Gleanings of the Week Ending October 26, 2013

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

Genome Digest - A summary from The Scientist of recent research findings. I like these summaries both for their specific content and the ‘overview’ comparison they sometimes stimulate. Did you know that chimpanzees/bonobos have 2.9 billion base pairs; a cyanobacteria has 4.7 million base pairs; cucumber has 245 million base pairs?

Did You Forget to Have Fun? - How long has it been since you actually did whatever your answer is to “If you had all the time in the world, and weren’t always working, what would you do for fun?”

Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think - Read the comments as well as the story. Time will tell as always. This is a technology that I am really looking forward to so I hope this naysayer is wrong.

The Gorgeous Fjordlands of West Norway - Beautiful wild places

How Are Open Access Publishing and Massive Open Online Courses Disrupting the Academic Community? - So far - is appears that MOOCs have been more disruptive than OA.

Mountain Lion Facts - Did you know that baby mountain lions have spots and blue eyes?

Ancient tattoos may have been used as medicine - Tattoos on Otzi the Iceman

Winners of the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2013 - More feasts for the eyes…UK landscapes.

Why Abraham Lincoln Loved Infographics - A map that showed the density of slavery was well used by Lincoln (it ‘bore the marks of much service’). This article also highlights William Playfair’s role in the development of data visualization; he was the inventor of pie charts and bar graphs in his “Commercial and Political Atlas which he published in 1786.

Improving Weather Forecasts - Forecast accuracy…and how the forecast is presented and interpreted. There’s always room for improvement.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 28, 2013

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.

Arctic on course for ice-free summer 'within decades', scientists say - Where will the polar bears go in an ice free summer?

The Arsenic in Our Drinking Water - Scary findings. Evidently arsenic causes problems at lower concentrations that previously thought.

John Green on health care expenses in America - A fast paced video about how American health care expenses and outcomes compare to the rest of the world. Does anyone want the status quo? The answer has to be ‘no’ but we definitely have a challenge agreeing on how to change the system.

Antibacterial Products Fuel Resistant Bacteria in Streams and Rivers - Yet another reason to read the labels on liquid soaps, toothpaste and other cosmetics…and avoid triclosan. I’ve noticed recently that there are more companies that are removing it from their products so the research and consumer choices are having an impact.

National Park Quiz: How Good Are You When Quizzed On Fall In The National Parks? - I am not a quiz taker any more - but I enjoyed scanning through this one about national parks.

For Scientists, Early to Press Means Success - A study that included 1400 biologists from around the world. Do the results apply to other scientific fields? It seems logical that they would….and should be used to guide the early career of scientists (beginning while they are still in school).

Introducing The Landscape Architect’s Guide to Boston - A guide to the green spaces of Boston. A similar one was published last year for Washington DC. If you are going to be walking around either city these guides are another source of information about the city landscapes.

10 More Fascinating Photos That Look Like Paintings - A collection from 10 photographers.

Ancient merchants are responsible for modern horse genetics - Isn’t this something that was always suspected…and we just have the DNA analysis technology to prove it now?

Geography in the News: Cobras - From National Geographic

Reading the Landscape (Texas)

The landscape in Texas is quite varied. Let’s see what we can tell from looking at this image of the area in the western part of the state.

At first glance - it is flat. Are there some low hills in the distance or is it a trick of the moisture in the air? The billowing cloud and the darker haze underneath gives the promise of rain ahead. Will it reach the ground?

The plants near the highway are predominately straw-colored rather than green. Further from the road, there appear to be green clumps of scrubby vegetation. Once disturbed, the soil does not support the vegetation that it did before.

Perhaps the area along the road is just the most recently disturbed (from the building of the road) and the area further away was disturbed early by grazing cattle. The original vegetation may be long gone.

Is the straw colored vegetation an invasive plant? Does it burn more easily than the more varied vegetation further from the road?

On the positive side - this is landscape of a wide open space. It is impossible to feel claustrophobic when the horizon is so far away! 

Reading the Landscape

May Theilgaard Watts popularized the idea of ‘Reading the Landscape.’ I’m reading her book about Europe now. Of course, it easier when you are out and walking around a landscape - but a picture can be a start. What can you tell from the picture above of the Robinson Nature Center and its immediate surroundings?

It is winter.

The building must not be that old since the plants do not appear to be universally well established.

The trees are not very big but they do appear to be several different types. Can you recognize them from their bark? It may be difficult or impossible from the picture but certainly something that would be possible with closer inspection.

There are some new trees that have mesh around their trunks. Someone is trying to help a forest become re-established here. Deer must be around - perhaps over abundant.

There is lot of undergrowth and downed limbs. Have the winds blown down some branches recently? We can’t tell if there are spots or shelves of fungus on the windfall. That would be clue about how long it had been on the ground.

Learning Threads

Have you ever noticed how learning something new leads to learning tangential things - totally unanticipated at the beginning? It has been happening to me quite a lot lately.

One day this past week I listened to the introduction for the Aboriginal Worldviews course on Coursera and became intrigued by the indigenous worldview that values integration of knowledge more than specialization. I happened to be enjoying Reading the Landscape of Europe by May Theilgaard Watts on the same day and was intrigued by the way she combines geology, botany, zoology, history….and sees it all by careful observation of the landscape. I’d just finished the chapter on France and was so intrigued by the section on roses that I looked on the Internet Archive for the artists she had mentioned from the 1700s ….and found their works plus others. I remembered that my father planted hybrid tea roses along the driveway of our new house in the 60s (one for each member of the family) and wrote an email to him asking if he remembered their names. What a thread: indigenous world view to landscape reading to roses to family history!

It is so much easier to follow a tangential thought now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. A trip to the library or bookstore might have yielded some information  back then but it took so much effort that many threads were simply dropped. And I can remember making the effort and being disappointed by the lack of information the library had on its shelves.

How is this ease of finding exactly the information desired - in seconds - impacting the way we learn? We have an enormous wealth of resources. Are we enlightened by them or overwhelmed? It is natural to be both. I willingly accept the risk of being overwhelmed as the price for finding what I want to know shortly after deciding I want it.

Today - I am celebrating the adventure of following threads for as long and as deep as I want.