Highlights of 2016

What are the experiences of 2016 I’ll remember the most?

The trip to New Mexico for the Festival of the Cranes tops the list for memorable travel. My husband and I enjoyed it so much we’re already looking for similar events at National Wildlife Refuges elsewhere in the country.

My son-in-law defending his research and getting his PhD…finding a postdoc for 2017…tops the list for memorable family event. It’s quite a milestone. My daughter will have a similar one in 2017. This kind of milestone is a huge change for them --- no longer a student, physically moving somewhere very different, etc. --- and has the potential to be a pivot point in their lives. It’s on my list for memorable experiences because of the flurry of activity we’re involved in these last weeks of the year…and knowing that there is more to come in early 2017.

Of course – there are many other things I could put on the list – courses, volunteering, travels to familiar places. I chose these two because they were so different...they are not part of the ‘norm’ that we enjoy all the time!

3 Free eBooks – December 2016

Scrapbook of Victorian Greeting Cards. Handwritten date of 1874. Available from Internet Archive here. I focused on the Christmas cards because – after all – it is December. Styles have changed considerably! This one of a child blowing soap bubbles – with a pipe held upside down…and, evidently, indoors – was one of my favorites.

Scrapbook of Victorian Greeting Cards. Handwritten date of 1874. Available from Internet Archive here. I focused on the Christmas cards because – after all – it is December. Styles have changed considerably! This one of a child blowing soap bubbles – with a pipe held upside down…and, evidently, indoors – was one of my favorites.

Gordan, Elizabeth; Ray, John. Buddy Jim. New York: P.F. Volland Company. 1922. Available from Hathi Trust here. I looked at everything the Internet Archive and Hathi Trust had with John Rae illustrations. I liked this one because of its depiction of outdoor experiences of a child in the 1920s. How many children today spend this much time outdoors?

Wolle, Francis. Diatomacae of North America. Bethlehem, PA: The Comenius Press. 1894. Available from Hathi Trust here. The drawings in this volume – over 2300 of them – from over 100 years ago prompted me to think about a photography project this spring (diatoms) and some Zentangle patterns. It was quite a visual feast!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 17, 2016

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.

Ceiling panel cools regardless of climate – I like to read stories about ‘out of the box’ solutions…although I wonder how many of them will prove feasible in the end.

Big Pharma and Distracted Driving are Killing Americans Early – Life expectancy in the US declined in 2015. It’s the first time in 23 years. It’s not a big drop but there is worry that it begins a downward trend. Deaths due to motor vehicle accidents have gone up by 6%. Accidental poisonings increased by 13% with 95% of that from drug overdoses and alcohol. There is related story – from another source: American Death Rate from Drugs, Alcohol, and Mental Disorders Nearly Triples since 1980.

Toward Treating Alzheimer’s Disease with Brain Waves – Another ‘out of the box’ solution…inducing gamma (brain) waves using optogenetics…exposure to flickering light.

“Neural Tourniquet” Zaps a Nerve to Stop Bleeding Anywhere in the Body – An example of bioelectronic medicine…that’s been researched for 15 years.

World Map Reveals What Each Country Does Better than Any Other – I’m not sure how useful this work is…how the ‘best’ about a country was determined. But it is interested to look at ti for a few minutes. The US is best at ‘spam emails’ --- not a positive thing.

Museum in Japan has a collection of 1,700 rocks that look like human faces – I remember ‘seeing’ faces in the patterns of wood veneer…why not rocks too. Some of them look more face-like than others to me.

The appalling reality of Bosnia’s missing dead – Mass graves from 25 years ago – a sad reminder of tragedy that is hard to unravel from what remains.

Reach Out Reporter – Science News for Children – Free Technology for Teachers post and actual site – There is ‘Fact Pack’ about the December Solstice that links to this time of year…I like the video about starling murmurations! The site is designed for teachers…but is useful for anyone interacting with children on science related topics.

A few new maps in National Park Maps – A great site to check before you head out to any of the national parks!

10 Intentional Deformed Skulls from Around the World – I’m taking a Osteoarcheology course on Coursera right now and am reading the articles other students are referencing. Expect more items on the gleanings for next week too.

Rawlings Conservatory – Part I

Earlier this week, my husband and I made the trek from our house up to the Rawlings Conservatory in Baltimore. We had seen it in passing 15-20 years ago when we were making trips to the Baltimore Zoo when our daughter was young – but we had never stopped and gone inside. It’s not as big as the Longwood Conservatives and is probably about a 100 years older than the Brookside Gardens Conservatories. It was a morning well spent. This post is about the desert room of the Conservatory and will be followed (eventually) by two more posts about the tropical room and the poinsettias.

There was an aloe in bloom. The color attracted my attention at first.

When I zoomed in for a closer look – the coloring became even more distinctive.

Periodically some rocks with rusty swirls were positioned among the cactus…adding other colors to the room. It reminded me of looking down on the terrain of some of the western US from an airplane window.

There was a tiny clump of cactus with seed pods about 1/4 inch across nestled in the spines. There were two elderly women that spotted them and made sure I saw them.

And then I continued my project photographing cactus spines. There were some different types than I had photographed before.

• Where the spines are along the edge of the pad like stem
• Where there are ‘leaves’ growing between the spines
• Pink pines on one, yellow spines on another, and white spines
• Different colors of spines (does it have something to do with the age of the spine?)

They all look so different from other plants...fodder for science fiction writers imaging aliens.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 3, 2016

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.

Mysterious Winds Cause Rapid Melting of Antarctic Ice – Fohn winds….a warm wind that may be responsible for calving ice shelves. And some of their most impressive heat waves come in the dead of winter, eroding glaciers at a time of year that no one thought possible.

Electron Micrographs Get a Dash of Color – And they used red and green…so the images looks very Christmassy!

Ancient Royal Boat Tomb Uncovered in Egypt – Found while investigating the tomb complex of 12^th dynasty King Senwosret III, located in southern Egypt. The walls of the tomb covered with sketches of boats.

How the Enormous Field of Physics All Fits Together – A short video (less than 10 minutes) that provides a big picture Physics.

NASA’s Bold Plan to Hunt for Fossils on Mars – Fossils of single celled algae and bateria…maybe taking a look at the cauliflower-shaped silica formations inside Mars’s Gusev Crater that look like objects sculpted by bacteria living inside hot springs on earth.

What it’s like to sail a giant ship on Earth’s busiest seas – Part of the BBC’s Future Now series.

Cuba’s Underwater Jewels are in Tourism’s Path – Gardens of the Queen National Park: keys, mangrove islets, and reefs about 50 miles off Cuba. Cuba limits the number of divers and fishermen allowed to visit but could face pressure to increase access.

Birds have skills previously described as ‘uniquely human’ – Caledonian crows use tools, scrub jays remember past events and act accordingly, pigeons can be trained to recognize patterns of letters (words). But they may be processing stimuli differently than humans. Maybe no two species are the same but the brain is often adaptable enough to find a means to meet the needs of the animal.

The most Visual Science Textbook You’ve Ever Seen – History of Evolution….and images of example along the way.

The Chemistry of Turmeric – Fluorescence, Indicator, and Health Effects – The post includes an infographic but the short video is worth watching (rather gathering materials to do the experiments yourself).

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 12, 2016

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.

How well are the world’s rivers protected? – The HydroSHEDS dataset includes high-resolution imagery that can be used to assess river quality…measure progress toward conservation targets.

Oregon DOT’s Columbia River Gorge Bus Service a Smashing Success – Something to add to my list of ‘things to do’ when we make our plans to vacation in the Northwest US.

Should birds stay, or should they go? – Some bird trivia…particularly about birds in Alaska.

Interactive: See How Global Health Has Changed Since You Were Born – A fun way to learn a bit about the history of global health.

Urban Forests: what city trees do for us and what we should do for them – Trees in the city...cost effective and good for our psyches too.

Wild cat brains: An evolutionary curveball – Cats are different….the size of their frontal lobes is linked to their social natures in a different way that people and monkeys. Cheetahs (social cats) have small frontal lobes and leopards (solitary cats) have large ones.

Jumping Worms: The creepy, damaging invasive you don’t know – I saw this article and have now see other reference to this invasive species. Aargh! I looked at worm pictures from our Belmont Bioblitz and was relieved that the worms we found were not this species!

Significant Bronze Age city discovered in norther Iraq – A dig only 45 kilometers from territory controlled by Islamic State!

The Lost History of South Africa – Rock art of the San people...older than the cave site in France.

How each one of us contribute to Artic sea ice melt – For example - The carbon dioxide emission for each seat on a return flight from London to San Francisco causes five square meters of Arctic sea ice to disappear.

3 Free eBooks – October 2016

There were some beautiful books I looked through online in October. Here are my picks for the top 3.

Brooke, E. Adveno. The Gardens of England. London: T. McLean. 1858. Available from the Internet Archive here. The illustrations are a step back into the mid-1800s both in terms of the grand gardens that surrounded large estates and how people interacted with them.

Harrap, Anne and Simon. Orchids of Britain and Ireland: A field and site guide. London: A&C Black. 2010. Available from the Internet Archive here. Skipped ahead by almost 150 years…and color photography! I am always partial the slipper orchids.

Duncan, James; Cuvier, Georges. The Natural History of British Butterflies. Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars. 1840. Available from HathiTrush here. As I looked through the images in this book, I wondered how many of these butterflies still exist. A lot has happened to the environment since 1840.

Enjoy!

Moving Day - Fall 1994

I found a set of pictures my daughter took the day we moved into our house in the fall of 1994 – and promptly scanned them. She was 5 years old and in kindergarten. She documented ordinary things – like the view of the partially unloaded moving van.

She also took pictures from the front porch of the house. The small tree with red leaves by the mailbox is an oak that is now almost too big for me to reach around (and it a major contributor to the leaves on our front lawn that I need to rake every fall).

Taking a slightly different view – the small tree near the front of the van was a maple that was never healthy. It eventually died and we replaced it with a red leafed plum. Across the street the ever greens are now very tall. Twenty-two years does make a difference in the tree size all through the neighborhood.

But my favorite picture is one that shows the perspective of a 5-year-old --- the washing machine coming into the house!

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 15, 2016

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.

Pumpkin steel-cut oats – I am collecting pumpkin (and other winter squash) recipes. They are probably my favorite seasonal foods. I am going to use some leftover butternut squash (already cooked) for one of them today!

Salt’s Secret Success in Ancient Chaco Canyon – Evidently the salts in the soil around Chaco Canyon are not chlorides …but sulfate salts which are not toxic to maize. And the sulfate salts are useful for making pigments too which were used to color walls and pottery. The research contends that the water management systems in Chaco Canyon did not cause catastrophic salt pollution and abandonment of the area as had been previously conjectured.

A Win for the Whooping Crane’s Texas Home – I have been thinking about making a winter trip to the wildlife refuges along the Gulf Coast of Texas – seeing whooping cranes being high on the priorities for the trip – so I notice articles like this!

Thirty Years of Progress – My undergraduate degree in biology was about 35 years ago so this series of articles is a good update for me.

The London Landmark with 20,000 Skeletons in its Vault – The Museum of London – and a project to examine 1,500 skeletons from the collection and compare them with skeletons outside of London. It will be a slice through history using a lot of the same technologies used in modern medicine.

Hummingbird Whisperer Captures Close-Up Photos of Birds Visiting her Backyard – Hurray for backyard photographer Tracy Johnson – patience and persistence!

Culling of White-Tailed Deer Coming to National Parks in Western Maryland – We don’t have any natural predators for deer….so culling has become necessary. In our neighborhood, all certainly just won’t last through the spring and early summer because the deer eat them, low branches of trees are nibbled (or eaten) – even the evergreens which must be very tough eating. There are way too many deer and in a suburban area like ours culling is not an option.

Antarctic Invertebrates – Many times we only think of the larger, more visible plants and animals of an area….but biodiversity goes way beyond that view. This article makes the case about why we should care about invertebrates in the Antarctic…not just the penguins.

A Bird’s Eye View of Simmering Kilauea Volcano at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park – Last year at this time, we were planning a trip to Hawai’i in December and we enjoyed Volcanoes National Park when we went. Now I always take a look at any article about the place. This one includes a video of the Halemaʻumaʻu Crater now – even more active than when we were there.

A Sherlock-Worthy Look at an Ancient Horse Mummy – From the steppes of Mongolia and dating from the 6^th to 8^th century CE.

Baltimore Inner Harbor in September 1984

I found some pictures of my very first trip to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It was in 1984 – a little over a year since we’d moved to the east coast. We were still living in Virginia so it was a day trip for us to see Baltimore. It’s hard to internalize that it was over 30 years ago!

It must have been a great day for being out on the water based on the number of boats. The rental paddle boats were simpler then that the ones that are there now.

The National Aquarium had been open for a few years (according to Wikipedia it opened in August 1981) and was expanded in the early 2000s – so this show what it was like before the expansion.

We were making a lot of day trips and exploring the Mid-Atlantic area back in the mid-80s. My husband was working on a post doc and we weren’t sure how low we would live in the Washington DC area --- but we ended up staying. Now we favor the natural areas over the urban attractions of museums and tours.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 01, 2016

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.

Images of the world’s greatest cities before they were cities – Visual history.

Internet addiction may indicate other mental health problems in college-aged students – An Internet Addiction Test was developed in 1998; this study indicates that the test may need to be updates…that there are significantly more students having trouble dealing with their day to day activities because of their internet usage. Also – are mental heal issues a cause or consequence of excessive reliance on the internet?

UK’s Oxford tops world ranking of best universities; US had 3 of top 5 – This UPI article also provides a link to the annual list (here if you want to jump there directly). There is a short blurb for each school as well.

The Good Guide to Milk: Cow: Soy, Nuts & More – I’ve switched from almond to soy milk based on this article. I’d switched to almond milk several years ago when I finally realized that almost all my stomach issues were caused by lactose intolerance.

50-country comparison of child and youth fitness levels: US near the bottom – Not good. The US is 47 out of 50. I wonder how long it has been this bad. So much has changed over the past 50 or so years. Many neighborhoods are not walkable…streets are too busy/dangerous for bicycling…parents are worried about children being outside without direct supervision.

View 3500+ Art Exhibits Online – A blurb from Free Technology for Teachers. Another source for free ebooks, specifically about exhibits at MoMA.

Greenland ice is melting 7% faster than previously thought – The hot spot that feeds Iceland’s active volcanoes is responsible. Uplift is happening a differing rate as well.

Sesame: Little Seeds, Big Benefits – Another seed to keep on hand. I use chia seeds the most but sesame seeds (and tahini) are a close second.

Ancient Skeleton discovered on Antikythera Shipwreck – From 65 BC...and now they can use DNA to learn more about a person that lived 2100 years ago.

Grading the Presidential Candidates on Science – From Scientific America. A compilation of answers on a number of science related issues from all 4 candidates.

3 Free eBooks – September 2016

So many good books….so little time. Here are my picks from my September online reading.

Reeves, William Pember; Wright F. and W. (painters). New Zealand. London: A. and C. Black. 1908. Available from Internet Archive here. The illustrations are wonderful….a rendering of what the country was like before the first world war.  The pictures of landscapes and natural areas encourage thinking about exploring there (hoping that those places still exist).

Johns, Thomas Rymer. Cassell’s Book of Birds. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin. 1869. Available on Internet Archive here. This books includes illustrations of Birds of Paradise. We still see them as amazing birds with improbable feathers. Think what a sensation they must have been when this book was published in the mid-1800s.

Rackman, Bernard, Read, Herbert Edward; Glaisher, James Whitbread Lee; English Pottery – its development from early times to the end of the eighteenth century. London: Ernest Benn, Limited. 1924.  Available on the Internet Archive here. Lots of good ideas for Zentangle patterns in this book! I am noticing that copyrights are expiring on books all the time and topics I have explored before on the Internet Archive have new books available. This was one example.

1994 Nature Study

In the summer of 1994, my daughter was almost 5 years old. She was not big enough for most of our yard work chores but she enjoyed being outdoors. I was reminded of her at that age by a picture I came across in my scanning project. My husband had finished mowing and she and I had gone around picking dandelion flowers that had missed being cut. She had a small basket that she put the flowers in. I started trimming some bushes while she arranged grass clippings and dandelion flowers (and a few other things she found) into an arrangement on the garage floor. After she finished – I went inside to get the Polaroid camera and her father took a picture with his camera too. She was thrilled with the near immediate result of the Polaroid; I’m not sure she ever saw this one that came back weeks later.

What a difference digital photography has made!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 24, 2016

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.

World Heritage in the High Seas: The Time Has Come – From National Geographic – pictures and a map of some potential places on the high seas that merit World Heritage status.

Historical analysis examines sugar industry role in heart disease research – A bit of disturbing history….is dietary fat the main culprit when it comes to heart disease? What about sugar and heart disease?

Gentians: part 1, part 2, part 3 – Elizabeth’s series on a particular flower….and not just in Maryland.

Brain’s stunning genomic diversity revealed – Huge insertions and deletions in DNA…surprise.

Scientists Baffled as Hundreds of Dead Horseshoe Crabs Wash Ashore in Japan – Sad…and no definitive reason yet. Theories being investigated include: parasitic infection or disease or oxygen shortage due to higher sea water temperature.

Between a rock and a hard place: biologists unearth sandstone-excavating bees – Bees are amazingly diverse. These are from the west and southwest in the US: Utah, Colorado, California.

Eggs make a comeback – A general overview of eggs in our diet. There is also a link to an article about ‘how to buy eggs.’

How our brain slows down the effects of aging – Elderly people develop a particular selective attentiveness. I wondered if, as we get older, we realize that we are paying more attention to details?

A Newly Explored Undersea Volcano is Teeming with Alien Life Forms – On Earth but very different than what we normally see.

How much do perfumes pollute? – A study of the canals of Venice….looking at the perfumes that are part of products we use daily like soaps, detergents, shampoos and other personal hygiene products. It turns out that the perfumes are in every sample…persistent for the 9 months of sampling. But what impact do they have on the environment – that’s still to be determined.

1981 Road Trip to New Mexico

My Monday posts are trips back in my own history…. brought into the present via pictures that I have been scanning. This week I’m remembering a road trip to New Mexico in September of 1989. We spent considerable time at Bandelier National Monument. We walked around the main ruin area,

Did some hiking,

Climbed into some reconstructed ruins,

Saw the carvings of mountain lions, and

Tried to image how it must have been when the canyon was populated in ancient times.

My husband was taking flower pictures then too…and managed some stunning ones at Bandelier.

I remember the hike down to the Rio Grande vividly. There is an elevation change between the visitor center and the river.

We followed the water for part of the hike and my husband too pictures of a waterfall from many angles.

And finally made it to the river….very muddy and much reduced by up river irrigation.

We drove over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and my husband took a dizzying picture from when we walked out onto the bridge. I remember feeling the bridge vibrate when cars or trucks went by…and not wanting to stay out on the walkway for very long.

We also went to Pecos National Historical Park on that road trip…but it was overshadowed by Bandelier.

Thinking back on this and other times I’ve vacationed in New Mexico – I have enjoyed them all…and am ready to go again.

1979 – Southeast Oklahoma in the Fall

Back in the last 70s and early 80s, we enjoyed a fall foliage camping trip almost every year. I favorite destination was southeastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas….where there were more trees than the area around Dallas. In 1979, we made two trips during the fall. The first one was in September when most of the trees were still green and it was to visit relatives further north than our usual fall stops. But we made a stop at a place just off the highway called Limestone Gap. There was a railway bridge over a stream – that was crumbling even then. Based on the weeds growing on top – maybe the train already was running over a new bridge.

The highway at that time did not have rest stops…so this stream and crumbling bridge made a pleasant stop for a picnic south of McAlester OK. My family had stopped there for years when we were on that stretch of highway. This picture was taken at one of the last times we stopped before the highway was upgraded – there was no longer a ‘Limestone Gap’ sign for the turn off – and we stopped at a fast food restaurant or truck stop further along the highway rather than a ‘scenic’ stop.

Later in the season, we made our annual camping trip. Many of the leaves had already fallen from the trees.

But there was still a golden quality to the forest with a few leaves hanging on and many on the ground – but not enough to cover the rocky floor of the forest.

The golden them was carried with mushrooms

And shelf fungus.

My husband picked the picture below as his favorite and printed it as an 11x14 not long after the trip.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 03, 2016

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.

Edible food packaging made from milk proteins – I’m not sure how this works to reduce packaging since to be edible it would have to stay clean (i.e. another layer of packaging?). Still – it would be great to reduce the amount of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging.

Zika Infects Adult Neural Progenitors Too  and How Zika infects Mother and Baby – Two articles from The Scientist. Zika is a hot research topic right now…and a public health concern.

Research priorities for the field of atmospheric chemistry – The development of a predictive capability to provide foresight into the consequences of rapid changes in the Earth system is need to help in preparation and decision making. Right now the field is focused on observing, learning and discovering for fundamental understanding…so there is data to support attempt to develop a predictive capability.

New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection – The Guaico Culex virus that infects mosquitoes has 5 genes and each gene is individually packaged. A mosquito cell has to have 4 of the 5 packages to be infected. The 5^th package may cause the infection to be potent. Once again – a case that shows how little we really understand about life on Earth.

How Aluminum Changed the World – A little history for the week.

Wildflower Wednesday: Chicory – Like the author of this post – I like chicory. The blue color redeems it from being considered a weed for me!

Invasive Species Spotlight: Canada Thistle – Evidently it was introduced accidently to North America in the 1600s!

Photos of Frozen Flowers Capture the Paradoxical Beauty of Preservation and Destruction – Eye candy for the week….maybe an idea for some photographic experiments for this winter.

Hope for reversing stroke-induced long-term disability – What a boon it would be for an aging population where having a stroke often reduce the quality of life.

Actin Architecture (image) – Filaments in a cancer cell imaged via confocal microscopy.

Geology Field Trips in 1973

Geology field trips were a special kind of ‘road trip’ in the first year of my marriage. I remember 3 in particular. They were sponsored by the community college (El Centro in Dallas TX); the school chartered a bus for a day, charged a relatively low fee, and students brought their own lunches and snacks. The field trips were popular for more than geology students based on the fullness of the buses!

The first one was to Enchanted Rock – a pink granite pluton batholith in Central Texas. It was not a great day for pictures. Some of the depressions in the granite still held water from recent rains.

That’s me in this picture for scale!

The second one was to see rose rocks near Norman, Oklahoma. The geology of the field trip was overwhelmed by bus getting stuck on the dirt road getting to the location. It had to be pulled out by two tractors!

The third field trip was to Inner Space Cavern north of Austin. It was an easy trip – just off the interstate highway. My husband did some experimentation taking pictures is the low light conditions – all hand held.

Geology field trips have evolved since the 1970s if my daughter’s experiences over the past 7 years are indicative. Now the geology field trips are more likely to require camping, be part of a class and for-credit, and use off-road vehicles rather than buses! Some of them require long distance travel; she had geology field trips to Germany and Hawaii!

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 27, 2016

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.

Dome of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Not As Gleaming As It Once Was – Biofilm is making the dome darken…and it is hard to treat without damaging the marble of the monument.

The Giant Pyramid Hidden Inside a Mountain – It’s in Cholula (Mexico) and the largest pyramid on the planet (base is 4x larger that the Great Pyramid at Giza and nearly twice the volume).

Longest-lived vertebrate is Greenland Shark: Lifespan at least 400 years – The specimens studied were caught as by-catch. I wondered how big the population is and if the by-catch is actually having an impact on the species; no info on that from the article.

365 pounds of Anacostia Park Goose Breast Going to Afterschool Lunch Program – I wonder if geese from nearby areas has filled in the void at Anacostia Park. Our area has a lot of resident Canadian Geese.

SpaceDrafts Vids! – My daughter is part of the group that finds speakers for the Space Drafts monthly events in Tucson…and they’ve made videos of the latest talks available. Most of the speakers are from University of Arizona, Lunar and Planetary Lab.

Invasive Species Spotlight: Devil’s Tail – Another name for mile-a-minute…a very common invasive plant in Maryland. This blog post gives some history of the plant.

How it feels to live in darkness – Dialog in the Dark exhibit in the Children’s Museum in Holon, Israel gives sighted people a 90-minute tour of what it is like to be a blind person.

Let there be LED: The future of light-based technologies for interiors – Anything that gets closer to natural light (for during the day) and can be tuned to not inhibit melatonin production at night would be what the kind of lighting I would want in my house.

Transparent wood windows are cooler than glass: Study –  I would like to have skylights made of this kind of material.

The Killer Flood Made of Molasses – In 1919, a tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed created a 20-feet-high wave of molasses. It flattened buildings and picked up people. 21 people died, 150 were injured.

1973 Day Trip to Platt National Park

Ever heard of Platt National Park? It was around from 1906-1976 and is now part of the Chickasaw National Recreation Area. My husband and I took a day trip to the place in November of 1973 not realizing that the area was destined to lose it designation in just a few years. It was only a little over 2 hours each way from Dallas following I35 into Oklahoma and a popular park at the time we went. The closer we got, the more interesting the road cuts along the highway became.

In the park itself, the road dipped down into streams – that overflowed the road when it rained,

Water flowed over ledges,

Rocky hillsides had trees growing in every crevice,

Water thick with filamentous algae fed into the larger waterways,

Rocky cliffs supported trees at the top,

And most of the trees had already lost their leaves by November.

We hiked, had a picnic lunch and hiked some more. My husband experimented trying to capture water ripples and sprays in photographs. It was learning in slow motion compared to photography today since the film had to be developed before the results were known. Now we just play back the images on the camera….and learn immediately.