Gleanings of the Week Ending December 19, 2015

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.

The future of medicine is testing our body fluids at home – Will the ‘annual physical’ become a thing of the past as this testing becomes more widely available?

The Coming Winter Part Two: The Elephant in the Room – The second part of Dan Satterfield’s explanation of the long range forecast for the winter.

Living Alone Now the Most Common Type of Household – Analysis of US households from 1930-2010. The over 60 population accounts for the majority of population that lives alone so the expectation is that the number of ‘living alone’ households will continue to increase.

Storing Electricity in Paper – Made from  nanocellulose and a conductive polymer….the basic research is promising…not to develop a production method for the power paper.

Improving Tools for Quantifying the Effectiveness of Conservation – Trying to quantify the effectiveness of conservation efforts is hard. This post is about the work of environmental economists to do it.

Pesticide found in milk decades ago may be associated with signs of Parkinson’s – I was reading this article while I was in Hawaii…and that is where the study was done. The pesticide heptachlor epoxide was used in the pineapple fields in the early 1980s in Hawaii and made its way into milk of that era in Hawaii.

Top 10 Winter Wildlife Experiences to Enjoy near You – Some ideas for getting outdoors in the winter. My husband and I are planning several jaunts to Conawingo Dam to photograph bald eagles this winter. And if we get snow (so far we have had a very warm winter hear in Maryland), we’ll look for tracks and look for wildlife in the morning/evening around our house.

Native Spotlight: American Holly – An item for the season. Holly is a plant often associated with Christmas. My picture is from a holly at Belmont Manor and Historical Park

Explore Machu Picchu in Google Maps Street View  and Artifacts from Machu Picchu from Google’s Cultural Institute – Another place for virtual travel.

One Million Icequakes – Data was collected from a glacier in Greenland for 2 years…one that produced 20 icequakes every 60 seconds. The icequakes offer a window into the glacier bed where the ice meets the sediment.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 11, 2015

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.

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust - It’s in Inner Mongolia…a place that is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of ‘rare earth’ minerals. So sad that we can’t manage to build our tech in a way that is sustainable for the planet.

A Delicate Stone Bridge Creates a Mystical Passage with Its Reflection - After that last story - I needed to look at something beautiful for a bit...and this was it: a picture of a half-circle bridge reflected in water to complete the illusion of a full circle.

Bombing Range Is National Example for Wildlife Conservation - Elgin Air Force Base had 300 year old trees and is home to the last remaining old-growth longleaf pines in Florida…there is a natural resources visitor center and has 250,000 acres open for public recreation/wildlife habitat.

Erupting Volcanic Lightning! - A volcano on Mexico’s west coast.

A complex landscape has both vulnerabilities and resilience to climate change - Changes in the length of growing season and timing of rainfall will change the forests in Central Appalachia over the next century….and probably in the area of Maryland where I live too.

Can You Identify 20 Of The Most Common Birds in North America? - The quiz is here. Identify the bird pictured from the list - you’ll know if you got it right immediately. How many can you identify? I got 15 out of 20!

Theoretical study suggests huge lava tubes could exist on moon - So - how long will it take to have a mission to the moon to discover if the lava tubes exist?

Essential Spring Guide '15: On the Road to Castles of Stone and Wood Turned To Rock - This story brought back memories of the vacation to northeastern Arizona last January! My picture of Montezuma Castle is below!

Yellowstone by Moonlight - A 3 minute film that includes a series of time-lapse views of moonlit scenes in Yellowstone - including geysers and stars. I don’t have the patience for this kind of photography but I enjoy seeing the work of others.

MIT Climate CoLab Asks All For Impactful Climate Plans - Contests seeking high impact ideas on how to tackle climate change…submission due 5/16/2015. The Climate CoLab site is here.

Coursera - February 2015

Only two courses in progress for me right now! It takes a lot of will power to not sign up for more; there are competing activities this month: travel and classroom-based courses. Here are the two that will keep me busy in February.

Circadian clocks: how rhythms structure life (from Ludwig-Maximilians - Universitat Munchen (LMU) is off to a good start with a mix of history of the research and vocabulary. It’s a topic that is interesting and has lots of implications for health and well-being.

The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold, and Conservation (from University of Wisconsin-Madison) started off by having student pick an avatar that reflected their perspective of the course topic. I chose ‘naturalist;’ it will be interesting to see the demographics of the other students in the course. I like the way the instructors are using surveys and probing questions along with the typical MOOC videos, reading list, and discussion forums.

Two courses finished in January:

Recovering the Humankind’s Past and Saving the Universal Heritage (from Sapienza University of Rome) was a more philosophical course than I expected. It included discussion of the science/technology of archaeology and how it developed over time which is what I expected. But the more thought provoking parts of the class were about the concept of ‘universal heritage’ and why it is important; the relationship of wars and destruction of material culture of the past is striking. It happens alongside the human lives lost and plight of refugees in Syria and Iraq.

Origins - Formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Life (from University of Copenhagen) was a very broad course taught by a team of people from the Natural History of Denmark. It was a good update on what has been discovered since I was in college in the 1970s. Scanning Science Daily over the years helps - but it was refreshing to get a fresh update that tied it all together in an organized way.

As usual - I thrive on having some new topics to learn about and Coursera is a prime avenue for that. Hurray for Coursera!