Started in 1974, the Nikon Small World Competition has been recognizing excellence in photography through the microscope.

"A photomicrograph is a technical document that can be of great significance to science or industry. But a good photomicrograph is also an image whose structure, color, composition, and content is an object of beauty, open to several levels of comprehension and appreciation."

Today, we're taking a look at a selection of palettes from the top photos in the 2009 competition.

This Year's Winners

Inspiration

Color is normally thought of as a fundamental attribute of an object: a red Corvette, a blue lake, a pink flamingo. Yet despite this popular notion, new research suggests that our perception of color is malleable, and relies heavily on biological processes of the eye and brain.

The brain's neural mechanisms keep straight which color belongs to what object, so one doesn't mistakenly see a blue flamingo in a pink lake. But what happens when a color loses the object to which it is linked? Research at the University of Chicago has demonstrated, for the first time, that instead of disappearing along with the lost object, the color latches onto a region of some other object in view – a finding that reveals a new basic property of sight.

The research shows that the brain processes the shape of an object and its color in two separate pathways and, though the object's shape and color normally are linked, the neural representation of the color can survive alone. When that happens, the brain establishes a new link that binds the color to another visible shape.

"Color is in the brain. It is constructed, just as the meanings of words are constructed. Without the neural processes of the brain, we wouldn't be able to understand colors of objects any more than we could understand words of a language we hear but don't know," said Steven Shevell, a University of Chicago psychologist who specializes on color and vision.

Shevell's findings are reported in a paper, "Color-Binding Errors During Rivalrous Suppression of Form," in the current issue of Psychological Science. Wook Hong, who received his Ph.D. at UChicago and is now a post-doctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University, joined Shevell in writing the paper and conducting the research.

Their work expands the understanding of how the brain is able to integrate the multiple features of an object, such as shape, color, location and velocity, into a unified whole.

"An aspect of human vision that we normally don't appreciate is that different features of an object, including color and shape, can be represented in different parts of the brain," said Shevell, the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology and Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

If a person sees a basketball coming, it is perceived as having a particular color, shape and velocity. "The knitting together, or what can be called 'neural gluing,' of all those different features so we see a unified object is a complex function done by the brain. Our research focused on how the brain does that," Shevell explained.

The Hubble telescope is back online after undergoing a billion dollar repair mission earlier this year. After installing two new cameras, other science instruments and replacing broken parts, Hubble is returning the sharpest and most colorful images the Earth has ever seen.

To create your own Hubble inspired palettes using PHOTOCOPA simply click on the image. To see palettes other users have created based on the image click on the palette.

These two images of a huge pillar of star birth demonstrate how observations taken in visible and in infrared light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal dramatically different and complementary views of an object.

The pictures demonstrate one example of the broad wavelength range of the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard the Hubble telescope, extending from ultraviolet to visible to infrared light.

Composed of gas and dust, the pillar resides in a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The pair of images shows that astronomers are given a much more complete view of the pillar and its contents when distinct details not seen at visible wavelengths are uncovered in near-infrared light.

A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young, blue stars to aging, red stars.

Unfortunately, it 's not directly related to the amount of wisdom one holds but rather the amount of hydrogen peroxide built up in your hair follicles.

"Not only blondes change their hair color with hydrogen peroxide," said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "All of our hair cells make a tiny bit of hydrogen peroxide, but as we get older, this little bit becomes a lot. We bleach our hair pigment from within, and our hair turns gray and then white. This research, however, is an important first step to get at the root of the problem, so to speak."

mandymooo

The team of Eurpoean scientists, including Gerald Weissmann, made this discovery by examining cell cultures of human hair follicles. They found that the build up of hydrogen peroxide was caused by a reduction of an enzyme that breaks up hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen (catalase). They also discovered that hair follicles could not repair the damage caused by the hydrogen peroxide because of low levels of enzymes that normally serve this function (MSR A and B). Further complicating matters, the high levels of hydrogen peroxide and low levels of MSR A and B, disrupt the formation of an enzyme (tyrosinase) that leads to the production of melanin in hair follicles. Melanin is the pigment responsible for hair color, skin color, and eye color. The researchers speculate that a similar breakdown in the skin could be the root cause of vitiligo.

Charles Masters & Vít Hassan

Grey Hair from the COLOURlovers' Library

Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a professor of Pyschology at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, and the famed creator of the Rotating snakes illusion, has been updating his site since 2002 and it is full of intriguing color illusion. He is also responsible for inspiring the artwork on Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion album.

Four Tanks

There are two pairs, each of which consists of two squares of the same color. Which are the two pairs?
Answer of "Four tanks": the pair of the leftmost square and the neighboring one, and the pair of the rightmost square and the neighboring one

Squares of four colors

Copyright Akiyoshi Kitaoka 2007 (February 15)

It appears that there were squares of four colors, though there are two colors (red and green) for squares.

These fascinating images, tagged 'radiology art', were created using a CT scanner by artist turned doctor Satre Stuelke.

About the Project

In the summer of 2007, artist and medical student Satre Stuelke started the Radiology Art project. Dedicated to the deeper visualization of various objects that hold unique cultural importance in modern society, this project intends to plant a seed of scientific creativity in the minds of all those inclined to participate. limited edition prints are available of some images. Please email prints@radiologyart.com for information.

Barbie Doll & Squeaking Rubber Ducky

METHODS
Stuelke acquires the images on an older four-slice CT scanner that is used for research. Most scan parameters include a 120kV tube voltage, 100mA current, 0.625mm slice thickness and interval, 1:1 pitch, 1.25mm beam collimation, and a speed of 1.25mm/rotation. The resulting DICOM images are then processed in Osirix software on a Macintosh iMac computer. Colors are assigned based on the varying densities of materials present throughout the object. Depending on the spread of densities within a particular subject, black or white backgrounds are chosen. Images are further processed in Adobe Photoshop for proper contrast and balance.

Sunbeam Egg Cooker & Sunbeam Mixer

This content was reposted from the Shopping Journal. You can see the original post here.

If you are a smart shopper, it is not that easy to persuade you to actually buy something. There is the science behind how the products are organized, labels are written and sections are ordered to guide you through to making a purchase. That’s a wealth of tricks based on psychological theories and practices that in the end “convert” you from a regular visitor into the buyer.

One of the most powerful methods to appeal to a potential buyer is applying color theory to (e)commerce. Has it ever occurred to you why you feel safer in one store and more energetic in another one? Have you ever noticed that landing on some web page you feel like clicking some button/link and keep browsing the site? While other pages prompt you to stay and keep reading? To some extent, this might be the choice of colors for the page elements.

Color is believed to be one of the most powerful elements of design for web sites, direct mail, ads, and other marketing materials. It carries meaning through associations and/or your body physical response. Color associates can vary from country to country but in Western culture they are basically the same.

So don’t let (online) sellers affect your decision by showing you what you want to see. Let’s see how color choice may affect your shopping behavior and habits - for you to be able to buy with a cool head.

Colors inspired by beautiful images of planet Earth, our moon, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter & Mars. These images, along with others, were complied by bitbox and are from NASA under a Public Domain License. You can check out a previous post of Colors from Outer Space here.

You may remember a few weeks ago in one of the weekly color roundups we mentioned an article about a recent study done by the University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business testing cognitive response in relation to color. With such an interesting and important findings, especially being related to color, I thought we should take a closer look at the findings.

In a yearlong study 600 participants were asked to complete a series of six cognitive tasks that required either attention to detail or creativity. The tasks were conducted on a computer screen with either a red, blue, or white background.

It was found that red increased detail oriented cognitive function such as proofreading and memory by 31% compared to blue which was found to double creative responses in brainstorming exercises compared to those with a red background.

The author of the study, Juliet Zhu of UBC’s Sauder School of Business, who conducted the study with Ravi Mehta, a doctoral student, attribute the findings to unconscious motivation in response to color, noting that these responses develop due to learned associations.

Here’s a roundup of the most colorful art, products, websites and such that I’ve come across in the last week.

Articles

Reinvent Wheel? Blue Room. Defusing a Bomb? Red Room.

nytimes

Trying to improve your performance at work or write that novel? Maybe it’s time to consider the color of your walls or your computer screen.

If a new study is any guide, the color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative... continue reading at nytimes.com

Green Design

Greener Gadgets Competition

Greener Gadgets; core77; Inhabitat

Some entries from the Greener Gadgets Competition hosted by Inhabitat and Core77. Voting for the top designs is open to the public. So, if you're interested jump over here and weigh-in on the competition.