Images Dated 29th November 2005

Frontispiece of Areopagitica, a speech of John Milton (1608-74) pub

XJF106627 Frontispiece of Areopagitica, a speech of John Milton (1608-74) pub. in 1644 (engraving) (b&w photo) by English School, (17th century); Private Collection; (add.info.: for the liberty of unlicenced printing; title derive from the Aeropagus, the hills of Ares near the Acropolis in Athens where the Upper Council met; inspired partly by Parliament's attempts to suppress Milton's own pamphlet on divorce;); English, out of copyright

© Bridgeman Images

Liver blood supply, SEM

Liver blood supply. Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of several capillaries running through liver tissue. The functions of the liver include destroying old red blood cells, breaking down harmful waste products and toxins in the blood, and extracting useful nutrients from the blood to make and store proteins and other useful chemicals. Numerous capillaries, veins and arteries supply and remove blood. The structure of the liver tissue allows the blood to percolate through the tissue. At any one moment, the liver holds over 10 percent of the body's blood supply

© SUSUMU NISHINAGA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

James Clark Maxwell with his demon

James Clark Maxwell and his demon, artwork. Maxwell (1831-1879) is best known for his laws of electromagnetism, which laid the foundations for modern physics. His "demon" was a thought experiment to question the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the entropy of a system tends to increase. This means that a hot region cannot draw heat from a colder region. Maxwell's demon is a being that can operate a door between a hot and cold gas, opening it to allow a fast-moving (hot) molecule to pass to the hot side, or a slow- moving one to pass to the cold side. This would violate the second law. However, as the demon requires energy to distinguish between fast and slow approaching molecules, and to operate the door, the entropy of the system increases anyway

© BILL SANDERSON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY