Summary III

12. SW Research Institute of San Antonio 2008 is summarized 11/27 and 11/28/09 and, similar to U of Utah 2005 focuses on "osteocyte function responding to mechanical loading", i.e. response of bone collagen producing cells to exercise. Again, they decline posting their results. But this post provides a mouthful of seemingly relevant terms:

bone quality
fracture toughness
bone strength
bone mineral density
porosity
microarchitecture
osteonal morphology
collagen integrity
micro damage

and, allowed me to tack together an interesting formula:

FR = bone quality + bone strength + bone mineral density + fracture toughness- micro damage.

This is a lot to consider when we take our horse out, but is this sort of inquiry and terminology getting us anywhere?

13. I thought so until bumping into a Max Planck Institute research piece which follows up on Paul's Hansma's work, and proceeds in the manner of the thesis of Andres Tovar looking at "calcification" unit to unit, cell to cell at the atomic microscopic level in the manner of a materials scientist. And, I might add as an aside, the video appearing in the post of 12/3/09 is the highlight of this blog to date and worth the price of admission.

16. With Planck it seems, we get down to real business: what are the effective properties of the fibril? What are the elastic properties of the fibril? We take one couch potato, extract a bone collagen fibril and compare it to another extracted from Triple Crown Winner Assault. How might these bone cells compare? Planck examines this from smallest to largest going up the chain: electron bond, atoms, molecules, cells, fibrils, fibril arrays, to the osteons, cell to cell, unit to unit.

17. The Planck piece changes the focus right down to it's essence. By Planck we change focus from amount and quantity of calcification, which is uncertain, to observable changes in response to exercise and stress that involve orientation, arrangement and shape of bone at the microscopic level. The difference between our unexercised and exercised bone seems to involve the manner in which the calcium is layed down!

Training:
5 days after the last rain we have a lot of mud and standing water here and there but it has dried enough that the horses can do their first running in two weeks. A couple of rare sunny days and then rain comes in again next week. We're just hoping to extract the trailer from the mud one of these days to get the heck out of here.
Tues. 3/16: walk-trot under tack for 20 min. with the horse again stumbling over the terrible going and almost falling on his face. the rider is nervous, but ground slowly improving.
Wed. 3/17: riderless pasture romp.