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 November 28, 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.

Plastic by the Numbers in the Atlantic Ocean – Samples taken during the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers show that microplastics are very common. There were 0 samples without any plastic! On a personal level, I’m reading labels on face washes and toothpastes now and not buying any that have microbeads.

6 Common Activities that Harm Wildlife – One of the six is ‘microbeads’ so another spur to action. The other activities are also thought provoking: sunscreen, feeding bread to birds, bleached products, removing weeds, and plastic bags. Most of them I had heard about before…sunscreen only recently.

Are superbugs deadlier near where you live? – They are everywhere…some places worse than others. Often they are indicators of use (and misuse) of antibiotics.

An easy pill to swallow – Research into a mechanism to deliver mucoadhesive patches via pill through the digestive tract to the small intestine. There is potential that this could change delivery of protein based therapies (insulin, growth hormone, antibodies, and vaccines) from a injections to a pill.

A Flight of Birds – 14 unusual birds…portraits from the Photo Ark project (one of the 14 is a California Condor)

800-Year-Old Ancient Extinct Squash Uncovered during Archeological Dig on Menominee Indian Reservation – I’d like to see this one in my grocery store!

Shenandoah National Park Counting on Beetles to Slow Invasive Insect – The wooly adelgid is killing the hemlocks in Shenandoah (and in our area of Maryland too). Shenandoah is importing a beetle from Japan (where the wooly adelgid came from). Evidently the beetle has already been used successfully in other parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

1,700-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Discovered During City Sewer Construction Project – Found in Israel by workers upgrading the sewer system.  It was the floor of a large room in a villa during the Roman period.

Pictures: Great Smoky Mountains National Park  and Pictures: Rocky Mountain National Park and Explore the Power of Parks – From National Geographic…lots of great pictures, of course.

Obesity: A Complex Disorder – Graphic from The Scientist with a link at the bottom for the full article. The more we learn about obesity, the more complex it seems to become.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 20, 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.

Soft Tissue Detected in Millennia-Old Dino Bones - New ways of looking at very old bones reveals unanticipated results (but not DNA).

Far From Sterile, Some Hybrids May Start New Species - Coyotes in the eastern US are quite different than their western counterparts and they are beginning to fill the niche left by wolves. Maybe they will help control the too large deer population!

Renewables Reach Highest Share of U.S. Energy Consumption since 1930s - Historical stats about renewable energy...with emphasis on the 1990-2014 time period.

Two similar articles: Why doctors should treat the healthy too and Interventions among healthy people save the most lives - The challenge is that most doctors are trained to treat illness and disability…not help people retain their health.

Data scientists find connections between birth month and health - The data for the study was from 1985-2013…1.7 million patients treated at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/CUMC. It interesting result but the researchers point out that the risk related to birth month is relatively minor compared to the more influential variables like diet and exercise.

The Weirdest (And Most Violent) Ways That Plants Release Their Seeds - Short videos. As with so many things botanical…I could not resist including it in the gleaning list. It includes how violets disperse their seeds and I’ve just started noticing the seed pods this year (I have several locations where I am watching the plants to see the seeds disperse).

Global freshwater consumption crossing its planetary boundary - Scary result.

Biodiversity reduces human, wildlife diseases and crop pests - Another reason to worry about the extinctions happening in the world right now.

Sunrise and Sunset Photos Capture Stunning Wildlife Silhouettes - Ending with some great images…and a reminder of the special light at the beginning and ending of the day.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 14, 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.

Karnak: Excavation yields 38 artifacts - New techniques and new finds at Karnak.

71% of Investors Are Interested In Sustainable Investing - It’s positive news that more people are voting for sustainability via their investments.

New Study Pinpoints Where Ocean Acidification Will Hit Hardest - Not only hardest…but earliest. The ocean does not acidify uniformly. Estuaries with excess nutrients will acidify more rapidly. Not a good new message for the Chesapeake Bay’s shell fish industry.

Boosting older adults' vision through training - The core of the message from the research was positive but it was frustrating that the next steps were all about more research. If the initial research finding holds - then why is there not already a strategy activity to think through how vision training could be delivered to larger numbers of people at low cost.

By separating nature from economics, we have walked blindly into tragedy - We live in complex world…making decisions based on simplifying assumptions that ignore the environment or economic or social aspects are perilous.

New research into materials for tooth fillings - The composite that is most common right now is problematic because it requires adhesive to bond to the tooth, needs to be illuminated with a lamp to harden, and needs to be replaced more frequently. A new material - glass ionomer cement - may be the filling material of the future.

Widely Used Antibiotics Affect Mitochondria - The environmental accumulation of tetraclines might be harming us in ways that are just now being studied. Scary.

Epoch-defining study pinpoints when humans came to dominate planet Earth - Two dates jump out: 1610 with the irreversible exchange of species between new and old worlds and 1964 associated with the fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Either way - humans have driven Earth into a new epoch…the Anthropocene.

Fun Parks to Visit in the Top 10 Cities for Wildlife - Staycation fodder. There are interesting parks in most areas of the country. These 10 are clearly the tip of the iceberg!

Did Neanderthals make jewelry 130,000 years go? Eagle claws provide clues - From a site in present day Croatia dating from 130,000 years ago.