Gleanings of the Week Ending March 1, 2025

/

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

Scientists Investigate Smell of Egyptian Mummies – A systematic study of the smells of 9 Ancient Egyptian mummified bodies. Odors are from pine, cedar, juniper, frankincense and myrrh.

'Healthy' vitamin B12 levels not enough to ward off neuro decline – The conclusion: “we need to invest in more research about the underlying biology of B12 insufficiency, since it may be a preventable cause of cognitive decline.”

Rethinking Fire-Resistant Landscaping: Which Trees Should We Plant? – After the recent wildfires across Southern California - Experts recommend replacing highly flammable trees with fire-resistant alternatives such as oak, sycamore, toyon, lemonade berry, and lilac. While the idea of removing iconic palm trees may be met with resistance, fire safety advocates argue that proactive changes in landscaping are necessary to adapt to the increasing wildfire risks in California.

Floods Swamp Tennessee – Satellite image from February 17 of the flooding after the February 15-16 storm. The area of western Kentucky to the north had more severe flooding….but clouds prevented a similar image on the 17th.

Learn COVID pandemic lessons — before it’s too late - “The science will deliver if we have a new emerging infectious disease,” says Joanne Liu, a pediatric emergency-medicine specialist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a former international president of the medical-aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders). “I think it will be the people who aren’t going to deliver…..None of us thought about the case scenario in which we would have leaders and a large part of the population that do not believe in science.” Yet that scenario is here. It means that researchers in public health and infectious diseases must work closely with social scientists who have been studying how another disease — misinformation — spreads and how best to counter it.

In many countries, people breathe the cleanest air in centuries. What can the rest of the world learn from this? – Lots of graphs….focused on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions….and the relationship to coal and catalytic converters.

The Science of Snakehead Slime - One of this fish’s most reported habits is its ability to move about on land. The answer, according to new research, may lie at least in part with another of the snakehead’s infamous features: its slime.

Wide-Eyed Fly Wins the 2024 Royal Entomological Society Photography Competition – Macro photography of insects…great work my amateur photographers. My favorite was the ladybird larva feeding on a colony of aphids.

How much protein do you really need to get strong? – A concerning take away: In 2018, a nonprofit group called the Clean Label Project, based in Broomfield, Colorado, released a report about toxins in popular brands of protein powders in the US. Researchers screened 134 products for 130 types of toxins and found that many protein powders contained heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury), bisphenol-A (or BPA, which is used to manufacture plastic), pesticides, or other contaminants with links to cancer and other health conditions. Interestingly, one certified "organic" product had twice the contaminants of non-certified ones. Plant-based protein powders were the most contaminated, while egg and whey-based powders were found to be the cleanest.

Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful than Exhaust – Brake dust evidently causes greater injury to lung cells than diesel exhaust. Brake pads on the market now include copper which can aggravate asthma when inhaled. Note: the shift to electric vehicles could curb pollution from brake pads. Most electric cars use regenerative braking that limits the need for conventional brake pads.

New Camera

/

I have been using Canon cameras for a long time but they aren’t updating (creating new models) of their bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) so I am transitioning to the Nikon bridge camera: Nikon Coolpix P950. My husband helped me along by ordering everything just as he did last April which I transitioned from Samsung phone and Dell computer to Apple products: iPhone and MacBook Air. This past year has been a tech pivot for me!

The box with the new camera came when I was busy with other things…but I opened it to take out the two small manuals about the camera to look at while I went off to get my car serviced. I realized that I needed to browse the full reference manual to become as proficient with the new camera as I am with the old – to avoid frustration when I am on field trips.

I unloaded the rest of the box: the camera, a camera strap, a lens hood, a battery, and a charger (to charge the battery when it is in the camera).

My husband had ordered some other things: a charger for batteries when they are outside the camera, 2 extra batteries, a better camera strap (Peak Design), and a strap for the lens cap (since I don’t always have a pocket for it). I attached both straps to the camera body.

The battery in the box with the camera was already charged and I had a new SD card---so it was easy to get to the point of turning on the camera. I set the time zone, date, and time then formatted the SD card. And took a few pictures. Two are yard art through my office window and the other is of a picture on the wall of my office.

Next step: browse the reference manual and plan a field trip!

Project FeederWatch

/

My husband signed us up for Project FeederWatch and we are counting our feeder birds together – 2 days a week, an AM and PM time each day for a total of 2 hours. We have comfy chairs situated at a large window and leave our binoculars within reach. I do the logging into the app on my phone as we observe – no paper involved at all. This is the view from our window. I moved the chairs from around the table before our latest count. It’s a very calming activity. I usually have a cup of hot tea at my elbow.

We’ve had several rainy days. The light was poor enough that we opted to take the screens off the window (no bird strikes there so far). It made photography a little easier too.

A squirrel has come through may times while we’ve counted; it only stopped at a feeder once (didn’t manage to get anything) since there were plenty of acorns around and it’s the squirrel’s time of year to bury them!

The most numerous birds are sparrows (white throated and white crowned) and finches (gold and house). There are a couple of juncos but we had more last year so maybe they have not all arrived in our area yet from their breeding areas to the north. There are occasional titmice, chickadees, and a red-bellied woodpecker. The grackles are also occasional….they are too big to get much from our feeders; one or two come around to try but don’t stay long fortunately.

Our holly tree has berries, but we haven’t had any hard frosts yet…haven’t seen any birds eating the berries.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 16, 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.

Drought Expands Across the U.S. – We are finally getting some rain…but we are in the ‘extreme drought’ area of southwestern Missouri; it is going to take a lot to get back to ‘normal.’ On October 29, abnormal dryness and drought affected over 78 percent of the American population—the highest percentage in the U.S. Drought Monitor’s 25-year-long record.

Cholera, Zika and West Nile: The deadly diseases that sweep in after hurricanes – Damage to infrastructure has been the big focus of reporting in the US, but diseases are ramping up.

  • Florida health authorities released a warning in early October of a likely spike in Vibrio vulnificus infections, urging residents to avoid wading in floodwaters.  Vibrio vulnificus is a bacteria which can cause the breakdown of skin and soft tissue, sometimes leading to amputations.

  • West Nile cases rose in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.

  • Studies found that flooding in Louisiana following hurricanes Rita and Katrina led to an increase in the airborne fungi Penicillium and Aspergillus, which can cause allergies, respiratory infections and pneumonia.

  • Research into the aftermath of hurricanes Maria, Irma and Michael, shows that a significant number of people in Florida developed new chronic health conditions such as asthma and allergies in the six months following the disasters.

Satellite Imagery Shows Breadth of Flooding in Spain - Valencia saw a year’s worth of rainfall in just eight hours, with floods destroying buildings, disrupting trains, and leaving more than 100,000 homes without power.

What animal societies can teach us about aging - Humans are not the only animals to change our social behavior as we age. Red deer may become less sociable as they grow old to reduce the risk of picking up diseases, while older house sparrows seem to have fewer social interactions as their peers die off.

The world’s oldest tree? Genetic analysis traces evolution of iconic Pando forest - By sequencing hundreds of samples from the tree, researchers confirmed that Pando, a quaking aspen tree (Populus tremuloides) in Utah, is between 16,000 and 80,000 years old. Pando consists of some 47,000 stems that cover an area of 42.6 hectares in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest. Because of the way the plant reproduces, this collection of aspens is technically all one tree, supported by a single, vast root system. Pando is triploid, meaning that its cells contain three copies of each chromosome, rather than two. As a result, Pando cannot reproduce sexually and mix its DNA with that of other trees, and instead creates clones of itself.

Have we found all the major Maya cities? Not even close – Using lidar to survey 50 square miles revealed evidence of more than 6,500 pre-Hispanic structures, including a previously unknown large city complete with iconic stone pyramids.

Stunning Shortlisted Photos From the 2024 Close-Up Photographer of the Year Contest – My favorite was “Chicory” for the color…and that I knew what it was!

Low-level lead poisoning is still pervasive in the US and globally - Chronic, low-level lead poisoning is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease in adults and cognitive deficits in children. Factors such as menopause and hyperthyroidism release lead sequestered in the skeleton, which causes a spike in blood lead concentrations. The solution to protecting people from lead poisoning is to identify and eliminate environmental sources of lead: eliminating lead acid batteries, replacing lead service lines, banning leaded aviation fuel, reducing lead in foods, abating lead paint in older housing, and further reducing lead-contaminated soil and other legacy sources.

Ghost Forests Creep Into North Carolina - Large swaths of cypress and pine forests along the southeast Atlantic coast have died, shed their bark, and become pale, leafless snags that line the waterways like gravestones. In the period before winds topple the snags over and shrubs cover them up, researchers call the eerie ecosystems “ghost forests.” One place that is it happening is Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge…and I realized I have been there! We visited in April of 2015. It was the first place I saw river otters and two vultures (different species) sharing a meal. There probably were bald cypress dying in 2015, but it is even more evident now.

Trees cool better than reflective roofs in vulnerable Houston neighborhoods - Heat islands occur in cities where structures such as buildings and roads absorb the sun's heat more than natural landscapes such as trees and grass. The researchers considered three different heat island mitigation strategies: painting roofs white to increase solar reflectance; planting vegetation on roofs to increase evaporation through the plants; and planting more trees, which increases evaporation and provides shade.

Identifying Woody Plants (Month 2)

/

The Identifying Woody Plants field class I am taking at Missouri State University has met 5 more times since my last post about the field sessions on the campus.

I am continuing to take pictures of items in the classroom before class:

An opened Maclura pomifera (Osage orange) fruit

Some Quercus macrocarpa (Bur oak) acorns

An herbarium page showing Tilia americana (American Basswood) fruit which we have seen in the field, but my pictures were not very good.

Cuttings from two plants were brought in and we were asked to ID them based on our notes – with the hint that the first one had milky sap (hard to see since it had been cut):

Morus alba (white mulberry) – a non-native that is frequently seen as a ‘weed’ tree and Vitis (grape).

Recently the walk from the parking lot to the classroom building has been full of late blooming pollinator plants and fall foliage.

The one session where we stayed on campus added some new trees to our list:

Quercus bicolor (Swamp white oak)

Sassafras albidum (Sassafras)

Carya ovata (Shagbark hickory)

Quercus lyrata (Overcup oak)

We also saw some review trees and I got better pictures of Celtis occidentalis bark (Rough hackberry)

And some add odd growth of a Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip/yellow poplar). The trunk of the tree was growing at a slant rather than straight upward and it had small branches coming out relatively close the ground.

The hikes on campus and further afield have been more pleasant this past month because the temperatures have been cooler. There have been no rainy days in the field either!

Previous posts about Identifying Woody Plants field class

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 12, 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.

Who Was Buried in Spain’s Megalithic Necropolis of Panoría? - More women than men were buried in Panoria, where human remains were interred in collective burials between 4,100 and 5,600 years ago.

On Navajo Lands, Ancient Ways Are Restoring the Parched Earth - Traditional rock and stick structures, similar to those used by Native peoples long before Europeans arrived on the continent, are not only delivering water to crops they are also restoring the watershed and those of neighbors, helping to sequester carbon, and reviving this high-desert ecosystem…. an opportunity to begin developing localized food economies.

Megadiverse flowering plant family on isolated islands – A high number of evolutionary events -- occurred in the aster family (daisies, sunflowers, and asters) within relatively short time periods on many islands worldwide.

Why is Mount Everest so big? New research highlights a rogue river – but deeper forces are at work - Everest is around 250m taller than the other great peaks of the Himalayas. It is also growing by about 2mm each year – roughly twice as fast as it has been growing on average over the long term. The Arun river’s course changed around 90,000 years ago, eroding away rock that was weighing Everest down – and the mountain has bounced up in response, by somewhere between 15 and 50m. However, the “fundamental cause” of the peak’s size is the tectonic processes that create mountains.

Researchers Grow an Extinct Plant From a 1,000-Year-Old Seed - Israeli researchers have grown the seed of a previously unknown species of flowering plant into a mature tree. In the late 1980s, archaeologists excavating caves in the northern Judean desert discovered a well-preserved but mysterious seed that had likely been carried there by animals. The seed could be dated to between 993 C.E. and 1202 C.E. and that it was a unique member of the commiphora family, a flowering plant known for its aromatic resins. Chemical analysis of the leaves shows an abundance of medical properties in the leaves, and its lack of fragrance matches descriptions of the tsori in the Bible.

Rare and Elusive Australian Bird, Once Thought Extinct for 100 Years, Discovered by Indigenous Rangers and Scientists – Night parrots are generally difficult to detect—a fact that has been long recorded in Indigenous culture. The elusive species creates tunnels and nests in dense spinifex bushes and emerges at night to forage for seeds.

5 things to know from this week’s big report on cannabis - A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine finds the disconnect between the states and the federal government is leading to fragmented policies, and risks to the public. 5 takeaways:

  1. People consume cannabis more regularly than alcohol in the U.S.

  2. Weed and vapes can be super potent and that’s not always disclosed

  3. You can get psychoactive hemp products even in states where cannabis is illegal

  4. Research on cannabis is stifled

  5. Cannabis can be dangerous, but people hear more about its benefits than risks

Biodiversity Becoming a Top Priority - A survey of 300 landscape architects, designers, and landscape architecture educators in the U.S. found that 96 percent of landscape architects are familiar with the impacts of the biodiversity crisis. 45 percent have made biodiversity conservation a top priority of their practice and another 41 percent consider biodiversity as part of their organization’s environmental ethos.

Medical imaging breakthrough could transform cancer and arthritis diagnosis - A new hand-held scanner developed by University College London researchers can generate highly detailed 3D photoacoustic images in just seconds, paving the way for their use in a clinical setting for the first time and offering the potential for earlier disease diagnosis (cancer, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis). What a boon if this could become the new standard…avoiding waiting for an imaging appointment, having to sit still for a long time, and higher cost of current technology!

Incredible Winners of the 2024 Natural Landscape Photography Awards – Couldn’t resist this collection of beautiful images to finish off the gleanings for this week.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 7, 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.

Rare ‘Doomsday’ Oarfish Surfaces in California, Just the 20th Discovered in the State Since 1901 - Usually lives as far as 3,280 feet below the surface. Scientists conducted a necropsy, but they couldn’t discern a reason for the elusive fish’s death. Scientists aren’t totally sure why oarfish and other deep sea-dwelling creatures sometimes surface, but they suspect the animals may be disoriented, sick or injured.

Owl-Inspired “Bionic” Fan for EVs Reduces Fan Noise 50% While Improving Efficiency 10% - Making EVs even quieter!

Do you have knee pain from osteoarthritis? You might not need surgery. – Article written by researchers in Australia about the updated treatment guidelines for knee osteoarthritis that stress exercise, increasing physical activity, weight management, and pain medication (in moderation and not opioids). The links at the end of the article include an online exercise program specifically for knee osteoarthritis.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Skyscraper Set to Close Amid Controversy – Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Built in 1956. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2007.

Rebuilding the Genome of Woolly Mammoths - Typically, ancient DNA fragments yield short snippets of DNA and provide an incomplete picture of the genomic puzzle. However, the woolly mammoth skin sample showed promise. The team assembled the first 3D reconstruction of the woolly mammoth’s genome, which had 28 chromosomes; the order of genes was very similar to that of the Asian elephant. They discovered: the specimen was female; differences from modern elephants in the genes related to hair follicle development and, more broadly, hair maintenance; cooling and dehydration can preserve the molecules in their original locations.

Homelessness – From Our World in Data. Interesting…but frustrating too. I was glad that they emphasized when the data is not consistently collected…and the analysis gets very tricky.

Only One Country Is Making Progress on Electrifying Everything – Unfortunately it is not the US…it’s China. The country that electrifies most rapidly and builds the most renewables to power its electrified economy will be the most competitive economy globally.

As Arctic Thaws, New Evidence of Looming ‘Mercury Bomb’ - Scientists estimate that the amount of mercury in the atmosphere has grown sevenfold over the last 500 years, primarily from burning coal. Air currents are carrying airborne mercury toward the Arctic, where it is absorbed by plants, which then deposit the toxin in the soil. Over centuries, mercury has built up in the frozen ground, such that today, Arctic permafrost may hold more mercury than the atmosphere, the oceans, and every living organisms combined. As the region warms, melting permafrost could liberate this buried mercury.

Rare Fossils Give Clues to How Tardigrades Survived Mass Extinctions by Hitting the Snooze Button - Tardigrades are known for being some of the most resilient animals to exist, capable of surviving extreme temperatures, pressure, radiation and starvation—they can even withstand exposure to outer space. Only four known fossils of tardigrades have been found to date, and all of them are preserved in amber, or ancient tree resin; recently they were reanalyzed using confocal fluorescence microscopy. Cryptobiosis is the secret to tardigrades’ incredible resilience, and it appears to have evolved in two tardigrade linages (at least). In survival situations, these hardy creatures will expel the water from their bodies and suspend their metabolism almost completely allowing them to outlast unfavorable conditions of their environment.

Five ways the brain can age: 50,000 scans reveal possible patterns of damage - Results could lead to methods that detect the earliest stages of neurodegenerative disease. Dementia and its precursor, mild cognitive impairment, had links to three of the five patterns. Intriguingly, the researchers also found evidence that the patterns they identified could potentially be used to reveal the likelihood of more brain degeneration in the future. Other patterns were linked to conditions including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and one combination of three patterns was highly predictive of mortality.

American Agriculture in the early 1990s (ebooks)

/

Liberty Hyde Bailey edited 4 volumes of the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture between 1900 and 1910. It was a time when horticulture and agriculture were becoming more organized at universities and Bailey was a proponent of America as a ‘great agricultural civilization.’

The books are easily browsed on Internet Archive and the photographs clearly reflect the ‘state of the art for agriculture’ in the early 1900s when they were written. I selected two sample images from each of the 4 volumes. (click on the image to see a larger version)

 Cyclopedia of American agriculture : a popular survey of agricultural conditions, practices and ideals in the United States and Canada V1 Farms

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 17, 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.

Ultrafine particles (UPFs) linked to over 1,000 deaths per year in Canada's two largest cities – Particles smaller than PM2.5 that primarily come from vehicle emissions and industrial activities. The study was done in Montreal and Toronto neighborhoods from 2001 – 2016. The findings associate long-term exposure to UFPs with a 7.3% increase in the risk of non-accidental death. Respiratory deaths saw the highest increase, at 17..4%, followed by a 9.4% rise in deaths from coronary artery disease.

Eureka: Why Was Monet Obsessed with Water Lilies? - From 1890 to 1927, Monet would create more than 250 paintings of the water lilies. He had found his subject and there would be no need for another. Besides, as the artist said in an interview, “the water flowers are only an accompaniment.” The real subject was that fickle, forever fluid thing called light, which Monet said changed every seven minutes in Giverny.

The History and Mystery of Glastonbury – A satellite image from January 2024. A little history lesson too: Before the Somerset Levels were drained and converted into agricultural land in the 18th century, the region was a flooded swamp. Glastonbury Tor towered above the water as an island, drawing attention as a site of worship for pagans and Christians.

95% of Steel-Related Emissions from Vehicles Can Be Cut Using Green Steel - Procuring primary steel without fossil fuels is the strongest possible pathway to reduce steel-related emissions from vehicles – and this could be done at scale in the U.S. by the end of the decade. Collectively, automakers are among the largest buyers in the steel market in both the U.S. and EU. In 2022, the auto industry consumed 26% of the 82 million metric tons of steel produced in the U.S., and 60% of all domestic primary steel. In the same year, 17% of the 136 million metric tons of steel produced in Europe went to the auto industry, and 24% of all domestic primary steel.

Lyme disease is becoming more common. But its symptoms aren't always easy to spot - Lyme, is a disease with arthritis-like symptoms, but symptoms can get more varied if treatment is not prompt. It's a type of bacteria that penetrates every tissue in the body. Lyme disease can also cause facial paralysis, heart problems, severe fatigue and painful pins and needles in hands and feet.

Static Electricity May Help Butterflies and Moths Pick Up Pollen - Previous studies have found that honeybees, bumblebees and hummingbirds could pull pollen from flowers through the air with their electric charges. This study looked at 11 species of butterflies/moths from 5 continents.

Multiple urinary metals play key role in cardiovascular disease and mortality, study finds - When analyzed together, the 6 metal-mixture including cadmium, tungsten, uranium, copper, cobalt, and zinc was associated with a 29 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease and a 66% increased risk of death over the study follow up of 18 years.

Your nose has its own army of immune cells — here’s how it protects you – The nose and upper airway — which includes the mouth, sinuses and throat but not the windpipe — serve as key training grounds where immune cells ‘memorize’ intruding pathogens. These memories allow the cells to defend against future attacks by similar microorganisms.

A Record-Breaking 17 California Condor Chicks Hatched at the L.A. Zoo This Year – Condors usually only raise one chick at a time…but the LA Zoo has found that they will raise more than one chick…and these chicks survive better than human raised chicks when released into the wild after 1.5 years at the zoo.

How the rising earth in Antarctica will impact future sea level rise - In Antarctica, melting glacial ice means less weight on the bedrock below, allowing it to rise. How the rising earth interacts with the overlying ice sheet to affect sea level rise is not well-studied. Measurements show that the solid earth that forms the base of the Antarctic ice sheet is changing shape surprisingly quickly. The land uplift from reduced ice on the surface is happening in decades, rather than over thousands of years.

Celestron Origin (1)

/

My husband has been taking one image per clear evening in our back yard with his new Celestron Origin Intelligent Home Observatory.

He has been changing the exposures every night from 20 minutes to over 90 minutes…taking pictures of galaxies and nebulae: Whirlpool Galaxy, Bode’s Nebula, Fireworks Galaxy, and Bubble Nebulae. The images below are created without post processing outside the telescope!  

The skies at our house are not particularly dark; there is one streetlight that is particularly problematic…and a neighbor’s house with twinkle lights around their deck. Our house blocks the streetlight in front of our house – which is good. Still – the initial days with the new telescope have been positive ones. There is a huge advantage to doing things in the back yard in a couple of hours each night rather than driving someplace, staying up all night (dosing in the tent during longer exposures) making the most of the night, and then either sleeping in a tent in the early morning hours or driving home.

He is planning to go to the Okie-Tex Star Party at the end of September. Then he’ll go into the mode of staying up all night…getting the most out of the dark skies for photography and interacting with other amateur astronomers. I’ll stay home to care for our 3 cats.

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 13, 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.

Pair of Resting Cuckoo Bees Wins the Royal Entomological Society’s Insect Photo Competition – Wonderful images of insects. My favorite is the Wavy-lined Emerald Moth (“A forest gem”).

The Role of Commons in Our Future Resilience - The climate and biodiversity crises will make collective land and water resources the source of future cooperation and conflict. If our commons aren’t governed well, we can have a “future of global violence.” Balancing the needs of local communities and conservation and restoration will require strong relationships between governments and the people who depend on commons for their livelihoods and culture.

Study shows how liver damage from stress and aging might be reversible – The study showed that aging exacerbates non-alcoholic liver disease by creating ferroptic stress, and by reducing this impact, we can reverse the damage.

Extreme Heat’s Far-Reaching Impacts - In addition to the expected impacts — dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke — heat can also endanger pregnant women, impact sleep patterns, and increase irritability, depression, and suicide rates. Heat is also associated with higher rates of violence and aggression, including intimate partner violence and gun violence.

The chemistry of Polaroid photography – The technology behind taking a picture and printing it instantly.

Cooling Solutions for Cities That Lower Surface & Air Temperatures – Some productive and appealing ways to cool urban heat centers.

Funny Early Entries of the 2024 Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards – Images that will make you smile!

Climate change and sea level rise pose an acute challenge for cities with combined sewer systems - Some 40 million people currently live in areas served by combined sewer systems (in places like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston) that are at increasing risk of being inundated by untreated sewage during floods.

Ancient Egyptian Scribes Were Worked to the Bone - Scribes sat in cross-legged or kneeling positions for long periods of time, hunched over paper and ink. Such activity was bound to overload the jaw, neck and shoulder regions. 30 skeletons of scribes from a northern Egyptian cemetery were examined. Much of the damage was found on the skeleton’s right sides, with the right knee being an especially common point of osteoarthritis, possibly because scribes repeatedly squatted on their right legs, the researchers theorize. And ancient Egyptian iconography commonly depicts scribes writing with their right hands. The posture impacted scribes’ backs.

Pronghorn Place: Preserve Protects Wildlife Migration Route – About the Flat Ranch Preserve on the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park…what has been learned about the Pronghorns migrating through. It reminded me of the pronghorns I saw at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (New Mexico) in 2018.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 29, 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.

The Electric Revolution of Gardening Tools is Here – Hurray! We’ve been completely transitioned to battery powered yard tools for a few years now. I wouldn’t be mowing my own yard without our electric mower. Our old gas-powered one was noisy and my throat got scratchy from the fumes. Now I think of mowing the yard as a challenging exercise rather than a negative impact on my hearing and lungs!

US Cities Ranked by Vehicle Miles Traveled – As I read the article, I wondered where Dallas/Fort Worth fit since they were not on the top 10 list. I went to the source cited in the article and found that Dallas/Fort Worth was 19th.  Other Texas cities are high too – San Antonio at 14, Houston at 18 and Austin at 22.

See Frida Kahlo in Her Element in a New York Show of Rare Photographs – There is a picture of her (and Diego) viewing a solar eclipse in 1932 (Detroit)!

The apple detectives hunting for lost varieties - Apple fanatics across the UK are now taking samples from very old apple trees in hopes of learning more about antique varieties, and perhaps making some surprising discoveries. That's because there are apples, documented in 19th-Century books like Robert Hogg and Robert Bull Graves' The Herefordshire Pomona, that have slipped through people's fingers.

In North Macedonia, an Ancient Lake Faces Modern Threats – Lake Ohrid - 19 miles long, nine miles wide and 945 feet deep, teeming with fish, snails, leeches, flatworms, phytoplankton, crustaceans, and more. Of the lake’s roughly 1,200 known native species, 212 of them are endemic, occurring nowhere else. It faces growing threats, including from overfishing, nutrient pollution, invasive species, booming tourism, unregulated building, official neglect, and perhaps the most inexorable challenge of all, global warming.

Rare White Bison Calf Born at Yellowstone National Park - Photographed on June 4, as a group of bison crossed a road with traffic stopped.

A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels - This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds. They haven’t come to the Walmart near me yet…I’ll be looking for them every time I shop there.

A new way to measure aging and disease risk with the protein aggregation clock - Although there are other "clocks" to measure ageing and health, most of them are based on nucleic acids like DNA. A biological clock based on proteins could be a useful complement to these existing clocks, as proteins are among the most abundant molecules in cells and are crucial for all cellular functions. With the help of such a protein aggregation clock, scientists and doctors might move one step closer towards helping people age healthily and preventing age-related diseases.

Tiny beauty: how I make scientific art from behind the microscope – Great illustrations…worth scrolling through.

New metric for blood circulation in brain to better understand dementia - By accurately measuring how pulsatility is transmitted in the brain, researchers can better understand the underlying mechanism of brain conditions (including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia) and potentially guide development of new treatments.

Restoring Ancient Bronzes eBook

/

Henry W. Nichols’ Restoration of ancient bronzes and cure of malignant patina was published in 1930 and documents the process used by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to restore ancient Egyptian bronzes (and some from Mesopotamia too) in their collection. They used the Fink electrochemical process which was inaugurated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The author was the curator with a geology and chemistry background responsible for the work on a total of 360 bronzes from 1926 to 1929. The before and after images contained in the book are dramatic. The book is available from Internet Archive.

 Restoration of ancient bronzes and cure of malignant patina

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 22, 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.

Life in a heat dome: The American West is figuring out how to keep cool – Summer in US cities…strategies to mitigate the hotter temperatures caused by climate change.

Statins for heart disease prevention could be recommended for far fewer Americans if new risk equation is adopted – Not a lot of details in this article although I have suspected for some time that statins were being over-prescribed.

10 States Where the Gas Tax Is Highest – This post prompted me to compare gas taxes in the states I drive through to on my frequent road trips to Dallas (Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas)…and the decision to always buy the tank of gas required in each direction in Oklahoma!

Creating a throw-away culture: How companies ingrained plastics in modern life – Aargh! Despite growing public pressure, companies increased their use of new plastic by 11% between 2018 and 2022!

What happens when you take too much caffeine - When we consume caffeine, it's quickly absorbed into our bloodstream, where it out-competes adenosine by preventing it from connecting to these receptors and doing its job to make us feel tired. This is why consuming caffeine can make us feel more awake and alert. Caffeine can also boost levels of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and adrenaline, which can make you feel more stimulated. Research has associated caffeine consumption with up to a 60% reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's. One explanation for this is that caffeine improves blood flow to the brain. While caffeine enters the gut quite quickly, its effects can take hours to wear off. Scientists recommend having your last 'dose' of caffeine eight hours and 48 minutes before you go to bed.

Why do 1 in 10 Americans get eczema? Is it too much salt? - Eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, is a chronic disease that causes dry, itchy skin. It's one of the most common skin conditions, affecting more than 31 million people in the U.S., and one in 10 people will develop it at some point. It has become increasingly common in recent years, especially in industrialized countries, implicating environmental and lifestyle factors like diet.

A fierce battle is being fought in the soil beneath our feet – and the implications for global warming are huge - In some parts of the world, increased CO₂ means tiny bugs in the soil “hold onto” their phosphorus, making less available for trees.

Rock Art Found in This Saudi Arabian Cave Offers ‘Rare Glimpse’ Into Ancient Human Life – Sheep, ibex, and goats on the walls of a lava tube.

Depressive symptoms may hasten memory decline in older people – 16 years of data from 8,268 adults with an average age of 64. This study shows that the relationship between depression and poor memory cuts both ways, with depressive symptoms preceding memory decline and memory decline linked to subsequent depressive symptoms. So – interventions to reduce depressive symptoms might slow memory decline.

D-Day shipwrecks were a WW2 time capsule – now they are home to rich ocean-floor life – 80-year-old wrecks that line the coasts of Britain and France…reclaimed by sea life.

Then and Now – Music

/

Music has always been…but it too has changed over the years. The differences between the 1960s and now are significant.

 I remember live performances in the 1960s…and records…and AM radio. There are still live performances now although most of my listening to music is done in my home office or when I am driving…more like the AM radio use in the 1960s. Now I choose what I want to listen to (from Apple Play primarily) rather than being at the mercy of a DJ picking tunes. The app does have a mode where it picks tunes for me by genre or ‘like’ what I have listened to previously which offers the benefit, like radio, of learning about new music.

In the 1960s we bought records and had a player. There was only one room of the house which had the player and speakers. My mother leaned toward classical (Dvorak, Strauss, etc.) and soundtracks from musicals (like Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Oklahoma)…a few country western and rock albums. And once a record got a scratch, it was not pleasant to listen to anymore. Now all the music I listen to is digital and via subscription.

 In the 1960s, my friends and I sang with records or sang a capella or with guitar (rarely with piano too). Now I rarely sing except sometimes when I am tired and driving. I start Simon and Garfunkel’s greatest hits and sing along to keep myself alert!

 Right now, I listen mostly to instrumentals: piano and cello (like Brooklyn Duo), harp guitar (like Jamie Dupuis), cellos (like Low Strung), and Celtic (like The Boys of County Nashville).

 The other improvement over the years is Bluetooth – to connect phones/tablets/PC to speakers in my office/car (I’m asking for Bluetooth speakers in my office for Christmas)!

 There is such a rich environment for music now…so much easier to listen to whatever I choose!

Previous Then and Now posts

A Big Tech Transition

/

My PC has been Intel-based since the 80s…but I transitioned to an Apple MacBook Air 15” last week (after transitioning from an Android-based phone to an iPhone 15 Pro Max earlier in the month). So – April 2024 has been a big tech transition for me. Now that I am through most of the it– I am thinking about my impressions of how it all went.

It was not as traumatic as I thought it would be although I was anticipating that it was going to be harder than a transition to a new Intel-based laptop and it was. But not as hard as I thought it was going to be. That could have been because:

  • My most active files were already in the cloud (OneDrive) and the huge bulk of my photographs were on an external drive.

  • I knew all my passwords. I am sometimes anxious about passwords (remembering them and changing them often enough) but I’ve managed to get better at it over the years.

  • My browser was the latest version.

  • The docking station I had used with my laptop worked with the new machine too (so the two external monitors were available immediately).

It only took me a day to begin doing some of my normal things on the Mac: writing and posting a blog, browsing some books, checking my news feeds, copying photos from my camera’s SD card to the Mac and tagging the best ones, sending/receiving text messages. Other than installing Microsoft Office and my favorite browser, I found myself minimizing the other apps I installed; I wanted to thoroughly explore the capabilities of the apps that came on the Mac; of course, Finder was a big focus for me since I was looking for ways to tag and resize pictures almost immediately along with moving around files.

On the subsequent days, I made tweaks – changing some settings to be more familiar to me (scrolling…the CTRL key to mimic the CMD key for cut and paste). I also installed the driver for my scanner, and it worked without any issues at all (the scanner was connected via the docking station, so it had been attached physically from almost the beginning). Tweaking will continue until I am thoroughly comfortable with the way the software is configured. Since I feel comfortable now, I suspect further tweaking will be minimal.

What I haven’t done yet is clean up the dock – taking off apps that I am not using and making sure the ones that I use frequently are always there. I will gradually try all the apps that are on the doc now and make the decision.

My overall impression of the transition at this point is positive. I am doing my normal activities – often in a slightly different way but acceptable (often improved). And I have cleaned up my environment considerably.

And – everything works faster! I’m very happy I made this tech transition!

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….

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 6, 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.

How Britain's taste for tea may have been a life saver - The explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives - the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens, may have been enough to keep many from an early grave. Sometimes people's existing behaviors can make more of a difference to their health than an explicit intervention might.

Carbon-Based Paleolithic Paintings Found in France - The carbon-based drawings were detected with visible light and infrared photography, X-ray fluorescence, and spectroscopy underneath previously known images. The discovery could allow for precise radiocarbon dating of the artwork. Most of the Paleolithic paintings in the more than 200 caves in the region were made with iron and manganese oxides, which cannot be directly dated with radiocarbon dating technologies.

Winners of the 2023 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest – Wonderful views. I wish more of them were annotated (where they were taken…comments from the photographer, etc.). One of my favorites was the Winner for Snow and Ice by Thomas Vijayan of Canada.

Which zoo animals are most active in winter and what times are best to see them? – Author commenting about zoos in the UK…but most of the comments are relevant to zoos in the US too. I particularly enjoyed the last recommendation – going to the Reptile House to warm up! My daughter gave us a membership to the local zoo for Christmas…and we’ll probably bundle up and go soon (but not while the weather is in the 20s)!

Photos of the Week – December 24, 2023 from the Prairie Ecologist – Great reminders that there are interesting subjects for nature photography in winter.

103-Year-Old Artificial Christmas Tree Sells for Over $4,000 – A sliver of history: The tree originally belonged to Dorothy Grant, whose family purchased it for their Leicestershire, England, home in 1920. When she first saw it, the 8-year-old girl was “wildly excited.” She decorated its branches with cotton wool that resembled snow, as baubles were an “extravagance” at the time. Grant cherished the tree for the rest of her life. When she died at the age of 101 in 2014, her 84-year-old daughter, Shirley Hall, inherited it. She decided to part with it to honor her mother’s memory and to ensure it survives as a humble reminder of 1920s life—a boom-to-bust decade.

Photography In the National Parks: 2023 In Review – Rebecca Lawson’s favorite shots from 2023 from Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainer, Lake Chelan, Yosemite, Death Valley, and Banff National Parks.

Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisp usher in banner year for U.S. apples - Growers report that apple production in the United States hit levels in 2023 that had not been seen since the 2014-15 season. Washington State was the largest grower, producing some 90% of the nation's crop. Of all the varieties, Honeycrisp, Gala, Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Fuji make up 76% of the total apple holdings. The big winner this year was the Cosmic Crisp apple, which experienced a 41% year-over-year growth, with 9.5 million bushels harvested.

Millions of mysterious pits in the ocean decoded - Most of the depressions in the seafloor in the German Bight are created by porpoises and other animals in search of food, and then scoured out by bottom currents. The researchers showed that the marine mammals leave pits in the seafloor when they hunt for buried sand eels.

2023 was a year of big anniversaries – 20 years ago the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas…the Concorde made its final flight, 30 years ago the World Wide Web launched into the public domain, 50 years ago hip-hop began, 60 years ago March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (“I have a dream” speech)…JFK assassinated, 75 years ago Israel declared independence, 80 years ago Casablanca opened, 150 years ago blue jeans patented.

1897 Montgomery Ward’s Common Sense Cookery

/

In 1897, Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business. Its first serious competition (Sears) had opened the year before.

They also published a book about cooking in 1897 that is available via Internet Archive. The title page indicates it is about more than just recipes: what to eat and how to prepare it, hygienic and scientific cooking!

They also published a book about cooking in 1897 that is available via Internet Archive. The title page indicates it is about more than just recipes: what to eat and how to prepare it, hygienic and scientific cooking!

The illustrations try to show the ideal of food preparation and enjoyment in the late 1800s.

Montgomery Ward & co.'s Common Sense Cookery

My mother remembers her parents ordering from Montgomery Ward in the 1930s for Christmas presents. I remember looking at their catalogs in the 1960s although I also looked at Sears catalogs.

I remember two other books from Wards.

One was the Wendy Ward Charm Book from the 1960s. It was full of somewhat dated information for teenaged girls; much of it we absorbed then jettisoned the parts that didn’t work for us as we entered the work force in the 1970s (the “I am Woman” era).

The other was the book written by Robert L. May on assignment to Montgomery Ward 1939 – the creation of Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer. I bought a copy for my daughter in the early 1990s from Wards! It can be checked out from Internet Archive here.