ground...