Gleanings of the Week Ending June 28, 2025

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.

Meet the Kangaroos That Live in Trees - Filling an evolutionary niche akin to monkeys, they’re keystone species in the rainforests of New Guinea and Australia.

Manet Cut This Painting in Half 150 Years Ago. Now, the Two Sides Are Back Together for a Rare Reunion - In 1874, Manet began to paint a scene of the Brasserie Reichshoffen on a large canvas. Unlike his paintings of military scenes or upper-class life of the 1860s, the new piece captured the dramas of everyday life. But Manet became dissatisfied with the composition of the large work and opted to cut the canvas in two. Over the next few years, he refined each half into more concise, if slightly less ambitious, depictions of the same café: At the Café and Corner of a Café-Concert. While both paintings are well regarded, Manet’s contemporaries struggled to understand his decision to separate them. But Manet’s conviction that the two should be kept apart remained strong. When the two paintings of the same café were exhibited at the Triennial Salon in Antwerp in 1879, they were shown in separate rooms.

Deconstructing Buildings: The Quest for New Life for Old Wood - A growing number of cities have launched initiatives to reuse the wood waste from construction and demolition that now ends up in landfills. The challenge, proponents say, is to deploy new techniques for disassembling old buildings and markets for repurposing the salvaged wood. Using reclaimed wood in buildings stores carbon and helps reduce emissions by avoiding the need to cut new trees. Going forward, some architects say, buildings should be designed for disassembly — meaning every structure is built not only to last but also for easy dismantling and repurposing when its time is up.

Why the appendix is much more important than we once thought - The appendix has been shown to be an important component of immune function, especially in early life. In addition, the appendix itself contains a very diverse and varied microbiota distinct from other parts of the gastrointestinal tract, suggesting a specialized role. Removal of the appendix has been associated with a reduction in gut bacterial diversity which can lead to intestinal dysbiosis and potentially increase susceptibility to various diseases. Appendectomy has also been linked to an increase in fungal diversity in the gut; the appendix may play a role in the balance between bacterial and fungal populations, potentially acting as a store of commensal gut microbiota that repopulate the colon after exposure to pathogens or antibiotic treatment. The appendix may play a further role in protecting the gastrointestinal system from invading pathogens.

How Extreme Heat Impacts Children - Infants and young children sweat less and are unable to regulate their core body temperature as well as adults. Playgrounds are not always built with materials designed to withstand heat and prevent burns. Older children such as high school athletes face increased risk of heatstroke and other illnesses during practices and games. 

Weather makers: How microbes living in the clouds affect our lives - Trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses and single-celled organisms travel the globe high in the atmosphere. Current aerobiologists deploy sophisticated air-samplers on drones and use DNA-sequencing technology to identify airborne life by its genes. The aerobiome, researchers now recognize, is an enormous habitat filled only with visitors. By one estimate about a trillion trillion bacterial cells rise each year from the land and sea into the sky. By another estimate, 50 million tons of fungal spores become airborne in that same time. Untold numbers of viruses, lichen, algae and other microscopic life forms also rise into the air. It's common for them to travel for days before landing, in which time they can soar for hundreds or thousands of miles. The aerobiome is a force to be reckoned with – one that exerts a powerful influence on the chemistry of the atmosphere. It even alters the weather. It turns out that biological molecules and cell walls are exceptionally good at triggering rain. More sobering… In a 2023 survey of clouds, bacteria carrying 29 different kinds of resistance genes were found.  A single airborne bacterium may carry as many as nine resistance genes, each providing a different defense against drugs. Every cubic meter of cloud could hold up to 10,000 resistance genes. A typical cloud floating overhead may hold more than a trillion of them.

The New Normal Is Already a Loss: How Shifting Baselines Skew Our View of Nature - Think back on the bird song you woke up to this morning. You might have pulled out a few recognizable threads, perhaps the robin, the crow, the sparrow. Now imagine what morning might have sounded like to your grandparents. Major scientific studies indicate that it was likely a cacophony of song by comparison—many kinds of birds and more of them. The difference, the shift in normal, is gradual over time and the loss, without memory or data, is hard to define. With each generation, our perception of the natural world changes, and with it, our understanding of what accounts for abundance and loss of biodiversity. A term bandied about is the “new normal.” In ecology, it’s called the shifting baseline syndrome. 

Fungi to the Rescue: How Mushrooms Are Helping Clean Up Toxic Lands - Mycoremediation, the use of fungi to break down pollutants and absorb heavy metals from contaminated soil. Certain species can transform petrochemicals, pesticides, and heavy metals into harmless compounds or concentrate them for safer removal. This nature-based method offers an affordable, less disruptive alternative to traditional “dig and dump” remediation approaches.

A History of Some National Park Roads – The only roads mentioned in the article I haven’t experienced is Generals Highway in California and Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana!

The Famous, Feathered Dinosaur Archaeopteryx Could Fly, Suggests New Study of a ‘Beautifully Preserved’ Fossil - A fossil collector discovered the Chicago Archaeopteryx sometime before 1990 in limestone deposits near Solnhofen, Germany, where all known Archaeopteryx fossils originate. As the Field Museum’s preparators worked on the pigeon-sized Chicago Archaeopteryx, they realized that the fossil included more soft tissues and delicate skeletal details than any other known Archaeopteryx specimen. From previous fossils, they already knew the dinosaur had asymmetric feathers, which are vital to creating thrust in modern, flying birds. But the hard slab of limestone around this specimen had also preserved a key layer of feathers called tertials that had never been documented before in Archaeopteryx.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 21, 2023

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.

Intact Roman-Era Sarcophagus Discovered in France – From the 2nd century AD, sealed with iron clasps, weighs about 1,700 pounds. It hasn’t been opened yet, but x-rays and an endoscope camera have revealed the contents.

Selective removal of aging cells opens new possibilities for treating age-related diseases - Aging cells, known as senescent cells, contribute to various inflammatory conditions and age-related ailments as humans age. The researchers created technology that specifically targets organelles within aging cells to initiate the cell’s self-destruction. There is still a lot of work to be done (and preclinical and clinical trials).

Cloud Rings Around a Volcano Takes Top Prize in ‘Weather Photographer of the Year’ Contest – Capturing dramatic weather moments…

Brainless Jellyfish Are Capable of Learning - Experiments that provide evidence that box jellyfish are capable of associative learning, or the process of linking two unrelated stimuli together.

How maps can protect children from extreme heat - Heat is becoming increasingly dangerous and it's a threat that is not going away. Community heat maps may not solve the long-term problem, but they are a step in the right direction, by providing awareness and empowering vulnerable children and their families.

Stunning 16th-Century Turkish Bath Reopens in Istanbul - Called the Çinili Hamam, the revitalized site won’t offer traditional bathing until 2024. In the meantime, however, it will feature private gardens and contemporary art in the newly discovered Byzantine cisterns that originally fed the baths. Nearby, a new accompanying museum will display objects associated with traditional bathing rituals—including towels, bowls and ornately decorated wooden shoes—and explain the baths’ original water and heating systems. It will also showcase artifacts from the Byzantine, Roman and Ottoman periods uncovered during the restoration.

The Resiliency of Urban Wildlife - Four distinct sets of traits that help urban wildlife adapt and survive in environments that seem hostile to animals: diet, body size, mobility, and reproductive strategy. Important to know since if you look at the traits animals are adopting to survive in urban environments, you can see how cities could be modified to become more habitable to a wider variety of species.

See the Trove of Ancient Treasures, including a Shrine to Aphrodite, Just Discovered in an Underwater City Off the Coast of Egypt - Thonis-Heracleion was Egypt’s biggest port for centuries, before being surpassed by Alexandria. The city was eventually lost thanks to a combination of rising sea levels, earthquakes, and tsunamis, disappearing beneath the waves along with a large section of the Nile delta. It was largely forgotten for centuries, until 21st-century archaeologists began investigating.

New Patch Inspired by Octopus Suckers Could Deliver Drugs Without Needles - A tiny, drug-filled cup that sticks to the inside of the cheek like an octopus sucker. The device is easily accessible, can be removed at any time and prevents saliva from dissolving the drug, which gets absorbed through the lining of the inner cheek.

Buried ancient Roman glass formed substance with modern applications - Photonic crystals were created by corrosion and crystallization over centuries. If we could significantly accelerate the process in the laboratory, we might find a way to grow optical materials (i.e. materials for communications, lasers, solar cells) rather than manufacture them.

13 'The Spell of…. ' (eBooks)

The Spell of… books were published in the early 1900s by L.C. Page and Company of Boston – travel books with a few colored plates and drawings…more photographs…of the places they are about. Often the endpapers have scenic drawings. I’ve selected 13 that I have browsed recently for the slice of place and time they represent.

Mason, Caroline Atwater - The Spell of Italy (1909)

Hallays, Andre - The spell of Alsace (1919)

McCrackan, William D. - The spell of Tyrol (1914)

 Anderson, Isabel - The spell of Japan (1914)

Addison, Julia de Wolf - The Spell of England (1912)

Call, Frank Oliver -  The Spell of French Canada (1926)

 Mills, Enos A. - The Spell of the Rockies  (1911)

Call, Frank Oliver - The Spell of Acadia (1930)

McCrackan, William D. - The Spell of the Italian Lakes (1918)

 Mansfield, Milburg Fracisco - The spell of Algeria and Tunisia (1924)