Gleanings of the Week Ending November 2, 2019
/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.
Eavesdropping on Soil Insects Could Aid Pest Management – Earlier this week I was hiking with second graders…soil auger in hand. There was big excitement when one of our samples include a beetle grub! And then this article appeared a few days later. The grub moved a bit and I wonder if it was one that made stridulations (chirps); if so – they weren’t loud enough for us to hear.
A Field Guide to Elk Bugling – Cool Green Science – Elk are not just in the western US. They have been reintroduced into the east.
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Birds in Flight – National Geographic Society Newsroom – Some familiar birds in this group – norther shoveler, northern pintail, red tailed hawk…some others.
Could Brain Activity During Sleep Be a Biomarker for Alzheimer's? | The Scientist Magazine® - The study only included 31 individuals…so replication with larger samples is still needed. We do need a non-invasive and early way to diagnosis Alzheimer’s.
Edge of the Ice – Brown bands at the edge of the ice are layers of ice deposited at different climate periods. Usually we only see the layers in ice cores.
Better way to teach physics to university students -- ScienceDaily – Kudos to the physicists and educators at University of Kansas. Hopefully other universities and maybe high schools can benefit from these ideas.
Climate Change Threatens Hundreds of North American Bird Species: “It’s a Bird Emergency” - Yale E360 – This on top of the declines we’ve already seen in insects and birds that feed on them. The ‘bird emergency’ is not a future event…it is already happening.
New test diagnoses Lyme disease within 15 minutes -- ScienceDaily – It would be great to have a faster test for Lyme disease. Most people are probably not tested until they have symptoms…and that’s sometimes too late to avoid permanent damage.
The peculiar bathroom habits of Westerners - BBC Future – A little cultural dissonance…that we don’t often hear about.
Humans have salamander-like ability to regrow cartilage in joints: The process could be harnessed as a treatment for osteoarthritis -- ScienceDaily – Wow! If works, there will be a lot fewer joint replacements as people get older….and moving would a lot less painful.
