As they cook, the leaves have the shrinking properties of spinach, quickly reducing to a green mush.
Because injectable hydrogels mimic the mechanical, swelling and shrinking properties of the native tissue, they have received increased attention in the fields of wound healing and tissue engineering.
The swelling and shrinking properties of hydrogels are currently being exploited in a number of applications including control of microfluidic flow [ 3], muscle-like actuators [ 4, 5], filtration/separation [ 6], and drug delivery systems [ 7, 8].
Prince George's County, for instance, continues to wrestle with the fallout from shrinking property values, and officials there have been searching for ways to rein in spending.
That stopped the legislature using any of that money for its own fell purposes, which might have included fulfilling a modest request for an extra $280m (in lieu of shrinking property taxes) to help out local governments.
Most fatefully, there's Marigold, a fading 23-year-old who lives in a derelict trailer at the edge of her family's shrinking property, towing cars for a living and avoiding her brutal husband, Hess, a limping former logger who lost his job -- and a testicle -- in a chain-saw accident.
We did this by failing to properly fund schools, making them dependent on shrinking property taxes and by shifting the costs of federal mandates to resource-strapped states and local communities.
She helped drive the campaign to reduce X-rated businesses, saying they contributed to an environment that sprouted crime, shrank property values and daunted many potential visitors and investors.
But by and large, mayors, who are gathered here for their annual conference, have seen revenue either rise a bit or stay stable, deficits shrink, property values increase, new jobs crop up and the quality of life improve.
Not surprisingly, Proposition 5 would also shrink property tax revenues statewide.
After Wall Street's recklessness set off the financial hydrogen bomb, home values plummeted, life savings and retirements were erased, and jobs vanished, California's revenues drop by about $20 billion a year because lower valued homes shrink property taxes and unemployed people cannot pay income taxes.
