Rick Kaiser

"Fractal figures are generated by an "iterative" procedure: you apply an equation to a number, apply the same equation to the result and repeat that process over and over again. When the results are translated into a geometric shape, they can produce striking "self-similar" images, forms that contain the same shapes at different scales; for instance, some look uncannily like a snowflake. The tricky part is finding an equation that produces an interesting image. The most famous fractal equation is the 2D Mandelbrot set, named after the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot of Yale University, who coined the name "fractals" for the resulting shapes in 1975. But there are many other types of fractal, both in two and three dimensions. The "Menger sponge" is one of the simplest 3D examples" - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"White's search isn't over, though. He admits the Mandelbulb is not quite the "real" 3D Mandelbrot. "There are still 'whipped cream' sections, where there isn't detail," he explains. "If the real thing does exist – and I'm not saying 100 per cent that it does – one would expect even more variety than we are currently seeing." Part of the problem is that extending the Mandelbrot set to... more... - Rick Kaiser

Doesn't it seem right that this is what the universe looks like? Branes are kind of boring. - Todd Hoff

"Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this. In recent research, published in Applied Physics Letters, Prabhakar Bandaru, a professor in the UCSD Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with graduate student Mark Hoefer, have found that artificially introduced defects in nanotubes can aid the development of supercapacitors." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Specifically, defects on nanotubes create additional charge sites enhancing the stored charge. The researchers have also discovered methods which could increase or decrease the charge associated with the defects by bombarding the CNTs with argon or hydrogen." - Rick Kaiser

"The researchers think that the energy density and power density obtained through their work could be practically higher than existing capacitor configurations which suffer from problems associated with poor reliability, cost, and poor electrical characteristics." - Rick Kaiser

"When it comes to carbon nanotubes, the majority of research so far has focused on small-scale applications. But now, a team of researchers from Rice University has created carbon nanotubes that are hundreds of meters long, yet just 50 micrometers thick. The researchers say there is no limit to how long the nanotubes can be made, which opens the doors to large-scale applications including using nanotubes as electrical transmission lines and as the basis of structural materials." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The Rice project began in 2001, led by the late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley. After years of research investigating solution-processing techniques, the scientists found that a superacid called chlorosulphonic acid could spontaneously dissolve carbon nanotubes at concentrations 1,000 times greater than any other solvent. The method can produce well-aligned carbon nanotubes on a large... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Arbor Networks recently studied Internet traffic patterns and found that U.S. Internet traffic usually reaches its highest point of the day at about 11 p.m. Eastern time and stays pretty high until about 3 a.m. What’s keeping Internet users up at night? Arbor found the answer." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"One is gaming. Arbor found that World of Warcraft’s Battlenet traffic jumps 30% exactly at 8 p.m., which is apparently a popular time for WoW guilds to kick off quests. Traffic from Battlenet peaks around 11 p.m. and then drops off rapidly. Another type of traffic that shows up is from Steam, which powers many multiplayer first-person-shooter games. This curve is a little different, though – jumping up at 2 p.m., peaking around 8 p.m., and staying quite high through midnight" - Rick Kaiser

"The second main factor is video streaming. This is also primarily an afternoon and evening activity, but it peaks at midnight. YouTube serves up a lot of that video, as do adult content sites at the later hours. So, in a sense you could say that what’s keeping Internet users up at night is sex and violence." - Rick Kaiser

"The creation of human iPS cells was first announced in December 2007 by two labs, one in Japan and another in Wisconsin. In both cases, the teams used viruses to insert multiple copies of four genes (eg. c-Myc, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4) into the genome of skin cells. These four genes then produced transcription factors turning on and off other genes, and pushing the cell to "dedifferentiate" into stem cells. While the work was a major breakthrough, it left two major challenges for the field to solve before iPS cell therapy could be considered of any potential practical use. The first involved safety, since the technique relied on potentially harmful genetic manipulation, and worse yet, the insertion of two known cancer-causing genes (c-Myc and Oct4). The second problem was the length and inefficiency of the iPS cell process, which had a success rate of roughly one in 10,000 cells and took about four weeks from start to finish." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Ding and colleagues essentially solved the first problem, the reliance on genetic manipulation, earlier this year in a paper published in Cell Stem Cell (Volume 4, Issue 5, May 8, 2009). In the paper, the researchers demonstrated that they could use purified proteins to transform adult cells all the way back to the most primitive embryonic-like cells, avoiding the problems associated with inserting genes" - Rick Kaiser

"Ding and colleagues tested a number of drug-like molecules, looking for those that inhibited the TGFb (transforming growth factor beta) and the MEK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) pathways, which are known to be involved in the MET process. The researchers identified the most active compounds, then looked at their effects on stem cell creation when used singly and in combination.... more... - Rick Kaiser

"The research, published in Nature, proves the existence of atom-sized ‘magnetic charges’ that behave and interact just like more familiar electric charges. It also demonstrates a perfect symmetry between electricity and magnetism – a phenomenon dubbed ‘magnetricity’ by the authors from the LCN and the Science and Technology Facility Council’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

Dr Sean Giblin, instrument scientist at ISIS and co-author of the paper, added: “The results were astounding, using muons at ISIS we are finally able to confirm that magnetic charge really is conducted through certain materials at certain temperatures – just like the way ions conduct electricity in water.” - Rick Kaiser

"A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

“If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet,” Chatterjee said. “A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter creates its own tectonics.” By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs was between 8 and 10 kilometers (5 and 6.2 miles) wide." - Rick Kaiser

"The researchers found that even a few minutes with the attractive woman was enough to make the students slower and less accurate on the test. The more attracted they were, the worse their results. They also studied the effects on women students of being in the company of handsome men, and found the test scores were unaffected." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The idea for the study came from one of the scientists, who was so impressed by a beautiful woman he met that when she asked where he lived, he had forgotten his own address! He had temporarily lost his mind." - Rick Kaiser

From the comments: "See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." -- Robin Williams - Simon

"This magnificent 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire southern and northern celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, which we see edge-on from our perspective on Earth, cuts a luminous swath across the image. The projection used in GigaGalaxy Zoom place the viewer in front of our Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image — almost as if we were looking at the Milky Way from the outside. From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and glowing nebulae, which harbours bright, young stars, as well as the Galaxy’s central bulge and its satellite galaxies." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

http://www.gigagalaxyzoom.org - Rick Kaiser

http://www.sergebrunier.com/galleri... - Rick Kaiser

"While researchers have already demonstrated the building blocks for few-bit quantum computers, scaling these systems up to large quantum computers remains a challenge. One of the biggest problems is developing physical systems that can reliably store thousands of qubits, and enabling bits and pairs to be addressed individually for gate operations. With this issue in mind, scientists have recently proposed a quantum computing scheme that uses an ensemble of about 100 billion electron spins. They show that hundreds of physical qubits can be made from these collective electron spin excitations. The researchers, Janus Wesenberg from the University of Oxford, and coauthors from Oxford, Yale University and the University of Aarhus in Denmark, have published the proposed system in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

“Firstly, there is the idea to couple an ensemble of electron spins to a stripline resonator,” he said. “While this is a novel idea, it is a straightforward extension of previous work (by Peter Zoller and many others), on coupling ensembles of polar molecules, Rydberg atoms etc. to such stripline cavities. The main advantage of using electron spins is that they can simply be smeared... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Topping the list of exciting new views are colourful multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation" and a butterfly-shaped nebula. Hubble's suite of new instruments now allows it to study the Universe's across a wide swath of the light spectrum, from ultraviolet light all the way to near-infrared light. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to map the structure of the cosmic web that permeates the Universe and also the distribution of the chemical elements that are fundamental to life as we know it." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The new instruments are more sensitive to light and therefore will significantly improve Hubble's observing efficiency. The space telescope is now able to complete observations in a fraction of the time that was needed with earlier generations of Hubble instruments. Therefore the space observatory today is significantly more powerful than it has ever been. " - Rick Kaiser

"The scientists suggest that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

I've read a number of plausible theories for the origins of life over the years, and I find myself wondering... maybe the answer is a combination of some, or even all, of these theories? - Rick Kaiser

"Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us. Michael Brooks presents thirteen of the most perplexing. Cracking any one of them could yield profound truths." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing? "Personally, I'm betting that sunspots are coming back," says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, "there is some evidence that they won't." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"This work has caused a sensation in the field of solar physics," comments NASA sunspot expert David Hathaway, who is not directly involved in the research. "It's controversial stuff." The controversy is not about the data. "We know Livingston and Penn are excellent observers," says Hathaway. "The trend that they have discovered appears to be real." The part colleagues have trouble... more... - Rick Kaiser

If sunspots do go away, it wouldn't be the first time. In the 17th century, the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotlessness known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists. The sunspot drought began in 1645 and lasted until 1715; during that time, some of the best astronomers in history (e.g., Cassini) monitored the sun and failed to count more than a few dozen sunspots... more... - Rick Kaiser

"A primitive quantum computer that uses single particles of light (photons) whizzing through a silicon chip has performed its first mathematical calculation. This is the first time a calculation has been performed on a photonic chip and it is major step forward in the quest to realise a super-powerful quantum computer. The chip takes four photons that carry the input for the calculation, it then implements a quantum programme (Shor’s algorithm) to find the prime factors of 15, and outputs the answer - 3 and 5. The results are reported by a team of physicists and engineers from the University of Bristol in today’s issue of Science." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The chip takes four photons that carry the input for the calculation, it then implements a quantum programme (Shor’s algorithm) to find the prime factors of 15, and outputs the answer - 3 and 5. The results are reported by a team of physicists and engineers from the University of Bristol in today’s issue of Science. “This task could be done much faster by any school kid,” said PhD... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles proposed by physicists that carry a single magnetic pole, either a magnetic North pole or South pole. In the material world this is quite exceptional because magnetic particles are usually observed as dipoles, north and south combined. However there are several theories that predict the existence of monopoles. Among others, in 1931 the physicist Paul Dirac was led by his calculations to the conclusion that magnetic monopoles can exist at the end of tubes - called Dirac strings - that carry magnetic field. Until now they have remained undetected." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"During the neutron scattering measurements a magnetic field was applied to the crystal by the researchers. With this field they could influence the symmetry and orientation of the strings. Thereby it was possible to reduce the density of the string networks and promote the monopole dissociation. As a result, at temperatures from 0.6 to 2 Kelvin, the strings are visible and have magnetic monopoles at their ends. " - Rick Kaiser

"A laboratory study by University of Maryland researchers suggests that some of the worst fears about a virulent H1N1 pandemic flu season may not be realized this year, but does demonstrate the heightened communicability of the virus. Using ferrets exposed to three different viruses, the Maryland researchers found no evidence that the H1N1 pandemic variety, responsible for the so-called swine flu, combines in a lab setting with other flu strains to form a more virulent 'superbug.' Rather, the pandemic virus prevailed and out-competed the other strains, reproducing in the ferrets, on average, twice as much." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Some of the animals who were infected with both the new virus and one of the more familiar seasonal viruses (H3N2) developed not only respiratory symptoms, but intestinal illness as well. Perez and his team call for additional research to see whether this kind of co-infection and multiple symptoms may account for some of the deaths attributed to the new virus. Among other research... more... - Rick Kaiser

"A study published in the July 17 issue of the journal Science details how sandfish -- small lizards with smooth scales -- move rapidly underground through desert sand. In this first thorough examination of subsurface sandfish locomotion, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that the animals place their limbs against their sides and create a wave motion with their bodies to propel themselves through granular media." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The sandfish used in this study inhabits the Sahara desert in Africa and is approximately four inches long. It uses its long, wedge-shaped snout and countersunk lower jaw to rapidly bury into and swim within sand. The sandfish's body has flattened sides and is covered with smooth shiny scales, its legs are short and sturdy with long and flattened fringed toes and its tail tapers to a fine point." - Rick Kaiser

"The laws of physics, which describe everything from electricity to moving objects to energy conservation, are time-invariant. That is, the laws still hold if time is reversed. However, this time reversal symmetry is in direct contrast with everyday phenomena, where it’s obvious that time moves forward and not backward. For example, when milk is spilt, it can’t flow back up into the glass, and when pots are broken, their pieces can’t shatter back together. This irreversibility is formalized through the second law of thermodynamics, which says that entropy always increases or stays the same, but never decreases." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

David Deutsch proposed a related thought experiment on a macroscopic sentient observer to 'verify' the Many Worlds interpretation, by constructing a reversible machine intelligence, who could make observations, and then be quantum erased (run in reverse). By making three measurements, and erasing the second one, it can be shown that MWI is correct and Copenhagen is wrong (that is, the... more... - Ray Cromwell

"Researchers Kirsten Bohn and Mike Smotherman in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M, George Pollak at the University of Texas at Austin and Barbara Schmidt-French from Bat Conservation International (now at Bat World in Mineral Wells, Texas) spent three years analyzing thousands of Brazilian free-tailed (also known as Mexican free-tailed) bat recordings to understand their meanings. They determined that male bats have very distinguishable syllables and phrases that they use as love songs to attract females and in some cases, to warn other males to stay away." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"With the possible exception of whales, you normally don't have this type of communication technique," she adds. "You see it frequently in birds, but that's about it. We've learned the vocal production of bats is very specific and patterned, and now we have a model not only to study communication similarities in other animals, but also human speech. We think this is a big first step." - Rick Kaiser

Cool! But are we talking Barry White? Hinder? Weird Al? - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

"The Encyclopedia of Life, an online project launched in 2007 with the aim of creating a webpage on every known animal and plant species, has reached 150,000 entries in its second year. In a statement marking the anniversary, the collaborative project said close to two million people from more than 200 countries had contributed to the website (www.eol.org). Users can create a page that describes a plant or animal with text, images or both. The information is then submitted to experts, verified and made available for free. The project's creators hope to accumulate a page for every 1.8 million animal and plant species known to scientists over 10 years." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Researchers Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler from the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics have created the temperature-regulating mug using phase change material (PCM). PCM is capable of storing and releasing large amounts of heat by changing its phase, such as changing from a solid to a liquid. To design the new mug, the researchers first created a hollow porcelain shell filled with ribbons of highly conductive aluminum. The aluminum formed a honeycomb structure, which the researchers filled with solid PCM. When the mug is filled with a hot beverage, the PCM absorbs the heat and melts like wax into a liquid. This process cools the beverage down to the optimal temperature. As the beverage cools over time, the PCM slowly releases the stored heat back into the drink, maintaining the optimal temperature for up to 30 minutes." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Even as low-carbohydrate/high-protein diets have proven successful at helping individuals rapidly lose weight, little is known about the diets' long-term effects on vascular health. Now, a study led by a scientific team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides some of the first data on this subject, demonstrating that mice placed on a 12-week low carbohydrate/high-protein diet showed a significant increase in atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque in the heart's arteries and a leading cause of heart attack and stroke. The findings also showed that the diet led to an impaired ability to form new blood vessels in tissues deprived of blood flow, as might occur during a heart attack." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Since there was no difference in the noxious or inflammatory stimuli that the animals' blood vessels were exposed to, Foo wondered whether the restorative capacity of the animals might be contributing to the difference. The investigators, therefore, looked at the animals' endothelial or vascular progenitor cell (EPC) counts. Derived from bone marrow, the EPC cells may play a role in... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Even more important, he notes, the findings point out that there can be a disconnect between weight loss or serum markers and vascular health, and that vascular health can be affected by macronutrients other than fat and cholesterol - in this case, protein and carbohydrates. " - Rick Kaiser

"Citing earlier work by other researchers, Uomini points out that handedness does not mean that one hand is “dominant” over the other. Rather, she writes, “both hands have different but equally important roles.” In right-handed people, for example, the right hand might be used for tasks requiring greater manual dexterity whereas the left hand might perform the more mundane but nevertheless crucial role of supporting an object. (Imagine eating dinner with just a knife but no fork, for example.) In human children, this kind of handedness begins to emerge between 7 and 13 months of age and is well-established by age 3. In nonhuman primates, however, there is no evidence of species-wide bias for one hand or the other, although some individual primate populations do show such trends. Yet even those trends are not consistent: Although researchers studying the captive chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta have found that they tend to be right-handed for many... more... - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Uomini argues that these findings are similar to those found in studies of nonhuman primates, in which the degree of handedness varies depending on the complexity of the task they are facing and the level of skill required to perform it. The nut-cracking task required five basic actions, Uomini says—“grasp nut, place nut on anvil, grasp hammer, hit nut, and eat nut”—whereas the puzzle... more... - Rick Kaiser

Maybe you could express the ratio like a differential equation, and that 15% left handed people are around the balance point? If we can use flamingo data: "Those that prefer to rest their heads to the left are more likely to be involved in aggressive encounters with other birds" http://ff.im/6xXs9. Add this: “tend to be pushier, more dominant, more manipulative, more self-centred – all... more... - Eivind

"The universal lingua franca of our age is information. We are used to the idea that stock and bond prices, books, photographs, movies, music and our genetic makeup can all be turned into data streams of zeros and ones. These bits are the elemental atoms of information that are transmitted over an Ethernet cable or via wireless, that are stored, replayed, copied and assembled into gigantic repositories of knowledge. Information does not depend on the substrate. The same information can be represented as lines on paper, as electrical charges inside a PC’s memory banks or as the strength of the synaptic connections among nerve cells. Since the early days of computers, scholars have argued that the subjective, phenomenal states that make up the life of the mind are intimately linked to the information expressed at that time by the brain. Yet they have lacked the tools to turn this hunch into a concrete and predictive theory. Enter psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the... more... - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"IIT is in its infancy and lacks the graces of a fully developed theory. A major question that it so far leaves unanswered is, Why should natural selection evolve creatures with high Φ? What benefit for the survival of the organism flows from consciousness? One answer that I hope for is that intelligence, the ability to assess situations never previously encountered and to rapidly come... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Using the NACO adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope the astronomers obtained the sharpest image yet of RCW 38. They focused on a small area in the centre of the cluster that surrounds the massive star IRS2, which glows in the searing, white-blue range, the hottest surface colour and temperatures possible for stars. These dramatic observations revealed that IRS2 is actually not one, but two stars — a binary system consisting of twin scorching stars, separated by about 500 times the Earth-Sun distance." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"As if intense ultraviolet rays were not enough, crowded stellar nurseries like RCW 38 also subject their brood to frequent supernovae, as giant stars explode at the ends of their lives. These explosions scatter material throughout nearby space, including rare isotopes — exotic forms of chemical elements that are created in these dying stars. This ejected material ends up in the next... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Since the early days of quantum mechanics, scientists have been trying to understand the many strange implications of the theory: superpositions, wave-particle duality, and the observer’s role in measurements, to name a few. Now, a new proposed law of physics that describes the geometry of physical reality on the cosmological scale might help answer some of these questions. Plus, the new law could give some clues about the role of gravity in quantum physics, possibly pointing the way to a unified theory of physics." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

I love this quote (itself a quote within the original paper): "The task is not to make sense of the quantum axioms by heaping more structure, more definitions, more science fiction imagery on top of them, but to throw them away wholesale and start afresh. We should be relentless in asking ourselves: From what deep physical principles might we derive this exquisite structure? These principles should be crisp, they should be compelling. They should stir the soul." - Joel Webber

"NASA's space shuttle program is winding down. With only about half a dozen more flights, shuttle crews will put the finishing touches on the International Space Station (ISS), bringing to an end twelve years of unprecedented orbital construction. The icon and workhorse of the American space program will have finished its Great Task. But, as Apple's CEO Steve Jobs might say, there is one more thing... An act of Congress in 2008 added another flight to the schedule near the end of the program. Currently scheduled for 2010, this extra flight of the shuttle is going to launch a hunt for antimatter galaxies. The device that does the actual hunting is called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer--or AMS for short. It's a $1.5 billion cosmic ray detector that the shuttle will deliver to the ISS." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"...AMS will detect particles such as heavy nuclei that have vastly higher energies than particle accelerators can muster. The most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, can collide particles with a combined energy of about 7 tera-electronvolts (TeV, a common way to measure energy in particle physics). In contrast, cosmic rays can have energies... more... - Rick Kaiser

"In all, water exhibits 66 known anomalies, including a strangely varying density, large heat capacity and high surface tension. Contrary to other "normal" liquids, which become increasingly denser as they get colder, water reaches its maximum density at about 4 degrees Celsius. Above and below this temperature, water is less dense; this is why, for example, lakes freeze from the surface down. Water also has an unusually large capacity to store heat, which stabilizes the temperature of the oceans, and a high surface tension, which allows insects to walk on water, droplets to form and trees to transport water to great heights." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

:D - Eivind

"Walking outdoors in the fall, the splendidly colorful leaves adorning the trees are a delight to the eye. In Europe these autumn leaves are mostly yellow, while the United States and East Asia boast lustrous red foliage. But why is it that there are such differences in autumnal hues around the world? A new theory provided by Prof. Simcha Lev-Yadun of the Department of Science Education- Biology at the University of Haifa-Oranim and Prof. Jarmo Holopainen of the University of Kuopio in Finland and published in the Journal New Phytologist proposes taking a step 35 million years back to solve the color mystery." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"According to the theory provided by Prof. Lev-Yadun and Prof. Holopainen, until 35 million years ago, large areas of the globe were covered with evergreen jungles or forests composed of tropical trees. During this phase, a series of ice ages and dry spells transpired and many tree species evolved to become deciduous. Many of these trees also began an evolutionary process of producing... more... - Ken Morley