I was delighted to learn about Werner's Nomenclature of Colours, a fascinating intersection of art and science. It's a book, first published in 1814, that orders, classifies, and names 110 colors and provides examples of where they can be found in the natural world.

The Public Domain Review shares a short history of origins of the book:

The book is based on the work of the German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner who, in his 1774 book Treatise on the External Characters of Fossils (translated into English in 1805), developed a nomenclature of colors so as to offer a standard with which to describe the visual characteristics of minerals. Clearly taken by the idea, some three decades later the Scottish painter of flowers Patrick Syme amended and extended Werner’s system. In addition to the mineral referent, for each of Werner’s colors Syme added an example from the animal and vegetable kingdom, as well as providing an actual patch of color on the page to accompany the words. While Werner found a suite of 79 tints enough for his geological purpose, now opened up to other realms of nature, Syme added 31 extra colors to bring the total to 110.

I love how this book dances back and forth between science and art. At the same time that it's trying to order and classify colors in a rigorous way, it's also making subjective associations between those colors and the natural world. I think it also tells a larger story about the close relationship between science and art, and how our ordered scientific knowledge emerges out of our subjective observations.

You can see the entire original book on the Internet Archive, or purchase a copy of the book for yourself from the Smithsonian.

We've spent the last few months getting our Kickstarter rewards shipping out to backers and prepping our tarot cards for production. Now that we've figured out the basics of order fulfillment—and let me tell you, international shipping is like opening twenty cans of worms—we're excited to take the next step forward and open the Massive Science Shop.

The first things we're putting up for sale are the Kickstarter rewards that weren't claimed by our backers. If you missed backing our campaign back in October, this is your second (and last!) chance to get one of our limited edition Women of Science Tarot Decks. We're only making 500, and over half have already been claimed by our backers. Make sure to pre-order yours before they're all gone.

In addition, we've got a regular edition of our tarot card deck, our sticker packs, and our postcard set up for sale right now. We'll put up our Women of Science posters for sale once they're ready.

But, most importantly, we want to know what you want to see in our shop. We've got a bunch of different ideas so far—books we've reviewed, oh-so-trendy enameled pins, all manners of swag sporting the Massive Science logo—and we want to know what we should focus on. Fill out the poll on our shop page to let us know what you want to see!

Finally, all of this wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of our Kickstarter backers. They proved that people really want to see more imaginative representations of science exist in the world. Their support has not only helped us not just bring this one project into existence, but also helped us lay the groundwork to continue realizing new projects like it in the future. To all of our backers: thank you!

Hamilton was a software engineer before the position was even existed—in fact, she's the one who coined the term. She was one of the first people who distinguished software engineering as a legitimate field worthy of respect.

In the 1960s, she led the team that developed the in-flight software for the Apollo missions. Her team's hand-written software played a critical role in landing the astronauts of Apollo 11 on the moon, one of the first times a computer was trusted with the real-time execution of a mission-critical task.

We asked our community whether or not the partial shutdown of the federal government, which has stretched into its second month, was having an impact on their research. One of our members is a former USDA researcher and helped illustrate the consequences of the shutdown on the government's scientific research. They asked to remain anonymous, citing limits on unauthorized statements imposed on scientists by the administration.

When it comes to agriculture research conducted by the USDA, they told us how a shutdown means the living things are not getting regular care. Plant research is often seasonal and so certain experiments need to be done at set seasonal times. If the few personnel allowed on station aren't capable of watering everything. Plants and insect colonies which aren't cared for could die. As a result, year-long projects could be irreparably lost.

Last month the scientific exploration ship Nautilus has discovered the largest deep-sea octopus nursery, with over 1,000 octopus. 

"We went down the eastern flank of this small hill, and that's when - boom - we just started seeing pockets of dozens here, dozens there, dozens everywhere," King told National Geographic.

It's wonderful to hear the un-self-conscious enthusiasm of these researchers as they discover the nursery.

Follow along with the Nautilus on Twitter and their ship's ongoing livestream.