Gleanings of the Week Ending May 17, 2014

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.

Two museums doing 3D scanning of artifacts (one of the technologies introduced in the archaeology course I took on Coursera recently:

Paleontologists unveil online showcase of 3-D fossil remains - An introduction to the University of Michigan’s Online Repository of Fossils.

Look at These Ancient Egyptian Artifacts from Every Amazing Angle This article points to a project at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to make objects available on the web in a format that allows complete rotation of the object. The project’s beta site also allows zooming in to get a closer look at the objects.

Categorizing Invasive Plants - I’ve recently done some volunteering to help control invasive plants in my community. This was a nice summary of approaches used by land managers.

Newsmap - A visual display of news (based on the Google news aggregator). There is color coding for broad categories of news and it is possible to select a ‘country’ from a list at the top of the display; looking at the news perspective for a country different than your own is always a broadening experience. The visualization has been around for a few years; I only found it recently and am trying it for a few weeks to decide if it is better than looking at the same info in a Newsfeed format.

Bee biodiversity boosts crop yields - Good to know. Hopefully we have not already reduced the diversity of bees on the planet.

8 CIO moms share tales and tips from the IT trenches - These tips make sense for more than just CIO/IT moms!

40 maps that explain the Middle East - I just finished a Coursera course about the modern Middle East….so this series of maps was particularly well timed!

The Most Common Language in Each US State—Besides English and Spanish - Language as a window into differences across the US.

Cold War Spy-Satellite Images Unveil Lost Cities - Tripling the number of known archaeology sites via technology…another story that linked well with the archeology course from Coursera. 

Never Say Die - Recent research results re longevity.

Magnificent 19th-Century Library Shelves 350,000 Books - Architecture of the late 1800s and books….in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It looks like a magical place.