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Showing posts from September 18, 2016

The Bird-Based Color System that Eventually Became Pantone

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The Bird-Based Color System that Eventually Became Pantone by  Allison Meier  on  September 22, 2016 Bird diagram from Robert Ridgway’s ‘A nomenclature of colors for naturalists : and compendium of useful knowledge for ornithologists’ (1886) (via  Smithsonian Libraries ) WASHINGTON, DC — An effort to describe the diversity of birds led to one of the first modern color systems. Published by Smithsonian ornithologist  Robert Ridgway  in 1886,  A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists  categorizes 186 colors alongside diagrams of birds. In 1912, Ridgway self-published an expanded version for a broader audience —  Color Standards and Color Nomenclature  — that included 1,115 colors. Some referenced birds, like “Warbler Green” and “Jay Blue,” while others corresponded to nature, as in “Bone Brown” and “Storm Gray.” Colors in Robert Ridgway’s ‘Color Standards and Color Nomenclature’ (1912), including “Peacock Blue” (via  Biodiversity Heritage Library/Missouri Botanica

11 clever kitchen hacks that only the professionals know

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11 clever kitchen hacks that only the professionals know Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest They say that architects cover their mistakes with ivy, chefs with mayonnaise. Unfortunately, not all your cooking mishaps can be fixed with the help of a thick layer of sauce. Sometimes you need to make use of much more tricky hacks. But don’t worry! In fact, from overcooking to oversalting, you can use  simple ingredients to balance flavors and mask those screwups. So before throwing out the dish you just made, or offering it to the dog, check out our culinary life hacks that will help you rescue your dinner and your pride. 1. Tough meat Have you ever bought meat which really looked good but after cooking got hard and difficult to chew? If your answer is ’yes,’ don’t worry. Here are a few tricks to end up with tender, great-tasting meat every time. Use fruits . Apple, pineapple, mango, and pear all work well. Peel the fruit if necessary, then cut i

Research on stress hormone effects on the brain reveals unexpected findings

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Research on stress hormone effects on the brain reveals unexpected findings September 23, 2016 Credit: University of Bristol Stress is a common problem often resulting in poor health and mental disorders. New research has revealed that current concepts on how stress hormones act on the brain may need to be reassessed. It is thought that disturbances in the action of  stress hormones  play a key role in causing  mental disorders , like major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Learning to cope with  stressful events is known to require changes in the expression of genes in the hippocampus, a limbic brain region involved in learning and memory. Such changes in gene expression are brought about by stress-induced glucocorticoid hormones acting via receptors that can directly bind to genes and alter their expression. A BBSRC-funded study, published in the international journal  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  ( PNAS ), has found that t