Gleanings of the Week Ending July 15, 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.

How climate change will transform business and the workforce – The way we work and the skills employers need will be changing…is climate savvy going to be become as important as tech savvy?

How to see if home prices are rising or falling where you live – The link is to an article….that contains the link to a zoomable map of the US. My house is in an area that has seen 20-39% increase in home prices since 2000.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #95 – I liked the picture of the two pintails…the tails clearly visible as they are taking off: matched choreography.

Greenland’s summer ocean bloom likely fueled by iron – It turns the water of much of the Labrador Sea turquoise!

Surf through newly digitized images to see Rome’s ever-changing history – Many images collected by Rodolfo Lanciani and then supplemented. I am looking at this source as well as books by Lanciani on Internet Archive.

Owls’ wing could hold the key to beating wind turbine noise – I guess humans are not keen on wind turbine noise, but will reducing the noise increase the deaths of birds? I include a demonstration for pre-schoolers that includes the sound made by flapping a turkey feather and then an owl feather….and they are always surprised at the silence of the owl feather.

How Abstract Photography has evolved and still continues to inspire art – A little photographic history…and maybe some ideas for you own photography experiments.

Scientists unveil reconstructed face of ancient Peruvian mummified female leader – And she was only in her mid-20s when she died.

Whole Grains: Good for the Gut – And whole grains have more flavor too.

Women of Color Face a Staggering Amount of Harassment in Astronomy – Not good…and it’s even worse in physics.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 18, 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.

WHO’s First-Ever List of the Dirty Dozen Superbugs – Bacteria resistant to our antibiotics are appearing more and more often…and the development of new antibiotics to treat them is not keeping pace.

Hotter days will drive global inequality – We’ll probably be seeing more of these types of projections as we see hotter weather. The temperature has an impact on so many things….some can be positive up to a point (like corn yields which increase up to a point…then decline sharply).

Ah-Choo! 11 Fun Facts about Sneezing – How many of these ‘fun facts’ did you already know?

Why China’s internet use had overtaken the West – The number of internet users in China exceeded the US in 2008…and they are leaping ahead using technology in a way that supports their culture rather than merely copying from elsewhere.

US Wind Energy Provided 5.5% of Nation’s Electricity in 2016, over 20% in 5 heartland states – Oklahoma, where I visited last weekend, generates 25.1% of their electricity from the wind. Hurray for them!

A tiny bug is upsetting Shenandoah National Park’s ecosystem – Aargh! The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (invasive insect) is killing hemlocks. The trees at Belmont Manor and Historic Park where I volunteer with the Howard Country Conservancy are infected….and dying too.

Why we can’t look away from our screens – I seem to be noticing more articles recently about addiction to modern digital products.

The Chemistry of Daffodils – In honor of spring. We got to enjoy our daffodils for a little while. Now most of them have been pushed into the mulch by the ice and snow that came along over the past week.

The last things that will make us uniquely human – In recent decades, we discovered that humans are not the only organisms to use tools…some we thought was once uniquely human. Now the ability of Artificial Intelligence maybe encroaching on what we think makes us unique. What will our value – our niche – be in the ecosystem of the future?

Diet and global climate change – Making dietary changes could dramatically reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, colorectal cancer and Type 2 diabetes (and associated health care costs) and greenhouse gases!

Wind Turbines in West Texas

Last Sunday, we left Abilene while it was still dark to drive to Tucson. I ask my daughter to take the first driving stretch because I wanted to photograph wind turbines at sunrise as we drove. The timing was good since we started seeing the big turbines almost immediately along Interstate 20 – and they continued for miles and miles. Most of them were set away from the highway but there were a few close enough to see the colorful sunrise light on the blades. The area must be one of the largest (if not the largest) in the US for wind power generation.

There were a lot of RV parks that looked full in the area and I wondered if RVs have become the housing of choice for temporary workers. There were people out and about – buddle up for the cold and working. Ranching, oil, wind….all industries big in the area that require outdoor work even when it is cold and a Sunday morning.

Surprisingly the wind did not bother the car as much in that stretch of highway as it did in the up and down area as we got further along – past Pecos. The terrain channels the wind into swirling gusts that we could feel in the car steering. We watched the big trucks more closely and minimized our time passing them….kept moving along at the speed limit – which is 80 mph for a lot of the drive through West Texas.