Word: robb
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1/20,000th of an Inch. Silicone rubber is one of the most permeable substances (60 times more so than Teflon film), and General Electric Researcher Walter L. Robb, 36, had long known that it could be made to act like a membrane. Two years ago, Robb hit on a way to stretch the rubber into sheets 1/20,000th of an inch thick, set about trying to devise a way to eliminate the tiny holes that somehow showed up in each square foot of film. His solution was simple: since the probability of two holes being in the same spot...
...Robb now had what amounted to an artificial membrane. Just as the lining of the lungs blocks out liquid blood but lets oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, Robb's membrane was able to filter through its gossamer skin the tiny dissolved bubbles of oxygen-rich air from water without drawing any of the liquid with it. Robb's membrane works best in a tank or stream of running water, where bubbles of oxygen are plentiful to draw on. Then the artificial membrane can operate as a gill does when it filters oxygen into a fish...
...with 35% Oxygen. General Electric says that the silicone membrane is more than a laboratory stunt, and G.E. engineers foresee half a dozen practical applications, not all of which will be water-bound. The membrane's natural preference for oxygen over most other gases (G.E. scientists, including Robb, do not yet know why) may soon result in a revolutionary unit to supply an enriched mixture of 35% oxygen for military field hospitals as well as in improved breathing systems for spacecraft and submarines. Other possibilities: space suits that cool off astronauts even as they perspire; a substitute...
...ceremony will be preceded by the traditional procession--in full academic garb--of the officers and Faculty of the University, deans, honorally degree candidates, and distinguished guests, led by the University Marshal, J. Hampden Robb '21, and the She riffs of Middlesex and Suffolk counties. Graduating seniors will line the route of the procession in front of University Hall and up to the entrance of Tercentenary Theater, in the new Yard. In case of rain, ceremonies will be held in Sanders Theater...
...ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m. with a march from the Old Yard to the Tercentenary Theatre under the direction of the University Marshal, J. Hampden Robb '21. Others in the procession, besides Faculty and officers of the University, candidates for degrees and alumni, will include governor Peabody '42, who will arrive in a horse and buggy escorted by a troop of National Lancers, Mayor Collins of Boston, a representative of Cambridge's Mayor Edward A. Crane '35, and other high officials of city and state...