A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet’s north pole.

“What do marathoners and heart failure patients have in common? More than you think according to new findings by physiologists…The new study shows that the fatigue that marathoners and other extreme athletes feel at the end of a race is caused by a tiny leak inside their muscles that probably also saps the energy from patients with heart failure.The leak – which allows calcium to continuously leak inside muscle cells – weakens the force produced by the muscle and also turns on a protein-digesting enzyme that damages the muscle fibers….” Full Slice

The Full Paper

“…Researchers have reconstructed proteins that were likely to have been used billions of years ago by the ancestors of modern bacteria and have found that these proteins provide estimates of the early earth’s temperatures that match those generated by geologists….” Full Slice

“…The researchers were surprised to find another subset of 84 genes triggered when either silicon or iron were limited, suggesting that these two pathways were somehow linked. Under low-iron conditions, the diatoms grew more slowly and genes involved in the production of the silica shell were triggered. Individual diatoms also tended to clump together under those conditions, making them even heavier and more likely to sink

The response of thin and thick cell walls depending on the amount of iron available had been observed at sea but “no one had a clue about the molecular basis,”…” Full Slice

My friend Tom Hill sends this out to the DC area Martians, and I endorse the basic idea: (Moon: No! Asteroids/Mars: Yes!)

If there were scads of dough, I would cavil not at the Moon, but there aren’t, and I do.

“The stripped-out shell of a heart has been made to work again - using brand new cells planted inside it…In just four days, the cells had multiplied and spread to such an extent that the researchers could see contractions in the new muscle tissue.

By the eight day, the home-grown hearts were capable of pumping, albeit at only 2% of the power of a normal rat heart…”When we saw the first contractions we were speechless.”…” Full Slice

“…Hydrologists have not to this day sufficiently studied the unique lake with regular shifts in its water level. Some changes are gradual, others sudden and disastrous since they are caused by earthquakes and torrents of water rush from lakes higher up in the mountains. Floods recede sooner or later, and people come back to the shores-only to become the victims of other floods 500-700 years later. Throughout the years of their partnership, Russian and Kyrgyz archeologists discovered and examined more than ten major flooded urban and rural settlements of varying ages….” Full Slice

Beginning with a single triangle, replace that triangle with three half-size copies arranged so that their outer border form a new triangle of the same size as the original. Then, replace each of those three triangles with three triangles half that size, and so forth. (Turns out of course, that the fractal pattern is due to the algorithm of shrinking and positioning the shapes, not due to the fact that the initial shape that we began with was a triangle– any plane figure can be used.) This algorithm is easy enough to implement directly and physically, using a flexible medium like polymer clay.

The 2007 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting concluded in Boston on November 30. This was the first time that the popular Science as Art competition was held at an MRS Fall Meeting. Three first place and three second place winners were selected from the various entries. Some of the images are from the nanotechnology domain but most are micro-scale.

What distinguishes fractal geometry within mathematics is an exceptional and uncanny characteristic. Its first steps are not tedious, hard, and unrewarding, but playful and extraordinarily easy, and provide rich reward in terms of stunning graphics. To the mathematician, they bring a bounty of very difficult conjectures that no one can solve. To the artist, they provide backbones around which imagination can play at will. To everyone, a few steps in about any direction bring extraordinary pleasure. Nothing is more serious than play. Let’s all play.—Benoit Mandelbrot

“…Previous studies indicate that dietary garlic consumption is inversely correlated with the progression and severity of CV disease and that it affects a lower incidence of hypertension (5). However, the mechanism(s) by which consumption of garlic attenuates CV disease has in large part remained a mystery. Benavides et al. (4) elegantly demonstrate that garlic-derived organic polysulfides are converted by red blood cells (RBCs) into hydrogen sulfide gas….” Full Slice

Time to sell low-bank waterfront? “When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder. January was the warmest first month on record worldwide — 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe’s average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.” Full Slice

“…By comparing the distribution of brain injuries between the PTSD group and the non-PTSD group, the researchers found two regions where damage was rarely associated with PTSD: the amygdala, a structure important in fear and anxiety, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), an area involved in higher mental functions and planning….” Full Slice

Journal

“…If the asteroid does indeed strike Mars, it will impact somewhere in an 800 kilometer (500 mile) wide band that crosses the Martian equator. The southernmost boundary of this band lies slightly to the north of the region explored by the rover Opportunity. Though close, however, the rover is clearly outside the zone of possible impact….” Full Slice

“We have discovered what appear to be micrometeorites imbedded in seven Alaskan Mammoth tusks and a Siberian bison skull. The micrometeorites apparently shattered on impact leaving 2-5 mm hemispherical debris patterns surrounded by carbonized rings. Multiple impacts are observed on only one side of the tusks and skull consistent with the micrometeorites having come from a single direction….” Full Slice

[This is a follow on to the earlier Younger Dryas impactor evidence paper]