MichelledeVilliers

The Harvard Color Detectives

Inside the Arthur M. Sackler Art Museum, below a vast glass roof and above a neo-classical series of stone gray columns, hangs a fake painting. It’s a Mark Rothko—or rather, a replica of a Rothko. The canvas is covered in moody indigo and vibrant crimson. It shows a square of color, patchy and …

Michdevilish Musings

Ra Ra Ropes!

Around 3000 years old, and beautiful.<p>Go forth; eat your olives and live long! Also, stay on the high horse. Avoid the olive fruit fly.<p>h/t: Tree …

Scientists discover world's oldest colour – bright pink

Scientists have discovered what they say are the world’s oldest colours – and they are bright pink.<p>The pigments were discovered after researchers crushed 1.1bn-year-old rocks found in a marine shale deposit, beneath the Sahara desert, in the Taoudeni basin in Mauritania, west Africa.<p>“Of course you …

The Entire History of Steel

From hunks of iron streaking through the sky, to the construction of skyscrapers and megastructures, this is the history of the world's greatest alloy.<p>The story of steel begins long before bridges, I-beams, and skyscrapers. It begins in the stars.<p>Billions of years before humans walked the …

Greek Goddesses

Mystery of Charles Darwin's flying spiders solved - they harness electricity

You might assume that evolution gave Charles Darwin enough to ponder during his five year voyage on The Beagle.<p>But of all the phenomena the naturalist encountered circumnavigating the globe, it was the flight of spiders which continued to puzzle him.<p>Darwin noticed that hundreds of spiders would …

DNA-Repairing Sunscreen: Legit or Not?

Having grown up in Tucson, Arizona, one of the sunniest cities in the world, I consider myself well-versed in the carcinogenic threat of UV exposure, …

Vetted

Check-up: done. <br>Sleep of the just. <br>The mulberries are ripening. <br>I will be gone for a while; posting may slow.<br>More Michdevilish Merch! …

Social Yeast in Time

I'm having rice cakes and Marmite to boost my yeast / Vitamin B intake. I never knew there was such a thing as marmite chocolate!<b><br>Die Botter …

Soccer it Up!

A Cup Size Phallacy<br>More Michdevilish Merch! http://www.redbubble.com/people/michdevilish

Hoppy Hun Solo

h/t: When it's good to be Antisocial - Nautilus<br>The sun is shining; the bees are buzzing. I have had a good encounter after the rain: what beautiful …

The Neuroscience of Pain

Brain imaging is illuminating the neural patterns behind pain’s infinite variety.<p>On a foggy February morning in Oxford, England, I arrived at the John Radcliffe Hospital, a shiplike nineteen-seventies complex moored on a hill east of the city center, for the express purpose of being hurt. I had an …

Rain

Composing Your Thoughts - Issue 61: Coordinates

<b>1.</b> <b>Unshaven and one bit short</b>To death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin’s binary list of life’s certainties, add the expectation that this six-note …

The Longest Day

We are in the centre of summer. There’s a snake in the garden.<br>WIP: see it finished on Saatchi.<br>More Michdevilish Merch! …

Bringing the Ocean Home

Bernd Brunner on the English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse and how his 1854 book <i>The Aquarium</i>, complete with spectacular illustrations and a dizzy …

Swings and Roundabouts

Add some color.<br>H/T: Science Friday - CRISPR, Colors, Narwhals More Michdevilish Merch! http://www.redbubble.com/people/michdevilish

The Seamstress And The Secrets Of The Argonaut Shell

The ancient Greeks were masters of creating legends of the sea. In the epic quest, Jason and the Argonauts, a band of heroes aboard the <i>Argo</i> sailed …

Uplifting

Redshift, blueshift;<br>Keep lifting.<br>Or just lick your pause.<br>More Michdevilish Merch! http://www.redbubble.com/people/michdevilish

One Word: Castration

We defend ourselves not against castration anxiety but against death, a far more absolute castration.—Ernest Becker<i>, The Denial of Death</i><p>The university library at my medical school was shared with students of veterinary medicine. Sometimes I’d find myself at a desk opposite one of the vet students; …

A Fine Day for Fledg(e)lings

They are everywhere!More Michdevilish Merch! http://www.redbubble.com/people/michdevilish

The nautilus’s impressive memory has survived five mass extinctions

But one thing's for sure: This creature of the deep has an incredible memory.<p>Number 51 loves frozen shrimp. The nautilus’ keepers, Brooklyn College professor Jennifer Basil and Ph.D. student Naomi Lewandowski, buy the marine meal from the Target across the street. They keep it frozen, and on a …

Black Hole Seizes Stars

Anansi!<br>h/t: Black Holes Really Know How To Savor their Meals - The Atlantic - Marina Koren;<br>Gut vagal sensory signaling regulates hippocampus function …