Gleanings of the Week Ending July 29, 2017
/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.
When you can’t remember where you are or how you got there – Transient Global Amnesia. Evidently accident and emergency units are accustomed to seeing 2 or 3 cases a month. The good news is that usually it happens once…and not again…and that the memories return except for the brief period of the episode. Brain imaging studies show abnormalities in the hippocampus during the episode. The description sounds like a hippocampus re-boot.
New Kingdom Egypt: The goldsmith’s tomb – On an island in the Nile River in Sudan, there is evidence of a multicultural settlement: Egyptian and Nubian….with a focus on gold.
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week # 97 – My favorite is a Green Bee-eater with a dragonfly.
How to Feed the World Without Killing the Planet? – A thoughtful piece about how we can all eat well into the future and not contribute to mass extinction.
Treated Fracking Wastewater Contaminated Watershed with Radium and Endocrine Disrupters – A study of sediments of Conemaugh River Lake – a dammed reservoir east of Pittsburgh – revealed that the highest concentrations of endocrine disrupting chemicals, carcinogens and radium peaked 5-10 years ago during a peak period of fracking wastewater disposal. High radium levels continued 12 miles downstream from treatment plants. Bottom line: treatment of fracking wastewater is not protecting our water supply. Aargh!
Plant Sources of Protein – This is done by serving size. I wish they had done it by calorie so it would be more obvious which sources are more protein dense. I found a reference that includes a table that shows grams of protein per 100 calories for some foods here although the list is not as extensive as I would like and includes too many highly processed items.
The underground railway that became a secret wartime base – In Bristol. A railroad built to tunnel up a cliff from the port to a spa area in the late 1800s…that closed in 1934 but then during the bombings of World War II it housed the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a little later an alternate broadcast center. It became the nerve center for the BBC in the west of England for the rest of the war. The tunnel became a derelict by 1960 and is slowly being opened for tours now.
Prairie Noise – Some pictures and a short video of a cicada ‘singing’ – it’s the sound of summer to me both from growing up in Texas/Oklahoma and where I live low in Maryland.
Recovery: Bringing Back Bumble Bees – 46 indigenous bumble bee species in the US are at some risk of extinction. Bumble bees are frequently more efficient pollinators than honey bees. We in the US have been slower than other countries to recognize their importance and act to stop practices that make their survival more difficult.
59 Retro Posers Celebrate the Colorful Diversity of America’s National Parks – Eye candy for the week!
