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Peacocks, panther chameleons, scarlet macaws, clown fish, toucans, blue-ringed octopuses and so many more: The animal kingdom has countless denizens with extraordinarily colorful beauty. But in many cases, scientists know much more about how the animals use their colors than how they make them. New work continues to reveal those secrets, which often depend on the fantastically precise self-assembly of minuscule features in and on the feathers, scales, hair and skin — a fact that makes the answers intensely interesting to soft matter physicists and engineers in the photonics industry.

A scholarship is an investment in the promise of a student whose intelligence and vision will yield returns many times over. For 50 years, the Mensa Foundation has nurtured that promise in thousands of students.

Roughly 4,500 years ago, some Mesopotamians living in present-day Syria decided to remodel and repurpose one of their community's most prominent monuments: a rippled white dome that entombed the dead. For generations residents periodically climbed the monument's exterior to pour libations and place offerings over graves beneath its surface. But the renovation around 2450 B.C. covered this communal space with earthen terraces, transforming the dome into a six-story ziggurat, or stepped pyramid.