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A mysterious thick layer of blue pigment was often found at the bottom of many Maya sacrificial sinkholes, called cenotes. The Maya blue was employed for coloring offerings, pottery, murals, and even the victims of ritual sacrifices. The chemical composition of the pigment has been known for long; also its resistance... |
28 February 2008
03:16 GMT |
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This is exactly what plants do during the photosynthesis: stealing the hydrogen of the water using light. Hydrogen would be a very clean fuel, and a recent Penn State research has made a step further towards this direction. "This is a proof-of-concept system that is very inefficient. But ultimately, catalytic systems... |
18 February 2008
04:15 GMT |
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What's the connection between the red leaves of the fall and human obesity? Anthocyanins are red/purple/reddish pigments encountered in grape skins, blueberries, blackberries, purple corn, and other plant matters, but they give the reddened colors of the autumn leaves as well. Now, a team from Arkansas, led by R... |
12 February 2008
05:46 GMT |
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1.The blood of all humans and animals is salty. Why? Because all animals started to evolve in the ocean, at least 3.8 billion years ago, under the form of unicelular creatures. Thus, the enzymatic systems sustaining life evolved during millions of years in watery conditions of high salt amounts. The content of the so... |
19 November 2007
14:11 GMT |
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The penis is a gift of evolution. At least in the case of fish, in which most species have an external fecundation (like we see in most frogs and toads), and a penis would be useless. (the sole exception are sharks, rays, and species of Poeciliidae family and related groups, tiny tropical species, some very common in... |
16 November 2007
14:06 GMT |
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Every autumn we look in melancholy at the falling leaves. But before falling, the leaves get yellow and orange with shades of red. But why this diversity in the color of the fallen leaves? The undergraduate research project of Emily Habinck at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, revealed that the color of ... |
1 November 2007
04:20 GMT |
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Heterochromia is a condition best recognized by the different coloring of one's eyes, hair or skin. The most common type is heterochromia iridis or heterochromia iridium, where the irises can either have an entirely different hue from one another (complete heterochromia) or only differently discolored spots (par... |
4 October 2007
14:51 GMT |
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Plants can be compared to nice human bodies: their colors reflect the plant's health. A plant's main pigments are of two types: caretonoids, the 'precursors' of the vitamin A that give yellow-orange-red hues and anthocyanins that create blue-red hues. A new research has made a crucial advance in ... |
3 October 2007
05:41 GMT |
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What makes people black or white (and not only people)? It's the pigment melanin (or its scarcity), which blackens the skin and hair in mammals. The pigment is synthesized in specialized cells, melanocytes and then delivered to other cells. But not all the skin cells are loaded with melanin. A team at the Massac... |
7 September 2007
05:27 GMT |
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All men who go clubbing know it: in the dark, all the girls are pretty. That's another story during daylight. Try the opposite and it will also result tricky: from the outdoors on a bright sunny day into a dark room, we can hardly distinguish anything at first. But we gradually start to detect the room's c... |
15 August 2007
04:52 GMT |
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Normally, people have three types of cone cells for daylight, for detecting different colors. But some women can see extra colors as they have four types of cone cell receptors. They are called tetrachromats. Compared to them, we all are color blind.The first tetrachromat woman was discovered by researchers at Cambri... |
26 June 2007
14:16 GMT |
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Want sex? Put on the showiest clothing, drive the shiniest car, display the catchiest tattoos and maybe you'll get some. Or at least you have tried. But that's, in fact, an ancestral animal trait; that we still have to do it. Just look at the bright colors in feathers, scales, faces, or insect wings. But i... |
28 April 2007
06:25 GMT |
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We live in a green world, but the ancient Earth could have been wrapped in a purple mantle. The eldest microbes might have employed another molecule than chlorophyll to get advantage of the Sun's energy. Chlorophyll absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths of the sunlight and as it reflects green ones, the plants... |
11 April 2007
05:52 GMT |
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