We ask how Black Protestants frame the connection between religion and science, analyzing fifty in-depth interviews with Black Protestants of different socioeconomic backgrounds who attend churches in two U.S. cities. Although individuals across the sample observe some tension, or incompatibility, between religion and science, Black Protestants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tended to perceive much more tension when compared with those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. However, when science is thought to contribute to improving health conditions (e.g., medical improvements to diagnose or prevent birth defects), individuals from both SES backgrounds framed religion and science as compatible. This lack of tension in regards to medicine challenges prevailing wisdom about lower-income African Americans’ attitudes towards medicine. We draw out the implications of these findings for larger discussions about trust toward science and scientific communities, elucidating Black Protestant particularities and perspectives in tensions between science and religion as a foundation for further research.

Long space flights and planetary settlement will require sources of nutrition and chemicals that must be generated in space. This will include not only amino acids and vitamins but also oxygen, all of which can be generated by means of biosynthesis. Synthetic biology has the potential to generate organisms designed for supplying human nutritional needs in space. Photosynthetic microbes may be ideal for this purpose, as they are more efficient per volume cultivated than green plants at conversion of light to chemical energy, biomass and nutritional molecules. In addition, microbes are easier and faster to genetically engineer, facilitating not only design and terrestrial manufacture of organisms optimized for growth and nutrient production in the artificial conditions of space, but superior ability in space to develop organisms suited to newly discovered environments. The rapid ability to adapt and create new microbes to suit new circumstances when in space offers significant potential for risk reduction. Development of sun-driven microbial production of nutritional chemicals would also have terrestrial benefits in commerce and sustainability. A synthetic biology approach to chemical production would not be based on fossil fuels as such fuels do not exist on other planets. This approach would highlight a synergistic relationship between outer space and ‘spaceship earth’, illustrating NASA's role in stimulating technology development with terrestrial application. Two specific approaches deserve consideration: production by traditional photosynthetic microbes, or by the newly appreciated capacity of some bacteria to absorb electric current (e.g. solar panels) to drive metabolism. Palatability and sensory stimulation are a key part of food consumption and could be engineered into microbes. As a first step, NASA should test a bioreactor in which genetically engineered, nutrient-producing photosynthetic bacteria are grown and harvested in space.

Pamela Howard designed Border Warfare and John Brown's Body at the Tramway, Glasgow, for John McGrath, and Wicked Old Man, which he wrote and directed for West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1992. Here, she recalls the highly distinctive visual language of the playwright, and the differences this made in seeing through a design from initial discussion to practical use in performance. Pamela Howard is a scenographer, director, writer, educator, exhibition curator, and international producer who has created theatre events in many countries and languages. She was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship in 1999 to write What is Scenography? (published by Routledge in 2001), and as adaptor, director, and scenographer created La Celestina at the Hopkins Center, USA, in February 2002, of which the text is forthcoming from Oberon Books.

A study of the daily motions of individual sunspots and of sunspot groups has been undertaken using Kodaikanal and Mount Wilson white-light observations. The Mount Wilson measurements were completed several years ago, and the Kodaikanal measurements have recently been started, using a technique identical to that used for the Mount Wilson data. Both data sets started early in this century, and both have continued to the present time. Preliminary results of a comparison of the two data sets are presented which show a good agreement between them in spot areas and motions. Analysis of the combined data set for the years that are available so far indicates that many more spots are available in such a reduction because the 12-hour time difference between the two sites allows for a more certain identification of individual spots from one observation to the next than in the case when data from only one site are used. This greatly increases the number of sunspots available for motion studies, particularly the smaller sunspots. Preliminary rotation and latitude drift reduction from the combined data set confirm earlier results from the Mount Wilson data alone.

In NTQ7 we included an assessment by Geraldine Cousin of two recent productions of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew – one of them by Di Trevis for the touring group of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The designer for that production was Pamela Howard, who created for it a central traverse playing area adaptable to the many different kinds of venues to be visited. Here, she adds an illustrated postscript on the conception, creation, and utility of the design element, which we hope will initiate the regular documentation of this often-neglected area of theatre practice. In addition to designing for the RSC and numerous other theatres and companies, Pamela Howard has since 1972 taught theatre design at the Central School of Art in London.

We present an engineering analysis of the rate of evaporation of solvent in the hanging drop method of protein crystal growth. Our results are applied to 18 different drop and well arrangements commonly encountered in the laboratory. We take into account the chemical nature of the salt, the drop size and shape, the drop concentration, the well size, the well concentration, and the temperature. We find that the rate of evaporation increases with temperature, drop size, and with the salt concentration difference between the drop and the well. The evaporation possesses no unique half-life. Once the salt in the drop achieves about 80% of its final concentration, further evaporation suffers from the law of diminishing returns.