Gleanings of the Week Ending November 09, 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.

Old Growth – Mitch Epstein photographs of very old trees.

The true story of a famed librarian and the secret she guarded closely – Belle da Costa Greene, the first director of New York's historic Morgan Library and Museum.

Inside Turkey’s Mysterious Ancient City That Once Sheltered Thousands—Underground - The Derinkuyu underground city is a sort of gargantuan anthill, except made by and for humans—up to 20,000 of them at a time, in fact. The city descends 280 feet into the earth, divided into eight levels. Upper levels were primarily used for living and sleeping, while lower levels were used for storage, even housing a dungeon. The far-stretched system of interconnected rooms was carved out of the Cappadocia region’s tuff rock. People didn’t live in these underground quarters year-round, however, as they were mainly used for shelter during times of conflict or extreme weather.

Climate change will affect food production, but here are the things we can do to adapt - Farmers can pick crop varieties best suited to different climate condition...production can shift to places with more optimal temperatures…planting and harvest times can shift as the seasons shift…focusing on the right irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides synchronized to climate change. We have the chance to build a more productive and resilient food system, but it’s not guaranteed that we will. It depends on whether the seeds, irrigation, and adaptation practices will be available. That will require real and sustained investment from governments, donors, and private companies.

Toothbrushes and showerheads covered in viruses ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’ - We live in a richly microbial world. Interactions with bacteria and other microbes in our homes are an integral part of our human biology.

The monarch butterfly may not be endangered, but its migration is - Migrating monarchs don't fly at night, so they spend their evenings in bunches on trees or shrubs, known as roosts. The study relied on 17 years of data from more than 2,600 citizen scientist observations of monarch roosts along the butterfly's migration route. The researchers found that roost sizes have declined by as much as 80%, with these losses increasing from north to south along the migration route. The evidence shows that when monarchs are reared in a captive environment, either indoors or outdoors, they're not as good at migrating.

World’s Rivers Are Driest They - In 2023, the hottest year on record, the Mississippi River and Amazon River basins were at all-time lows, while the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mekong rivers, which all have their headwaters in the Himalayas, were also unusually dry. Across nearly half the globe, rivers were drier than normal.

The worrying puzzle behind the rise in early-onset cancer - Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25- to 49-year-olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Australia, Canada, Norway and Argentina. Perhaps the most obvious explanation points to the role of obesity and metabolic syndrome, conditions which have been associated with driving cancer risk through increasing inflammation throughout the body and causing the dysregulation of key hormonal pathways. Or maybe changes in sleep patterns is part of the explanation. Combined with shifts in lifestyle, many cancer scientists believe that a key driving force for these illnesses is the consequences of various toxic changes within the gut (from microplastics). Antibiotics might be involved too. The bottom line…it’s a looming public health crisis.

New research reveals how large-scale adoption of electric vehicles can improve air quality and human health - Computer simulations show that aggressive electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet, coupled with an ambitious rollout of renewable electricity generation, could result in health benefits worth between US$84 billion and 188 billion by 2050. Even scenarios with less aggressive grid decarbonization mostly predicted health benefits running into the tens of billions of dollars.

New study explores how universities can improve student well-being - Six guiding principles for improving student well-being:

• Embedding well-being into curricula for broader, more accessible adoption.

• Having each initiative only focus on one or two aspects of well-being, making it easier to create instruction that can also be more immersive.

• Tailoring initiatives to the student body and university culture.

• Securing buy-in from faculty.

• Ensuring new offerings are accessible and don't create additional financial burden for students.

• Employing an iterative assessment framework at the beginning to make it easier to change or scale up a program.

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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 28, 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.

What links litmus paper and lichens? – How did I not know that litmus dye was made from lichens? I remember using red cabbage to tint paper for an elementary school science project with my daughter. We tested everything in the house…discovered that even the fumes from toilet bowl cleaner turned the strips we made bright pink!

How donkeys changed the course of human history – The beast of burden. During Roman times the subspecies used was larger than modern donkeys…specifically bred for the expanding empire.

Jungle realm of the Snake Queens – A 5-part article about 2 Mayan queens: Lady K’abel and Lady Six Sky.

Marriage in Minoan Crete – A surprise – it was very common to marry one’s first cousin!

Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes are rising, putting thousands at risk – A study reveals that there have been increases in rainfall since 2010…an increase of only 0.4-2% of mean annual rainfall leads to the observed rising lakes/flooding.

EPA requirement keeps electric buses out of low-income schools – Low-income school districts often don’t own their school buses; they rely on contractors or subsidized lease deals. So --- they can’t meet the requirement to scrap the old diesel buses.

Ten-minute scan enables detection and cure of the commonest cause of high blood pressure – The hormone aldosterone causes 1 in 15 cases of high blood pressure. This new technology/treatment is a big improvement for the way those cases can be treated.

Dead Humpback Whale Washes Ashore at Assateague Island – This is the second one recently. I am familiar with the place this time…Assateague Island was a place my husband and enjoyed for birding when we lived in Maryland.

China’s population declines for the first time in six decades – Changing demographics in China.

Bees exposed to common weedkiller via wildflower nectar – Evidently the flowers can be contaminated even if they are not sprayed directly!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 12, 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.

America’s largest transit bus charging station & microgrid open in Maryland – The headline caught my eye because I lived in Maryland for over 20 years – 8 of those in the county where this is happening! I hope other states have the same sorts of projects in the works.

NASA Finds More Than 50 Super-Emitters of Methane – Finding them is only the first step….how many of them will be situations we can reduce or stop the emission?

Iron induces chronic heart failure in half of heart attack survivors – This study prompted testing of iron chelation therapy to remedy or mitigate the effects associated with iron in hemorrhagic myocardial infarction patients.

Unique Bronze Age belt discovered near Opava – Half my ancestors came from the area that is now the Czech Republic…I am drawn to articles about the history of the region.  The belt is quite beautiful…but was it a practical item of apparel?  

What happens if our circadian rhythms are out of whack? – WHO has proclaimed that disrupted circadian rhythms are a probable carcinogen. The study discussed in this post was about the mechanism that circadian rhythm disruption triggers lung tumors.

View 16 Breathtaking Images from the Nature Conservancy’s Annual Photo Contest – Take a little break….look at awesome images of our world.

Mississippi River Basin adapts as climate change brings extreme rain and flooding – This year the stories about extreme weather seem to be more frequent – and wide ranging in terms of water. The Mississippi was low enough for barge traffic to be impacted because of drought…yet there were floods along part of the river just last summer.

Eye-opening discovery about adult brain's ability to recover vision – An unexpected success…opening new ways to treat a vision impairment (LCA) and maybe prompt a re-look about how the adult brain can re-wire itself relative to vision.

The World’s Whitest Paint May Soon Help Cool Airplanes and Spacecraft – A way of making paint that was previously too thick/heavy for things that move. The thicker version works for homes and buildings. We’ll need this technology to reflect heat without expending energy!

Greater cloud cover may be narrowing the gap between daily high and low temperatures – Simulating clouds explicitly. Trying to understand why nights are heating up faster than days across the globe.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 7, 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.

A Watershed Moment: Key Findings About Potential Drinking Water Contamination – The sources of contamination are varied….but the list of primary sources is relatively short.

Better residents’ health after switch to electric buses – A study from Sweden. Improved health is a benefit of electrification of transportation!

Should people get rid of their yards? – Somewhat depressing conclusion: “Most people would rather make an aesthetic choice with their lawns than an environmental one.” My plan is not to eliminate the yard in my new house but to minimize it over time with the addition of bushes along the fence and extending beds around trees and around the house.

We talk the fastest growing green jobs with LinkedIn Sr. Editor – The “job vs the environment” is changing. The “green economy’s ability to expand job opportunities is too significant to ignore.” This growth in green jobs is like the 1970s for computer related jobs – a lot of new types of jobs and many of them will extend for the duration of a career starting now.

Discover the Microscopic Wonders of Olympus’ 2021 Image of the Year Awards – Taken with light microscopes…lots of finesse preparing the specimens.

Known to be toxic for a century, lead still poisons thousands of Midwestern kids – Two things I learned from this article about the state I am moving to: Missouri is one of the four states in the Midwest that is struggling to alleviate lead poisoning in children…and it is the number one producer of lead in the US. Hope they are making progress.

Top 25 birds of the week: terrestrial birds – Always enjoy the bird photographs! This group includes a roadrunner….a bird I always associate with Texas but the photograph was taken in California!

Tests indicate bronze age daggers had a practical purpose – Evidently the daggers were thought to be ceremonial objects prior to this analysis.

Should we be eating three meals a day? – The number of meals may not be as important as consistency….and giving the body a long enough ‘fast’ time to rest.

The Great Barrier Reef through Time – Landsat Images used to illustrate recent research on the growth of the reefs as the ocean changes. Evidently the reef has been more resilient to past sea-level and temperature fluctuations than previously thought….but increased sediment input has been a bigger problem.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 5, 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.

Oyster Hatcheries Help the Industry Adapt to Climate Change – There are lots of aspects of climate change that impact oysters – making mitigation more complex. The industry is trying to be proactive as problems are recognized.

Could COVID-19 still be affecting us in decades to come? – A summary of some research particularly about brain function/Parkinsons and diabetes relationship with COVID-19 just beginning…there is so much we don’t know yet.

The porcupine’s winter in slow-motion – How do porcupines in Alaska survive being out and about in the winter?

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Interactions – Mostly adults of the same species…but there are a few with different species and the first image is a pair of young owls (siblings).

2,000-Year-Old Roman Bowl Discovered Intact in the Netherlands – Blue glass that look like it could have been made very recently.

Locations of ancient Maya sacred groves of cacao trees discovered – History of cacao (chocolate) trees…grown around sinkholes…so special that the beans were used a currency.

Monarch butterfly numbers soar in California after dramatic losses – It’s great to have some good news about Monarchs….but they’re still a species that needs our help.

AccuWeather shares how an electric school bus fares in Alaska – Evidently the bus has done well even at -48 degrees Fahrenheit!

Musings from the parks: Navigating National, Wild, Recreational, and Scenic Rivers – Prompted by a proposal to refine limits on the horsepower boaters can use in Ozark Scenic Riverways in Missouri…a look at regulations at other rivers in the National Park System. I’d prefer that we begin the transition to electric motors (if motors are allowed at all) rather than only focusing on horsepower.

Epidemiologists develop advanced state-of-the-art tool for measuring the pace of aging – A blood test to measure the pace of biological aging…with the possibility of identifying interventions that would slow aging… and attempt to build aging health equity.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 27, 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: Bird Interactions! - Wild Bird Revolution and Top 25 birds of the week: Raptors!  and Top 25 birds of the week: Feathers!  – A treat this week – 75 bird photographs – enjoy!

The unseen 'slow violence' that affects millions - BBC Future – The harms that happen so slowly that we don’t notice in the moment. It happens over months and years and decades (maybe even centuries). We notice as we use our ‘big data’ to see hot spots of ill-health, where the environmental degradation is at it’s worst, and populations that can’t seem to escape their dire situation. And the issue very quickly becomes – how does our culture respond to the awareness of that ‘slow violence.’

Carbon: Getting to net zero -- and even net negative -- is surprisingly feasible, and affordable -- ScienceDaily – A detailed model of the entire US energy and industrial system….showing how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050…with particular emphasis on what needs to happen in the next 10 years.

The country rejecting throwaway culture - BBC Future – France has introduced an index of ‘repairability’ rating for appliances…hoping to increase the electronics repair rate to 60% within 5 years. I’m glad I opted to repair my clothes drier rather than replace it….although the repair (replacing of the failed heating element) produced some trash it was a lot less than the whole appliance! Things like phones and laptops and monitors are harder.

Carolina Wrens Will Nest in Just About Anything and Why Carolina Wrens Have Moved into Your Neighborhood – We had a Carolina Wren make a nest in a gas grill we hadn’t used in along time. It surprised me when I opened the lid and the bird – startled and then panicked – flew out onto the deck railing. There is usually a pair nesting somewhere around our yard; we see them when they come to the feeder and hear them even more frequently. The forest behind our house and the brush pile at the edge of the forest are good places for them.

Federal Funding Obtained to Replace Zion National Park's Shuttle Fleet – And they’ll be electric! What a great way to keep the air smelling like nature rather than combustion fumes!

Rare Yellow Penguin Photographed for the First Time | Smart News Science | Smithsonian Magazine – What an unusual looking bird! It’s a king penguin on South Georgia Island with leucism, a condition where melanin is only partially lost and some parts of the body retain color. In this case…the ability to produce the usual black pigment is missing.

New River Gorge is America's Newest National Park - News | Planetizen – This park is within ‘road trip’ distance from where we live….maybe a destination post-pandemic.

How we turned a golf course into a haven for rare newts, frogs and toads – Hopefully US golf courses are doing things like this too. I usually think of them as using a lot of chemicals and would not want to live near a golf course….but if they consciously made places for amphibians….it would mean that other creatures could survive in the space too. There is an Audubon International Certification program for golf courses but they don’t publish a list of course that are certified.

The Arctic Ocean might have been filled with freshwater during ice ages – Based on a geochemical study of sediments.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 12, 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.

Massive Arecibo Telescope Collapses in Puerto Rico | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Very sad. It was already being decommissioned which was wrenching….but then the collapse meant that even the instruments that might have been usable elsewhere were destroyed. My husband spent some time at Arecibo during his graduate school studies in the 1970s.

What do slight arm movements reveal about our breathing and health? -- ScienceDaily – Evidently it works best during sleep when there is not a lot of other movement other than breathing!

Hegra, an Ancient City in Saudi Arabia Untouched for Millennia, Makes Its Public Debut | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine – Undisturbed for 2,000 years…once an international trade hub although most of the surviving structures are tombs…a few hundred miles to the south of Petra

Proterra Sells Its 1,000th Electric Bus and New Electric School Buses In Virginia & Massachusetts – Electric buses are very appealing…I’ve always hated the sooty exhaust from diesel buses. Buses operate in situations where many people (and children) are in close proximity, so removing buses as a source of city and school pollution would be a good step forward.

Glyphosate may affect human gut microbiota -- ScienceDaily – A bioinformatics tool to predict if a microbe is sensitive to glyphosate – in the soil…in the digestive system of animals. The compound, widely used as a herbicide, biochemically targets plants but the same pathway is also in bacteria.

Opinion: The Biological Function of Dreams | The Scientist Magazine® - Learning more about sleep…and REM sleep in particular.

The mystery of Siberia’s exploding craters - BBC Future – Gas emission craters. Studies have revealed a 3-5 year life cycle: a mound forms…rising several meters, the gas underneath explodes. They tend to form in areas where there is a thick layer of ice over permafrost…with some areas of unfrozen ground surrounded by permafrost…and very deep deposits of gas and oil. The big challenge has been to identify the source of the gas that builds up – because after the explosion it is already gone.

Forest fires, cars, power plants join list of risk factors for Alzheimer's disease: Airborne pollution implicated in amyloid plaques, UCSF-led study shows -- ScienceDaily and Air pollution spikes linked to lower test scores for Salt Lake County third graders -- ScienceDaily – Studies that show the impact of air pollution on humans….other reasons to step up the pace of the shift away from fossil fuels. Thinking positively – actions to address climate change tend to improve air quality.

Mistletoe: A Natural and Human History – A plant associated with the season! And there are other species of mistletoe from around the world.

Top 25 birds of the week: December 2020! - Wild Bird Revolution – Beautiful birds….at the end of the gleanings list for this week.