Gleanings of the Week Ending June 1, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How Storm King Art Center Became One of World’s Top Sculpture Parks – Adding to my list to consider seeing if I travel to New York (state).

Dirt Cheap Batteries Enable Megawatt-Scale Charging Without Big Grid Upgrades Right Away – Hope the technology trend continues…that this idea helps us transition to more electric trucks and other vehicles.

Extreme Birding: Shorebirds at the Sewage Lagoon – Maybe a great place for birding….if you can stand the smell. The same thing happens at landfills.

The human brain has been shrinking – and no-one quite knows why - The brains of modern humans are around 13% smaller than those of Homo sapiens who lived 100,000 years ago. Exactly why is still puzzling researchers. I was a little surprised that the authors did NOT consider the challenge of birthing babies with larger heads (i.e. until C-sections allowed mother and baby to survive if the baby’s head was too large, both mother and baby died) which would result in natural selection of genes for smaller heads.

Climate change is most prominent threat to pollinators - Pollinator populations are declining worldwide and 85% of flowering plant species and 87 of the leading global crops rely on pollinators for seed production. The decline of pollinators seriously impacts biodiversity conservation, reduces crop yield, and threatens food security. Changes in water and temperature associated with climate change can lower the quantity and quality of resources available to pollinators, decrease the survival of larvae or adults, and modify suitable habitats.

The deep ocean photographer that captured a 'living fossil' – In 2010, Laurent Ballesta was the first diver to photograph a living coelacanth. In 2013, Ballesta and his team returned and encountered multiple coelacanths, spending up to half an hour in their presence. Thanks to Ballesta's work, we now know the coelacanth is among the longest-living fish species, with a lifespan of around 100 years, and has one of the slowest life histories of all marine fish – so, like deep-sea sharks with a reduced metabolism, the coelacanth grows slowly, taking as long as 69 years to reach sexual maturity, and with a gestation period of around five years.

Under stress, an observer is more likely to help the victim than to punish the perpetrator - It takes more cognitive effort to punish others than it does to help them. Studies show that when witnessing an act of injustice while stressed, people tend to behave selflessly, preferring to help the victim than to punish the offender.

Stunning Aerial Photos Capture the Abstract Beauty of Iceland’s Glacier Rivers – Iceland….blue.

These tricks make wind farms more bird-friendly – Migratory birds can crash into wind turbines…but there are ways to reduce the carnage: adding high visibility reflectors and spirals to cables, not building wind farms in flight paths, painting one blade on each turbine black (or stripes of black on each blade), and sound.

Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously – Interesting idea. While the bots were decontaminated and reused…they were not as effective…so more work is needed.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 10, 2024

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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.

Sleep tight: A curious history of beds through the centuries – From 4,500 year old ‘beds’ at Skara Brae (Scottish island of Orkney…rectangular enclosures, around the length of a human…made from slabs of cold, hard stone…with tall headboards and raised sides) to Durrington Walls near Stonehenge (spectral outlines of long-vanished wooden bed boxes, where the builders of that monument may have once slept) to a clay figurine of a woman slumbering peacefully on her side, one hand under her head, on a simple raised platform to the gilded wooden bed in King Tut’s tomb (including a rigid, raised headrest rather than a soft pillow) to mats of dried leaves or animal skins to box beds to the ‘tick mattress’…hints of beds of the past.

Peru’s High-Altitude Hunter-Gatherers Ate Mostly Plants – Wild potatoes and the root vegetables made up 80% of their diet.

Rethinking Monarchs: Does the Beloved Butterfly Need Our Help? - The Xerces Society has published a joint statement signed by 10 top monarch biologists warning against the captive rearing and releasing of monarchs by backyard and commercial breeders. Such activities, they wrote, “promote crowding and disease spread.” The monarch is not in peril since the winter population in Mexico has shown no continued decline for the past 10 years. --- But there are some that still argue for continued ‘help.’

Deceptively Beautiful Invasive Plants – Avoid Lessor Celadine, Mimosa Tree, English Ivy…..Today, we have the opportunity to make gardening choices that benefit both the aesthetics of our gardens and local wildlife by removing invasive species and replacing them with beautiful and wildlife-friendly native alternatives. 

See the World Through the Eyes of Animals with These Stunning New Videos - To “see through” animal eyes, the team uses two cameras—one sensitive to ultraviolet light and one sensitive to visible light. Together, they capture light in four distinct wavelengths: blue, green, red and ultraviolet.

New genetic variants found in large Chinese mother–baby study - Mothers with higher blood pressure give birth to lighter and shorter babies than do mothers with lower blood pressure. This was just one of a multitude of links between maternal health and fetal development observed in a large genetic analysis of Chinese parents and their babies, which included some unexpected results. The researchers sequenced genetic data from blood samples taken from the parents and umbilical-cord blood of the infants and collected physical information about the mothers and their babies, including height and weight. The researchers identified discrepancies in the effect of some genetic variants on the same trait between mothers and their babies. For example, some variants were associated with altered cholesterol levels in infants but not in their mothers, and vice versa.

Preserving History at Bandelier National Monument – Two videos that show recreations of what the structures looked like in use based on archeological findings.

The 4-Second Nap: Unusual Sleep Habits of Animals - The killer whale, which can go a month or more without sleeping. Or the chinstrap penguin, which researchers recently discovered sleeps in four-second microbursts. Compare that to the koala, which conks out for most of the day.  When dolphins are sleeping with one hemisphere, one eye closes and one remains open. They sometimes rest motionless near the surface of the water or swim slowly, still able to breathe when needed. African elephants sleep for the least amount of time recorded of any land mammal.  The domestic horse sleeps just under three hours on average each day, and the domestic pony sleeps about three hours and 20 minutes. 

How a walk in nature restores attention - The study, conducted in 2022 between April and October, analyzed EEG data recorded on each of 92 participants immediately before and after they undertook a 40-minute walk. Half walked through Red Butte, the arboretum in the foothills just east of the University of Utah, and half through the nearby asphalt-laden medical campus. The participants that had walked in nature showed an improvement in their executive attention, whereas the urban walkers did not.

Climate change is causing a pothole plague. Are robots and self-healing pavement the solution? - In the United States, about 44 million drivers reported damage to their vehicles from potholes in 2022, which was a massive 57% increase over 2021, according to AAA. New developments offer hope for addressing potholes more effectively amid climate change, and are attracting investors….but innovations take time to be implemented.

Missouri Botanical Garden – June 2023 (2)

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There are aspects of the Missouri Botanical Garden that are not plants….but are part of the garden experience.

There are benches at handy intervals; it always seemed easy to find one in the shade! Maybe I will make a project of photographing more of the benches during some future visit.

The ceiling in the Sachs Museum is worth the few steps inside…check out whatever is being exhibited there too.

There is a statue of Henry Shaw, founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden near his mausoleum. He set out to create a major and lasting institution more than 150 years ago. He died in 1889 and the garden has continued to thrive in all the directions he initiated…has expanded in ways he could not have imagined. My first experience with the garden was via their Botanicus site where the Missouri Botanical Garden has been digitizing botanical books and making them available since 1995; I found the site in 2009 and have been browsing their books (mostly via the Internet Archive interface). Visiting the garden is something I have wanted to do for a long time.

The Japanese Rock Garden areas around the water feature have smooth curves created with a rake…and there are Japanese lanterns too. A Great Blue Heron flew to a large rock in the center of the water feature and began to preen; the Canada goose in the background is doing the same.

In the Chinese Garden there are mosaics made with small stones as well as the traditional lions at the entrance.

I liked the bench around a tree. It reminded me of the one at Longwood Gardens when my daughter was young; we used it as a resting place where she could easily get up to run into the mists when the big fountains came on (it was a warm day); and then it was gone as part of the fountain renovation. I savored that memory sitting on this bench half the country away from Longwood (near Philadelphia).

There are small sculptures of wildlife too: wood ducks in the forest, butterflies in the butterfly garden….

Geese and racoons as part of fountains.

A purple martin house looked almost full.

One of the green areas had a ‘Mowbot’ to keep it trimmed.

At the end – I took pictures of the floor in the visitor center…familiar leaf shapes: horse chestnut, tulip poplar, sweet gum.

Looking back, it was a good ‘first visit’ – but I already want to go again!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 16, 2022

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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.

Purple gallinule with chicks – I remember seeing an adult purple gallinule on a birding field trip in Florida. Aren’t the chicks cute? Little black fluffs.

Reproductive factors and dementia risk – Hurray! My life events skew toward reduced dementia risk…according to this study.

Macro photos reveal the often unseen beauty and diversity of slime molds – Hmmm…maybe I should hone my observational skills to find these on my next hike…attempt some macro photography of them.

As EV Sales Soar, Automakers Back Higher Fuel Standards – So glad that industry is finally onboard…projecting a ‘we can do it’ attitude. I’d rather society take action…build some optimism into our view about the future rather than being depressed by trends that seem dystopian.

Beginner’s Tips for Identifying Backyard Bird Nests – It’s the nesting time of year! Look…id…don’t disturb!

Ozone may be heating the plant more than we realize – We’ve been concerned about ozone in the upper atmosphere for years (hence the Montreal Protocol) but this study also points to ozone in the lower atmosphere (caused by chemical reactions between pollutants like vehicle exhaust fumes and other emissions) as contributing to climate change as well. Until now, we thought of lower atmosphere ozone as a health problem (I get headaches if I am outdoors on a high ozone day, for example). This research says that it also is contributing to climate change by affectioning ocean heat uptake.

American Lung Association Says EVs Save Lives – Good for our health….and also for the planet. I also noted that where I live now is in the American Lung Associations Tops 10 US urban areas at risk from airborne pollution…another reason to move away from this area!

New Technology Employed to Protect Pompeii – A four-legged robot used to gather data on structural and safety issues.

Flamingo that escaped from a zoo in Kansas is spotted once again in Texas 17 years later – The flamingo is a species from Tanzania….and must be a very lonely bird.

Brain charts for the human lifespan – Normative trajectories derived from over 100,000 MRI scans that allow quantification of individual variation. Figure 1 in the post can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.