Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Blues!


A Berry So Shiny, It's Irresistible (And Inedible)


Steiner measured that intensity. It's the result of how unusually reflective the berry's skin is. Most surfaces reflect just a small percentage of the light that hits them. However, this berry reflects 30 percent of the light.
In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Steiner says its reflectivity is more intense than any living thing. "We find that it is more intense than, for example, the morpho butterfly, which is usually cited for being one of the most brilliantly colored animals.

True Blue Stands Out in an Earthy Crowd

Scientists, too, have lately been bullish on blue, captivated by its optical purity, complexity and metaphorical fluency. They’re exploring the physics and chemistry of blueness in nature, the evolution of blue ornaments and blue come-ons, and the sheer brazenness of being blue when most earthly life forms opt for earthy raiments of beige, ruddy or taupe.
(..)
As a raft of surveys has shown, blue love is a global affair. Ask people their favorite color, and in most parts of the world roughly half will say blue, a figure three to four times the support accorded common second-place finishers like purple or green. Just one in six Americans is blue-eyed, but nearly one in two consider blue the prettiest eye color, which could be why some 50 percent of tinted contact lenses sold are the kind that make your brown eyes blue.

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