There’s a little earless lizard living in the gypsum dune fields southwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico, that can hide from its predators in broad daylight. The dune field is the White Sands National Monument, the world’s largest, at 275 square miles. Because of gypsum’s high albedo, White Sands is also one of the brightest areas […]

Strut, booby, strut.   Swooping into land, the blue-footed booby flares his wings and settles in front of the ladybird he likes. His heartbeat starts to race as he shows off his wingspan. She seems to like that; she shows her wingspan back. So far, so good. He lifts his neck; she lifts her neck; […]

“C’mon, Lillian, just pick one,” says Jim. “It doesn’t really matter. We shouldn’t need to spend a half an hour in Walgreens every time.” Lillian, ignoring him, continues to scrutinize a bottle of metallic blue nail polish and a bottle of alloy blue nail polish, her face twisted in concentration. Jim looks at his watch. […]

Charles Revson, the famously irascible founder of Revlon Cosmetics, once opined that “in the factory, we make cosmetics, in the store, we sell hope.” But the majority of consumers tend to purchase items in colors that subjectively please them, with little objective evaluation of how products will look once applied. And if you’re a manufacturer, […]