Gleanings of the Week Ending June 25, 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.

What the rising light pollution means for our health – Circadian disruption from ill-timed electrical lighting (particularly at night) may contribute to poor sleep, obesity, diabetes, certain cancers and mood disorders. The night time lights are shifting to LEDs in our cities which has the effect of shifting that lighting toward the blue wavelengths which are most disruptive to our circadian rhythms.

Vitamin D may not be the great solution to health problems – I remember when the testing for vitamin levels revealed that many people were low and doctors started recommending supplementation – sometimes megadoses of the vitamin. Now the results are being reviewed --- and it is obvious that it is not a panacea and may not be of very much benefit at all.

What if the coolest thing about a 21^st-century school wasn’t technology? – The results of a TED workshop on creating a new healthy school from scratch. What do you think of their ideas?

Lightning Strikes: How to Stay Safe – Hopefully most of these recommendations are familiar to you - we’ve been having a lot of thunderstorms recently so I took a look to refresh my knowledge.

Garlic mustard populations likely to decline – I hope this begins to happen soon in our area. Right now we seem to have a lot of this plant around our area of Maryland.

Ancient satellite busts massive gas storage leak, fracking could be next – I’ve always wondered how we could detect leaks more effectively – conserve our resources by reducing leakage – and maybe this is a solution! It’s another example of a NASA instrument (and satellite) working long after its original mission was complete.

Americans are getting heart-healthier: Coronary heart disease decreasing in the US – Hurray! The study compared 2001 and 2012. The prevalence of smoking decreased during that same time period although high blood pressure and abnormal cholesterol have not (although control rates have improved). Obesity and diabetes rates have increased significantly but overall control of glucose levels has improved significantly.

Meet an Artist with no Hands – A historical piece about Matthias Buchinger – but with discussion about how the brain accommodates physical challenges such as being born without hands and learning to use feet with exceptional skill.

Flow: What is it and how to find it – How much of your day is in “flow”? I think quite a lot of mine is. The key for me is realizing that I often have more choice in the way I want to be…the way I want to do everything.

Study offers explanation for why women leave engineering – I’m not surprised by the results of this study. I was at the peak of women graduating from computer science programs in the 1980s (mine was in a math department rather than engineering) and was surrounded by so many interesting projects early on that I didn’t get into a marginalized (or menial tasks) role until later when I was strong enough to recognize it and get out it on my own – back into a place I wanted to be.

Bandelier National Monument in 1980

The first time I visited Bandelier National Monument was in the spring of 1971; I didn’t take any pictures on that trip but remembered the place and wanted to return. An opportunity to visit again didn’t come until August of 1980; I recently scanned the images my husband took and remembered that visit. We had driven from our home in Plano TX. It was quite a road trip through New Mexico – camping along the way.

There is a large D shaped ruin on the canyon floor and eroded rocks everywhere.

There are ruins along the side of the canon that used eroded spaces for storage. Some of plastering and black markings from fires remains from the long ago uses of the place.

Post holes into the rock show that the ruins once had multiple floors along the canyon wall.

Here is a close up of a row of holes for a floor/ceiling support and some pecked images in the rock.

Some of the designs made in plaster had been protected from the elements.

Some areas were left as they were but the black at the top of the cavities show that they once had fires. Perhaps there are ruins under the rubble at the base of the cliff.

These rooms are probably restored although some of the posts look battered and may be original. There has been a lot of study of the tree rings in ruins like this and a sequence has been established to date construction via tree ring analysis.

The canyon was a great place to hike. I remember that we hiked all the way down to the Rio Grande. When I looked at the web site for the monument now I saw that they had experienced flood damage to that trail and it is closed past the upper falls. Unfortunately -  I haven’t found the slides from that part of the visit – yet.

Mount Vernon

I’ve posted about Mount Vernon before – back in the summer of 2013. This time it was hotter and the wind was blowing hard enough to kick up dust. There were a lot of people. I enjoyed trying to photograph the magnolia flowers again while I waited for them to call our time slot for the house tour but the wind had contorted their petals; none of them were symmetrical! Based on the signage about them - most were planted in the 1860s.

I took a picture of the ‘necessary’ at the corner of the garden. This was the area that had overgrown boxwood when we first visited Mount Vernon in the 1980s. Now the garden beds are surrounded by small boxwood and there are flowers and vegetables planted there.

I didn’t remember the shutters over the front door. This is the view from the line for the house tour…on the land side of the house.

Standing further back on the circular drive – on sees the breeze ways on both sides of the house. There used to be steps on the route from the kitchen (on the left) to get to the house but now the line for the house tour goes there and they have a raised floor so that the house can be entered via wheelchair.

The river side of the house has comfortable chairs that are used by almost everyone for a few minutes after they finish the tour - a pleasant shady spot on a hot afternoon.

This is the view of the Potomac River from the house.

The cupola is worth looking at from several vantage points: the river side of the house,

from the side where there are other out buildings, and

from the front.

I’ve noticed lightning rods in all of the older trees before. This time I also saw them on all the outbuildings.

There was also a building that had been newly shingled – not yet painted red. There must always be some maintenance going on even during Washington’s time. One of the outbuildings actually was for storing paint!

Last but not least – I had never really looked at George Washington’s signature….it’s everywhere in the visitor’s center.

Valley Forge National Historical Park

Last week – the day following my visit to the Scott Arboretum – I walked around Valley Forge National Historical Park. I’d been there before but had never had time to see all of it. I remembered the cannon that were point at meadows. This time I wondered about how they were maintained. The one I looked at more closely had a fleck of paint that had flaked away and some rusty areas.

I remembered reconstructed log structures.

The structures help one imagine how miserable it must have been at this place in winter. The structures were very crowded - lined with crude bunks along the walls - with a crudely made fireplace for warmth.

We drove around as far as we could on the road that loops through the park but we came to a section that was closed because of damage to a bridge and construction of a replacement sewer line. We followed the detour signs through a beautiful older neighborhood (one of the highlights of the trip) and back to the visitor’s center to check the map more carefully on how to get to the other parts of the park. My sister was keen to see the DAR tower at the Washington Memorial Chapel.

I was fascinated by the eagles on the four corners of the tower.

Further down on the corner facing the chapel, there is a statue of George Washington.

There is a cannon in front of the chapel that points into the main area of the park and an obelisk.

There are numerous cool courtyards with statuary and dedications. The chapel area was getting ready for a Flea Market the next day but even with the extra activity, it was a serene place.

Further along the road was Washington’s Headquarters. There as a statue of George Washington that has been replicated in other places because

His family indicated that the face depicted him better than any other.

The headquarters was a house…that was crammed full of people when it was the headquarters. The house part was never changed structurally. The kitchen part (to the left) was ‘modernized’ in the 1800s but is now back to the way it would have been in the 1770s.

There is a train station near the Headquarters that provided transportation for people to visit the park up to the time it became a National Historical Park. The addition of the railroad created a tall berm between the headquarters area and the Schuylkill River which would not have been there in the 1770s; it changed the relationship that then encampment had of the river but may have protected many of the structures from flooding.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 11, 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.

New Climate Spiral – A visualizing of average global temperatures. Do this little exercise with the graphic – if you live to be 100, how much hotter will the planet be than when you were born? For me – it is about 2 degrees…almost 3 degrees hotter than in 1850.

Climate change poses threat to World Heritage sites - Melting glaciers, rising seas, increasing wildfires and harsher droughts….these could diminish the value of protected sites and even make them unsuitable for World Heritage designation. That would have a domino effect into local economic development, in particular the tourism sector.

Bionic leaf turns sunlight into liquid fuel – And at a higher efficiency than the fastest-growing plants!

Washington grapples with a thorny question: What is a GMO anyway?  and Report: Still lots to learn about GE Crops – The terms GMO and GE are inadequate to describe the complexity of what is happening now. Both of the articles are about a recently released report on the situation.

What’s up with microbeads – Plastic microbeads cause long term health effects in our waterways (streams, rivers, lakes, oceans). There are US regulations that are being phased in over the next few years to require that manufactures no longer make products with microbeads but prior to that individual can stop purchasing the products. I’m going to check packaging to avoid products with microbeads; the key ‘ingredients’ to avoid are polyethylene, acrylate copolymer, and polypropylene.

Top 25 informative maps that teach us something uniquely different about the world – Displaying data by location makes for easy comparison. If you did not already know about the US and paid maternity leave – the map makes if very clear – not something to be proud of.

Teenage brain on social media – It’s always been true that teenagers are better at doing than not doing (i.e. inhibition develops more slowly than other forms of cognition). This study was about how that translates into the social media realm.

Antibiotics from scratch – Drug resistant bacteria are becoming more and more problematic. This research is a ‘bright spot’ in developing antibiotics to stay ahead. No one wants to go back to the time before antibiotics.

Arctic Foxes ‘grow’ their own gardens – From Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Image of the day: don’t eat me – Usually moths are rather drab – not this tiger moth!

Camping 35+ Years Ago

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, most of the vacations we took involved camping. It was a way to travel inexpensively and we enjoyed National Parks and Forests. One of the first places we camped was at Mesa Verde National Park – driving from where we lived near Dallas all the way across the panhandle of Texas and Colorado to get there. We borrowed a relatively large tent and purchased a Coleman stove and lantern…some ice chests. My husband took one campsite documenting picture on that trip. I was only in it for scale! Surprisingly – we still have and use the green ice chest seen in the picture.

We bought a smaller tent that took a lot less space for subsequent trips. There was an annual fall foliage trip to southeastern Oklahoma (Ouachita National Forest). On one such trip there were 3 couples. Our new 2-person tent is the one in the middle.

We made trip to Colorado the next summer with the smaller tent. The space we saved by having a smaller tent was taken up with the addition of a lawn chair. We still had the Coleman stove but often cooked our meal over a camp fire in a ring of stones. By that time, we had our own grill to put over the fire that we also packed with our camping gear.

The chipmunks were interested in everything going on in the campsite. We were glad we had not left the bag of M&Ms open! This picture also reminds me that we were still using borrowed sleeping backs (the red, yellow and brown colors behind the rodent).

The spring before we moved to the Washington DC area, we made a trip to the Grand Canyon with friends. We camped the night before we hiked down to the plateau. I vividly remember my legs being very sore before we even got back to the top and realizing that my hiking boots were not as broken in as I thought they were (raw ankles). Standing in the camp shower (coin operated) felt so good and I used up all the change I’d taken with me! We were all feeling even more sore the next day – no additional long hikes for that vacation. The blue ice chest in the picture is still something we have and use; our choices of ice chests have proved to be very durable. The blue car with the trunk open is a 1983 Honda Accord that we had just purchased; we owned it until the early 1990s.

Between that time period and now we have not done much camping. We’ve recently bought a new large tent and two air mattresses. The motivation is not so much to save money but to be able to stay at Dark Sky sites for Star Parties. The camping equipment can only take about half the cargo space because a telescope has to come too!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 28, 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.

Hawai’I at the Energy Crossroads – A case study about the issues with how we produce electricity – now and into the future.

“Top tips for men juggling a successful career and fatherhood” hilariously nails how sexist the advice given to working women is – For anyone that doubts that gender bias is still quiet prevalent in the workplace.

Ancient tsunami evidence on Mars reveals life potential – Evidence of cold, salty oceans on Mars (the image of Mars was produced using Google Earth!)

Restoring an Ancient Nursery for Atlantic Sturgeon – These fish can reach 14 feet in length and weigh 800s pounds – a species that has been around since the dinosaurs. In the 1890s, caviar from Delaware River sturgeon was a thriving enterprise. Within a decade, the population of sturgeon fell to 1% of its historic numbers. Even with a moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the 1990s, the fish were not recovering due to ship strikes, channel dredging, and poor water quality. Now – with focus on dissolved oxygen, salinity, and flow conditions….and understanding the extent of spawning and nursery habitat in the freshwater portion of the river…slow recovery is beginning.

Antibiotics that kill gut bacteria also stop growth of new brain cells – Another reason antibiotics should not be overprescribed….and that we look for ways to resolve an infection that does not kill gut bacteria.

Wildlife is where you find it – A reminder that the natural world often survives even in a very man-made environment…and to be observant enough to notice it.

Bright light alters metabolism – Blue-enriched light in the evening seems to be problematic….will electronic devices of the future modify the type of light they emit based on time of day to help us stay healthy?

State of North America’s Birds Report Released to Commemorate Centennial of the First Migratory Bird Treaty – Birds connect our continent and some progress has been made. There is still a lot to be done. Individual actions like choosing sustainably created products, preventing bird collisions with windows of our houses and office buildings, and participating in bird related Citizen Science project (like eBird) make a difference.

10 Overlooked Wildlife Experiences in our National Parks – Sometimes small creatures that make their homes in National Parks are just as memorable as the scenery.

Toothpaste Tips and Myths – Toothpaste comes in lots of different formulations. Educate yourself about the good – and not so good – aspects of some of the benefit claims.

Belmont Cemetery

One of the stations on the 6^th grade field trip to Belmont is at the cemetery not far from the Manor House. It was my station earlier this week; I walked out early to get everything set. The cemetery is situation on a gentle slope at the edge of the forest. Looking toward the Manor House, the trees on the grounds are large enough to almost hide the house. The cemetery was used by the family that owned the land from the late 1700s until the mid-1900s.

The longest lived person in the cemetery was 95 years old…and a relatively recent burial.

There was a baby that only survived a few weeks. The cemetery prompts discussion of history…of health care. There are also other topics. Note the difference in weathering of the stones between the one from 1922 and the one from 1972; the newer one (1972) looks more weathered --- different types of stones --- geology.

Another stone toward the back – a child 2 years old with a different last name than any other person in the cemetery. This child was a visitor from Baltimore that died at Belmont and buried in the cemetery in 1834. Her grandfather was Francis Scott Key – another link to history. This grave is toward the back and appears to be isolated but a survey with ground penetrating radar found graves in the open area in the center of the cemetery --- bringing up technology and archaeology.

Lichen growing on a stone that is old enough to be so weathered it cannot be easily read brings up biology and how rock is chemically weathered by the algal/fungi symbionts.

The very large (and old) Tulip Poplar tree just outside the cemetery’s fence is also something the students noticed.

The buses were 20+ minutes later than expected so I had time for some bird observation as well. The blue birds, robins, and tree swallows were enjoying the mowed grass area in front of the cemetery.

Other posts about volunteering at Belmont this month:

• Belmont BioBlitz
• Birds at Belmont for Pre-Schoolers

Wallops and Chincoteague in 1978

I’ve been scanning our collection of old slides and will be posting about some of my ‘finds.’  This post is about the first exposure to Chincoteague and Wallops Island. My husband – in the early days of grad school – went on a research trip there in May of 1978 and stayed at the Refuge Inn (still our favorite place to stay). The picture of the pony corral from an upper floor of the Inn looks about the same – dated only by the cars in the parking lot.

Growing up in north Texas – the ocean scenes were new to him. The research was a collaborative effort with the Russians and they were based on a research vessel off the coast which added to the experiences. One trip out to the Russian vessel resulting in my husband’s camera getting sprayed with salt water; it never recovered fully and he started his collection of Canon cameras with the following year.

Pictures of nature are relatively timeless. There are still egrets, water, and grasses,

Gulls (and unfortunately discarded tires),

And my husband and I still try to photograph the birds in flight. He succeeded with an egret in 1978! I was surprised that there were no pictures of Great Blue Herons from 1978. Did he just not notice them….or were there not as many as there are now?

The lighthouse still shows up above the trees although the trees seem higher now.

There are still a lot of radio dishes at Wallops island that can be seen from the road.

Since he was actually on the facility, he got closer views.

He travelled with a lot of instruments. He checked a lot of equipment. He was assigned a small vacant observatory for his set up for the week. This pile was what it looked like after he packed it all back up to come home. I suppose some of the briefcases and luggage date this picture too! The plaid suitcase was one that had been collapsed on the trip up but contained laundry and seashells collected on the Wallops Island beach for the trip home!

The last to be packed: the insect repellent (he still remembers the salt water mosquitoes vividly) and his sunglasses. The packaging for OFF has a familiar look!

3 Free eBooks – May 2016

The three eBooks I’ve picked to highlight this month have a common theme: Art Nouveau – a style popular from 1890-1910. Looking at these books from the period gave me lots of ideas for Zentangle® patterns ---- and some home decorating ideas as well.

Fuchs, Georg; Newbery, Francis H.; Koch, Alex. L'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs modernes à Turin 1902. Darmstadt : Alexander Koch, Librairie des arts décoratifs. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The style appeared in fabrics and tile and architecture (extending into every aspect of artistic expression as well as daily life) and included a lot of motifs from nature.

Feure, Georges de; Puaux, Rene. Oeuvres de Georges de Feure. Paris. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The style included fashion too.

Rehme, Wilhelm. Ausgeführte moderne Bautischler-Arbeiten. Leipzig: Baumgartner’s Buchhandlung. 1902. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The integration of art in everyday places – like windows and doors – still has a lot of appeal. In much of the 100 years since the style reached its zenith, we have standardized elements of our environment to reduce costs but will that continue to be the case? It’s not that the standard doors and windows are ugly – just that they are boring because of the lack of variety.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 7, 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.

Winding Pathway Offers Unforgettable Journey Through Portugal's Stunning Natural Landscape – A rugged area – made more accessible via a boardwalk!

Motherhood without maternity leave – Why is America one of the only countries in the world that offers no national paid leave to new working mothers? 88% of working mothers have no access to paid maternity leave!

Trouble in Paradise: Fatal Blight Threatens a Key Hawaiian Tree – The beautiful Ohi’a trees we saw are in trouble!

10 Unexpected Impacts of Climate Change – How many of these 10 were you aware of before this article?

Winners of the 2016 Audubon Photography Awards Celebrate Diverse Birds of North America – These are birds in action – not posing for a photograph!

Four Ways to Explore the News through Maps – This post was for teachers (and via them to their students)…..but could be interesting to just about everybody. It is a different way to access news.

Pulling it all together – I took a Systems Biology course from Coursera last year and realized the need to integrate what has been compartmented for study – a needed simplification until recently. Systems Biology requires computers and models that have a lot of similarities to those for research into global weather or astrophysics. This article highlights 4 strategies for hunting new cancer targets.

Dreamlike Watercolor Paintings of Iconic Skylines Around the World – How many of these skylines do you recognize?

Fructose alters hundreds of brain genes, which can lead to a wide range of diseases – Interesting research done with rates. Fructose was found to impair memory but rats given DHA (an Omega-3 oil) along with the fructose performed comparably to rats that were not on the fructose diet.

Satellite maps shows explosion in paved surfaces in D.C. region since 1984 – I moved to the Washington DC area in 1983. A lot has happened since then. On the ground, the increase in paved surfaces has not kept up with the number of cars trying to get from one place to another.

Learning Log - April 2016

The majority of learning in April was experiential rather than formal course work although it seems that I always have at least one course in progress or scheduled!

I learned about mealworm cookies and Fresh Paper (for keeping strawberries fresh longer) while during my volunteer gig at my county’s STEM Fair and

Realized that I was glad cooking for 12 people was not the norm for me (it is quite a bit more work that cooking for 2-4) and

Was pleased that I didn’t panic when an opossum carcass turned up beside the stream where 7^th graders were going to appear to search for macro invertebrates in a few minutes (no shovels were available so we pushed the stinking mess into a bucket and dumped it into some nearby brambles).

I did take a macro photography class via Creative Live: The Art of Seeing: Macro Techniques for Flowers and Plants with Frans Lanting. I wanted the course on the day it was broadcast (and thus ‘free’) and then have been experimenting with selective focus since then. One of my first attempts is the picture below. It is fun to ‘fool’ the autofocus on my Point and spShoot camera (a Canon Powershot SX710 HS) into creating blurs in the foreground and background.

I also finished the second unit of the Soul Beliefs course available via Coursera from Daniel Ogilvie and Leonard Hamilton at Rutgers. I’ll do the third and last unit after the spring field trip season is done – maybe start in mid-June.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 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.

Cancer’s Vanguard (exosomes) and Immune Influence and Under Pressure – From The Scientist, graphics explains some recent research findings about cancer.

Texas and California have too much Renewable Energy – There have already been instances where spot prices for power have turned negative. Large-scale storage is needed for renewable energy…and does not exist.

Fertilizer’s Legacy: Taking a Toll on Land and Water – Massive amounts of legacy phosphorous has accumulated and will continue to impact aquatic ecosystems for a very long time. The study used data for the past 70 years for 3 rivers.

The Impact of Climate Change on Public Health – Four Infographics…. there is no good news.

Buzz Aldrin’s Plan for a Permanent Presence on Mars – Part biography…part of what ‘going to Mars’ should mean.

Breakthrough Toothpaste Ingredient Hardens your Teeth While You Sleep – Not only new technology to ‘significantly reduce tooth decay’…but new ways of marketing to both professionals and consumers. I thought at first that it was all about new ways of getting the positive action of fluoride in a more effective way but toward the end of the article it says they are working on a fluoride free version.

Behind-the-Scenes…Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum – Warehouses of collections.

8 Great Food Documentaries – Short descriptions and links to trailers for some food related documentaries.

Photographer Michael Nichols on Yellowstone – A place I’d like to visit again…once is not enough.

Effects of BPA Substitutes – Not good at all. Why wasn’t research done on the replacements for BPA before they became replacements?

3 Free eBooks – April 2016

My picks this month range in publication date from 1850 to 2015!

King, Derrick. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand – 9900 km, 7 Weeks. 2015. Available from Internet Archive here.  I liked that this was a book with lots of pictures of these countries…and relatively recent (early 2012). Many of the pictures included people that provides scale to the rest of the structures – such as the tree and ruin in the one a clipped to include with this post. There are other books about his travels that he has posted on the Internet Archive as well.

Thomas, Edward; Cameron, Katherine. The Flowers I Love. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 1910. Available from Hathi Trust here. I didn’t look much at the poetry…the visuals were too wonderful.

Bacon, M.A.; Jones, Owen. Fruits from Garden and Field. London: Longman & Co., 1850. Available from Hathi Trust here. Skip the poetry (the font makes it a challenge to read and just enjoy the visuals. I liked that the flowers and fruit were almost always included….then maybe an insect as well.

STEM Fair as Prompt

I was a judge for out county’s STEM (Science – Technology – Engineering – Math) Fair last Saturday. It was a well-organized event and I enjoyed it just as I have in years past. Every year the students seem to be better prepared and their projects even more interesting. This year I was judging 8^th grade projects and afterwards I thought a lot about how much things have changed since I was in 8^th grade. It’s been close to 50 years!

I did not participate in a Science Fair when I was in 8^th grade although I was in a general science class. It was not a required class and I was 1 of 2 girls in the class. These days the need for STEM literacy is even greater than it was 50 years ago and the schools are striving to upgrade curriculum to keep pace with the needs of the modern world. The students participating in the STEM Fair were the best from their school – and there were more girls than boys. I’m glad that more girls are participating these days but it’s very important for all students to be savvy about these topics.

8^th grade for me was ‘junior high’ but the more popular term these days is ‘middle school.’ My junior high was fed by neighborhood elementary schools and reflected the racial and ethnic diversity of those neighborhoods which were very homogenous (later racial integration would be achieved via busing); 99% of the student body were Caucasian. In my area now, the neighborhood elementary schools still feed the middle schools. The big difference is that the neighborhoods are racially and ethnically diverse so the student body is too. The students at the science fair were representative.

When I was in 8^th grade there were only a few instances when I was asked to present anything; it was not a focus in junior high at all. In high school – debate teams provided that experience to a few students. Now, the ability to present your ideas or work is part of the educational experience. It was clear that the 8^th graders had practiced their presentations and had anticipated the types of questions the judges were asking. Some of the projects were done by 2 person teams and their presentation was orchestrated so that both students talked and interacted with the judges.

Many of the students acquired things for their experiments that would have been very difficult to obtain (if they existed) 50 years ago: mealworms, empty gel caps, open top field chambers for saplings, iPads/smart phones to display pictures, and an online memory game. It is easy to acquire things like this now. I suppose that the student could have grown mealworms…but it would have made the experiment much more time consuming and maybe even distracted from the experiment.

The families of these students are most likely different than those from 50 years ago too. Fifty years ago fast food was an infrequent thing, most mothers worked part time or were at home when students got out of school, the school was not air conditioned and that was true for a lot of homes too, there were no computers, most students had one or more siblings, and jeans were not acceptable attire in many schools.

The big scary thing in the 1960s was nuclear war. As an 8^th grader it was something I was well aware of. It was related to science/technology just as the new big scary thing is for these students: climate change. Several of the students related their project to climate change --- one quite passionately.

There have been a lot of changes and as I think about them now – it is important that we integrate everything into the way we really want to be for right now and into the future. The students I met at the STEM Fair seem to be achieving that. I applaud them and the people (parents, teachers, friends, etc.) that support them.

Learning Log – March 2016

March was a huge month for classes...both online and traditional classroom/field work.

The 6 modules of Coursera’s Big History were a whirl wind discussion beginning with the Big Bang to the present and then initiating the importance of our understanding Big History as we contemplate our actions into the future. This is unlike any history course I’ve taken before in that it integrates a lot of disciplines rather than the traditional view of history. In Big History - wars and memorization of dates are way down on the scale of importance. Instead thinking about increases in complexity and energy flows are the drivers of change….and human history is in the context of the universe rather than insular to our species. I still have some references from the course to read/view but I was so fascinated by the material that I did all the lectures in March!

I finished 9 of the 11 modules of Coursera’s Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences Unit 2: Belief Systems. This is a continuation of Unit 1 which I finished in February. This part of the course is delving more into neuroscience and psychology. I’ve enjoyed it.

The Howard County Conservancy provided volunteer naturalist training for the spring field trips that will beginning in April for pre-school through middle school students. There was quite a range of topics: rocks, history of the places where we hike, insects, habitats, watersheds, literacy, seasons, and Bioblitz. In each of the 7 sessions, there was a classroom segment and then a hike to demonstrate the types of things we would do with the students. We looked at macroinvertebrates in the stream, learned to use iNaturalist, explored the hiking routes in detail, and sometimes pretended we were students. The first field trip is next Monday….so we’ll see how prepared we all are very soon!

Then there were all kinds of experiential learning going on – here are my top three for March:

Observing the effect of the combination of pine bark beetles, tree age, salt mist, and big storms at Chincoteague

Noting the large number of Tundra Swans at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge and Snow Geese at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Seeing two organisms I knew about from books and pictures but had not seen in the wild: the hemlock woolly anelgid (see previous post here) and a wood duck (more images coming in an upcoming post).

3 Free eBooks – March 2016

So many good books to peruse online….so little time.

There are two botanical print books this month:

Parsons, Frances Theodora. According to the season. New York: Scribner, 1902. Available on Hathi Trust here. This one is in color and included skunk cabbage. I couldn’t resist including the fiddleheads image too for this book!

Audsley, George Ashdown; Greve, W. Ornamental Arts of Japan. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1884. In two volumes from Hathi Trust available here. Mixture of chromolithographs, photoaquatints and carbon prints….beautiful work. I always like the cranes in Japanese art work.

Edwards, George Wharton. Alsace-Lorraine. Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Company, 1918. Available from Hathi Trust here. Some of the plates are in color. The aspect that interested me the most was the artists emphasis on capturing the light just as it was on the subject.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 19, 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.

Eyeglasses that can focus themselves are on the way – I’m not sure whether this is the technology that will actually do it….but I sure would like glasses that adjusted to my needs rather than the static versions we have now.

Thickly Layered Paintings Literally Pop Off Artist’s Canvas – Bright and colorful….good paintings to pair with a spring day!

Down the Drain: Here’s why we should use rainwater to flush toilets – Good rationale but it seems like the retrofit for an existing house would be expensive. Our house had 3.5 bathrooms and they are not close together. The logistics of getting the collected rainwater to the toilets would take some design work.

Time to rethink your vegetable oil? – Research about what is good about linoleic acid. The study was funded by NIH (better than if it had been funded by lobbyists pushing grapeseed oil).

World Average Temperature Could Rise by 1.5 Degrees as Early as 2020 – This is close enough to be in the lifetime of the majority of us.

On-the-spot diagnosis of certain cancers and other diseases is closer to becoming a reality thanks to sensitive biosensor – If this technology is effective and done for a lot less cost than current methods (mammograms, colonoscopies, ultrasound, x-rays, biopsies, etc) – it will be quite a boon for patients. But will the vested interests of our medical system allow it to replace all that infrastructure in place for diagnosis?

An Interactive Timeline of the History of the Earth – A resource listed for the Big History Course I am taking. After landing on the page – click on the red triangle on the left of the screen and the timeline beginning with the Big Bang appears. Click and drag the triangle to the right and see more details on the progression along the timeline. When the triangle gets to 1 billion years ago, another bar will appear below with a new triangle on the left. Continue in this mode to the present. The page gets very busy!

Potential new therapeutic target for hypertension may offer less side effects – This therapy seems to be focusing on something closer to the ‘cause’ for age related hypertension which is very appealing. The more we understand about the body as a biological system, the more therapies will be of this type.

These 27 Solutions Could Help the U.S. Slash Food Waste – When I saw the picture of the food scraps at the top of the article – I realized how far I’ve come in the way I prepare food. Some of those green ‘scraps’ (stems and green leaves) looked good enough to go into a stir fry or soup! If everyone learned to use the produce they buy more completely – there would not be as much waste to deal with.

Facebooks is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard – In 2012, 30 million users with Facebook accounts had died…some estimates claim that 8,000 users die each day. Just as Facebook has changed the meaning of ‘friend’ and ‘like’….it leaves digital legacy of its users.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 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.

Dragonfly is world-record flier – Confirmed by genetic analysis…this insect makes transoceanic flights.

Identity unearthed: How excavations in Sudan reveal the transformation Egyptian, Nubian culture – Cultural blending in the ancient world…with a lot of individual choice involved: Nubian bed or Egyptian coffin, wrapped like a mummy or not, Egyptian-type amulet or Nubian jewelry (or both).

Fitting into what I’m learning in my Big History class: Mysterious cosmic radio bursts found to repeat, Hubble breaks cosmic distant record: sees universe soon after big bang, and Einstein’s gravitational waves ‘seen’ from black holes – Every time I take a course, it seems like there are a lot of relevant articles coming out in the news feeds!

Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe – Student companion site for the Charles S. Cockell text. Includes chart sets for each chapter – if all you want is an overview of the topic. The book is developed to support the Coursera Astrobiology course taught by the author (which I took last year).

Migrating Monarch Number Rebound – Hurray! The good news is from analysis of the numbers of butterflies at hibernation sites in Central Mexico. There were 3x more butterflies than the year before. Still – the area is still a lot lower than the 45 acres in 1996. The area was 10 acres in 2015, 2.79 in 2014, 1.66 in 2013. Outside of the hibernation sites – more people are planting or conserving milkweed which is needed for monarch survival and keeping that focus on increasing milkweed availability in the environment is what we in the US can do to help.

Toward diagnosing diseases such as cancer in their earliest stages – But can it be done very inexpensively? So far a lot of these diagnostic tests have added cost to the medical system and there a lot of people that are not going to have the disease (i.e. there is a lot of cost of lots of testing to find the few people that need treatment).

Can some birds be just as smart as apes? – Research with corvids (crows, jays and their kind) and parrots reveals that they are capable of thinking logically, of recognizing themselves in the mirror and of empathy. Even though the brain structures and size appear quite different…both birds and apes have a prefrontal brain structure that controls similar executive structures.

Irish Eyes Soda Bread – Something to bake for St. Patrick’s day – coming up on the 17^th.

Uncovering the Roman Roads Cutting Across England - An amateur archeologist using LIDAR…reveals roads the Roman’s build for trade and rapid deployment of troops (follow the ‘full story’ link at the bottom of the article to see a map).

Who Sleeps? – Sleep conserves energy and may be why so many species sleep…but there may be other benefits at all. This an article that summarizes our current understanding of sleep in some major types of organisms (marine mammals, birds, insects, and mentions ongoing research.

Learning Log – February 2016

There are so many ways that we learn new things. Since I started logging something new I learn every day – I am more conscious of how varied what I’m learning and the way I am learning it really is.

Observation is a way to learn new things. Birds were very active in February in our area and two ‘new to me’ observations were mourning doves making and geese climbing from open water up onto ice!

Experience. Several items on my learning log fit this category: 1) I started experimenting with not wearing my glasses and discovered that I rarely need them when I am working at my computer…and the neck/shoulder discomfort I had started to feel sometimes later in the day has completely disappeared. 2) Another learning experience this month was having a thyroid nodule biopsy; it was not bad but I really am not keen to have another one. 3) I learned to use a laminator (to make a tree identification guide more durable). It isn’t a big thing but was ‘new to me.’

Books. I started looked at the Hathi Trust collection of online books; there are so many items there is it overwhelming; botanical prints are my first ‘theme’ for browsing. On the physical book side, I read several books about Wild Life Refuges and have already started applying what I read to vacation planning; we’re going to visit the 4 National Wildlife Refuges on the Eastern Shore (of Maryland and Virginia) in March: Eastern Neck, Blackwater, Prime Hook and Chincoteague. In the Internet Archive arena my theme for browsing in February was ‘wallpaper’ with particular focus on wallpaper catalogs from the year I was born!

Udemy’s Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography). I finished as much of the class as I was interested in. I learned a few things but realized that I am spoiled by the quality of the courses I’ve taken on Coursera and Creative Live. The 4 Udemy courses I have taken are just not up to the same standard in terms of production or content.

Coursera’s Soul Beliefs (Unit 1). I finished the 11 ‘weeks’ of lectures for this portion of the course and will start on the Unit 2 lectures in March.

Coming up in March – there are already some other types of learning coming up: travel and ‘live’ classes.