Community Supported Agriculture

I’ve joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) for this summer. I purchased a half share. I had thought about it last year but didn’t get around to doing it. This year taking courses on the US Food System and How to Change the World provided a little extra push.

The CSA idea appeals to my sense of taking individual action to make the world a better place. The local farm avoids the transportation costs for its crops, the community gets locally grown produce, the family farm remains a viable business…..the whole is a more sustainable model.

Being a member of a CSA will encourage me to eat a larger variety of veggies - an even healthier diet than I have already. Somehow my vegetable purchases at the grocery store settle into a pattern: carrots, tomatoes, romaine, peppers, celery, andcucumbers. It’s not that I don’t like almost all vegetables --- the familiar is just too luring. So - having the CSA provide veggies that are at their best that particular week will coax me to try some new foods.

I supposed I could do almost the equivalent by going to the local Farmers Market but I am sure I’d have the same problem I have the past few summers: the one afternoon a week that the one nearest to me is open goes by….and then I remember! The requirement of prepaying for the CSA share is a good way to motivate myself to pick up the veggies every week at my allotted time.

Here are some links for more information about CSAs:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Progression of Spring Semester Classes - March 2014

My enthusiasm for the Coursera courses I am taking continues.

Two are completing: How to Change the World (from Wesleyan University) and Moralities of Everyday Life (from Yale University). There is one more week of An Introduction to the US Food System (from Johns Hopkins University). I learn something from every course I take….but these three are ones that prompted thinking about how I live, picking causes worthy of support either through action or donation, and changing my behavior for the good of society and the planet.

A new class started this week: Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets (from Brown University). I’ve already enjoyed the first set of videos and the suggested readings.

There is a new module in the Nutrition course (from Vanderbilt University) I took last spring on Food allergies and intolerances. I signed up for the course again just for that new material.  

And then there is the Volcanic Eruptions (from Ludwig Maximilians Universitat Munich) that was offered last fall. I somehow overlooked it then (or maybe I was too busy with other courses). The content was still available on the Coursera site - so I am making my way through the 10 weeks of materials.

The Roman Architecture course (from Yale University) is continuing - it’s a 15 week course that started in January. I find myself reading architecture books with pictures and diagrams of Greek and Roman buildings on the Internet Archive. The course has given me a sharper eye for architectural detail already!

Previous posts: 

• February 2014
• January 2014

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 1, 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.

Abdominal fat accumulation prevented by unsaturated fat - Just another indicator that thinking about all kinds of fats as ‘all the same’ is probably not a good idea. The unsaturated fats generally come from plant based foods and fatty fish.

Are bookshelves becoming obsolete? - What do you think? I have started reading a lot more books in electronic form than I do in physically printed form….and I’ve given away all the books I don’t need for reference; the old video tapes are gone too. So I have some empty book cases at this point but I find myself using some of the shelves for other things: the bag of shopping bags and a support for a large garden flag hung from an upper shelf by weighting the flag’s upper edge with unused candle holders. I’m not getting rid of them any time soon because I anticipate moving at some point and needing the storage options they would offer. They are not obsolete….they are just shelves that no longer hold books!

How wolves can alter the course of rivers - TED video about the wolves in Yellowstone National Park. It is an ecosystem story.

The symmetry of citrus is a beautiful thing - I like the colors of the fruit….and then the later collections of eggs, beans, and leaves too.

Where Do People Spend the Most of Their Paycheck on Housing? - (for the US) Find out how your state compares.

Americans Want Antibiotic-Free Chicken, and the Industry Is Listening - Good! But in the meantime - I have switched to organic chicken products because that is the closest to sustainable farming practices (i.e. I want them to go beyond anti-biotic free….I want chicken raised in a way that is not damaging the environment.

Daily Overview - A new picture from above every day! 

Infographic about Personalized Learning - I still not sure I understand how Personalized Learning will work for all students because it seems to depend on all students having the desire for self-directed learning….and I’m not sure that is something that can be assumed. Still - I’m going to follow this series of infographics to learn more about the approach. It is appealing to move away from the factory as the model for schools…but is this best alternative model?

New Water Heater Flies Past Crowdfunding Goal - Something to look into when my old hot water heater needs to be replaced.

'Microbial Pompeii:' 1,000-year-old plaque preserves bacteria, microscopic particles of food on skeleton teeth - I am taking a class on Roman Architecture so this blurb caught my attention - but it wasn’t about Pompeii….it was about a study that looked at dental calculus (plaque) that was dated from about the same time as Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius. The plaque provided a window into the diet and microbes of the people living at that time.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 22, 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.

Aging men: More uplifts, fewer hassles until the age of 65-70 - Interesting that the research is being done but disappointing that it is not terribly insightful yet. It caused me to think about the demographics….men that are in their 80s now don’t have very many 75-years-and-beyond role models in their growing up  because not very men lived that long in prior generations.

10 Things We Learned From Dr. Temple Grandin - Temple Grandin is one of the best sources for insight into autism. I haven’t listened to the webinar recording pointed to in the post yet….it’s on my ‘to do’ list.

Forced Molt: Starving Hens for Profit - Controlling egg production….so that there will be plenty of eggs for consumers all year round. Is starving the hens for 2 weeks the only way?

Colorful Watercolor Paintings of Radiant Trees in Nature - In keeping with Trees being a theme for upcoming photographic projects…..they’re showing up more in my reading and in images I enjoy from others!

6 Offbeat Veggies worth a Try - Maybe some new foods to try….with recipes to get you started.

Sound-sensing cells regenerated in ears of mice with hearing damage - Maybe there is hope to repair time damaged hearing! Since there are a growing number of older people, there are potentially a lot of people that would benefit if this can work in people. Loss of hearing and/or sight are significant hits to quality of life for otherwise healthy seniors.

Time to Sign Up For Summer Field Courses in the National Parks - National Parks are among my favorite vacation destinations. It’s an appealing idea to sign up for a field course!

Involved parents raise slimmer adults - I like the infographic. Glad that the study showed what seems intuitively obvious to me!

Navigate the Global Meat System with New Meat Atlas - The link is to a summary but the 68 page report itself is available by following the link at the beginning of the summary. The report has a lot of graphical representation of data which makes it worth the look.

A lost city reveals the grandeur of medieval African civilization - Still so much history of the world to discover…..

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 16, 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.

Green Schoolyard Movement: Gaining Momentum around the World - Hooray for outdoor spaces that are complex systems….good for the children and the environment!

Aerial 3D Panoramas from around the World - Wow! There is a lot of interesting places to explore on this site. I started with Petra, Jordan.

Fracking in Water-Stressed Zones Increases Risks to Communities – and Energy Producers - Nearly half of the wells hydraulically fractured (indicated by black dots) in the United States are located in areas of high or extremely high water stress…not a good thing. The potential for supply shortfalls poses operational risks to the energy producers as well as risks of rationing and other emergency measures to the wider community.

Special Albinos and Unusually White Animals - Their lack of coloring caused them to stand out.

A Crash Course in Psychology - On YouTube. It will continue on in 10 minutes segments over the next few months. The second installment is here.

Global Health Observatory Map Gallery - There is a pull down list for geographic coverage and topics….and then an area for keywords.   There are lots of maps to explore with this tool. Here is one example: I selected ‘world’ then ‘maternal and reproductive health’ - and there was a list of 3 maps to look at.  One of them was “Maternal mortality ration (per 100,000 live births), 2010.” The US is now as good as most of the developed world in this metric.

The Nine Planets Imagined as One - I like this both as art and science (even if it does include Pluto which is no longer considered a planet)!

The Future of Agriculture (part 1 and part 2) - Fred Kirshenmann talking about going beyond ‘green’ to resilient agriculture. The videos are few years old but I just discovered them (they were suggested as references in the Coursera course I am taking on the US Food System).

Jumping Liquids Mimic Japanese Flower Arrangements - Whether or not they look like Japanese Flower Arrangements….they are worth a look. My favorite is the red, white and purple one need the middle of the series.

The end of the GMO era? -  Some recent stories about GMOs.

Telescope Memories

My telescope memories are all aligned with my husband: he’s the one that had a telescope from his early teenage years onward. By the time I met him in the early 70s, he had an 8 in reflector with a mount that was mostly cast iron. It was a team effort to assemble the mount because it was so heavy! I vividly remember a night during the summer before we got married when  we took the telescope out to the astronomy club’s observing site to observe a lunar eclipse. We discovered when we got back that my mother had gone out to see if there really was a lunar eclipse….that it wasn’t just an excuse we’d concocted for a late night date!

Now - over 40 years later - the telescopes have improved significantly. My husband has a new one with much more sophisticated electronics and a lighter weight mount. He set it up on our deck. There is too much light for the deck to ever be a prime observing spot and it was a marginal night weather wise…veils of clouds kept rolling by….but it was good enough for him to check out the equipment. Everything worked. I took a picture of the moon by aligning my camera to the eyepiece of the telescope!

So - it seem that both my husband and I are reverting to some hobbies we put aside when we were crunched for time during a peak career years…..me to my microscope and him to his telescope. 

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 8, 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.

Syphilis: Then and Now - The recent research on the origin and manifestation of treponemal diseases (syphilis, yaws and bejel) is reported along with the history of research about them.

Splendid Botanical Gardens Full of Stained Glass Murals - Cosmovitral in Toluca, Mexico. A botanical garden in the old city market.

A map showing gender inequality around the world - Using the Gender Inequality Index (GII) from the UN Human Development Programme. There are many parameters for the index and the US does not The full 2013 Human Development report is available here (The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World).

Printed Eye Cells Could Help Treat Blindness - The ability to print retinal cells could lead to new therapies for retinal disorders such as macular degeneration....just one of the technologies with potential to improve the quality of life for older people. Not being able to see well produces a cascading effect on mobility and self-confidence that often leads to rapid physical decline.

40 more maps that explain the world - From Max Fisher at the Washington Post. Take your time, enlarge the maps that interest you the most…there is a lot to learn from these 40 maps!

Why 259,969 people taking the same class at the same time might just be the future of education - Co-founder of Coursera, Daphne Koller reminiscing. “We need a way to integrate education much more deeply into the fabric of our lives in a lifelong way,” she says. “And that’s what we’re doing.” And several other recent articles about MOOCs and online education: MOOCs by the numbers: Where are we now? (with infographic); Two giants of online learning discuss the future of education (Salman Khan and Sebastian Thrun); and Next Gen School Board: Governance Challenges & Opportunities in the Digital Age

Fiery-red coral species discovered in the Peruvian Pacific - Coral reefs and communities in Peru are just beginning to be studied….more discoveries likely.

C40 Cities Releases Landmark Research Revealing Expansion & Acceleration of Climate Actions in Megacities - 98% say climate change presents significant risks to their populations and infrastructure; more than 8,000 climate actions are underway and 41% of those actions are at a transformative, citywide scale. C40 cities in the US are: Austin, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC (details of all cities in the C40 is here) Infographic with a link to the full report included in the article.

A Beautiful Map of Global Ocean Currents - Wow! It’s worth going to the site to look at the visualization in more detail too (click on the globe to enlarge, drag to rotate OR click on the word ‘earth’ in the lower left corner of the image and then experiment with the different projections of the ocean currents at the surface).

Organic Shmorganic - An attempt to sort out the value of organic fruits and veggies for children.

The First Weeks of Class - February 2014

I’m through the first weeks of Coursera classes that started in January (posted about last month before they started).  I thought that 4 courses might be a little overwhelming…..and that has turned out to be true. All of them are well done and the topics are well-honed to my interests; dropping one is not an option. So - I have a flurry of activity to keep up. I’ve dedicated one day a week to each course and then use the other three days to read extra resources and follow threads outside the course entirely.

The Roman Architecture course is furthest along. I find myself looking at buildings differently; there are still a lot of elements of Roman Architecture is buildings constructed long after the end of the Roman Empire. The Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC is one example (the picture below is one I took of the monument a few years ago during the spring cherry blossoming). One of the threads I followed outside the immediate course material this past week was finding out how the impluviums actual worked; it wasn’t just catching/holding water….it was often an pervious basin that allowed water to filter down into a cistern which was then used by the residence as a source of cool water!

The three other courses (How to Change the World, Moralities of Everyday Life, and An Introduction to the US Food System) are all thought provoking. There are times they seem to converge rom their varying perspectives on the same topic: how can individuals live in a way that is good for them and good for the rest of planet (people and everything else on Earth). They are all very focused on the present and the possible futures we are creating - sometimes with intention and sometimes not.

The whole motivation for taking classes is very different for me now than it was back in my 20s. Then I was focused on getting a degree that would lead into a career. Now I am takings classes primarily because I enjoy being a student! I am taking courses about things I was always interested in but didn’t need for my degrees. Since I am not interested in a grade or certificate, generally avoid tests and time consuming projects....focus instead on going off on tangents that spin out from the course materials. What a difference the Internet has made in how students can find answers to questions!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 1, 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.

Bomb-Sniffing Rats - An organization in Tanzania trains African giant pouched rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis.  I was more interested in the TB aspect to this story rather than the bomb portion. Once trained, a rat can screen 100 samples of sputum for TB in 20 minutes!

The World as an Apple - A video using an apple to demonstrate how much arable land there is on earth from the American Farmland Trust

Interesting and Overlooked National Parks in America - Some of these have gone on my ‘future vacation’ list.

Fantastic Kaleidosopic Light Paintings Created in Camera - Long exposures and moving lights to create images.

How Parents and The Internet Transformed Clubfoot Treatment - Hurray for the non-surgical solution!

Global Footprint Calculator - If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American, we would need 5 planets. I did the calculator for the way I live and the answer was 3.9 planets (so I am better than the average American but still pretty far from sustainable).

Setting the Context: A Brief History of EdTech - Infographic (click on the graphic to enlarge or get the graphic in PDF form here and enlarge within the reader) about how technology has evolved in society, business and education from the 1980s to today.

Intimate Portraits of Bees - From National Geographic.

Nature Soundmap - Recordings of natural sounds from around the globe. I listened to several and will come back to listen to more. They have that quality of being gently invigorating and relaxing at the same time.

Two recent posts from Richard Watson: Could the BRIC (N11 and MINT) wall fall? and Issue 34: Society and Culture (and other topics…listed on the right) 

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 25, 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.

All of these outbreaks could have been prevented with vaccines - The US has taken a backward step when it comes to outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough. It’s very sad that the downturn has been so abrupt in the past 4-5 years….and that we know why; when will the toll of these diseases reach a tipping point toward increasing mandates for vaccination. All my vaccinations are up to date (and I may ask for a whooping cough booster at my next annual physical since some if my volunteer work is with children).

Wellcome Images - Digital images from the many historical sources made available under Creative Commons licensing by the Wellcome Library, London. All low resolution images are freely available for download for personal, academic teaching or study use. The image at the right is a Mark Catesby illustration of a magnolia blossom and pod.

Top 20 Metropolitan Areas in the U.S.A., 1790-2010 - A very busy chart…but worth look at for a bit. Expand it and take a look. Some cities peaked early (like Baltimore); some didn’t get started until much later (like Dallas and Houston). New York has stayed at the top since it surpassed Philadelphia in the early 1800s.

An earthquake threat is building up in the central U.S. - Lots more people living in the area than there were in the early 1800s (when the last big earthquake occurred there.

Designing Your School of Choice: mySchool - An essay by Adam Renfro about his vision for ‘school.’ There are so many options for future schools….the big challenge will be to choose those options wisely. The balance between needs of the student and society will become more nuanced. It is interesting to observe the uniformity implied by core curriculum, testing, and building structures with the explosion of easily available learning environments that are anything but uniform.

How a Versatile Gut Bacterium Helps Us Get Our Daily Dietary Fiber - Another bit of evidence that our bodies are complex ecosystems with many organisms interacting…..organisms that we need to be healthy!

What's the best place to see or visit in your area? - This is a post where the comments are the main content.  I know in my area I have favorites - and the ones I recommend depend on the interests of the person asking!

To MOOC or Not To MOOC - Infographic. I learned a new acronym: SPOCs is (Small Private Online Courses)

NASA Finds 2013 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend - The Earth’s temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F since 1880. The average temperature in 2013 was 1.1 degrees F since the mid-20th century. There is a video showing the temperature changes over the past 6 decades.

Roasted Chickpeas - A recipe I’m going to try this week.

3 Free eBooks - January 2014

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for January 2014.

Reed, Chester Albert. Wild Flowers East of the Rockies. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.1910. Available from the Internet Archive here. This book had great illustrations. I found myself looking forward to spring when I can out to find skunk cabbage and trillium.

Bailey, John; Schneider, Carri; Vander Ark, Tom. Navigating the Digital Shift: Implementation Strategies for Blended and Online Learning. Digital Learning Now. 2013. Available in several formats here. This book is a series of papers about the adoption of Common Core State Standards and the shift to personal digital learning.

Moncrieff, Ascott Robert Hope; Palmer, Sutton. The Heart of Scotland. London: A & C Black. 1909. Available from the Internet Archive here. I like the golden colors of the paintings by Sutton Palmer. They are full of details too - enough to make the 1000 words that picture are touted to be worth.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 18, 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.

Over 4,000 Reasons to Love (and Protect) North America’s Native Bees - many agricultural plants are primarily pollinated by native bees (rather than the honey bees that were brought from Europe that are uniquely equipped with the tools and techniques required to do the job. )…and they are declining.

Web Soil Survey - The WSS interface allows you to find out about the soil for a specific area in the US (i.e. an address). It’s provided by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. Reports can be generated about the suitability of the soil for specify uses. For example, I requested a map about the suitability for houses with basements for my neighborhood. Where my houses sits was coded ‘green’….but at one edge of the neighborhood it was ‘yellow’ because the soil changes and there was another small area that was ‘red.’ This would certainly be a resource to check if you were building a house or buying one in an unfamiliar area! The builder can take steps to overcome the soil suitability issues….and avoid wet basements! There is also a site that provides the detailed descriptions of soils here. Did you know that there are 26,000 soil types in the US?

Ray Archuleta Soil Health Lessons in a Minute - Short videos about aspects of soil health from the USDA NRCS. Watch the one about the benefits of no-till farming!

Spectacular Photos of a Powerful Volcano Erupting in Chile - Awesome power of the earth to reshape itself.

Long-Forgotten Photographs Reveal Challenger Disaster As It Happened - Most people old enough to remember January 1986….know where they were and how they found out about the Challenger. It’s one of those sad, defining moments for the psyche of the US.

The truth about technology’s greatest myth - The impact of technology in our lives is not straightforward at all…there are positives and negatives...complexities…unintended consequences. Technology cannot be evaluated without the context of the people and societies using it - which means that it isn’t ever simple or entirely rational.

Which scientific ideas do we need to get rid of? - Some answers from some prominent thinkers

Salman Khan’s TED Talk ignited the conversation about online education. Why he’s doubling down on the school of the future - How can education keep up with the pace of the rest of society and the cultural nuances around the globe? One pathfinder is the Khan Academy.

European word translator - Enter one or two lower-case English words and see translations overlaid on a map of Europe!

5,900 Natural Gas Leaks Discovered Under Washington, D.C.: A Dozen Locations Had Concentrations High Enough to Trigger Explosion - Aging infrastructure can be dangerous…and very wasteful.

Microscope Memories

Over 35 years ago when I was in college working on an undergraduate degree in biology, my husband and I bought a microscope. The one we chose was as good as or better than the ones I used in the labs at school:  objectives, spider silk guide lines, wooden carrying case.  It was ordered from a local company and took several weeks to arrive. The microscope was a major purchase for us (I remember thinking that it cost almost as much as a used VW Beetle!). There was reciprocity involved in the decision since he owned a telescope and we were spending money to tweak it (cold cameras, mount modifications, new guide scope, and electric socks come to mind) and it was loosely tied to his physics major. The plan we both had was to forge ahead to grad school in our chosen fields and our hobbies would align with our academic work. Our ideas about what would come after graduate school were still vague and seemed very far in the future.

A few years later as I began graduate school, I decided that computer science was so much fun (I had supported us through our undergraduate years with programming jobs) that I decided to do graduate work in that field instead. There was not enough time for a microscope hobby so the microscope was carefully stored away with the idea that when I did have time, it would be a hobby I would start again.

The microscope was only unpacked a few times in the intervening years. We bought a student microscope that attached to our computer for my daughter when she was in elementary school. The quality of the image was not very good and the software didn’t work with current versions of windows by the time I wanted to use it a couple of years ago when I started this blog. That device was jettisoned but I still wanted to restart the microscope hobby. Recently I decided to buy microscope imager for my original microscope. It replaces the eyepiece and attaches to my laptop via USB. I dug out my wooden box of slides and cover slips. The prepared slides dried out years ago and were thrown away; there are only three slides and covers left!

It is a rude awakening to realize that I have forgotten a lot in 30 years! I will need to read up on microscope maintenance (it’s been in its wooden box for a long time) and decide on what other supplies I need aside from a few more glass slides and covers - immersion oil and stains come to mind. Once I decide what I need - I’ll have to order it; online ordering and shipping has certainly improved since I originally worked with this microscope but it is not instantaneous. I’m excited to be fiddling with the microscope again!

There will be a series of mini-projects - things I want to view and then write a blog post about. Feathers and plant material and molds are high on my list. My goal is to have at least one microscope based post a month. Stay tuned for my experiences restarting an activity from my early 20s!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 11, 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.

Iodine - A new site that formats drug information to be more easily understood by consumers. There is information about how it all got started on the TED site here.

An Animated Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States - Maps are a visual pathway to history. Thanks to the University of Richman for making these available online with a good interface.

CES 2014: Audi Shows Off a Compact Brain for Self-Driving Cars - Good to have a car manufacturer getting serious about self-driving cars.

Remarkable coastal change from the recent UK storms - Sometime erosion is so slow it is almost unnoticeable. These ‘before and after’ pictures show the potential of storms to cause changes very quickly.

The Bright Side of Prions - When prions are in the news, they are often associated with terrible diseases like Mad Cow Disease. This article is about recent discoveries where prions perform positive functions in cells.

10 Easy New Year’s Resolutions to Transform Your Health and Well Being - Some of these are so easy….they are good prompts to do something ‘outside the box’ to improve your 2014!

Timeline of the far future - An infographic from BBC Future. This timeline is for one hundred quintillion years!

The Future: What 32 Ed Leaders Are Excited About - And more about the near term future of education and the potential of technology to improve outcomes.

Gulf Coast Wetlands Rapidly Declining - It includes a map of the gulf coast that shows the huge wetland loss in Louisiana between 2004 and 2009. They are subsiding underwater.

Why we need to sleep in total darkness - I need to get an alarm clock with red rather than blue numbers…or do without a clock in the bedroom at all! And I have installed f.lux on my computer to change the color the screen emits at night (software available free from here).

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 4, 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.

Quinoa, Apricot, and Oat Muffin Clusters - Yum! I made these yesterday. There were some substitutions since I ‘made do’ with ingredients I had around the house: spiced fruit preserve instead of apricot paste, sesame seeds for the nuts/seeds, tahini instead of almond butter. I also used muffin cups that I had had for years (found recently when I was re-arranging the cabinets!).

Heat maps reveal where you feel emotions in your body - Hmmm….so people that are happy are physically warmer!

Beyond the Core: What about Other Important Outcomes? - What topics do you think are missing from the common core for K-12 education? Use this article to jumpstart your thinking.

Stranger than Fiction (Plant Biology) - An intro to the January issue of The Scientist online magazine. Read the full articles too: Plant communication, plant DNA challenging preconceptions about the evolution of life, and gold in plants.

Attacking Fungal Infection, One of World's Major Killers - When we think of microbes that kill we generally think of bacteria or viruses, but fungal infections kill 1.3 million people per year. I remember the mycology class I took (a long time ago) in college because of the beauty visible through the microscope: it was a blue world (dye) with complex structures. Reading this story makes me wonder if there were too few people from my generation that chose to pursue medical mycology and if our medical system has tended to focus only on the non-fungal microbes. Here’s another fungi story published this past week about How Mushrooms are Changing the World’s Winds.

Meditative Moments Found Within Dramatic Landscapes - If I went for a walk, there would be some places close to my house that look like these images! I took a few pictures from my door and decided that the wind and temperature in the teens made it too cold to venture further.

Marvelous Snowflakes - A video about how they form…in keeping with the view from my window in Maryland today!

The Best Wildlife and Nature Photos from NWF Staff in 2013 - My favorite is the pitcher plants (toward the end) but the sandhill crane (the picture after the pitcher plants) just visible in tall grass is a close second. And here is a group of nature photos from National Geographic: Rainforest Bugs and Best Wishes for 2014!

Elder Pharmacology - Many clinical trials exclude patients over the age of 65 as well as patients taking multiple drugs. And one of the key findings by gerontologists is that the biology of a young body is quite different from that of a young body. Put these together…and doctors medicating patients over 65 are virtually ‘flying blind.’ The status quo is not acceptable.

The book we all wish we could have read as children - I’ve added Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison to my wish list (The NPR article that is referenced is here.)

Signing up for New Classes in the New Year - 2014

Just like traditional universities, Coursera has classes starting this month. It is challenging to pick - and I have probably overindulged by enrolling in 4:

Roman Architecture from Yale University because I’ve never taken an architecture class - it’s a different perspective on history. Also - this will be my first course from Yale.

Moralities of Everyday Life from Yale University because the increased lack of civility within political discourse in the US seems linked to ideas about morality. That makes the topic much more reality rather than theoretically focused.

How to Change the World from Wesleyan University because I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Roth’s previous course on Coursera: The Modern and Postmodern.

An Introduction to the US Food System: Perspectives from Public Health from Johns Hopkins University because it seems like our food system has been changing very quickly although it is difficult to grasp the changes as a whole…and the impact on health. It is a complex topic.

In addition, I signed up for Nutrition, Health, and Lifestyle: Issues and Insights from Vanderbilt for the one new lecture: Food Allergies and Intolerances: Separating Fact from Fiction. I took the course last spring/summer and it honed my understanding of nutrition in a way that helped me take off the last 15 pounds (to down to the weight I was at 25!).

I’m sure they will all have some extra reading that will supplement the videos. I’m planning on allocating a day of each week to each of one….and then using the other days of the week to catch the overflow. The courses do have to fit into the rest of life. I generally do the multiple choice knowledge checks embedded in the videos but not the quizzes or other assignments. I’m not after a grade and I prefer to talk about topics from the course with people I interact with face to face rather than other students virtually.

There was an article recently about MOOCs not living up to their original goal of online education approaching the quality of traditional colleges to the large population all over the world without access to such institutions. That is probably the case but, through refinement by iteration, they could improve on that goal. I’d like to suggest that MOOCs have an even larger role in society in the realm of lifelong learning - in enhancing the quality of life particularly for those that are long past the traditional college age. I’d like to see the end of course surveys probe this aspect. It would be interesting to know not just how many people did everything the course required to get a certificate or credit but how many students completed a subset like:

• Watched all the videos
• Read the online (free) references
• Scan parts of the discussion form
• Read all the references

In my case, I generally do the first three --- and get what I want from the course. A certificate or credit is not something I need.

It would also be interesting to find out how many people would be willing to pay some amount for the lectures to defray the cost of producing them. What amounts would be tolerated? Or does a charging scheme get too complicated to administer?

The bottom line for me is - I enjoy the Coursera offerings. I applaud the universities and professors that are participating. It is a positive development in education and the experiment has already succeeded for those of us that see these courses as a potent addition to lifelong learning.