Electrical impedance myography (EIM) is a painless and non-invasive technique for the assessment of muscle which we apply here to the effects of normal aging. The paper presents a cross-sectional analysis of EIM data from the quadriceps and tibialis anterior of 100 healthy subjects (44 men, 56 women, ages 18-90 years). The principal EIM parameter, the spatially averaged phase theta(avg), shows a roughly quadratic reduction with increasing age, declining more steeply beyond 60 years. The correlation was stronger in men (quadriceps: r2 = 0.68 for men, 0.52 for women; tibialis anterior: r2 = 0.74 for men, 0.38 for women; p < 0.001 throughout). Additionally, four subjects (age greater than 75 years) were asked to return for repeat testing several years after their initial assessment. These longitudinal results qualitatively confirm the cross-sectional data, though with greater reductions in theta(avg) at high age. The findings of this study support the potential use of EIM as a simple and effort-independent test of muscle health in the elderly.

Despite the fact that red blood cells carry negative charges, under certain conditions they form cylindrical stacks, or "rouleaux". It is shown here that a form of the Casimir effect, generalizing the more well-known van der Waals forces, can provide the necessary attractive force to balance the electrostatic repulsion. Erythrocytes in plasma are modelled as negatively charged dielectric disks in an ionic solution, allowing predictions to be made about the conditions under which rouleaux will form. The results show qualitative and quantitative agreement with observations, and suggest new experiments and further applications to other biological systems, colloid chemistry and nanotechnology.

We outline unimodular conformal and projective relativity (UCPR), an extension of unimodular relativity in which the conformal and projective structures play central roles. Under SL(4, R) symmetry group, the pseudo-Riemannian metric naturally decomposes into a four-volume element and a conformal metric; and the affine connection decomposes into a one-form and a tracefree projective connection. In UCPR, these four space-time structures are treated as independent fields that have clear physical interpretations. A Palatini-type variational principle for the usual general relativity Lagrangian leads to a breakup of the Einstein field equations and the compatibility conditions between the metric and connection. We indicate how new gravitational theories may be generated by modifications of this Lagrangian and discuss two such cases. Finally, we discuss possible physical consequences of our results for quantum gravity.

A discussion of the meaning of a physical concept cannot be separated from discussion of the conditions for its ideal measurement. We assert that quantization is no more than the invocation of the quantum of action in the explanation of some process or phenomenon, and does not imply an assertion of the fundamental nature of such a process. This leads to an ecumenical approach to the problem of quantization of the gravitational field. There can be many valid approaches, each of which should be judged by the domain of its applicability to various phenomena. If two approaches have overlapping domains, the relation between them then itself becomes a subject of study. We advocate an approach to general relativity based on the unimodular group, which emphasizes the physical significance and measurability of the conformal and projective structures. A discussion of the method of matched asymptotic expansions, and of the weakness of terrestrial sources compared with astrophysical and cosmological sources, leads us to suggest theoretical studies of gravitational radiation based on retrodiction (observation) rather than prediction (experimentation).

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