Evening star., 1953-11-11
Nut Shells Are Useful
To Industrial Purposes
z Billion Pounds of Stones
And HulIs Wasted YeurIy
By Thomos R. Henry


About billion pounds Of nut shells
and fruit stones go to waste In the
United States every year.
Yet they might constitute q valuable
agricultural by-product If some means
could be found for collecting them, 1t
Is reported by Drs. T. r. Clark and e. c.
Lathrop Of the Agriculture Depart
ment's Northern Research Laboratory.
Shells from peanuts, almonds and
walnuts find various uses In fertilizers,
insecticides, animal and poultry feeds,
they point out. When they are ground
to the fineness Of -four they can be
used as carriers for insect and fungus
poisons. Their highly absorbent prop
critics render them useful for mulching
agents and for use on floors of poultry
houses Miscellaneous uses include I'LL
ing material for low ground to improve
drainage, replacement Of crushed stone
in driveways, and to make smoke for
curing meats.
Soft grits from shells and corn cobs
are finding considerable use in air-blast
cleaning of precision finished machine
parts. A typical use is in removing
carbon, oil and rust in aircraft and
automobile engines. The labor and
time involved in conventional soaking
and scraping is reduced and the FIRE
hazards involved in using solvents is
avoided
Used in Rubber.
Finely ground hulls can be used as
filters for hard rubber goods" They act
as anti-slip agents when incorporated in
natural or synthetic rubber coatings.
Superior ncn-skid properties are claim
ed for automobile tires in which coarse
particles from shells and corncobs have
been incorporated.
Experiments in making board ma
terlalS from peanut shells, the two
chemists say, do not promise much at
present when compared with available
wood wastes.
also find uses as absorbents for nitro
glycerine in the manufacture of dyna-
mite. Nut shells also contain various
chemicals. such as a waxlike material
found in walnuts. of which practically
no use is made at present.
There are about 2 billion people in
the world. Assuming one knew the
names of all of them. how many ques-
tionS would be necessary to guess cor
rectly the name of any individual?
This is the variation of the popular
twenty questions" game posed by DR..
r. l.. Shuey, research associate of the
General Electric Co
His answer-exactly 81 questions. It
could be done, that is, by an ideal
mathematician who didn't get ratified
using the latest mathematics of prob
ability so that every question asked
would split the remainder into two ex-
actly equal halves.
Actually, he says it probably would
be possible to arrive at the same result
with the traditional 20 questions, TAX
ing only the reasonably likely names.
Wordy Hypothesis.
In the same report published in the
General Electric Review he pictures a
mathematically ideal written language
in which all letters occur with equal
frequency, all combinations of letters
make words, and all combinations Of
words make sense. Taking the 26 letters
of the English alphabet, the number of
words possible in this ideal language
would be about IL million. There now
are over 100000 recognized English
words. s. aoa
Practically. he admits, it wouldn't
work at all because, since any possible
combination of letters would make
word and any combination of words
would make sense, the slightest error
on the part of the typist would change
the meaning of what was written.
Still mathematicians and communi-
cations experts struggle with the prob
lem. One of the hurdles they are up
against, according to table presented
by DR.. Shuey, is the limitation of the
human brain and nervous system to ac-
cept and transmit information.
Thus, it is estimated, the human eye
can receive about 4.3 million bits of
information a second and the ear about
5000. The estimated capacity of the
brain to accept information, however.
is only about 100 bits second
That is one reason why mechanical
brains can do some jobs so much faster
and better.