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This paper describes SHAPE TAPE™, a thin array of fiber optic curvature sensors laminated on a ribbon substrate, arranged to sense bend and twist. The resulting signals are used to build a three dimensional computer model containing six degree of freedom position and orientation information for any location along the ribbon. The tape can be used to derive dynamic or static shape information from objects to which it is attached or scanned over. This is particularly useful where attachment is only partial, since shape tape “knows where it is” relative to a starting location. Measurements can be performed where cameras cannot see, without the use of magnetic fields. Applications include simulation, film animation, computer aided design, robotics, biomechanics, and crash testing.

The British Medical Journal observes that there is overwhelming evidence that the digestive disorders to which many young children are subject have resulted from the practice of feeding them upon certain foods largely composed of starch. Hitherto no very great effort has been made to prevent these foods being sold, beyond the general advice which is given to mothers and nurses by doctors and health visitors as to the harmfulness of them. Our contemporary points out that the County Council of Rutland have, however, succeeded in obtaining a conviction before the local justices against a druggist for selling an infants' food which was found by the Public Analyst for the County to contain upwards of 70 per cent. of practically unaltered starch, and which was therefore held to be not of the nature, substance, and quality demanded by the purchaser. It appears that the preparation was described as being suitable for an infant only a few days old. A dessertspoonful of the mixture was directed to be put into a basin to be mixed to the thickness of a smooth cream with cold milk or water; to this was to be added half a pint of milk and water in equal parts, and it was then to be brought to the boil. It was contended by the vendor that the boiling would convert the starch into sugar, and this view was supported by a member of the “Society of Public Analysts and other Analytical Chemists.” The British Medical Journal further observes that there are some artificially prepared infants' foods, not containing 70 per cent of starch, in which the conversion of the starch into saccharine bodies may become complete, but considers that it is not very satisfactory that the harmfulness or otherwise of such preparations should be left to the decision of a local bench of magistrates—a course which may well be compared to our disadvantage with that which it is now possible to adopt in Queensland under the provisions of the Health Act of 1911. Section 17 of the Act enables the Health Commissioner to cause to be examined any food which is advertised, for the purpose of ascertaining its composition, properties, or efficiency. He may then report the result of the examination to the Government and publish his report in any newspaper which circulates in the colony. Moreover, the Governor in Council may, on the recommendation of the Health Commissioner, prohibit the advertising or sale of any food which, in the opinion of the Commissioner, is injurious to life or health. Until such an enactment is in force in this country it must be left to other public authorities to follow the example of the Rutland County Council.,

IN order to be able to discriminate with certainty between butter and such margarine as is sold in England, it is necessary to carry out two or three elaborate and delicate chemical processes. But there has always been a craving by the public for some simple method of determining the genuineness of butter by means of which the necessary trouble could be dispensed with. It has been suggested that such easy detection would be possible if all margarine bought and sold in England were to be manufactured with some distinctive colouring added—light‐blue, for instance—or were to contain a small amount of phenolphthalein, so that the addition of a drop of a solution of caustic potash to a suspected sample would cause it to become pink if it were margarine, while nothing would occur if it were genuine butter. These methods, which have been put forward seriously, will be found on consideration to be unnecessary, and, indeed, absurd.