Der rettende Begleiter. Der Erzengel Michael ist mehr als nur der Engel, der mit dem Teufel kämpft

Ein Artikel über die Figur des Erzengels Michael und das theologische Engelsverständnis in einer kirchlichen Zeitschrift für ein allgemeines Publikum.

Wissenschaft und Glauben bei Michael Polanyi

For Michael Polanyi, religion and science fight abreast to protect the occidental culture from totalitarian threat. Both are belief-based endeavors, Polanyi is convinced. While this is not surprising at all regarding religion, it is surely a provocation regarding science. The article tries to explore this original thought of Polanyi and to examine how it is rooted in his personal convictions and beliefs. Special emphasis is given to Polanyi’s critique of contemporary biology, as expressed in his article on “Science and Religion”, in some ways a response to Paul Tillich’s theology. Contemporary biology’s findings undermine exactly what Polanyi is fighting for, hence he is convinced that its findings are somewhat flawed. This should however not lead to the false conclusion that Polanyi had anything to do with creationism or would have favored Intelligent Design in our days.

Full correction for spatially distributed speed-of-sound in echo ultrasound based on measuring aberration delays via transmit beam steering

Aberrations of the acoustic wave front, caused by spatial variations of the speed-of-sound, are a main limiting factor to the diagnostic power of medical ultrasound imaging. If not accounted for, aberrations result in low resolution and increased side lobe level, over all reducing contrast in deep tissue imaging. Various techniques have been proposed for quantifying aberrations by analysing the arrival time of coherent echoes from so-called guide stars or beacons. In situations where a guide star is missing, aperture-based techniques may give ambiguous results. Moreover, they are conceptually focused on aberrators that can be approximated as a phase screen in front of the probe. We propose a novel technique, where the effect of aberration is detected in the reconstructed image as opposed to the aperture data. The varying local echo phase when changing the transmit beam steering angle directly reflects the varying arrival time of the transmit wave front. This allows sensing the angle-dependent aberration delay in a spatially resolved way, and thus aberration correction for a spatially distributed volume aberrator. In phantoms containing a cylindrical aberrator, we achieved location-independent diffraction-limited resolution as well as accurate display of echo location based on reconstructing the speed-of-sound spatially resolved. First successful volunteer results confirm the clinical potential of the proposed technique.

Effects of divergent selection for growth on egg quality traits in Japanese quail

The experiment was designed to investigate the impact of selection for increased body mass on external and internal egg quality traits of Japanese quail. Three hundred and sixty Japanese quail, divergently selected over three generations for different body mass at 4 weeks of age, were used. Quail were homogeneously divided into three groups each consisting of 120 birds: high body mass (HBM), low body mass (LBM) and Control. ANOVA was used to detect the effect of selection on egg quality. In addition, correlation between external and internal egg quality traits was measured. Our results revealed thatHBMquail laid heavier eggs (P = 0.03 compared with LBM but not significantly different with Control quail) with a higher external (shell thickness, shell weight, eggshell ratio and eggshell density, P = 0.0001) and internal egg quality score (albumen weight, P = 0.003; albumen ratio, P = 0.01; albumen height, yolk height, yolk index and Haugh unit, P = 0.0001) when compared with both the Control and LBM. The egg surface area and yolk diameter were significantly higher in HBM when compared with the LBM but not with the Control line. Egg weight was positively correlated with albumen weight (r = 0.54, P = 0.0001), albumen ratio (r = 0.14, P = 0.05), yolk height (r = 0.27, P = 0.0001), yolk weight (r = 0.23, P = 0.002), yolk diameter (r = 0.14, P = 0.05) and yolk index (r = 0.21, P = 0.005) but was negatively correlated with yolk ratio (r = –0.16, P = 0.03). Our results indicate that selection for higher body mass might result in heavier eggs and superior egg quality.