Gleanings of the Week Ending May 17, 2014

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.

Two museums doing 3D scanning of artifacts (one of the technologies introduced in the archaeology course I took on Coursera recently:

Paleontologists unveil online showcase of 3-D fossil remains - An introduction to the University of Michigan’s Online Repository of Fossils.

Look at These Ancient Egyptian Artifacts from Every Amazing Angle This article points to a project at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to make objects available on the web in a format that allows complete rotation of the object. The project’s beta site also allows zooming in to get a closer look at the objects.

Categorizing Invasive Plants - I’ve recently done some volunteering to help control invasive plants in my community. This was a nice summary of approaches used by land managers.

Newsmap - A visual display of news (based on the Google news aggregator). There is color coding for broad categories of news and it is possible to select a ‘country’ from a list at the top of the display; looking at the news perspective for a country different than your own is always a broadening experience. The visualization has been around for a few years; I only found it recently and am trying it for a few weeks to decide if it is better than looking at the same info in a Newsfeed format.

Bee biodiversity boosts crop yields - Good to know. Hopefully we have not already reduced the diversity of bees on the planet.

8 CIO moms share tales and tips from the IT trenches - These tips make sense for more than just CIO/IT moms!

40 maps that explain the Middle East - I just finished a Coursera course about the modern Middle East….so this series of maps was particularly well timed!

The Most Common Language in Each US State—Besides English and Spanish - Language as a window into differences across the US.

Cold War Spy-Satellite Images Unveil Lost Cities - Tripling the number of known archaeology sites via technology…another story that linked well with the archeology course from Coursera. 

Never Say Die - Recent research results re longevity.

Magnificent 19th-Century Library Shelves 350,000 Books - Architecture of the late 1800s and books….in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It looks like a magical place.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 12, 2014

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.

Blood test could detect solid cancers - Another discovery that started with bioinformatics. It seems like the biological research arena is exploding with findings that are teased out of ‘big data.’ Biological research has met the computer age!

Viewing Nature’s Beauty through a New Lens - Watch the 4 minute video from Louie Schwarzberg imbedded in this post. I liked the bats and cactus sequence the best!

Yes! Yellowstone is a Volcano - A set of 3 videos. They were filmed in 2009 but I just found them. I remember a decade ago when we visited Yellowstone and my daughter being intrigued that is was a ‘super volcano.’

The Gamification of Education - Infographic that includes a timeline of gamification technology applied to education

Find the Closest National Park with This Handy Map - A handy map for planning a US National Park vacation. And just to add some incentive - a post about macro photography in the National Parks.

Global Air Quality Crisis - It is estimated that 7 million people died in 2012 due to air pollution. That makes air pollution the highest environmental risk on the planet.

Senior Discounts (list 1 and list 2) - Two lists posted by Feisty Side of Fifty/Baby Boomer Women. Some of them start at 55…many more at 60….and more at 65.

Jane Goodall: How she redefined mankind - An interview of Jane Goodall at 80.

New York Public Library Releases Thousands of Historic Maps to the Public - Yet another example of the revolution in libraries. They are making the content of their fragile historical collections that used to be accessible to very few people available to anyone with access to the Internet because high quality digitization has come to the fore.

You'll Never Look at Pond Water the Same Way after Watching This Video - There are so many good videos in my list this week. This one encourages me to collect water from the nearby river….and take a look through the microscope!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 8, 2014

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.

Syphilis: Then and Now - The recent research on the origin and manifestation of treponemal diseases (syphilis, yaws and bejel) is reported along with the history of research about them.

Splendid Botanical Gardens Full of Stained Glass Murals - Cosmovitral in Toluca, Mexico. A botanical garden in the old city market.

A map showing gender inequality around the world - Using the Gender Inequality Index (GII) from the UN Human Development Programme. There are many parameters for the index and the US does not The full 2013 Human Development report is available here (The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World).

Printed Eye Cells Could Help Treat Blindness - The ability to print retinal cells could lead to new therapies for retinal disorders such as macular degeneration....just one of the technologies with potential to improve the quality of life for older people. Not being able to see well produces a cascading effect on mobility and self-confidence that often leads to rapid physical decline.

40 more maps that explain the world - From Max Fisher at the Washington Post. Take your time, enlarge the maps that interest you the most…there is a lot to learn from these 40 maps!

Why 259,969 people taking the same class at the same time might just be the future of education - Co-founder of Coursera, Daphne Koller reminiscing. “We need a way to integrate education much more deeply into the fabric of our lives in a lifelong way,” she says. “And that’s what we’re doing.” And several other recent articles about MOOCs and online education: MOOCs by the numbers: Where are we now? (with infographic); Two giants of online learning discuss the future of education (Salman Khan and Sebastian Thrun); and Next Gen School Board: Governance Challenges & Opportunities in the Digital Age

Fiery-red coral species discovered in the Peruvian Pacific - Coral reefs and communities in Peru are just beginning to be studied….more discoveries likely.

C40 Cities Releases Landmark Research Revealing Expansion & Acceleration of Climate Actions in Megacities - 98% say climate change presents significant risks to their populations and infrastructure; more than 8,000 climate actions are underway and 41% of those actions are at a transformative, citywide scale. C40 cities in the US are: Austin, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC (details of all cities in the C40 is here) Infographic with a link to the full report included in the article.

A Beautiful Map of Global Ocean Currents - Wow! It’s worth going to the site to look at the visualization in more detail too (click on the globe to enlarge, drag to rotate OR click on the word ‘earth’ in the lower left corner of the image and then experiment with the different projections of the ocean currents at the surface).

Organic Shmorganic - An attempt to sort out the value of organic fruits and veggies for children.