(version compiled August 25, 2007) John Baez, Aristide Baratin, Laurent Freidel, Derek Wise 1 Department of Mathematics, University of California Riverside, CA 92521, USA 2 Laboratoire de Physique, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon 46 allée d’Italie, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France. 3 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics 35 King Street N, Waterloo ON, N2J 2W9, Canada. 4 Department of Mathemat...

On May 11, 2008 the German biophysicist Professor Fritz-Albert Popp will celebrate his 70th birthday. This is a welcome occasion to pay tribute to the scientific achievements and human qualities of a scientist whose merits as one of the founders of biophotonics and as a pioneer of quantum biophysics increasingly find appreciation internationally.

We determine paleoelevation of the Sierra Nevada, California, by tracking the effect of topography on precipitation, as recorded in hydrogen isotopes of kaolinite exposed in gold-bearing river deposits from the Eocene Yuba River. The data, compared with the modern isotopic composition of precipitation, show that about 40 to 50 million years ago the Sierra Nevada stood tall (>/=2200 meters), a r...