From South Africa comes a proposal for railroad trains to run at high speed on blocks of ice instead of wheels.

Dragan R. Petrik of Pretoria was granted a patent last week for vehicles equipped to change the blocks as they melt and wear down, without stopping the train.

Patent 3,343,495 provides for propulsion by jet, rocket thrust, propellers or other means independent of the usual wheel traction. While conventional rails could be used, Petrik prefers a flanged metal surface that can be heated in cold climates.

Each car is to have cold rooms for storage of the ice. Blocks are to be forced down through ducts under control of a sensing unit that maintains the car at proper height.

Conventional wheels may be used in a station or for emergency support. A set of ice blocks is provided just ahead of and in back of each set of wheels. One ice skid can be used while another is being replenished.

For braking, there is a rubbing surface along the track, on which friction pads can be applied.

Petrik says his system will make possible very high speed for all types of land vehicles.

The principal object of the invention is to provide an imitation of a glass or mug of beer which is so accurate in its imitation that it can not be easily picked out among a number of real containers of beer. When the beer is served with the 'joke beer' included in a group, one of the guests will obviously pick up the 'joke beer' and attempt to drink it; whereupon he will be embarrassed.

That in the steeping of the mixture of half, measure, 'the whole wheat straw cut info fine square snips the width of the straw and half' the grains in a jar of ordinary cold water "I let the steep remain still for ten hours at a temperature of fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit varying with temperature, and then straining off the liquor into a shallow pan of some such cool substance as china or earthenware, I leave this liquor to stand in this pan for yet twenty-four hours at sixty degrees also varying with temperature; these durations of times of ten hours and twenty-four hours speaking for a very inferior brown straw much knocked about and the grains those, of a very good quality, of red wheat; and then catch up the skim on a cylinder of some such cool substance as china or earthenware," and then let this skim dry, so getting some results of films of Gold.

The material (whole-wheat straw) is steeped in slightly warm water for ten hours, and strained off into a shallow pan; the pan being allowed to stand in a moderately warm place for twenty-four hours, a scum appears on the surface of the liquid, and this is caught on a cylinder of some cool substance, as china or earthenware. "Then let this skim dry," says the alchemist, "so getting some results of films of gold."

This invention relates to a means for intercepting the liquid tending to run down the wrists and the arms when eating crayfish.

When eating crustacea of this nature, it is found very unpleasant that the liquid emerging therefrom tends to run down the wrists and into the sleeves, this liquid resulting in stains, which it is extremely difficult or impossible to remove.

According to the invention, this drawback is overcome by means of a ring which tightly encircles the wrist and consists of an absorbent material. As a material of this description it is convenient to employ rubber sponge. It is, however, also possible to use paper, fabric or similar materials, which intercept the moisture running over the wrists and absord the same.

A means, however, of generating a glass coating on the wall, as a direct result of the tunneling process could be achieved by nuclear heating and melting, rather than nuclear explosive crushing. This latter idea has been explored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under the guise of the SUBTERRENE program in which it was envisioned that the heat from a fission-reactor might be used to literally melt the rock around it - effectively, that is, tunnelling by the controlled use of a China-Syndrome meltdown. Indeed, a US patent (#3,693,731) for such a nuclear tunneling machine, was awarded to Dale Armstrong and co-workers at Los Alamos in September 1972. The patent application states, "this invention provides a rapid versatile economical method of deep-earth excavation, tunneling shaft sinking which offers solutions to ecological problems, acquiring natural resources presently inaccessible and access to an enormous reservoir of natural heat energy. These valuable subterranean sources include natural minerals and hydrocarbons, fresh water and clean geothermal heat energy".

The same technology was proposed by Joseph Neudecker and co-workers, in 1986, as a means by which tunnels might be bored upon the Moon in order to construct a subsurface transportation system. Describing their nuclear-powered melting machine as a SUBSELENE, Neudecker et al. calculate that a fission-reactor-heated, 5-m diameter tunneler could be made to advance by as much as a 50-m per day through the lunar subsurface. This tunneling, they argued could (indeed, must) be operated remotely. Importantly, for tunnel coherence and stability, the material melted at the front of the SUBSELENE would be extruded at its backend to form a glass lining on the tunnel wall.