Gleanings of the Week Ending July 14, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Way out in a barren Chilean desert, the biggest telescope ever made is taking shape - Photos from the construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array

High-Tech Tools Give Researchers New View Of Yellowstone Thermal Features - Thermal maps of popular areas within the park

Electricity Storage - Wow - there are a lot of new ways out there and the idea of ‘storage’ of electricity implies a more robust infrastructure for reliable power than we have now

12 stats that matter to digital publishing - the number of people reading electronically rather than from paper is growing….and what/how they read is changing too

Heron Cam 2012 Highlights - All 5 have fledged from the Sapsucker Woods nest!

Scientific History and the Lessons for Today's Emerging Ideas -  A look back at what was happening in the 1890-1910 time period…lots of theories…some are threads to current theories, others are on the trash heap

Bridges for Animals - All around the world…this is an idea being tried to reduce road kill on highways

The 10 most pristine places on earth - none are in the US

Yama no sachi - A Japanese book from 1765. Read it on the Internet Archive. Use page down (or up) to browse through the book. It has illustrations of flowers, insects, and animals. My favorites are the peony (at right) and the poppy.

Drought leads to declaration of natural disaster in 26 US states - That’s more than half the states!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 7, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Funny Food (365 fun, healthy, silly, creative breakfasts) - Take a look at this site if you need to spice up  a child’s (or your own) breakfast

Bioluminescence in the ocean - pictures and explanation from National Geographic

The Secret Life of Fish (TED video)

UK Emissions Dropped 7% in 2011 - due to reduced energy demand (warmer weather) and increased low-carbon electricity generation

5 states (US) getting over 10% of electricity from wind power - South Dakota, Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wyoming.  Wind generation has been growing by 36% each year since 2007. States that are getting between 5 and 10% from wind are Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, Oregon and Oklahoma. If Texas were a country, it would rank 6th in the world for total wind capacity.

Research on how Giant Gypsum Crystals form - some recent discoveries about the initial stages and how increasing our understanding could benefit industrial production of plaster and help keep pipes clear in desalination plants

Photo of the Day: Rufous Hummingbird

Lean Back - slide show from The Economist re media consumption

12-Mile-High Martian Dust Devil - dust devils form on Mars too (there are two animations accessible via the bottom of this page - http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_026394_2160)

The role of mobile devices and social media in news consumption

Death Valley Field Trip

My daughter just returned from a field trip to Death Valley....one chewed up steering pump and three flat tires later (and they didn't have to leave any of the 6 vehicles along the way to be repaired). The nights were cool enough for coats and zippered sleeping bags. I'm enjoying the pictures...and made a slide show of them below.

Road Trip in December - Texas

The road trip across Texas was a long one - from Texarkana to El Paso with a side trip toward Oklahoma City from Dallas. It was easy to see the vegetation trend across the state from forest to mixed forest/grasslands to grass lands then sand dunes/desert to rocky desert. There are rivers to cross too: the Red, the Trinity, the Brazos, the Rio Grande. The terrain goes from hilly to flat to a climb up onto the Edwards Plateau to flat again then the mountains.

I wrote about the rest stop mosaics in west Texas in an earlier blog. The rest stops in Texas were all clean and well maintained; the ones in west Texas were the same temperature as outside so were very cold when I passed through. There was at least one where the construction of a new facility was already started, presumably one that will be heated and cooled. 

The pictures below are from the welcome station between Texas and Oklahoma on the Red River (two on left), the wind farms that seem to be more numerous every time I come through west Texas (lower right) and then the mountain ranges that appeared on the horizon to break the monotony of the sand dune part of the state.