Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 9

The last session of the Missouri Master Naturalist Training was one lecture followed by graduation and ice cream cake!

The lecture was on invasives. Most of the invasive plants I was familiar with (from Maryland)…except for Sericea Lespedeza which is a warm-season, perennial legume. It is something that was introduced intentionally then escaped and is now widespread – outcompeting native plants. Frustratingly – its seeds are still being sold and attempts to stop that at the state level have failed.

There were some trunk sections of young ash trees killed by Emerald Ash Borer. The widespread death of ashes in Missouri is happening now…just as it did in Maryland several years ago.

The good (so far) news on the invasive insect front is that Missouri does not have Spotted Lanternfly…although it is probably only a matter of time since the insect is in Illinois and Kentucky.

Graduation included a magnetic name badge and a certificate (and some goodies that included milkweed seeds). I splurged and had 2 pieces of ice cream cake!

I am going to miss the rigor of the class but am relaxing a bit – savoring my Identifying Woody Plants class at the university that continues into December!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 02, 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.

Astonishing Photo of Millions of Monarch Butterflies Wins 2024 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest – Starting out the gleanings list this week with beautiful images from nature.

Iceberg A-68: The story of how a mega-berg transformed the ocean - Scientists following A-68's birth and demise were able to track just what such giant icebergs do to the surrounding ocean. For its short, transient life as an iceberg, A-68 became a frozen lifeboat for a wide range of species. Over its three-and-a-half-year journey since it broke away from the Antarctic ice shelf, A-68 lost 802 billion tons of ice as it thinned from an average thickness of 770ft (235m) to 551ft (168m). Over a three-month period at the end of 2020 and start of 2021, it dumped an estimated 152 billion tons of fresh water into the ocean – that is equivalent to almost 61 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. At the peak of its breakup, around 1.5 billion tons of fresh water was gushing into the ocean every day. The crushing weight of the freshwater from A-68a as it melted may have helped force carbon-based material down more quickly, to depths where it was less likely to be eaten.

Salmon Make a Long-Awaited Return to the Klamath River for the First Time in 112 Years, After Largest Dam Removal in U.S. – Four dams blocked the salmon’s migration between the Klamath basin and the Pacific Ocean…but now the dams have been removed, and the fish are returning. The first salmon in the river since 1912 were spotted less than two months after the last dam was removed.

Avian architects: weaver birds in Africa have unique building styles – The African white-browed sparrow weavers build nests that look like pompoms in acacia trees. Some families build roosts that are very long, with long entrance and exit tubes; others will build roosts that are much shorter, with hardly any tubes. Essentially, it looks like different white-browed sparrow weaver families have different architectural styles. Researchers excluded all environmental and genetic explanations for the differences in the structures built by different families. Maybe, like humans, some species of birds have their own architectural traditions passed on across generations through social interactions.

Huge! A Roman Engineering Marvel Reaching Across a Spanish City - In Segovia, the Romans built an aqueduct that stands as arguably their greatest architectural legacy from six centuries in Spain. After drawing water from the Frio River, the aqueduct runs underground for some 10 miles before appearing in Segovia as a grand, elegant beast that strides for nearly 2,400-feet across the town. Comprised of more than 20,000 blocks of granite and erected without a lick of mortar, at its highest point the aqueduct reaches more than 90-feet high with narrow, double arches. It remained in use until the late 1970s.

Life-saving spongelike 'bandage' rapidly stops hemorrhaging and mitigates risk of infection - A liquid gel comprised of siloxanes (silicon and oxygen) that is delivered via a special two-chamber syringe which rapidly expands into a spongy foam upon exposure to each other within the wound in under one minute. The sponge applies pressure to restrict the hemorrhage at the delivery site while also serving as an antibacterial agent because of the silver oxide in it.

Learning in the Environment: The Importance of Expanding Outdoor Education Across the United States - Although environmental discussions are expanding in schools, students often lack the opportunity to interact with the natural world through outdoor education, including place-based learning located in nature. The widespread decline of green spaces, especially in densely populated areas, restricts youth engagement with the environment. Interacting with the outdoors helps students to understand not only the environment itself but the role they can play in protecting it.

Chickpeas: Sustainable and climate-friendly foods of the future - Chickpeas are a drought-resistant legume plant with a high protein content that can complement grain cultivation systems even in urban areas. I have discovered that roasted chickpeas is my favorite ‘crunch’ topping for soups and salads!

Photo Contest Celebrates Excellence in Architectural Photography – I haven’t done much architectural photography…but maybe it is something to consider…when I am not able to do nature photography (which is my favorite).

Grasslands live in the climate change fast lane - The rapid shifts in grassland communities involve not only the gain of some hotter, drier species but also the loss of some cooler, wetter species. These shifts might have negative consequences such as dominance by non-native species and loss of biodiversity.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 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.

Dragonflies Reveal Path of Mercury Pollution – Dragonfly larvae collected from 150 national parks and then analyzed for mercury revealed: in arid regions, mercury comes from snow and rain, while in wetter, more forested areas, airborne mercury clings to leaves, which then fall to the ground, where the toxin spreads.

Komodo dragons have iron-coated teeth to rip apart their prey – A clue to how dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex killed and ate their prey.

COVID-19 devastated teacher morale − and it hasn’t recovered - A National Education Association survey of members found that, as of late 2022, a staggering 55% of educators were thinking of calling it quits because of: eroding sense of safety in the school, intense and unrelenting workload, lackluster leadership and changing expectations, and cuts in jobs and budget. Better pay is a start. I was disappointed that this article did not suggest more than that.

25 Stunning Images of the Cosmos from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory as It Celebrates 25 Years in Space - As NASA continues to grapple with a limited budget this year, Chandra is in danger of ending up on the agency’s chopping block and the program faces cuts in funding.

National Park Fun Facts: Petrified Forest – I’ve been to Petrified Forest National Park several times….still learned something from this post.

Art Bites: Michelangelo’s ‘David’ Was Carved Out of a Flawed Marble Slab – Some history of the famous statue.

8 Tips for Maximizing Your Home Solar Savings in 2024 – I am beginning to read articles like this…we will probably put solar on our house within the next year.

Why Covid-19 is spreading this summer – We’ve got to stop thinking about COVID as something that is like the flu…it isn’t.

Saving Dixie: 24 Hours Caring for a Wallaby Joey – The mother killed along a highway….and the Joey discovered alive…fortunately by someone who was willing to take care of him long enough to get him to an experienced wildlife carer.

Happy 50th birthday to the UPC barcode - While the world has changed a lot since the mid-1970s, the Universal Product Code (UPC) – what most people think of when they hear the word “barcode” – hasn’t. The code first scanned on a package of gum on June 26, 1974, is basically identical to the billions of barcodes scanned in stores all over the world today.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 20, 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.

Why US schools need to shake up the way they teach physics - As the economy becomes more tech-centered, understanding physics is critical. Yet the number of Americans with a solid grasp of physics is dwindling. Learning physics can better prepare you for a role as an aerospace engineer, software developer or environmental scientist, to name just a few. Shifting the way physics is taught so that students see how physics influences their daily lives with examples from sports, extreme weather or baking and cooking rather than rote memorization of formulas with examples from history would increase the number of students mastering physics and prepare them for the future…which is what education should do.

The Smithsonian Acquires the Earliest Known Photograph of an American First Lady – A daguerreotype of Dolley Madison from 1846 when she was 81.

The Hunt: What Happened to the Great Sphinx’s Nose? – The nose was gone well before Napoleon’s time.

NASA Returns to the Beach: Assateague on the Move – The changes in the barrier islands between 1985 and 2019 shown in images from NASA satellites.

The State of Electric School Bus Adoption in the US – Every U.S. state, except Wyoming, has electric school bus commitments. I hope the adoption has the momentum to continue for the health of child and the environment! As of December 2023, 3,700 electric school buses had already been delivered and 4,800 were awarded/ordered.

Huge firework displays will mark 4 July in the US, but the nation's air quality will suffer - Fireworks generate large amounts of smoke, which can have a visibly negative impact on air quality, but they also release other pollutants that are harder to see. In some areas, the concentration of fine particulate pollution known as PM2.5 can be between 1.5 and 10 times higher than normal on the night of 4 July and the following day. These fine soot particles have been linked to a range of health problems including asthma, heart disease and low birth weight. Another negative for fireworks: One analysis of wildfires on federal land in the US over a 37-year period from 1980 found that 11,294 of nearly 600,000 fires over that period could be attributed to fireworks. Two thirds of these occurred in the two-week period around 4 July. There are concerns that perchlorate (used as a propellent in fireworks) contamination can find its way into drinking water, where high levels of perchlorate can interfere with human thyroid function. --- I hope to see more drone shows available in the coming years.

Weaker Ocean Circulation Could Worsen Warming – A new modeling study finds that slowing currents could disrupt the upwelling of nutrients from the deep ocean to the surface, starving the phytoplankton that absorb carbon. The result is that, not only would the ocean absorb less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it would also unleash more carbon dioxide from its depths, leading to further warming.

See Ten Awe-Inspiring Images from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest – Beautiful images. My favorite is the solar prominence image.

Proteins and fats can drive insulin production for some, paving way for tailored nutrition - Production of the insulin is much more dynamic and individualized than previously thought. A subset of the population appears to be hyper-responsive to fatty foods. As a next step, the researchers hope to expand their work into clinical studies that would test insulin responsiveness to carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in a real-world setting, and to begin developing personalized nutrition approaches based on the findings.

Clever pupils don't need to attend academically selective schools to thrive – A study from Australia that followed students for 11 years. At ages 19 and 25 there was little difference between the educational and employment outcomes of children who attended selective schools versus non-selective schools. For example, the study found that while 81% of selective school students went on to secure a job or university place at 19 compared to 77.6% of pupils from non-selective schools, this difference disappeared when the students were matched on key characteristics, including socioeconomic background, gender, and geographical location.

Then and Now – Universities

My parents prompted my goal to go to college; it was still in my future during the 1960s. At first there was only a vague idea of what universities were like. That begin to change when my mother went back to school so she could become a teacher when I was in junior high. I learned about required courses and textbooks and the library. My sisters and I were in the audience when she acted in a play as part of a drama class. I remember paging through a very thick book for a biology/life sciences class – relishing how much more it included beyond the encyclopedias and schoolbooks I had looked at before. When I started an insect collection for special credit before my sophomore year of high school, my mother took me to the campus bookstore and we bought special black straight pins for the project (there must have been a class at the university that required insect collection too). My collection impression my teacher so much that she asked to keep it!

I was also aware of the protests of the Vietnam War at universities in the 1960s via the news and now with protests of the war in Gaza also via the news. I never was on a campus when one of the more significant protests happened at either time of my life.

Now my perception of universities is based more on first-hand experience from the 1970s and early 1980s when my husband got his PhD and I got my masters, vicarious experience (again) from 2007 to 2019 when my daughter was at 3 universities for undergraduate through to PhD and post doc, my daughter being employed as a professor at a university now, and the prospect of a course each semester at the university beginning next fall taking advantage of the free tuition for citizens age 62 or older.

In the 1960s, the prospect of heading off to the university was all about continuation of my education…preparing for a career…getting the required credits toward a degree. Now, I’ll be taking courses because I am interested in the topic and not ‘for credit.’ Courses that offer field experience or labs will be my primary focus…things that I can’t get in an online format or from a book. The first course will likely be a field course identifying woody plants; the second might be geology course which includes field trips and a lab; the next one might be pottery making!

In the 1960s, I was oblivious to the administration of universities. In retrospect, there were a lot less non-faculty staff at universities in the 1960s. And those non-faculty people often get higher salaries than the faculty; they are largely responsible for the cost of university education increasing faster than costs in just about every other sector. And those non-faculty people make decisions about how funding cuts will be made so their ranks will never go down! How does bloat in a university’s administrative staff ever get trimmed?

It seems that universities are changing very slowly compared to the rest of society. There is a paradox of research that is often leading edge coming out of an organization that incorporates processes that are almost like hazing (qualifying exams for graduate students that are traditionally ‘failed’ the first time through…committees of other faculty members that review tenure track packages and provide negative feedback, sometimes not factual and sometimes personal rather than relevant to the position…minorities and women judged harshly).

The role of universities is not as clear now as it seemed to me in the 1960s. I’m not sure if that is true because I know more about them now or if they have not changed in the intervening years in ways that they should have.

Previous Then and Now posts

Then and Now

The is the first post in my Then and Now series that will include my reflections on my ‘growing up decade’ (the 1960s) and now. A lot has changed over those 60 years, and I’ve found myself thinking more about it recently – maybe prompted by my mother’s death or me being 70 years old. Choosing these decades leaves out my career almost entirely – only the perspectives of preparation for it in the 1960s and reaping the benefits from it now in my post-career years.

I was 6 to 16 years old in the 1960s …remembering vivid snippets primarily about friends, family, and school…and a few events in the news (the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and a tornado that I saw through my school window before the sirens went off on April 3, 1964). In the 1960s I assumed I had a long life ahead of me; now I assume that it will take more and more focused effort on my part to remain healthy and enjoy the years left in my life. The way I live now definitely has roots that began developing in the 1960s!

The posts will focus on a particular aspect that has changed and will come out weekly on Monday mornings. Stay tuned….

Eva March Tappan

I recently browsed Eva March Tappan books available on Internet Archive; she was a prolific author from the early 1900s.  According to the Wikipedia, she graduated from Vassar in 1875 and taught for many years before embarking on her writing career – writing primarily for children. Enjoy these books (including their illustrations) this week!

The world's story; a history of the world in story, song and art V1 - China, Japan, and the islands of the Pacific,  1914

The world's story; a history of the world in story, song and art V2 - India, Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine,  1914

The world's story; a history of the world in story, song and art V3 - Egypt, Affrica and Arabia,  1914

The world's story; a history of the world in story, song and art V4 - Greece and Rome,  1914

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 25, 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.

20 Incredible Winners From the 2023 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest – Lots of natural beauty…captured in photographs.

A known environmental hazard can change the epigenetics of cells – Formaldehyde. It is a widespread pollutant - formaldehyde enters our body mainly during our breathing and, because it dissolves well in an aqueous medium, it ends up reaching all the cells of our body. It is associated with an increased risk of developing cancer (nasopharyngeal tumors and leukemia), hepatic degeneration due to fatty liver (steatosis) and asthma.

How forest schools boost children's immune systems – It seems the benefits go well beyond immune systems.  Hopefully this type of school for 3 to 5 year old will increase in availability/popularity.

Circular Maya Structure Uncovered in Southern Mexico - Similar round structures have been found at the Maya sites of Edzná, Becán, Uxmal, and Chichen Itzá.

Health Care Workers Are Burning Out, CDC Says - The CDC researchers analyzed self-reported symptoms of more than 1,400 adults in 2018 and 2022 who were working in three areas: health care, other essential services and all other professions. Workers’ self-reported poor mental health days in the past 30 days was similar across all three groups in 2022, but health professionals saw the most significant jump, from 3.3 in 2018 to 4.5 in 2022. Reports of harassment at work also spiked among health care workers over the five-year period, going from 6.4 percent to 13.4 percent.

How To Bring Back the Prairie, a Tiny Bit at a Time – The use of “prairie strips” on farms in an effort to restore a portion of the Minnesota’s remnant prairie and to soak up polluted water.

These Ten Stunning Images Prove That Small Is Beautiful – From Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Contest. My favorite was the cuckoo wasp.

Deforestation in Colombia Down 70 Percent So Far This Year - Since taking power last year, leftist President Gustavo Petro has enacted a slate of new policies aimed at protecting Colombian forests, including paying locals to conserve woodland. The recent gains in Colombia mirror similar advances in the Brazilian Amazon, where leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has cracked down on forest clearing; deforestation is down 50 percent through the first nine months of this year. In 2021, more than 100 countries, from Brazil to Russia to Indonesia, set a goal to end deforestation by the end of this decade, but so far forest loss has declined too slowly to stay on pace for this target.

European wildcats avoided introduced domestic cats for 2,000 years – About 50 years ago in Scotland, however, that all changed. Perhaps as a result of dwindling wildcat populations and a lack of opportunity to mate with other wildcats, rates of interbreeding between wild and domestic cats rose rapidly.

Why grazing bison could be good for the planet - The shortgrass prairie makes up 27,413 sqare miles of remote land straddling the US/Canadian border to the east of the Rocky Mountains. This rare habitat is in ecological decline. Plains bison co-evolved with the short-grass prairie. In the 12,000 years since the end of the Pleistocene, they have proven themselves to be potent ecosystem engineers. An adult bison eats about 25lb (11kg) of grass a day. The grasses adapted to their foraging. Vegetation across the plains uses the nutrients in their dung. Birds pluck their fur from bushes to insulate their nests. Bison also shape the land literally. They roll in the dust and create indentations known as "wallows" that hold water after rainstorms. After the bison move on, insects flourish in these pools and become a feast for birds and small mammals. Pronghorn antelope survive by following their tracks through deep winter snows. Replacing cattle with bison greens floodplains…setting the stage for beavers.

A 50th Anniversary

I posted about my parents’ 70th anniversary back in December; now I am celebrating my own 50th wedding anniversary with my husband. The anniversary prompts me to think about those 50 years of shared life from different perspectives.

Our external focus shifted through the years:

  • For the first 10 years, we were completing our education – a PhD for him, a masters for me. I was working full time during those years…not thinking about computer science as a career for the first 5 years but gradually realizing that I liked the work too much to switch fields. From the beginning he seemed to have a clearer idea of what he wanted to do. We were the first in both our families to go beyond an undergraduate degree.

  • We moved to the east coast for my husband’s work; it was a great career move for me too. We were both focused on our careers for about 5 years.

  • Then we decided to have a child and took the precautions needed for a successful pregnancy in our mid-30s. We thought we were prepared when our daughter was born but quickly realized that there was a learning curve that was just beginning. Between the two of us we successfully juggled parenting and careers…until she went off to college 20 years later.

  • There were 5 years of career focus with occasional bursts of activity to help my daughter move out of the dorm into an apartment, get to an internship, or move for graduate school. The internship and graduate school were more than halfway across the US!

  • 10 years ago - I retired and my husband started a ramp down from his career that continued for several years.

We’ve lived in several states over the 50 years: Texas for 10, Virginia for 3, Maryland for 36.5, Missouri for .5 years. The two long haul moves (from Texas to Virginia and from Maryland to Missouri) were quite different. We had a lot more household items to move the second time, the technology of finding a new house/selling our old one had improved dramatically, and we were able to buy our current house rather than get a mortgage.

Our shared interests have evolved over the years.

  • Photography. My husband was the one that enjoyed photography from the beginning….doing his own black/white and color developing (and printing too). I remember in our first house when one of the developing chemicals was not diluted enough when he poured it down the kitchen sink and it dissolved the disposal flaps! We have a lot of negatives and slides from those pre-digital years. The transition to digital happened about the time our daughter was old enough to start taking pictures. My interest in photography picked up a little when my daughter was born but ramped up dramatically once I retired.

  • Travel. From the very beginning we’ve both enjoyed day trips and vacations to outdoor destinations: gardens, state parks, and national parks. In the beginning, we economized by car/tent camping and not eating out. By the time we moved to Virginia we could afford flying, staying in hotels, and eating out although the road trip still dominated our vacations. When my daughter was born, we shifted our accommodations to ones that had a small kitchen to accommodate her food requirements/preferences. Some of our travel was associated with either my career or my husband’s…so that part of the travel was paid for as part of our work. After she got older and as we travelled more on our own, we enjoyed short term house rentals. For a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband and I used birding festivals as a focus for our travels.

  • Astronomy. My husband was interested in astronomy before I knew him. One of our early dates included a lunar eclipse at the local astronomy club’s observatory. In the early years of our marriage, we participated in grazing occultations (stars and the mountains of the moon); my role was to help him get the telescope set up as quickly as possible in the assigned location so he could take the measurements. Later I used the cast iron telescope mount to add weight in the back of my rear-wheel drive car – to give it more traction on snowy days in Virginia. His astronomy activity ebbed although he did replace his telescope; we (daughter included) observed the sunrise in 2000…our celebration of the new millennium. Once he retired, he became active the local astronomy club in Maryland and we both camped on the field for a star party at a dark sky site in Virginia several times; he liked the dark sky (and being able to call it a night whenever he got tired) and I enjoyed being outdoors, hiking during the day.

A lot has happened in 50 years and we’re both realizing how fortunate we are that the big decision we made all those years ago was a good one for both of us!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 24, 2022

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.

Photographer Captures the Vast Beauty of Alaska Through Breathtaking Mountainscapes – Eventually I’d like to visit Alaska…but pictures are the next best way to experience the state.

Characteristics of older forests can buffer effects of climate change for some bird species – Results from an 8-year study (2011-18). Forests can provide refugia for some species….our stewardship is important.

Ruby was the first Black child to desegregate her school. This is what she learned – I’m glad she survived and thrived….don’t want any child going through this type of experience in the future. Education is challenging for child without accompanying trauma from the community or institution or bullies.

Should you feed garden birds? – Right now we have 2 bird feeders and baths…with a few plants in the yard that attract birds as well. Over the next few years, I will be planting for the birds – native plants that will support insects the birds need particularly during their breeding season…produce pollen and nectar and seeds to round out their diet.

Earth’s Iconic Waves, observed by Landsat – A 3.5 minute video about places on earth where the waves are significant enough to be visible from satellites…and a little about why those spots produce the types of waves observed.

The sands of Mars are green as well as red, rover Perseverance discovers – The discovery of volcanic rocks on Mars rich with large grains of olivine! I remember going to a green sand beach on the big island of Hawaii – olivine on earth.

Enhanced Geothermal Technology Cracks The 24/7 Energy Code – Maybe a technology that will be as important as wind and solar in our renewable energy portfolio.

What older adults do while they sit affects dementia risk – Passive behaviors like watching TV increased dementia risk-- on the plus side active behaviors while sitting like reading and using computers reduced dementia risk. The study had more than 145,000 participants aged 60 or over with nearly 12 years of follow-up.

Cataracts: we’re working on eye drops to treat them so people don’t need surgery – Glad the research is happening…probably not fast enough to be available when my cataracts will require treatment.

When Told About Flood Risk, Homebuyers Shun Vulnerable Homes, Study Finds – I shouldn’t be a surprise that people don’t want to buy properties that flood….and there are a lot of expensive coastal properties that have an increasing flood risk.

Slime Mold

One morning when I came back through our back gate after walking around the neighborhood ponds, I saw something unexpected in the grass. At first, I thought it was some escaped packing peanuts.

I took a closer look. Not packing peanuts. I took pictures….and later put them into iNaturalist. It identified it as a slime mold! I think I had expected slime molds to be shiny…and yellow…because that is how they were depicted in my biology textbook (many years ago when I was in college). But – it turns out that they dry out and are no longer slimy and they are other colors beside yellow too!

It’s thrilling to see something in my own yard that I’ve known about only from books previously….another thing to like about my move to Missouri!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 19, 2022

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.

Can cloud seeding help quench thirst of the US West? – New research on an old idea…many states increase their use of the technology.

Fresh water from thin air – Another technology that might help dry regions….using hydrogels (like the ones currently used in diapers!).

What’s The Construction Industry Blueprint to Cut Carbon? – I wanted more specific examples…was a little disappointed that this article did not provide them, but maybe that would have made it a long article! I hope to see more on this topic.

Higher education must reinvent itself to meet the needs of the world today. Enter the distributed university – The pandemic has highlighted the challenges the current higher education model is facing. The ideas in this post are a start but don’t seem to be fully developed to push into full implementation. More work needs to be done to enable transition from the existing model to a new one that is more responsive to the needs not only of undergraduate students but for graduate students and continuing education. The sources of money in the current model don’t match up well. For example – in the US the sports programs (football) is a big money maker for many universities; how does that map into the new model (or do we want it to).

Upcycling plastic waste into more valuable materials could make recycling pay for itself – Hope this research can be transitioned into commercial use….we have to improve the recycling processes that are being used today. Too much is still ending up in landfills.

Fossil pollen reveals the African origins of Asia’s tropical forest – Research on Borneo’s Dipterocarps (very large trees with buttress roots, smooth/straight trunks, high crown) using fossil pollen reveals their origins in Africa…spread through India before it crashed into Asia…and then to Southeast Asia. The forests in India shrank as the climate became drier. These trees need a wet, seasonal climate to survive.

Mummification in Europe may be older than previously known – Analysis of bodies found in Mesolithic shell middens in Portugal reveal that they were probably mummified before being placed there 8,000 years ago. The description of the way the researchers came to that conclusion was interesting…a lot has been learned about forensics since the 1960s when the bodies were originally found. The oldest intentional mummification known before this finding was from the Chinchorro hunter-gatherers living in the coastal region of the Atacama Desert in shell middens (around 7,000 years old).

Lake Powell Reaches Lowest Level Since 1980s – The drought continuing in the west….

The myths and realities of modern friendship – Thought provoking. The ways we communicate with each have changed a lot over my lifetime!

The climate math of home heating electrification – The rationale for moving to heat pump heating/cooling as quickly as possible.

90 Years

Both of my parents are 90 years old this year. I’ve been thinking about the events of their lives and what has happened in the world during their lifetimes.

Their lives began during the Great Depression. They were both born at home; both families were living in rural Oklahoma and grew most of their own food. They were too young to fully realize the stress around the country…secure with their family and small rural community.

Their school memories are from the 1940s --- the World War II era. Their fathers were too old to go to war so the impact of the war on their families was indirect…primarily the rationing programs. Both went to schools where there was only a small cohort at each grade level. Later in their lives they attended high school reunions occassionally – keeping in touch with that small group that had mostly scattered across the country.

They were in college in the early 1950s – the boom years with the GI Bill funding returning veterans and college being encouraged for those just graduating from high school. My parents were ‘first generation’ to college for their families. They married, left the farm, and had 3 of their 4 children during the decade. My dad’s career stayed related to agriculture initially – at first requiring a lot of traveling and then into management of grain storage.

By the 1960s, they were in Texas living in a small city…children in public schools, living in an air-conditioned house (an important thing in the Texas summer). The big health improvement was the availability of the polio vaccine (we all got the vaccine via sugar cubes at school) and the waning of smallpox around the world even though we were still required to get updated vaccines when we traveled to Mexico.  In the mid-60s my mother returned to college for a degree in education…a career she started in the 1970s. My dad’s parents moved from Oklahoma to the same small city in Texas.

In the early 1970s, they moved to a suburb of a big city. They bought a house that accommodated the whole family, including my dad’s parents. My dad had transitioned completely from an agriculture related career to financial management and planning. My mother was teaching. All 4 of their daughters graduated from high school and went to Texas colleges (the last one just starting at the end of the decade). One daughter got married. My parents’ fathers died during the decade. Somehow everyone managed to stay ahead of inflation and pay mortgages that were high interest compared to today.

The 1980s were a very busy decade with careers of the whole family in high gear. My father was coming adept at digital spreadsheets…my mother was focused on reading for students in upper elementary and middle school. The youngest daughter graduated from college. One daughter (me) moved halfway across the country to the east coast and two others got married. My maternal grandmother died. Toward the end of the decade, the first two grandchildren were born.

In the 1990’s, my parents retired from their careers; they travelled and took care of grandchildren and helped with home maintenance (a total of 5 houses in the family!). Three more grandchildren were born, and the older ones started school.

Similar activities continued in the 2000s changing as the grandchildren got older…the oldest ones starting college.

In the 2010s, travel and engagement with family continued in a similar way for the first part of the decade; by the middle of the decade someone else was doing the driving on road trips and they stopped driving completely by the end of the decade. My paternal grandmother died; she had been living in the same house with my parents since the 1970s. Health challenges began to emerge for both parents…intermittent at first and then slowing them down in the last years of the decade. They both benefited from cataract surgery. Other surgeries and injuries required more recovery time…and sometimes recovery was not complete.

The last road trip was for Thanksgiving in 2019…to be with a grandchild. Not long afterward the COVID-19 pandemic locked down travel and they discovered the comfort of ‘stay at home as much as possible.’ Recently they have transitioned to primary care practice that comes to their home for checkups, blood work and most other health needs. Their children and grandchildren come to them now. If they leave their home, it is a very special event. Four of their five grandchildren have college degrees – one has an MD…another a PhD. There aren’t any great-grandchildren – yet.

So many changes have occurred since they were born. Electricity and indoor plumbing were just beginning to be available on farms when they were born. They bought their first air-conditioned home in the early 1960s. Computers came along in the 1980s.

And now – my sisters and I are thankful they are still with us – still enjoying living independently in their home with support from the family, neighbors, doctors, and house cleaners – getting close to celebrating 70 years of married life.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 17, 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 birds of the week: October 2020 – Starting out the weekly gleanings with birds.

Linking calorie restriction, body temperature and healthspan -- ScienceDaily – Interesting research. I went off on a tangent thinking about “up to half of what we eat every day is turned into energy simply to maintain our core body temperature.” Many people in the developed world spend the majority of time in temperature-controlled buildings or homes…and that means we probably expend a lot less calories warming or cooling ourselves than we did prior to efficient heating and cooling systems. Just one more way we are changing our environment in a way that will tweak our future evolution.

The super-adaptable chimps that can withstand climate change - BBC Future – I didn’t realize how many different habitats chimpanzees are found in…and that the ones that live in environments with greater seasonal change have more varied behaviors to respond to those changes than chimps that live in an environment that doesn’t change much.

Environmental Education Goes Virtual: Creating Meaningful Learning Opportunities at Home: The National Wildlife Federation Blog – So many good online resources…they’ve been developed over years but are probably getting a lot more use during this pandemic year.

It's Tarantula Season At Bandelier National Monument – I’ve not been to Bandelier during tarantula season! The last time I was there was in March 2005 and that was before I started taking a lot of pictures….this article reminded me that I want to go again. Maybe we’ll plan to go in the fall and be on the look out for the male tarantulas trying to find a mate. Here are a couple of pictures my husband took when we visited in 1980!

Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? - BBC Future – It’s difficult not to look at current trends and think the future will be a dystopian one with or without seeing this as a ‘hinge.’ The last paragraph was the best of the article: “So, while we do not know if our time will be the most influential or not, we can say with more certainty that we have increasing power to shape the lives and well-being of billions of people living tomorrow – for better and for worse. It will be for future historians to judge how wisely we used that influence.”

Why is America Running out of water? – Shortages are not everywhere…but there are places in the US that are already problematic…and there are a lot of people living in those areas.

Raptor Rescue: When Bird Injuries Warrant Rehab – This article was a good summary of things I’ve heard about before re injured birds.

Unusual climate conditions influenced WWI mortality and subsequent influenza pandemic -- ScienceDaily – Something new about the 1918 flu…torrential rains and unusually cold temperatures kept Mallard ducks from their normal migration…and thus spread the virus more broadly in the battlefields of the Western Front.

What 'net-zero carbon' really means for cities - BBC Future – Using London as an example: no/fewer cars and all transport EV, less concrete…more timber, buildings reused/retrofit, green roofs and walls, renewable energy, reduced waste through recycling and energy production, urban farms. It’s technology that exists now…and already is being applied…ramped up, of course.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 26, 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.

Closing the Racial Inequality Gaps – Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions – The report (summarized by NPR in Cost of Racism: US Economy Lost $16 Trillion Because of Discrimination, Bank Says) details the analysis  done by Citi that calculates the economic impact of racism….and thus puts a value on proposed government and individual actions to close racial gaps.

Top 25 Birds of the Week: Birds in Flight and Bird Interactions – Double the bird photos this week!

Infographic: Dialing Down the Glitz | The Scientist Magazine® - The mechanism that makes dramatic sexual dimorphism in some finches.

How vitamin C could help over 50s retain muscle mass -- ScienceDaily – Another reason to eat Vitamin C rich foods (and take a supplement when that is not possible).

A guide to natural sweeteners – in C&EN – Compound Interest – A good summary of the chemistry behind natural sweeteners. I am enjoying the stevia leaves I am getting from the CSA’s cutting garden right now – building up my supply a little every week of dried leaves and stems to enjoy even after the cutting garden ends for the year.

Schooling is critical for cognitive health throughout life -- ScienceDaily – Boosting cognitive skills early in life not only expands career opportunities and provides progressively higher salaries…it also pushes back the point at which age-related dementia begins to impact a person’s ability to care for themselves. Education is a good long-term investment for everyone.

Study Tracks Geographical Gene Flow and Ancestry in the US | The Scientist Magazine® - Beginning to get deeper genetic studies that might translate to better understanding of risk of disease across sub-populations within the US.

Scientists use fruit peel to turn old batteries into new -- ScienceDaily – Recycling metals from lithium-ion batteries with food waste…an example of the types of processes we need to develop for a circular economy (zero waste).

Hike in Walnut Canyon – A short video of a special place. I first visited in 1971 in the winter. It was memorable. Maybe I’ll go again after the pandemic is over; it’s high enough elevation I’ll make sure I am acclimated before I hike the trail to see the cliff dwellings up close.

The Undoing of US Climate Policy: The Emissions Impact of Trump-Era Rollbacks – Many young people see climate change as a high priority for the government to address….so do I. This research shows that the actions of the last few years have moved the US in the wrong direction. I usually prefer to focus on solutions and what individuals can do….but the government has a roll to play and, right now, it is moving opposite of the way needed.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Letter sweater. I found my 50-year-old letter sweater (academic…not sports) from high school when I cleaned out the coat closet. It still fits! It’s a little chilly today and I am wearing it. I took the letter off years ago but the flap in the pocket has my name embroidered on it. One of the buttons aged differently than the others – looks reddish rather than black. I’ll wear it as a basic black cardigan (with the odd button) in the fall and winter. I made a small pile of some other things in the closet to give away. My pile is big enough now that I am scheduling a pickup from my front porch!

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Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/2/2020

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Finishing the Coursera course: In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting from MoMA. The last module was about Yayoi Kusama – the only artist featured in the course that is still alive and the second woman.

Making a Yayoi Kusama inspired Zentangle tile. Kusama’s Accumulation 18a from 1962 is made with paper savers (circular adhesives to reinforce holes punched into paper) and charcoal on paper. My tile is smaller, lightweight cardboard instead of paper…and it was brown instead of white. I used some very old paper savers that were a woven material (I had saved them in the office supply cabinet even though I didn’t think I would ever have a use for them); I wondered if the adhesive would still work…was pleasantly surprised when it did. And I used a graphite pencil instead of charcoal. Once I had done the paper savers and pencil…..I diverged by coloring the holes green….and added a black circle on each paper saver (feeling the nubs of the weave). I took a series of pictures of the progression.

Tracking the changes in the COVID-19 Projections. The model gets a daily tweak as new data is available. I made some notes the night before so it could detect some of the changes between the 4/1 and 4/2 version of the model.

  • The peak for the US overall moved from 4/16 to 4/15…one less day to prepare.

  • For Maryland the peak moved from 4/28 to 4/29, the peak death day rose from 51 to 53 deaths, and the peak number of ventilators moved from 638 to 659.

Hearing about my daughter’s transition from in-classroom to virtual teaching (university level). My daughter has been calling when she takes her (almost) daily walk around her neighborhood in Missouri. A positive bit of news: her gen-ed class has transitioned to virtual mode. She thought the first class might have been a fluke because about the same number of people attended as were in her classroom before the pandemic; she thought that maybe the students were curious enough to make the effort to attend; but then they joined again for the second virtual lecture…so now she is realizing she and her students have made a successful transition.

Photographing a minute at our birdfeeder. A lot can happen. The gold finches were there at the beginning of the minute – 3-4 of them. Then the female red-bellied woodpecker showed up and scattered the other birds. She ate some seeds at the feeder then got a peanut and flew away. I noticed a female cardinal below the feeder about that time. A second later, a chickadee arrived…quickly got some seed and flew back o the safety of the trees.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

3 Free eBooks – January 2020

Starting out the new year…I selected 3 books with an art and history skew from my accumulation of reading this month.

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Dillon, Edward. Glass. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. London: Methuen and Co. 1907. Available from Project Gutenberg here. The book is a history of glass (up until the early 1900s) with illustrations of pieces in museum collections. I paid more attention to the illustrations than the text. I’ve always been interested in ancient glass because it points to the step beyond basketry and pottery in our manufacturing expertise. It a material we think about as being ‘breakable’ but is often very enduring.

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Whitney, Frederick. Blackboard Sketching. Springfield, Massachusetts: Milton Bradley Company. 1909. Available from Internet Archive here. Written at a time when many students were learning to write and draw with blackboard slates and slate pencils…it provides an idea of how students were taught. Early classrooms used a lot less paper!

LaFontaine, Bruce. Bridges of the World Coloring Book. Dover Publication. 1994. Available from Internet Archive here. The bridges are organized chronologically. The sample image I show below is the colored version (as the end page of the book) of page 10…a bridge from China built about 1100. The book includes short descriptions the design features and technologies the bridge builders utilized. Obviously, these bridges have proven to be very durable.

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Enjoy these 3 online books!

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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 21, 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.

These Caterpillars Can Detect Color Using Their Skin, Not Their Eyes | Smart News | Smithsonian – A little surprise…but insects probably have a lot of adaptations developed over eons that are challenging to imagine.

Five weird and wonderful ways nature is being harnessed to build a sustainable fashion industry – New dyes from enzymes, ‘leather’ from mushrooms, lacy fabric made from plant roots that grew that way (watch the video), cellulose for fabrics derived from manure!

Aesthetics of skin cancer therapy may vary by treatment type -- ScienceDaily – Hopefully these findings will guide doctors to use the more aesthetic treatments…since they all have about the same recurrence rates a year after treatment.

On the Alabama Coast, the Unluckiest Island in America - Yale E360 – Dauphin Island…when does everyone decide that these places can’t be saved…should not be rebuilt. It’s not something we are dealing with very well as individuals or as a nation.

Deer browsing is not stopping the densification of Eastern US forests -- ScienceDaily – Deer hurt the understory but the canopy is more impacted by the greater density of the big forest trees (because of fire suppression) and that red maples are growing in areas where young oaks, hickories, or pines would have grown previously. But wouldn’t the deer browse young trees? In our area – the forests have also changed quite a lot in the last 20 years with the decline of the hemlocks and now the ashes. This study – done in Pennsylvania – did not comment about those issues.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: September – These photographs are always worth a look….birds are so beautiful.

North America has lost 3 billion birds – And fresh from looking at the wonder pictures of birds….this sobering news: North America has lost 25% of its bird population and it’s all happened in the last 50 years. More than 90% of the loss is in just a dozen bird families that includes the sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, and finches. Grassland birds have suffered a 53% loss. Potential causes: habitat degradation, urbanization, and the use of toxic pesticides.

Staying at elementary school for longer associated with higher student attainment – My daughter didn’t seem to have a problem transferring from elementary to middle school after 5th grade…but the middle school was next door to the elementary school, and she was doing well in school. The results of this research will have to overcome the school building infrastructure in many areas. Change happens slowly with school systems. So far I haven’t seen a change in start times for high schools even though there are studies that say that early starts are not good for high school students (in our area, they have always started before the elementary and middle schools).

Spotted in Kenya: a baby zebra with polka dots – I hope there is a follow up story on this baby. Will the pattern make it more susceptible to fly bites? Another note from the article: Zebras are accepting of difference…animals with atypical coat patterns fit right into the herd.

Drought Reveals Lost “Spanish Stonehenge” – The Dolmen at Guadalperal has resurfaced from the Valdecanas Reservoir in western Spain due to lower lake levels from dry, hot conditions this year. It has been submerged for 50 years. Hopefully someone will make a good 3D tour of the place.

Bugs 101

I took a lot of Coursera courses between 2015 and 2017….then I got so busy with other things that I didn’t do any in 2018. Now I am back to an occasional course when I have a lull in other activities.

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The most recent course was in August – Bug 101: Insect-Human Interactions from University of Alberta.

I enjoyed the course beyond the content too. It was more thought provoking that I thought it would be.

  • It was very evident how much has been learned since my biology undergraduate courses in the 1970s and I found myself thinking more about taking some biology courses again – challenging myself to identify all the deltas between the first time I took them and now.

  • The world has changed too…much caused by what we have done (or were doing prior to 1970 but didn’t quite realize the impact of our actions at the time). We were just beginning to fully understand the impact of DDT on the environment when I was in school.

  • Scanning ScienceDaily in my news feed helps keep me updated at a ‘headline’ level but having a course integrate the topic is something I should pursue for areas I am really interested in.

  • It’s good to know that Integrated Pest Management is pushing toward more sustainable agribusiness.