No, this isn’t a close-up of the surface of a golf ball. It’s a new type of material, one that is porous and elastic, lighter than solid aluminum yet stronger than steel, one that its creators are calling an “ultra high-strength metal matrix composite foam.” A bit of a misnomer, really, considering the foam is made up entirely of stainless steel.

The enzyme calcineurin is critical to normal development and function of heart cells, and loss of the protein leads to heart problems and death in genetically modified mice, according to researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Their new study, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, demonstrates that calcineurin in hearts of mice is directly linked to proper cardiac muscle contraction, rhythm and maintenance of heart activity. The near total absence of calcineurin in mice leads to heart arrhythmia, failure and death, according to the research team.

People who live in areas with lower household incomes are much more likely to die because of their personal and household characteristics and their community surroundings, according to research conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University and published in the American Journal of Public Health.

 Researchers analyzed census data and vital statistics from Virginia counties and cities between 1990 and 2006. They demonstrated that one out of four deaths would have been averted if the mortality rates of Virginia's five most affluent counties and cities had existed statewide. In some of the most disadvantaged areas of the state, nearly half of the deaths would have been averted.

Plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII). Researchers writing in PNAS say they have taken a significant step closer to understanding how these photosystems work their magic, which may boost the effort to develope new sources of energy.

Pushing The Moon Away With Victorian Machinery

This is a further article in my occasional series about coal, engines and energy, heat and thermodynamics.  In this article I am going to show you how to push the Moon further away using some very basic machinery invented by 19th century scientists and engineers.  Yes!   Really!


This Earth of ours is so huge in scale compared to our puny bodies.  How could it be possible that by our ordinary actions we could alter the whole Earth climate system?

Let me try to give you a perspective on that, at the scale of a classroom globe:

Where Science Meets Poetry

Caveat:  it may strike the reader from what follows that I have an agendist stance against modern poetry.  I have no quarrel with that assessment.


Quite obviously, science meets poetry in the field of linguistics.  But what if scientists could embrace poetry?  What if a paper in, say, oceanography, were rendered in the media as poetry?  Would the public more readily grasp the core concepts?

As moontide drags her weary way
through ocean, sea, and gulf, and bay ...

I think you see my drift¹.