Gleanings of the Week Ending August 24, 2024

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.

Warming waters and nutrient overload: A dangerous combination threatening our rivers and lakes - Food webs are becoming less complex in warmer, nutrient-rich waters. This simplification means shorter food chains and a degraded functioning ecosystem.

Stonehenge’s giant Altar Stone came all the way from north-east Scotland – here’s how we worked out this astonishing new finding – It evidently came from north-east Scotland at least 430 miles from where it is today!

Over half of iron deficiency cases in large health system still unresolved at three years - Factors associated with a higher likelihood of getting iron levels back to normal included older age (age 60 and up), male sex, Medicare insurance, and treatment with IV iron alone. Younger patients, females, and Black individuals were most likely to remain iron deficient or experience longer lags in getting their iron stores back to a healthy level.

What the Mesopotamians had for dinner – Small clay tables date to 1730 BC or earlier…are about preparing food! The instructions are terse, clipped. And as is the case for many old recipes, from all vintages of the human relationship with cuisine, amounts are not specified. Here is how one of the stews is made: for the lamb stew known as tu'hu, first you get water. Then you sear leg meat in fat. In go salt, beer, onion, rocket, coriander, Persian shallot, cumin, beets, water. Crushed leek and garlic and more coriander, for a fiery taste. Then add kurrat, an Egyptian leek. The beets turn it an electric red.

Cleaning up the aging brain: Scientists restore brain's trash disposal system – Using a hormonal like drug to help the glymphatic system of the aging brain to remove toxic buildup more effectively (as younger brains do).

Plant disease could spell apocalypse for citrus fruits - Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as “citrus greening” disease. The economic impacts are dramatic in some countries. In Brazil, production has fallen by more than 20%, 60% in Guadeloupe and plummeted by more than 90% in Florida.

U.S. Wind Generation Hit Record in April, Beat Coal! – Hope this begins happening more often. It should as more wind energy comes online and coal plants are shut down.

Our skin is teeming with microbes. We should learn to love them - Zoom in on any square centimeter of the skin on your body and you'll find between 10,000 to one million bacteria living there. The skin microbiome is second only to our guts when it comes bacterial diversity. This is quite surprising if you think about it. Compared to the safe, warm and moist habitats of our mouths or guts, the skin is an inhospitable place.

Maine! Ghost Plant – A parasitic plant I learned about in my general biology course….and was thrilled the first time I saw it in the wild years ago. I haven’t seen it since.

Five ways science is tackling the antibiotic resistance crisis – Natural products, the promise of AI, combination therapies, immune assistance, efficient diagnostics….and we need more.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 3, 2024

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.

5 Ways Power Sectors Worldwide Can Drive Down Emissions - The coal-to-clean transition is complex — how effective it ends up being hinges on ensuring ambitious climate action integrates priorities around energy security, affordability, reliability, and meeting growth in electricity demand.

The 'dark earth' revealing the Amazon's secrets - Amazonian dark earth(ADE), sometimes known as "black gold" or terra preta, is a layer of charcoal-black soil, which can be up to 3.8m (12.5ft) thick, and is found in patches across the Amazon basin. It is intensely fertile – rich in decaying organic matter and nutrients essential for growing crops, such as nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. But unlike the thin, sandy soils typical of the rainforest, this layer was not deposited naturally – it was the work of ancient humans. Now businesses are attempting to capitalize on this ancient method, in a quest to help farmers to improve their soil and combat climate change at the same time.

Rusting Rivers - Researchers suspect that thawing permafrost is the cause of dozens of Alaskan streams turning orange. Along with the strange appearance of the water, they have found it tends to be higher in iron, lower in dissolved oxygen, and more acidic than nearby rivers that run clear. The dramatic shift in water quality may be felt most acutely in the villages that rely upon rivers originating in permafrost regions for fish and drinking water.

World’s Largest Green Hydrogen Plant Will Take a Poke at Russian Gas - Mitsubishi is putting up $690 million to help build the world’s biggest green hydrogen plant, to be located in the Netherlands. It will help patch up some holes in the energy independence plan of Europe, where Russian gas has been clinging to a foothold despite sanctions.

Greece Reopens the Palace Where Alexander the Great Was Crowned - The 2,300-year-old Palace of Aigai—the largest building in classical Greece—had been under renovation for 16 years. At 160,000 square feet, the Palace of Aigai was classical Greece’s largest structure. Built primarily by Alexander’s father, Phillip II, in the fourth century B.C.E., it was the home of the Argead dynasty, ancient Macedonia’s ruling family. It was destroyed by the Romans in 148 B.C.E. and endured a subsequent series of lootings.

Predictions For Heat Pump Adoption Trends In 2024 - With $8,000 rebates for space heating heat pumps, and $1750 for water heating heat pumps, the IRA is helping accelerate adoption of this technology.

Miners Discover Seven-Foot Mammoth Tusk in North Dakota - Coal miners in North Dakota have uncovered a seven-foot-long, 50-pound mammoth tusk that’s been buried for thousands of years. Paleontologists have found more than 20 additional mammoth bones so far, including parts of hips, ribs, a tooth. and a shoulder blade.

The new drugs that may bring an end to constant itching - One in five of us will experience chronic itch lasting weeks or months. Fortunately, there might be treatments that address the problem.

Global groundwater depletion is accelerating but is not inevitable - This study shows that humans can turn things around with deliberate, concentrated efforts. Fine resolution, global studies will enable scientists and officials to understand the dynamics of this hidden resource.

Syphilis microbe’s family has plagued humans for millennia - Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganisms that cause syphilis.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 8, 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.

Air Pollution Causes 1 In 6 Human Deaths – Deaths from modern pollution risk factors, which are the unintended consequence of industrialization and urbanization, have risen by 7% since 2015 and by over 66% since 2000. Unfortunately, little real progress against pollution can be identified overall, particularly in the low-income and middle-income countries, where pollution is most severe. It is increasingly clear that pollution is a planetary threat, and that its drivers, its dispersion, and its effects on health transcend local boundaries and demand a global response.

Opioids no more effective than placebo for acute back and neck pain – The study was done in Australia but, hopefully, will lead to stepping away from opioids for back/neck pain. How many became addicted to opioids via doctors writing prescriptions trying to relieve their patient’s back pain?

Antimicrobial Resistance: The Silent Pandemic – The first accounts of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurred 2 years after Alexander Fleming warned about it in his 1945 Nobel speech. AMR is now responsible for nearly 700,000 deaths worldwide each year, and it is projected to kill 10 million per year by 2050.

Early Women Were Hunters, Not Just Gatherers – My favorite statement from the article: “Grandmas were the best hunters in the village.”

Overdose deaths involving street xylazine surged years earlier than reported – Drug death data is gathered and analyzed slowly…not so long ago, it appeared that illicit xylazine use was still largely concentrated in the mid-Atlantic states and the Northeast….but it is not showing up in street samples all across the US and surging in the South and West. US drug deaths hit a new record last year with roughly 110,000 fatal overdoses nationwide from fentanyl and increasingly complex street drug cocktails.

U.S. Wind and Solar Overtake Coal for the First Time - In the first five months of 2023, wind and solar produced 252 terawatt-hours, while coal produced 249 terawatt-hours, according to preliminary government figures. The decline in coal is happening faster than anyone anticipated.

Largest-ever atlas of normal breast cells brings unprecedented insights into mammary biology – 12 major cell types, 58 biological states…differences based on ethnicity, age, and the menopause status of healthy women.

Why our voices change with age – Lots of reasons the sounds we make can change. One habit suggested from the article that I am considering: “Singing or reading out loud daily can give the vocal cords sufficient exercise to slow their decline.”

Cedar Breaks Wildflower Festival Starts Friday – Hmmm…maybe I should look for wildflower festivals (along with birding) when I plan our vacations.

Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure - Earth’s remaining ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are far more vulnerable to climate warming than models predict, and that the ice sheets may be destabilizing from inside. Recent studies have shown that:

• Warming ocean currents are intruding into the Antarctic and Greenland coastlines, flowing under the ice shelves to undercut outlet glaciers and destabilize their calving fronts.

• Increasing rainfall across the Greenland ice sheet not only depletes snow accumulation, it also accelerates surface melting and ice flow.

• Algae and microbes, along with surface snowpack melt, darken the ice sheet surface, absorbing more solar radiation, which also accelerates ice melt.

• Superimposed ice slabs within the snowpack are forming across the accumulation zone, forming an impermeable barrier that depletes meltwater retention and drives extraordinary runoff.

• Water at the base of the ice sheet thaws and softens the frozen bed, thereby triggering basal sliding and accelerating interior ice sheet flow to the margins.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 15, 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.

Cyprus’s copper deposits created one of the most important trade hubs in the Bronze Age – Cyprus was part of the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean. It was the largest copper producer around the area. Imports found via excavation included item from close countries like Greece and Egypt; items from distant places like Sardinia, the Baltic Sea region, Afghanistan, and India have also been found. Aside from copper, pottery produced in Cyprus at that time was exported and had been found in excavations around the Mediterranean and beyond.

Green Winter: Europe Learns to Live Without Russian Energy – “In a year when planetary emissions edged upward, Europe is now on track to comfortably outpace its pledge to generate 40 percent of its total energy from renewable sources by 2030.” Impressive.

Australia’s extinct giant eagle was big enough to snack koalas from trees – Likely one of Australia’s top predators during the Pleistocene.

Why East Antarctica is a 'sleeping giant' of sea level rise – The eastern part of Antarctica was thought to be resistant to global warming. In 2012, the East Antarctic ice sheet gained mass overall. But recently, it appears that some ice shelves are melting and might be at risk to collapse. The ice shelves in front of glaciers act as a safety band that keep the glaciers for speeding up and reaching the ocean. Scary comment from the article – “Most of the uncertainty about how much and how fast future sea levels will rise comes from how the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is going to behave.”

Arctic climate modelling too conservative – And about the other pole…researchers at the University of Gothenburg argue that the rate of warming will be faster than projected….and climate models need to reflect the processes occurring there.

In Eastern U.S., Climate Change Has Extended Forest Growing Season by a Month - Scientists tracked American elm, black walnut, white oak, and four other species in northwest Ohio, comparing their data to records collected by an Ohio farmer (Thomas Mikesell) from 1883-1912.

In these cheatgrass-infested hills – Often the natural places closest to where we live…are degraded in some way. That doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the natural world that we find there.

Federal Agencies Directed to Develop Policies for Migratory Corridors – Birds and butterflies and fish and big game.

Ski Resorts in the Western U.S. Will Stay Open Into the Spring and Summer – Something positive about record-breaking snowfall.

As Enforcement Lags, Toxic Coal Ash Keeps Polluting U.S. Water – Coal ash in the environment and polluting ground water. Even as we migrate toward renewables…the toxic legacy of burning coal is going to last a very long time.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 25, 2021

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.

Top 25 birds of the week: September 2021 – Such a variety of birds in the world!

The Love Stories of Sleepy Lizards – An Australian lizard…they are monogamous and have a surprising threat display. They have been studied for over 40 years.

Searching for the Fisher Kings – The Calusa of south Florida…a capital on a man-made island made of shell. Surviving the Spanish but not the British.

New Coal Plants Dwindle Amid Wave of Cancelled Projects – Good! We need to be ramping up generation of electricity with renewables….and dramatically reducing the methane released by the oil and gas industry in their extraction processes…and then begin to reduce our need for oil and gas in areas that can be electrified (like transportation and heating/cooling).

Explore Life Under the Microscope with the Winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Contest – Photomicrography frequently creates art from reality that it too small for our eyes to see without the magnification and specialized equipment.

August 2021 global climate summary – From NOAA. Two global maps (temperature and precipitation). Where I live, August was hotter and slightly wetter than the average (averages from 1981-2010 for temperature…from 1979-2020 for precipitation).

People synchronize heart rates while listening to stories – Thinking about the brain as part of physical body….looking at the brain-body connection more broadly.

Study Links Transportation Noise to High Rates of Dementia and Alzheimer's – From Denmark.

Indigenous Resilience Center Launched at the University of Arizona – My daughter did her graduate work at University of Arizona; I’m glad they are launching the center to find and implement culturally appropriate solutions to the challenges of climate change.

The chemistry of dahlia flower colors – Also explains why there are no blue dahlias.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 17, 2021

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.

The 'Zoom Boom' Can't Save the Midwest – People are leaving dense, high-cost urban metro areas…but very few of them are going to the heartland.  Maybe some of the areas will benefit from migration because of climate change. Or maybe the Midwest should simply focus on investments to help their economies and create places people want to live….do the groundwork to encourage people to move to the region.

Poison Mushrooms: How to Tell – From the Natural History Society of Maryland…good pictures.

The Avenues of America – An overview picture of Washington DC taken from the International Space Station.

The Invasion Of The National Park System – Quagga mussels, Burmese pythons, feral swine, household pets gone wild, tamarisk trees….and those are just the ones pictured!

Incredible Footage of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall Volcano – And there are people in many of the pictures to provide scale!

Major advance in fabrication of low-cost solar cells also locks up greenhouse gases – There are so many articles about technologies that sound promising toward creating faster pathways away from fossil fuels….hope a lot of them move forward.

Elephant Trunks Can Suck Water at 330 Miles Per Hour – Wow

Pyramid made of dirt is world’s oldest known war memorial – Located in Syria…and at least 30 people – male and presumed to be warriors – buried in horizontal steps.

COVID-19 pandemic has been linked with six unhealthy eating behaviors -- ScienceDaily – Eating disorders are one of the deadliest psychiatric health concerns and 6 of them have a correlation to the pandemic: mindless eating and snacking, increased food consumption, generalized decrease in appetite or dietary intake, eating to cope, pandemic related reductions in dietary intake, and re-emergence or marked increase in eating disorders.

How flooded coal mines could heat homes – Evidently the water in the mines could be tapped as a source of geothermal heating/cooling!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 22, 2020

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.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: February 2020 – Note the new website for these weekly posts: https://wildbirdrevolution.org/ ---The posts are still the beautiful bird pictures collected into a group for a weekly visual celebration of birds.

100% Wind, Water, & Solar Energy Can & Should Be the Goal, Costs Less | CleanTechnica – A short summary of a report with specifics for 143 countries…getting to 80% renewable energy by 2030 and completing the transition by 2050. Now to vote with that goal in mind for a livable future for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren….and onward.

LEDs, Downward Lights Changing the Night in Chicago - News | Planetizen – Chicago will complete the transition to energy efficient LED streetlights in 2021. They’ve calculated that it will save the city $100 million over 10 years. At the same time, they have made an effort to focus the new lights downward to cut light pollution. It’s too early to tell if that aspect of the project will be a success.

Vegetation Filters Harmful Particulates from Air--But How Much? | The Scientist Magazine® - It’s probably better to push for the transition to renewable energy (in school buses, for example) but where that is not happening fast enough – planting a green wall of vegetation can block pollution from school yards…which could reduce the impact of vehicle exhaust on children’s lungs.

Decline in Coal-Fired Power Reduces U.S. Carbon Emissions in 2019 - News | Planetizen – Good news…but it could decline more quickly. The 2019 results are from market forces alone. If there were political will, things would happen even faster.

Archaeologists Excavate 200 More Chinese Terracotta Warriors | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – The first terracotta warriors were found in China’s Shaanxi province in 1974. Now there is more excavation and more soldiers from the same tomb. All the warriors have unique expressions, hairstyle and physical features.

Organic crop practices affect long-term soil health -- ScienceDaily – This study looked closely at organisms in the soils…along with the impact of prior soil disturbance.

Recovery: A Plague of Bullfrogs – The Eastern part of the US is the native range for Bullfrogs…but they are invaders in the West. They are clearing native frogs and eating other animals too (ducklings are an example cited). So various municipalities and conservation groups are acting.

What We Can Learn From Ötzi the Iceman's Hunting Pack | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Ötzi was preserved for 5,300 years in a glacier until he was discovered in 1991. A lot has been studied since that time. He’s a window into Copper Age Europe.

Photography in the National Parks – More favorite spots for photography from Rebecca Larson. This collection included three National Parks I have not visited: Glacier, Olympic and Mount Rainier. Now I want to plan a trip to see them!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 23, 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.

Salt Could Play a Role in Allergies | The Scientist Magazine® - Atopic dermatitis has increased more than 2-fold since the 1970s….and researchers do not attribute the increase to greater awareness or diagnosis. Now comes the observation that people with lesioned skin from atopic dermatitis (but not psoriasis) had a 30-fold higher salt level in their lesions than in their unlesioned skin or skin from healthy controls. The connection to diet is speculative at this point…but we do have higher salt in our diet now that most people had in the 1970s.

In Siberia, Toxic Black Snow Reveals the Toll of Coal Mining | Smart News | Smithsonian – Yuck! Pollutions from open-air coal pits…in the extreme. Another reason, I’m glad we’re moving away from coal powered electricity generation. I wondered if the people living in the area of black snow develop terrible lung problems.  

See the best pictures from Bill Ingalls, NASA's official photographer – 30 years of photography

What makes joints pop and crack and is it a sign of disease? – A little lesson in joint anatomy

Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling - Yale E360 – China’s plastic imports have plummeted by 99%, mixed paper has dropped by a 33%. Recycled aluminum and glass are less affected by the ban. So now we are sending plastics to landfills, incinerators or littering the environment. Communities across the US have curtailed or halted their recycling programs. That hasn’t happened (yet) where I live in Maryland. We must learn to produce less recycle (waste) and process it more locally…not ship is someplace else in the world.

Meet the Bizarre American Bittern – Cool Green Science – It’s a type of heron that makes a strange sound (listen to the recording in this post). It is so well camouflaged that you are more likely to hear it than see it!

Photography in The National Parks: Capturing the Grandness of The Grand Tetons – Reminds me that this is a National Park I want to see again. Last time we went, I wasn’t doing any photography yet.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Interactions – National Geographic Society – Pictures that are more than just a bird.

Prehistoric Microbes Inhabit an Oasis in the Northern Mexican Desert | The Scientist Magazine® - Fish, diatoms, and bacteria in lagoons in the Chihuahua Desert and cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. More than 5,000 species of bacteria and archaea have been documented.

Owls against owls in a challenge for survival: Researchers forecast interactions between two owl species and the quality of their habitat in the Pacific Northwest -- ScienceDaily – I learned at the Festival of the Cranes (New Mexico) last fall about Barred Owls moving into Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) territory….and winning the competition. That further reduces the NSO populations which is already endangered because of over-logging of the old growth forests.