Narayan Khandekar, the head of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, takes pleasure in such skirmishes, secure in the knowledge that he presides over something weightier: a priceless resource for understanding how works of art are made, and how they should be preserved. The Department of Conservation and Technical Research was founded, in 1928, by Edward Waldo Forbes, the director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum from 1909 to 1944. Today, the Forbes’s vast library of color and its technical laboratories are housed in the museum’s steel-and-filtered-glass rebuild, designed by Renzo Piano. Rows of pigments in tubes, jars, and bowls are visible through the doors of floor-to-ceiling cabinets. Khandekar had the winning idea of displaying them as if unspooled from a color wheel: reds at one end, blues at the other. There are the products of nineteenth-century chemical innovation—viridian green, cadmium orange, and the chrome yellow with which van Gogh was infatuated but which, over time, has begun to darken his sunflowers. But at the heart of the Forbes Collection are the natural pigments that were the staples of painters’ inventories before chemically synthesized paints replaced the impossibly esoteric, the dangerously toxic, the prohibitively expensive, and the perilously fugitive.

Born in West Warwick and a URI grad, Hood is a best-selling novelist and short story writer; and the author of fifteen books, with her latest, The Book That Matters the Most, due out this August.

A decades-old mystery of why a naturally-occurring organic crystal fluoresces blue under ultra-violet light, yet when grown under laboratory conditions fluoresces with an intense green colour, has been solved by scientists …

Finally, the set of semi perm tools help customers mix “beautifully obnoxious colors” without staining their hands. The set contains two pairs of black gloves, a tinting brush, and a mixing bowl — with the GDY logo emblazoned on the side.

What: Photofest 2018When: 8 a.m.-11:30.p.m. Daily through Jan. 14Where: The Artport Gallery, 3300 Capital Circle SW Cost: FreeContact: For more information, call 850-224-2500 or visit http://coca.tallahasseearts.org/art-in-public-places/artport-gallery.   Amanda Sieradzki is the feature writer for the Council on Culture & Arts. COCA is the capital area’s umbrella agency for arts and culture (www.tallahasseearts.org).  

[A63B] APPARATUS FOR PHYSICAL TRAINING, GYMNASTICS, SWIMMING, CLIMBING, OR FENCING; BALL GAMES; TRAINING EQUIPMENT (apparatus for passive exercising, massage A61H)

India imports more than 80 percent of its oil. Though the price of Brent crude oil — the global benchmark — has plummeted over the last two months, it has more than doubled since early 2016. Oil is priced in dollars. Its increase, combined with a 10 percent decline in the value of the rupee this year, have lifted the cost of petroleum-based products, from fuel to chemicals, used by key parts of Indian industry.

Inventor(s): Ian Byers (Northville, MI) Assignee(s): STMicroelectronics, Inc. (Coppell, TX) Law Firm: Crowe Dunlevy (Local + 7 other metros) Application No., Date, Speed: 15435912 on 02/17/2017 (662 days app to issue)

I’ll have to get off the Adderall now and wonder how I am going to be able to function mentally. I wish I had known earlier that such stimulants may affect the liver.

Abstract: A low-debris low-interference semi-solid well perforator having selectively variable free volume and method for providing such is disclosed according to one or more embodiments. The perforator may include a charge tube holding an independently floating axial stack of selectively variable divider segments, each having one or more concavities formed in upper and lower sides. The segments are arranged so that concavities of adjacent segments form sockets, into which shaped charges are located. The segments provide support to minimize deformation of shaped charge cases yet provide less than 360 degrees circumferential contact about the shaped charges to form selectively variable voids for collecting debris and spall resulting from detonation. The voids and floating segments attenuate detonation shock interference. A debris guard prevents debris from entering the wellbore. Relieving slots in the debris guard attenuates transmission of shock interference through the debris guard.

Inventor(s): Kallol Mazumder (Plano, TX) Assignee(s): Micron Technology, Inc. (Boise, ID) Law Firm: Fletcher Yoder, P.C. (1 non-local offices) Application No., Date, Speed: 15680006 on 08/17/2017 (481 days app to issue)

The ongoing trade fight between the U.S. and China also has been an obstacle in 2018 because of tariffs on pigments and additives that North American firms need to make their products.