Gleanings of the Week Ending December 21, 2013

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

Radiation Physicist Beautifully Colorizes X-Ray Images of Nature - The color adds to the images - making them much more art-like.

Important Bird Areas - An interactive US map that shows areas marked as of global, continental, or state importance. Zoom in or enter an address to see detail in a particular location.

Behind the Headline: Even Gifted Students Can’t Keep Up - A summary article prompted by a recent story in New York Times about gifted students. Follow the links to dig deeper into the story.

An Optical Illusion You'll Swear Is Moving. It Isn't. - Watch the video….and read the explanation.

23 Women CEOs Running Fortune 500 Firms - A list published by the Associated Press. I would be interesting to know how the number of women CEOs running Fortune 500 firms has changed over the past decades. In 2009, it was 15. The first woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company was Catharine Graham of the Washington Post in 1972.

Fake it ’til you become it: Amy Cuddy’s power poses, visualized - My daughter was the first to tell me about ‘power poses.’ If you haven’t heard about them before - take a look at the Infographic in the article and/or follow the links for details.

Architectural Breakthroughs that Changed the World - It’s always interesting to see what gets selected for posts like this….and the suggestions for additions in the comments section are worth a look too.

Worth a Watch: Climate Change - the state of the science - A 4 minute film produced with UN funding and based on the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

Redefining What It Means to be a Successful School - Measuring schools through the lens of student outcomes rather than compliance models

Mapping 400,000 Hours of U.S. TV News - Which areas of the world do we hear and see on the news frequently….which areas are almost never ‘in the news.’ From an analysis of the Internet Archive’s television news research service collection.

10 Elements of Next-Generation Higher Education - It seems like the changes are coming quickly to higher education. Some are technology enabled….others are forced by the change in perspective to view outcomes rather than just the traditional examination/compliance model to determine the quality of education.

Census Bureau Introduces New Interactive Mapping Tool along with Latest American Community Survey Statistics - Take a look at the Census Explorer. It is easier to look at a county or state level rather than an address. The measures that can be selected are: total population, 65 and over, foreign born, high school graduate or more, bachelor’s degree or more, in labor force, owner occupied, and median household income.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 31, 2013

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

Another 'Grand Canyon' Discovered Beneath Greenland's Ice - Right now it is covered by lots of ice….but the data from the increasingly sophisticated instruments monitoring the ice sheet has revealed lots of detail about the topography of what is under the ice. How many of us will live to see this canyon without ice?

Peter Huttenlocher has left the building - An article summarizing the contribution of the child neurologist: synaptic pruning. A simple graph shows it all.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes on Rights of US Women - A summary of the legislation relative to protection of women’s rights over the past 50 or so years. I knew at least vaguely about all of them because I lived through those years - but it was good to see it all in one place and to think about the problems working women still face. The comments are worth looking at too.

Giant solar plane could stay airborne for 5 years, replace some satellites - It would fly above the clouds and weather but still within the atmosphere….And reduce the expense for such things a crop or fire monitoring, providing internet access to remote regions and disaster rapid response.

Changing River Chemistry Affects Eastern US Water Supplies - Rivers are becoming more alkaline….because acid rain causes more rapid leaching of limestone, other carbonate rocks and even sidewalks….and so life in the river is changing. Natural systems have ways to reach a new balance eventual but the path to balance is often very complex.

apple-picking time: our top-pick apple treats - From King Arthur flour. Lots of goodies - at least half look way too high-calorie for my current weight loss diet! But maybe I’ll make one to celebrate when I finally reach my goal (less than 2 pounds to go!)

Thyroid Cancer Biopsy Guidelines Should Be Simplified, Researchers Say - My favorite quote from the article: “…start doing diagnostic tests and procedures more selectively and prudently, as there rare harms to doing unnecessary tests and procedures.” But do we trust doctors to make the best recommendations to us when it is in their financial best interest to do a many diagnostic tests and procedures as possible?

Fantastic Shots of Japan's Summertime Fireworks Festivals - Lots of events in July and August….and these images capture some of the excitement

Brown-bag lunch strategies - Eating well away from home. The strategies in this article are skewed toward the gourmet variety of brown bag lunch - but good to review when get bored with whatever you have been packing. The key is planning (as with most things).

Visualizing the Psychology of Attraction - Infographic

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 17, 2013

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

Distracted Driving Video - 35 minutes…three vignettes…the message: don’t text and drive

Fall in The National Parks: Some Other Park Fall Drives Not To Overlook - Some ideas for a fall foliage road trip

Why do we laugh? - James May with a very straight-faced explanation

Park Score Index - Compare ranking of cities based on parks

Photos from Restored Wetlands - From the Prairie Ecologist. My favorite is the paper wasp on the swamp milkweed.

Why aren’t more girls attracted to physics? - It’s all about seeing possibilities.

A History of the World: The 100 British Museum Objects - There are several images for each object and a narrative. Note the little symbols beside each thumbnail and click on the thumbnail to take a closer look; the images with a magnifying glass have annotations (I prefer to click on the thumbnail, go to full screen, then look at the annotations), listen to the short videos for the ones with the ‘play arrows.’ A bit longer audio (originally for a BBC radio program) is available as well.

How a 'Deviant' Philosopher Built Palantir, A CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut - The good and bad of the state of the art in mining information from huge amounts of data.

Great Blue Heron Highlights 2013 - From Sapsucker Pond in Ithaca NY. I didn’t watch much of the season ‘live’ this year but enjoyed these highlights.

Three Ways Cooking has Changed Over the Last 300 Years - It’s more than cooking….it’s the history of what people ate. Some ingredients are not common now…others are common but prepared quite differently.

Tangents from a Book

I just finished reading Marilyn French’s Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals. It was written in the 1980s and is somewhat dated. There were quite a few items that surprised me as I read and made me realize how naïve I was about the limitations on women in the US while I was growing up. For example - women were not allowed to serve on juries in Alabama until 1966 when the Supreme Court struck down the state law. There were still many limitations on property ownership in the 1960s as well. But much had improved by the 1980s and early 1990s. Somewhere along the line, progress slowed and increased limitations on women are the new trend - once again, as it has many times before in history.

As I read, my mind jumped very easily to related topics from my own life (since this book was written) or the news:

• I was part of the peak of women entering the computer field. That happened in the mid-80s and has been declining ever since. When I was in school, the college courses for people that wanted to go into programming were in various departments: math, business, and engineering. It was new field and there was an excitement about it. In my classes there were about equal numbers of men and women. The same was true when I started work. Over the years, there were fewer women. I’m sure there are many reasons for the decline - but the move to put computer science almost universally in the engineering department is probably a significant factor.
• Years later, my daughter was in an engineering physics course - one of two women in the class. The professor was not a problem (but was not helpful either). The male students picked on the other woman (said that she wasn’t qualified to be in the class) but fortunately left my daughter alone. She had to beg the other woman to stay in the course….and then study hard without the benefit of a study group. What does this say about what these men will be like once they are in the work force? It causes me to shudder.
• Another experience my daughter had was on a geology field trip - in a van full of people, only two of them women. The guys talked about ‘hot’ women all during the trip. My daughter chose to stay silent and hope they would stop soon. It was not a pleasant field trip. Are the guys rude or just clueless? I assume that it is probably a little of both.
• And in the news - Lindy Boggs died recently. What a great lady she was --- and a champion for the cause of women’s economic rights! Her efforts came after this book was written.

For much of my career, I assumed that the trends toward increasing opportunities for women were on the right track….that the progress made had an unstoppable momentum and that, in time, the perspective of women would be fully integrated into our culture. For the past 10 years or so - I am no longer as certain that is true - and there is a possibility that the trend has reversed. Reading this book reminded me of that.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 26, 2013

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.

How Much Unsubsidized Solar Power is Possible? - interactive map showing increase incost competitiveness of solar power in the US

World's Largest Natural Sound Library Now Available On-line ... And It's Free - the Macaulay Library archive…a 12 year project to digitize the entire collection has been completeed!

Woodpecker inspires cardboard bike helmet - it absorbs 3 times as much force as polystyrene helmets and is 15% lighter

Hello Robots, Goodbye Fry Cooks - what about the impact of the robotics revolution on human employment/

Vouching again Creationism - a rant about the relationship between school vouchers and the teaching of creationism...how religious teaching is becoming publically funded

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #34 - The last one surprised me….the Indian Robin does not have a red breast like our North American robins

Exploring The Parks: Grand Canyon National Park, A Winter Wonderland - Some year I’ll get to the Grand Canyon in the winter

To Surf a Hundred Million Stars - intro to a zoomable photo of the Milky Way center….spend some time zooming the image (and the others available from the GigaGalaxy Zoom project also linked from this article).

Interior Department Nominates Poverty Point National Monument For World Heritage Site Designation - specifics about Poverty Point but also general information about the World Heritage Site designation

Museum Collections (National Park Service) - the site has been revamped. Take a browse through the collection highlights (click on one that looks interesting and a whole series of items from that same location will appear0. Or use the pull down to select your favorite park!

The rise and fall of artificial gravity - Why has no one built a space station with artificial gravity?

Opinion: The Successes of Women in STEM - there are still roadblocks. Karen Purcell articulates some of them.