Changes at the Grocery Store - a little history

When I first started doing my own grocery shopping back in the 1970s – the checkers still had to know the prices (no scanners), there was only one kind of bag and it was paper, and I paid cash or wrote a check.

Then the scanners came along and plastic bags although paper bags could be requested. At some point, paying for groceries with a credit card took over from checks. The credit card processing hand changed over the years…from the checker swiping it through a part of the register, to me swiping it through a device, and most recently, to me inserting the chip end of the card into the upgraded device. That finally step has eliminated the signature requirement.

I started using my own reusable bags about 8 years ago and now seldom get the plastic bags any more (and never from the grocery store). Sometimes my husband requests paper bags that we use for collecting paper to be recycled.

The last plastic bags I’ve eliminated are from the produce department; I’ve started taking a reusable plastic bin for those items – weighing them so the checker can easily scan the weight/price for those items. In a recent trip I eliminated 3 plastic bags; I always am pleased when I can take a simple action and reduce plastic use!

Of course, once the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) season starts in June, my purchases from the grocery store produce department are dramatically reduced.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 12, 2018

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.

Why I Speak Up for Science – National Geographic – A short piece about the need for science in everyday life….why science is important for everyone.

From property damage to lost production: How natural disasters impact economics -- ScienceDaily – The economic impact is more than just a single point of property damage and lost production…there is a ripple effect that can increase the overall impact significantly over what insurance covers and it beomes a very complex problem to estimate.

European Union Bans All Outdoor Uses of Neonicotinoids - Yale E360 – Shouldn’t we in the US be at least this concerned about the health of bees and other pollinators? Why have we not done more to curtail the use of neonicotinoids?

Top 25 Urban Birds – National Geographic – Some birds are thriving in the cities of the world.

Common Eye Disorders Explained: Cataracts, Glaucoma, AMD | Berkeley Wellness – Prevention, signs and symptoms, treatment…well organized and easy to understand.

These daggers made from human bone were a deadly asset on the battlefield | Science | AAAS – They are from New Guinea….and decorated. Most of the time they were made from cassowary leg bones….but sometimes human thigh bones were used.

US gains in air quality are slowing down: New study indicates challenges of meeting ozone goals -- ScienceDaily – I live in an area that has an increasing number of ‘code red’ days (high ozone). This study indicates that emissions from cars and power plants are understood well enough…but not other sources and that is probably why the trend toward better air quality is slowing down.

BBC - Future - How prison changes people – Evidently the personality change that dominates is an inability to trust others….but there are other common changes as well. Prisons almost seem design to change personalities for the worse.

City upbringing, without pets, boosts vulnerability to mental illness -- ScienceDaily – We need to figure out how to make cities a healthy place for everyone --- including children.

BBC - Future - Why pristine lakes are filled with toxins – A study done on Lake Geneva revealed cadmium, mercury, lead…sometimes in high concentration…from decades of plastic build up in the lake. Other studies of the microplastics in the water (and in water that has been processed for drinking) and then beer and honey from the area. Lots more research is needed on the impact to wildlife in and around the lake.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 28, 2018

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.

Significant role for nitrate in the Arctic landscape -- ScienceDaily – There is much we need to learn about how the arctic ecosystems work today….and what will likely happen as they warm. The carbon and nitrogen cycles will speed up…but how does that translate to the types of plants that will grow there.

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act at Fifty – Protection of some special places….rivers and the banks.

Artist Paints Imaginary Ecosystems Bursting with Colorful Flora and Fauna – Eye candy for the week! (The paintings are also inspiration for Zentangles.)

A is for Aerosol: Earth Matters – A little tutorial that includes satellite pictures of different kinds of aerosols like volcanic ash, sand/dust storms, fog/haze, smoke.

New NOAA Report Looks at National Coastal Flood Vulnerability – The whole report can be found here. Figure 6 (page 26 of the PDF…14 of the report) shows annual high tide floods days per year from 1950 onward. There is a color skew toward more days in the last decade for many areas. Another flood related article: Flood risk denial in US coastal communities -- ScienceDaily – research about how to move communities from denial to taking mitigation actions to reduce the risk to their community.

Without Birds, Lizards, and Other Vertebrate Pollinators, Plant Reproduction Could Decline by Two-Thirds - Yale E360 – Pollination drops an average of 63% when vertebrates (like lizards, birds, bats, mice) are kept away. Wow! Pollinators are not all insects.

When Going Gluten-Free Is Not Enough: New Tests Detect Hidden Exposure – It’s hard to live a gluten-free diet in the modern world…and that is what 3M people in America are trying to do. This article increased my awareness of how hard it it….and how many people are impacted by celiac disease.

The Sahara Desert Has Grown 10 Percent Since 1920 - Yale E360 – The expansion has happened mostly to the south…during the historically rainy summer months. This is one of the first studies to look at precipitation over the course of a century rather than a shorter time.

Influence of global warming on U.S. heat waves may be felt first in the West and Great Lakes regions | NOAA Climate.gov – Maryland is included in the ‘Great Lakes’ region based on the map; in this area more than half of all heat waves would be predominately due to global warming by the mid-2030s. In the west it happens even earlier (by the end of the 2020s). Lots of people live in those areas and the statistics currently tell us that more people in the US die each year of heat-related illness than any other weather disaster.

Sweet potato history casts doubt on early contact between Polynesia and the Americas -- ScienceDaily – DNA studies of sweet potatoes show something about history…and about its closest wild relative (good for the long-term viability of the domesticated crop).

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 14, 2018

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.

Solar Power Works in Many Places You Might Not Expect | CleanTechnica – Solar power is not just for sunny, hot areas! Sometimes assumptions we make early on about a technology are hard to overcome.

The secret world of babies – Techniques for improving our understanding of how baby’s develop their sense of the world…and some cute baby pictures.

How 'Bad Medicine' Dismisses and Misdiagnoses Women's Symptoms – Gender bias in medicine

Wild Birds of the Night – National Geographic -  Lot’s of owls in this group

Business Lessons from A Radical Industrialist (#CleanTechnica Occasional #Bookclub) | CleanTechnica – Ray Anderson’s carpet company set a goal back in the 1990s to have no net impact of the environment. They are on track to achieve that by 2020! As I looked at the summary in this blog post and took a look at the company website, I found myself wishing they made residential carpeting…not just industrial carpeting.

Sunset Crater Volcano and Capulin Volcano – I always enjoying seeing articles about places I’ve visited. I’ve been to Sunset Crater more recently (back in February 2015). Capulin Volcano was the first interesting stop along our route from the Dallas area (where we lived 35 years ago) and Colorado!

An Alternative to Burial and Cremation for Corpse Disposal | WIRED – Maybe there should be other options to cremation and burial….the ‘greener’ the better.

Six Ways to Help Bees and Beesponsible : The National Wildlife Federation -  Good ideas to add to your spring gardening.

How a Black Bear Wakes Up from a Long Winter’s Nap – Cool Green Science – Tis the season!

Pulling valuable metals from e-waste makes financial sense -- ScienceDaily – I hope it gets easier to get e-waste into a place that the value metals are extracted. In our community, it does not go in the regular recycle stream…it either is taken back to the store (traded in) or to a central collection point. We have a group of it now to load up and take.

In the Middle Patuxent River

Last weekend I participated in the quarterly water quality monitoring of the Middle Patuxent River at Robinson Nature Center. The temperature was in the mid-40s it felt warmer with the sun shining and the river level less breezy that the top of the nearby hills. We hiked down taking a short cut through the forest and crossed the river.

The crossing was a little tricky for those of is with boots (Me and several others) rather than waders but we made it across with only one person getting water in one of her boots. There is a whale-shaped rock that is a landmark for where the quarterly surveys take place.

We used D-nets and tubs to collect macroinvertebrates from leaf wads and riffles. The leaf wad my partner and I worked on had lots of little critters, a very large crane fly larvae and a frog. Everything went into the tub except the frog which we put back into the river (not a macroinvertebrate….and not easily contained anyway). After collecting for over an hour we headed back across the river to the lab with buckets to search through of macroinvertebrates to identify.

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Back in the lab we emptied the buckets into smaller plastic bins and started separating the macroinvertebrates into ice cube trays for identification. We were after diversity and numbers of macroinvertebrates, so we were sifting through everything very carefully. I used a macro lens attached to my cell phone camera to get a few pictures.

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There were a few things that were not macroinvertebrates but they were in the sample which were generally bigger than the macroinvertebrates and moved around a lot – a little distracting while we were searching. Several of us had salamanders (me included) and one person has some small fish!

Our team lead completed the form to submit for the monitoring session; the river scored about the same as the last sampling in January which is better than 85% of other Maryland water sources. Hurray for the river!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 7, 2018

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 Do We Carry Our Shopping Home Now? | CleanTechnica – I’ve been using my collection of reusable bags for years. Some of them are over 10 years old and still in great shape. Occasionally, I still get a Lightweight Plastic Bag (or a newspaper in plastic, or other plastic bag packaging) which I take back to the bag recycling bin at my grocery store. I’m always sad when I set a grocery cart full of stuff in the plastic bags…hope none of them escape into the environment.

A Harlequin Duck’s Long Cross-Country Migration – Cool Green Science – A bird banded in Glacier National Park migrated to Long Island! Zoom lenses on cameras and binoculars make it possible to record banding info from a distance.

BBC - Future - The small Scottish isle leading the world in electricity – Eigg has an off-grid electric system powered by wind, water, and solar…they average 90-95% renewable energy. The time of year they tend to need back up generators is in the spring.

Implications of access to high-quality fruits and vegetables: Quality has potential to impact consumer selection and consumption in rural areas -- ScienceDaily – There has been a lot of discussion about food deserts in big cities – places that lack affordable, high-quality food. It appears that food deserts occur in rural areas as well.

Top 25 Endemic Wild Birds – National Geographic – The weekly bird photography fix! The chickadee we see frequently in our areas of the Mid-Atlantic of the US is endemic to our part of the world (and is one of the 25 pictured).

New Beginnings: Cherry Blossoms and Helen Taft's Landscape Diplomacy – Some years we manage to see the peak of the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin in Washington DC….but every year we enjoy the cherry tree in our front year. It is always at least a week later than the ones in DC.

US electricity use drops, renewables push fossil fuels out of the mix | Ars Technica – Total electrical generation was down 1.5 percent in 2017. Coal and natural gas declines were more than that with renewable energy projects coming online. Energy efficiency has made a difference! Another article reported that some utilities are planning for the uptick in electric vehicles to cause the trend in electricity generation to turn upward again. Right now – it seems like people that buy electric cars are often the same people that install solar panels; that could result in no uptick to the draw from the electric utility.

The Life Issue | WIRED – A collection of thought provoking articles about ‘what it means to live in an age of improvisation.’ I started with the articles about the 55-infinity age group.

Microscopic Images of Seeds • Insteading – hmm…maybe I’ll take a magnified look at seeds before I plant them in my flower beds.

Meditate regularly for an improved attention span in old age – Nice to know that something enjoyable immediately is also good for the long term too!

HoLLIE – Week 8

The Week 8 of HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) class was a week later than originally planned because of our late season snowstorm. As I passed the gate and started up the drive toward Belmont Manor, I realized that not only was it the last day of class, it was also the last days of the ash trees in the park. The trees along the drive had been marked since the beginning of class and there was a truck already in position to start cutting one of the larger trees down. After I parked, I took pictures of one that has already been cut along the road between the manor house and the carriage house. The emerald ash borer has changed the landscape of our area of Maryland.

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The last two environmental lectures were “Why protecting the environment is really about protecting our own health” and “The relationship between climate and weather.” The lectures were followed by a segment reflecting on leadership strengths and ‘what’s next’ for the class cohort and feedback on the class overall.

The grand finale of the day was seeing the baby chicks and a visit to Myrtle Woods Farm which would become their home: pigs, chickens, hoop houses with veggies and edible flowers….fields with high fences to keep out the deer ready for planting. Its 9 acres of farm surrounded by housing developments!

I’m still reflecting on my follow-up to the class. I’ve done the easy thing of signing up for a few more volunteer activities like what I do with the pre-K through high school field trips with the Howard County Conservancy. I’m exploring other volunteering that diverges from my education focus up until now and am not sure yet on the direction I will take….something that is directed more toward adults or communities rather than children and their education – probably.

I judge the value of a class these days by how much I act upon what I learn afterwards. By that measure – HoLLIE is headed toward the top of my all time list of actionable classes!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 31, 2018

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.

 4 Psychology Lessons That Can Teach Us About Inspiring Climate Action | CleanTechnica – Good ideas – particularly if anticipating a lot of disagreement or people being too depressed about the prospect of the future for Earth to take action.

Top 25 Wild Raptors – National Geographic – From around the world…no bald eagle in this group of photos.

After 250 Years of Dams, Rhode Island River Restored for Migratory Fish – Cool Green Science – Maryland is also removing dams. Bloede’s Dam (see blog post about it here)

Hummingbirds Make an Incredible Journey North – Cool Green Science – This little birds make a very long journey. Hope our recent cold weather has not made is a problematic year for them.

Saving Terrapins From Drowning in Crab Traps – Cool Green Science – Hopefully this can be a success story for terrapins around Long Island…time will tell.

Elusive Deep-Sea Anglerfish Seen Mating for the First Time | Smart News | Smithsonian – I’d only see pictures of dead specimens or drawings. The 2.5 minute video shows a living fish moving slowly through the water with filaments that glow surrounding it. Still very fierce looking but also a slow moving graceful beauty.

Drug-related mortality rates are not randomly distributed across the US -- ScienceDaily – The map says it all. The hotspots for drug-related deaths in the US are not necessarily where historically high drug use happened.

The 20 most beautiful libraries in the U.S. - Curbed – I’ve only been in one of these: the reading room of the Legal Research Library at the University of Michigan; it was part of the campus tour when my daughter visited the university before she added it to her short list that she would apply to for her undergraduate studies. I remember it being very quiet even though people were walking around – cork floors are quiet floors!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Much Larger and Chunkier Than We Thought | Smart News | Smithsonian – Ugh! It was bad even before the more precise measurements came in. There has to be a way to start cleaning it up and keeping more garbage from getting into the ocean.

Landscape Photography Series Tells “Winter’s Tale” of Snowy Forests – Hopefully we’ve had our last bought with snowy weather here in Maryland. I do enjoy the snowy forests…for a little while.

HoLLIE – Week 7

The Week 7 of HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) class focused on County Government (Office of Community Sustainability, Department of Planning and Zoning, and Department of Public Works) and the Saving the Places We Love (Ned Tillman) followed by a hike in Patapsco Valley State Park.

Some memorable factoids about the county:

• 20% of the land is in conservation or agricultural easements (that means the land must stay – forever – in compliance with the easement specifications)
• The methane generated by the landfill is captured rather than flared (as much as possible)
• Elementary school students are consistently better at getting their food waste into compost bins than middle or high schoolers
• The composting facility is patterned after successful facilities in California; the build of the second of three phases will start in October. They are at capacity now with the part of the county (residences and schools) currently enrolled.

In the afternoon the hike to Patapsco Valley State Park was similar to the hike made several years ago with my Master Naturalist Class (blog post here back in April 2015). We hiked the short hill to Cascade Falls and looked at cracks in rocks – some that determined the path of the stream that continues down to the river.

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We crossed the swinging bridge and walked to where the trail is blocked off for the removal of Bloede’s Dam.

The state is taking out dams on this part of the Patapsco that no longer serve any purpose (the basins for all of them are full of sediment); after the removal, fish and eels should be able to move upstream and reestablish their natural life cycles.

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The challenge with this dam is the rerouting of the sewer line (see the big pipe that goes through the dam parallel to the path….that’s a sewer pipe!) while the same is removed.

There is a lot of history in the area as well. As we walked the path to the dam we saw an arch built in 1869 (ran on top) and there was a sign for the mill where Patapsco Superlative flour was made until 1905.

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As we walked back – we noticed a heron in the river. It looked scruffy – like it was not quite dry from it’s last plunge to catch a fish. We saw blue birds and cardinals too.

The tress along the river are not large. Storms that bring heavy rains are particularly damaging in this stretch of the river. In Hurricane Agnes (1972) the river was 40 feet above normal. It’s hard to imagine that any of the trees planted by the CCC in the 1930s survived.

Next week is the last class and I am already trying to think about what changes this course has prompted. Some I’ve started already because it is an easy progression from something I already do. The more substantial changes I have started thinking about are more complex and there are more choices involved.

Previous HoLLIE posts: Week 1, Week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 17, 2018

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.

A Day in The Park: Cuyahoga Valley National Park | National Parks Traveler – I’ve been to the park but only saw a small part of it. Next time I need to be more organized!

Top 25 Wild Waterbirds – National Geographic Blog – Some of these birds were familiar….some unfamiliar and living far away from the US!

BBC - Future - The quest to tackle the rubbish dump in orbit – There is getting to be a lot of junk up there!

Flood risk from American rivers is greatly underestimated -- ScienceDaily – A high resolution model that maps flood risk across the whole continent and includes small streams shows 41 million Americans at risk from flooding rivers rather than 13 million estimated by FEMA (their maps only include 60% of the continent and does not include smaller streams). Seems like anyone buying a house would be keen to know if there was a flood risk for the property and FEMA maps are giving a false sense of security. Here’s the link to the full paper: Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States - IOPscience

Recycled carbon fiber improves permeable pavement: Technique reduces waste, improves strength and durability -- ScienceDaily – From Washington State University…in partnership with Boeing

Incredible Pictures of the Caterpillars of New England – I’m going to keep a sharper lookout for caterpillars in our area this summer….get subjects for photography because they don’t move very fast!

Spring Break Goes Wild(life) – Cool Green Science – Lots of places to go in the spring – other than a southern beach.

High-Fiber Diet Shifts Gut Microbes, Lowering Blood Sugar in Diabetics -  If this pans out, they need to get it out to doctors treating patients with type 2 diabetes rather than focusing on all the new (and somewhat expensive) drugs that can have side effects.

The Metamorphosis of Butterflies – A 5-minute video from TED-Ed.

A Place for Pollinators: Bees and Butterflies call National Monuments Home – At Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a 4-year study found 650 unique bee species from 54 genre of native bees, 3 of which were new to the state of Utah. We need pollinators like native bees for the rest the ecosystem to continue! We should strive to keep the special places (not pockets) of species diversity to not only to sustain our planet…but to help it regenerate. The people alive today are the stewards of the future Earth.

HoLLIE – Week 6

The Week 6 of HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) class focused on The Chesapeake Bay Watershed and Environmental Advocacy. As my norm, I arrived early so I could enjoy the sunny (but cold) morning at Belmont before the before class. I stopped at one of the pullout spaces on the narrow drive to photograph the stumps from the recent tree removals (and there are more to come). The first picture is looking away from the Manor House; the second shows the Manor House in the distance.

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I took pictures of the two stumps from the trees already cut down. Someone had carved in one of them. Aargh! It’s sad when a tree is cut down and the carving struck me as disrespectful to the tree and the place.

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After I got to settled into my place in the carriage house, I trooped over the butterfly meadow where I saw the bright yellow grass late last week. It was still there, and I liked the snow and blocks in the picture with it.

The little walks outside were a good start to the day that was sedentary otherwise. Our speakers were from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Land Trust Alliance (re the Chesapeake Bay), and Patuxent River Riverkeeper in the morning. In the afternoon we heard about sustainability and what individuals in our area can do toward the goal of moving toward sustainable lifestyle…and beyond to regenerative. The last segment of the day was a short lecture on effective environmental advocacy that included a practice use of the planning template from the lecture….learning enhanced by attempting to apply the technique.

Next week we’ll be outdoors in the last segment of the day. I’m already watching the forecast for the day; as of now – the forecast is cold and a bit breezy…but no rain.

Previous HoLLIE posts: Week 1, Week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 10, 2018

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.

Look at What the Coastal Storms Have Done to the Chesapeake Bay - AGU Blogosphere – We had high winds in our area a week ago and it was worse (even higher winds and more precipitation) north of us. Trees feel, power outages prevalent, and some rail cars fell from a bridge as they crossed the Susquehanna River. The suspended matter in the rivers around the Chesapeake Bay were dramatically high…and it moved fast (lots of difference between March 4 and March 5). Wow!

New Perspectives on Bogotá’s Architecture Thanks to Drone Photography – I liked the first picture the best: the building footprint and the rooftop gardens…the trees below.

Forecasting diseases one image at a time – National Geographic Blog – Los Alamos working on predictive models of disease outbreaks in populations suplementing traditional data sources (with lag times in data availability) with non-traditional sources that are available more quickly to enable more timely response to disease outbreaks.

Are flamingos returning to Florida? -- ScienceDaily – Florida had flamingos in the 1800s but by 1900 they had been eliminated (killed for their plumage). Since 1950 they have been increasing in numbers and this study indicates that they are not just escapees from captive flocks. Most are birds from the Caribbean or Mexico that have repopulated Florida.

Can You Ever Have Too Many Turkeys? – Cool Green Science – Turkeys in Oregon – not native to the area but thriving – and an experience with the citizen science project to count them.

The Pileated Woodpecker in Winter – Cool Green Science – We have some pileated woodpeckers that make their rounds in the forest behind our house. They are indeed easier to see in the winter time than any other time of the year.

Welcome to the Age of Climate Migration - Rolling Stone – People are already moving from areas that are flooding more frequently. This appears to be an early indicator of economic consequences for climate change denial.

The Strange and Magnificent Nudibranchs of the Cape – National Geographic Blog – Marine slugs look so different from life we are used to seeing…they could be from another planet…but they are here on earth. Enjoy the pictures in this blog post.

Low magnesium levels make vitamin D ineffective: Up to 50 percent of US population is magnesium deficient -- ScienceDaily – Yet another reason to eat those leafy greens…or take a magnesium supplement.

Recovery: Evicting Rabbits – Cool Green Science – Ridding some islands of non-native rabbits so native flora and fauna can recover (penguins, birds, lots of plants)…with the help of a Labrador retriever wearing rubber booties!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 3, 2018

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.

BBC - Future - Spice: Why some of us like it hot – A little interesting history…not sure it really gets to the question about why some of us like it hot though.

Life-Size Camel Carvings Found in the Saudi Desert | Smart News | Smithsonian – I saw this story in several of my feeds…this one had the best pictures.

As Ice Sheets Melt Faster, Sea Level Rise Is Accelerating Every Year - Yale E360 – It’s hard to translate stories like this into what will happen to specific areas and it seems like that is what is critical for coastal areas that need to plan for rising sea level. Planners in Annapolis MD are using the flood they had from Hurricane Isabel in 2003 to help people realize what the situation will be like in 2050 (the projection is that the flooding will be about like that 2003 flood very frequently because of sea level rise, enough that the city will be forever changed).

BBC - Future - Five myths about loneliness – Some ideas about loneliness. If you time and interest…do the survey (link is toward the bottom of the page) to participate in the BBC Loneliness experiment.

Photography in the National Parks: Don't Forget About Those Little Things -  I like the closer up shots of little things --- and there are good ones in almost every natural area, not just National Parks.

This Map Shows What Climate Change Could Mean for Your Region – There is an article around the map…but the map is the graphic to look at. There are more areas with economic costs than benefits in the US.

Transforming patient health care and well-being through lighting -- ScienceDaily – I’ve always wondered about the fluorescent lights often used in hospital settings…wondering how the sleep cycles of patients could be normal at all. I’m glad lighting is finally getting more attention.

Wild Birds with a Splash of Colour – National Geographic Blog – Eye candy for this week. Somehow bird pictures are always a favorite for me.

Thousands of Photographs Created These Hyper-Real Portraits of Historic Buildings | Smart News | Smithsonian – If you are in New York City before April 7 you can see the gallery show…if not – get a glimpse of Brunetti’s work looking at the 4 images with this blog post from the Smithsonian.

New Study Shows Flood Risks Across the U.S. are Underestimated (in a Big Way) – Cool Green Science – I wonder how long it will be before the FEMA maps are updated. It seems like people purchasing houses would like to be aware of the flood risk before they made their purchase.

HoLLIE – week 3

The Week 3 of  HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership for the Environment) class day was last week and it was held at NASA Goddard like the second week. The theme for the day was continued from last week: “what informed citizens need to know about earth systems science.”

The first talk of the day as about ice sheets and included a discussion of the speakers trek to the South Pole last year. Check out her ICESat-2 Antarctic Traverse Blog (The first post is from December 4, 2017. If you want to start with that one and read in chronological order, scroll down to the bottom of this page until you get to ‘Heading South, to New Zealand and Beyond.’ Then after reading the ‘South Pole Station: The Last Stop Before the Traverse’ beginning at the top of the page, click on ‘newer entries’ to read the rest of the of the posts – and again start with the post at the bottom of the page and work up). She spent Christmas at the South Pole!

She recommended a book that I found could be checked out from Internet Archive when I got home: The two-mile time machine by Richard B. Alley. The book is about the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland and what they tell us about Earth’s climate over time.

The second talk was about the Land-Based Hydrology Cycle. This talk included what we can learn from satellites but also what measurements are taken on land too (and how much effort that takes…to get even sporadic data). With fresh water being so key to life – the very highs (floods) and very lows (droughts) are major impact all around the world.

The third talk was about the Black Marble project…about what we can learn from looking at the earth at night. Back in April there was good summation of the project – to create the images more frequently so that they could be used more even more applications (like short-term weather forecasting and disaster response): New Night Lights Maps Open Up Possible Real-Time Applications - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-night-lights-maps-open-up-possible-real-time-applications; take a look at the map of India midway through the article and slide the vertical bar to the see how the northern part of the country was electrified between 2012 and 2016. There is more at https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights/.

The fourth talk was about how the Montreal Protocol saved the earth’s ozone layer. I knew the protocol concerned Ozone and CFCs….but didn’t realize any more history than that. The timing of a report that linked CFCs to ozone depletion just before the ‘hole’ was discovered in the ozone layer (a major change from measures of ozone for many years beforehand) over Antarctica made for a dramatic beginning to the conversation. It has been effective because governments engaged industry that provided substitutes (some transitional) that made it possible to move away from compounds that were ozone damaging in the stratosphere.

Next we visited NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio – seeing some of their recent work on a wall sized screen. Here are some web versions of what we saw in the studio:

NASA's Near-Earth Science Mission Fleet: March 2017

Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2017

Weekly Animation of Arctic Sea Ice Age with Two Graphs: 1984 - 2016

Previous HoLLIE posts: Week 1, Week 2

HoLLIE – week 2

The second HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership for the Environment) class day was last week and it was held at NASA Goddard. I was worried about hitting rush hour traffic so left very early since we were to meet in the Goddard Visitor Center parking lot to catch the bus into the facility. The day was sunny and clear…but very cold and breezy. I managed to take this picture of the visitor center (not yet open) without getting out of my car!

The theme for the day was “what informed citizens need to know about earth systems science.” It was the first of two days that our classes will be at Goddard; last week we started with lectures on “understanding the tools and the state of the art in earth science” from the Project Scientist for the AQUA satellite and then got a tour of mission control for several earth science satellites from the Aqua Mission Director. They did a good job of demonstrating the types of data that can be collected, the methods used to collect it, and the ways it has been analyzed. I was surprised to see the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission control in the same building. That brought back the memory of my daughter being on the team to do image calibration shortly after it launched during her undergraduate days!

On the way back to our classroom, we stopped by the replica of the big rock found at Goddard that has mammal and dinosaur and mammal tracks. This was not on our agenda originally but was a wonderful serendipity aspect to the day even if it took part of our lunch time. I’d read about it in one of my news feeds and followed the link to the paper…but it was such a thrill to see the exhibit and hear the short lecture. I managed to take a few pictures.

We started the lectures on ‘understanding the science of earth’s cycles’ that will continue in this week’s class. We talked about the oceans and the carbon system in this second class. One of the interesting videos in the lectures is available online: twenty years of global biosphere data mapped on a slowly spinning globe; it easy to see the annual cycles. With the massive amounts of data, visualization becomes an important component.

When I got home an article in one of my newsfeeds talked about climate models that are developing that explain why there might be a linkage between melting of Arctic sea ice (one of the topics for the HoLLIE lectures this week) and droughts in California (How nuclear weapons research revealed new climate threats). It was easier to understand since I had the background of the lectures!

Previous HoLLIE posts: Week 1

HoLLIE – week 1

The first HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) class was last week. The first class was at Belmont Manor and Historic Park (in the Carriage House) – a place I am very familiar with and have been for a lecture and hike earlier in the week. I was excited about the course beforehand and it lived up to my expectations…a very full day – interesting – thought provoking. The day was cold and cloudy; there was no longing to get outdoors and hike!

I found myself comparing the class to the ones I’d experienced in the corporate world.

I found myself comparing the class to the ones I’d experienced in the corporate world.

• The class was from 8:45 AM – 4 PM…about the same length as any day long course. There were fewer breaks than many classes I’ve attended (we were invited to get up whenever we needed to). By the end of the day I felt that maybe I should have gotten up more times to just move around. I am not used to sitting for long periods of time like I was during my career.
• I took notes…which I have always done in classes. In some cases, the notes help me keep my attention focused. In this class, I easily stayed focused and the notes really were more to just help me remember the material.
• At the end of the day, there was a discussion about class norms. That happened in classes during the later part of my career, but usually nearer the beginning of the first day.
• The classes are 1 day a week for 8 weeks. The classes I took in the corporate world were back to back days because many people (speakers/teachers and students) were not local. I appreciate that this class is spread out over 8 weeks and already realize that I’ll get more out of it this way. The more thought provoking a class is – whether it is a lot of information, challenging concepts (either technical, logic, or political), or the interaction with people from very different backgrounds – the more time after class it takes to assimilate what was learned. I am transcribing my notes to enhance what I learn…integrate it into what I want to do immediately and in the longer term.

This class is the most substantial class since the Master Naturalist training I took back in February and March of 2015. Unlike the Master Naturalist course which focused almost exclusively on science topics, this course overlays non-positional leadership development on science topics. The topics for the first day included:

• What legacy leadership means (intro to non-positional leadership)
• The HoLLIE Volunteer Experience (hearing from previous students)
• Environmental Initiatives of Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks

Stay tuned for the next 7 weeks!

Prius Prime – Year 1

I’ve own my Prius Prime for a year as of today….and enjoyed the serenity of driving in EV mode for most of my errands. I took this picture just after I bought the 3rd tank of gas (it came with a full tank so it’s on is 4th tank at this point).

It has been an easy thing to transition from a gasoline powered car (my 10-year-old Acura TL) to a plug-in hybrid. I view it as a stepping stone toward and purely electric vehicle by the time I buy another new car…and maybe that will be self-driving as well. The plug-in hybrid has worked well for me since I do make road trips occasionally that would have taken more planning – changes to the way I travel – than I was ready to undertake. This car makes it easy since it just uses some gasoline when I am on the road for a longer time.

I like that the car charges overnight (I have it programed to start charging at 11:15 PM); I haven’t needed to upgrade the regular outlet in the garage since I don’t need faster charging. There have been a few times that I’ve come back from an errand knowing I had another later in the day that I’ve had it ‘charge now’ rather than waiting for the overnight….but it hasn’t been a frequent occurrence.

The only bad experience I had with the car was a tire blowing out (on my first road trip!) last summer. The passage of time has dimmed that trauma….and the car has been a wonderful drive for the rest of the time.

I’m still pleased with my decision from a year ago today!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 13, 2018

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.

Cache of Newly Digitized Travel Photographs Will Transport You to 1900s California | Smart News | Smithsonian – A little California history. I couldn’t figure out how to browse photographs almost like a slideshow. The interface seems to only provide one-at-a-time viewing.

With wrist-worn gadget, researchers capture real-life sleep for the first time -- ScienceDaily – I wondered how this differed from my Fitbit Alta HR tracker. I assume it has more detail and that raw data is processed with more sophisticated algorithms.

The National Gallery of Art Releases Over 45,000 Digitized Works of Art – Wow! Follow the link to the NGA images and enjoy!

BBC - Future - The labs that protect against online warfare – Even with the labs….is seems like we are not doing enough. Governments are serious about the problem from a military standpoint…not necessarily about infrastructure or healthcare.

Habitat on the Edges: Making Room for Wildlife in an Urbanized World - Yale E360 – A good summary of some things that appear to be working to increase and/or preserve wild life habitat even as human populations increase. The habitat is gerrymandered…and different that the original, but may be almost the only path forward.

A Floating House to Resist the Floods of Climate Change | The New Yorker – It seems far fetched that whole neighborhoods would be built like this – but it is appealing to think about non-traditional approaches now when extreme storms seem to be more common.

Deep learning sharpens views of cells and genes – Using a neural network to look at retinal images and determine the likelihood of heart attack…and other applications of high end computer algorithms for improving understanding of medical images.

Badlands National Park – It’s been 20 years since I visited the park. I enjoyed it…think I would appreciate it more now.

National Park Service Begins Roof Replacement, Masonry Repair at Lincoln Memorial – Something going on in DC. The memorial will be partially open during the work.

US childhood mortality rates have lagged behind other wealthy nations for the past 50 years: Leading causes of death are prematurity and injuries -- ScienceDaily – Very sad. We have a system that is expensive and not very effective. Infants in the US were 76% more likely to die than in other economically similar countries.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 6, 2018

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.

30,000 Shards of Historic Stained Glass Found in Westminster Abbey’s Attic | Smart News | Smithsonian – Glass found in the dust and dirt that accumulated in the deep cone-shaped pits of the interior of the triforium. Evidently most of it is from the Medieval period.

Streams can be sensors -- ScienceDaily – Using streams to assess the health of a region’s landscapes my lead to more focused actions for sustainable agriculture and development. This research highlights that basic concept but also points to some way to improve the way streams are monitored.

Stunning Images of Hokkaido Covered in Snow by Photographer Ying Yin – It is very cold in Maryland while I’m creating the post…fortunately we only have a dusting of snow.

BBC - Future - The mosquitoes that are fighting dengue and Zika – Increasing mosquito born diseases….new measures.

John Wesley Powell: Soldier, Explorer, Scientist and National Geographic Founder – National Geographic  - A little history – one of the founders of the National Geographic Society.

Scientists find surprising evidence of rapid changes in the Arctic -- ScienceDaily – Chemical changes in the arctic ocean…open waters, increased wave action, stirred sediments. There is a need for international collaboration to understand what is happening.

Hawai’i Volcanos National Park – A reminder of our vacation a few years ago to the Big Island

The Race North – Cool Green Science – Some trees may not be able to move north or up fast enough as the climate changes. Will foresters for the future step in?

New desalination method offers low energy alternative to purify salty water -- ScienceDaily – In places where water shortages are happening (and projected), desalination may become a very important technology.

The Year Climate Change Began to Spin Out of Control - MIT Technology Review – An aspect of 2017 in review. When will everyone decide climate change is an existential issue rather than a political one?

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 2, 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.

Free Technology for Teachers: Resources to Learn About Outer Space – Good resources – for more than teaches!

When They Said They Wanted to Rethink Agriculture, They Meant It – Cool Green Science – Developing ways to feed more people with less water and without expanding the area we already use for agriculture….crop redistribution to maximize food production with rainfall rather than irrigation may be part of the solution.

Image of the Day: The Last Sloth | The Scientist Magazine® - Taking a closer look at the Caribbean Islands where then end of the ice age and the arrival of humans were 1,000s of years apart. There were two waves of extinction induced by human arrival: the first about 5,000 years ago when humans first arrived (ground sloth extinction) and the second around 1492 when Columbus arrived (smaller animals extinction).

Ah-Choo! 11 Fun Facts About Sneezing | Berkeley Wellness – No – your heart does not stop!

Large decrease in age-related macular degeneration in baby boomers compared to previous generations -- ScienceDaily – Positive news…but it was a small study and the participants were mostly non-Hispanic white individuals…and there is no information about why the decrease happened. Hope it holds for my family. My grandmother was blind by the time she died in her 90s…from macular degeneration.

New Science Shows Nature’s Potential to Fight Climate Change – Cool Green Science – Finding natural solutions to fight climate change. Reforestation has the highest potential!

Midwifery care at hospitals is associated with fewer medical interventions -- ScienceDaily – enhancing perinatal car and lowering costs for low-risk pregnancies…what’s not to like!

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #115 and #116 – Birds and more birds!

Making it easier to recycle plastics: Emerging technologies could greatly reduce plastic waste -- ScienceDaily – Only 9% of plastics are recycled in the US…not good.

How did Ammonite fossils form? – The chemistry of ammonite fossil formation