The Evening Standard (London, England) articles from December 2007

The Evening Standard (London, England) archives from December 2007

This month in odyssey.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ODYSSEY's art director, Ann Dillon, loves color more than anyone I know (Perhaps, not quite as much as our cover model!). Ann dresses in bright colors, crafts jewelry of polymer clay in equally bright hues, and...

What color is your blood?(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Red, right? That is, of course, unless you're a Vulcan like Mr. Spock aboard the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek. But doctors in Canada recently got a "Spock shock" when a patient they were operating on started...

Can you dig it?(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Life's a melon. In this case, a 2,100-year-old bit of biological refuse believed to be the oldest melon that still has fruit on the rind. This little slice of life was found by archaeologists digging in Moriyama Japan, about 205 miles...

A genius for seafood.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Why does a lobster turn red when it's cooked? That sounds like an easy question. Except that for over fifty years, scientists (including Nobel Prize winners) haven't been able to provide a complete answer--until now!...

Was Columbus a chicken?(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(Christopher Columbus)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... No. And that's why he certainly wasn't the first person to "discover" America in 1492. You see, researchers have recently unearthed chicken bones on the coast of Chile in South America, which predate Columbus's arrival to "the New World." ...

I, neuron.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Imagine if you could take a computer chip and rig it up so that it could store simple information in live neurons. That, for researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence, would be the Holy Grail. Well,...

A purple frog?(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Purple is a princely color, even for a frog. Meet the purple frog of Suriname, a highland country on the northeast coast of South America. The frog has an elaborate color scheme--an aubergine (sort of eggplant purple) skin with irregular...

The mysterious Mr. Biv.
December 1, 2007... Sir Isaac Newton was the first to make Mr. Biv's acquaintance. The two met in the year 1666. Newton's most famous discovery, that gravity causes apples to fall and moons to orbit, was still two decades in the future. In 1666, Newton...

Fire in the sky: an interview with chemist & colorist John Conkling.(Interview)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Say the word "fireworks" and a burst of color is sure to flash through your imagination--crimson starbursts, green comets, and fiery blue cascades. Dr. John Conkling, an adjunct professor of chemistry at Washington...

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies.
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHY IS THE SKY BLUE? SIMPLE QUESTION, RIGHT? WRONG. Scientists battled with this puzzle for centuries. After all, why isn't it white, or black, or lemon-lime? Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton...

Breaking science: under a purple sky.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] According to Rayleigh scattering, our sky gets its color because our atmosphere scatters short wavelengths of light (like blue). OK, but the purple in natural sunlight has a shorter wavelength than blue. So why don't...

Color by number: Albert Munsell's color system.
December 1, 2007... Is "fern" more similar to "moss" or to "forest?" Any of the three might be fine if you're choosing a T-shirt or painting your room. But what if you re a forensic pathologist? Which name accurately describes an eye color? Or, if you're selling...

Meet color scientist: David R. Wyble.(PEOPLE TO DISCOVER)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "SIMPLY BY BEING HUMAN AND SEEING COLORS, WE ARE ALL IN A VERY REAL SENSE COLOR SCIENTISTS," says David R. Wyble, an associate scientist at the Munsell Color Science Laboratory (MCSL). "We have to perceive colors,...

Color coded.(BRAIN STRAIN)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While exploring Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, astronauts come upon a large rectangular monolith. On the outside of the huge stone block is an array of different colors. The astronauts suspect there is a pattern in the...

Color by computer.
December 1, 2007... Have you ever considered the path that a color, say red, takes in the digital world? "Since when do colors move around?" you might ask. Actually, all the time! They are communicated from place to place, especially between computers, from...

What color is a fire engine?
December 1, 2007... If you're a person with normal color vision, you no doubt reply, "Red, silly!" But if you're one of ten million or more Americans who are color deficient, the answer is not at all obvious. What is red? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Color...

How does pistachio ice cream taste? Green!.
December 1, 2007... When is a sound not a sound? When you're a synesthete, because then it's also a shape, a color, a scent, and a taste. Synesthetes are people with a statistically rare medical condition called synesthesia. Just as "anesthesia" refers to the...

The boy who spoke in colors.
December 1, 2007... He flooded my mind with yellow. At first, I felt cheerful as I looked down on him squirming and pink-faced in his crib. The brightness and intensity of the yellow quickly wore me down, though, making me feel angry and frustrated. The nurse...

The Monet effect.
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] In Claude Monet's masterpiece, Impression: Sunrise, the bright orange Sun, rising above the water, seems to shimmer, as if it were real. Monet (1840-1926), an impressionist painter, was renowned for his use of color...

Primitive paints: made to last many lifetimes.
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHAT'S THE OLDEST PAINTING YOU'VE EVER SEEN? Maybe a Rembrandt or da Vinci's Mona Lisa? These paintings are centuries old, but the primitive paintings on the walls of Egyptian pyramids are 5,000 years old. And...

Do you (really) see red?
December 1, 2007... When we say we're "seeing red," we feel angry. "Feeling blue" means we're sad or depressed. Calling someone "yellow" means the person is cowardly or afraid. People use these common phrases every day. But do colors really affect our...

Red in China actually is related to warm, loyal, kind, lucky, hospitality.
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In one study, researchers from Hong Kong and British Columbia tested responses to made-up "Rainbow Paint" ads. Brightly colored ads resulted in greater feelings of excitement and more positive views of the ad. People...

Conduct a colorful study.(ACTIVITY TO DISCOVER)
December 1, 2007... Design your own study to test people's feelings about color. Think about a question you'd like to investigate. Maybe you want to see what personal qualities your classmates associate with different colors. Or perhaps you want to see whether...

Coloring our world with words.
December 1, 2007... Have you ever "had the blues" after a special friend moved away, or been "green with envy" when that same friend got an iPhone? Today and throughout history, people have used color to express their feelings and describe their world. As a...

The case of the baffling black bloom.
December 1, 2007... Like most mysteries, this one is strange and eerie. It's a black, botanical thriller that remains unsolved. The case of the baffling black bloom started with one question: Is there such a thing as a black flower? Not one bred to be black,...

Tickle me pink!(ASK DR. CY BORG)
December 1, 2007... Dear Dr. B, I've always wondered how color TV works. Can you explain it to me? Aaron, Web post Great question, Aaron. There's a lot of "behind the screen" magic going on to bring you a color television picture. To keep it simple,...

Star chart.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... The monthly All-Sky Chart depicts the sky (minus the Moon) as it appears at 6 p.m. on Dec. 15. Useful all month (except for planet positions), the chart is also accurate for 7 p.m. on Dec. 1 and 5 p.m. on Dec. 31. To use the All-Sky Chart,...

Why the winter solstice was a time of fear.(STARGAZING)(Cartoon)
December 1, 2007... GREETINGS, GREETINGS, FELLOW STARGAZERS. I KNOW A LOT OF US FEAR THE NIGHT. THAT'S EASY TO UNDERSTAND. BUT THE WINTER SOLSTICE? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WELL, TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, THE WINTER SOLSTICE WAS ALMOST UNIVERSALLY FEARED...

Color: A Natural History of the Palette.(KIDS' PICKS)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... COLOR: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay (Random House Trade Paperbacks, Reprint 2003) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What's black, white, and red all over? Not to mention orange, yelling, green, blue, and purple? The book...

Shrimp? I'm not a shrimp!(ANIMAL ANGLES)
December 1, 2007... Sea locust," "thumb splitter," "prawn killer." Not exactly the friendliest of nicknames, right? And these nicknames for the mantis shrimp are well deserved! So, although you probably wouldn't want to get cozy with one, the mantis shrimp is an...