Caltech's division of biology is sponsoring Caltech's annual gift collection for Haven House, a shelter for battered women and their children. From December 2 to 16, donate new, unwrapped, nonviolent toys; new clothing for children (usually under the age of 16); gifts for mothers; wrapping paper, ribbon, and tape; or checks made out to Haven House. Click here for a list of locations of collection boxes.

"Towards Dense Reconstruction of Dense Neuropil" Winfried Denk, Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg.

"The Visual Sensorimotor System that Drives Rapid Adaptive Camouflage and Communication in Cephalopods" Roger Hanlon, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Caltech Scientists have created images of the heart's muscular layer that show, for the first time, the connection between the configuration of those muscles and the way the human heart contracts. More precisely, they showed that the muscular band—which wraps around the inner chambers of the heart in a helix—is actually a sort of twisting highway along which each contraction of the heart travels. Their findings were published in the December issue of the American Physiological Society journal, Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

Two prominent researchers from Caltech have been named among the country's 24 top leaders by U.S. News Media Group in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School. The 2008 edition of America's Best Leaders—available online at http://www.usnews.com/leaders and on newsstands Monday, November 24—includes honors for Caltech's David Baltimore and Fiona Harrison. According to U.S. News, the Best Leaders issue features "some of the country's most visionary individuals," highlighting those professionals "who continue to offer optimism and hope through their work."