Posted in Science, Uncategorized, tagged science on June 4, 2012 | 13 Comments »
Morning and Evening Star by Alphonse Mucha, 1902
I find it hard to believe that I have only just put two and two together and worked out why Venus is always the morning or evening star!
I expect you know already, but if you think about it, as Venus is closer to the sun than we are, it’s always (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Science, Uncategorized, tagged colours, flowers, Gardening, science on October 25, 2011 | 6 Comments »
.jpg "blue-moon-shadow")
Blue is the colour (with a little help from my PhotoShop) - to see the original mauve Moon Shadow rose, click on this image by Drew Avery
In his prime, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my father grew hybrid tea roses – 150 of them, row upon row, in our long, narrow back garden.
And like most rose enthusiasts, he dreamed (more…)
Posted in Science, Uncategorized, Words, tagged science, Words on September 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
An artist's impression of the process of apoptosis or programmed cell death - I think that's a phagocyte or white blood cell on the right, cleaning up the mess
Recently a reader of the newspaper for which I work wrote to ask why on earth we always publish such ridiculous artist’s impressions every time there is an outbreak of a disease (the latest was Legionnaires’ disease).
I explained that we needed an illustration of some sort and couldn’t always take a photograph of a victim. The artist’s impression cost us nothing as it was in our archive already – and anyway the images were pretty and colourful.
I am reminded of this as I illustrate one of my “favourite words” – APOPTOSIS. It’s a (more…)
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