Gleanings of the Week Ending June 28, 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.

Enjoy the Wilderness of Saguaro National Park through This Video - I’m remembering the vacation to Tucson last June --- which included a morning at this National Park. Another blurb in the feeds this week about one of my favorite places: Longwood Gardens Unveils 86-acre Meadow. I’m already beginning to think about return visits!

Timeline of Emerging Science & Technology (2014 to 2030+) - From Richard Watson and the Imperial College of London. If you want to look at an enlarged version of the graphic - a PDF is available here. One of my favorite technologies is autonomous cars - and there was a new item on that topic this week too: Demonstrating a driverless future: Promise of driverless cars. Computerworld posted 8 technologies that are on the way out - and one that we’ll never be rid of.

Reproduction later in life is a marker for longevity in women - Hurray! I fit this marker for longevity in women (I was 35 years old!).

Connectivity is Critical: 33 Ways Broadband Boosts Learning - There are lots of positives about connectivity but it takes a level of maturity to not experience the negatives. Like most technology - advocates think only of the positives first; hopefully eventually there are objective perspectives.

Architecture of signaling proteins enhances knowledge of key receptors - The Preventing Chronic Pain course I am taking was focused on the systems biology aspects of pain last week - so I noticed this article more than I might have otherwise. The progress being made in the systems biology arena is gaining momentum now that the technology is available to research questions.  Another systems biology type article: about creating viruses that naturally home in on tumor cells while boosting the body’s immune system was posted by The Scientist.

Interactive Model Skeletons - Free Technology for Teachers has a blurb this week about eSkeletons, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas. The site is focused on primates. What a wonderful way to learn about skeletons!

Mysterious 'magic island' appears on Saturn's moon Titan - Something new on Cassini’s mission radar of Ligeia Mare…a ‘transient feature.’

Do the Rumble-Rump with Peacock Spiders - I’d seen pictures of these spiders before but had not realized how small they are….and the videos (here) are worth a look too!

Few Doctors Warn Expectant Mothers about Environmental Hazards - I hope this change.

Distributed Renewable Energy under Fire - How electric utilities are fighting local renewable energy in 19 states. It’s a frustrating situation. I’m glad Maryland is not one of the 19.

Coursera Experience - June 2014

May was a relatively easy month from a course load perspective. I finished two courses:

• The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Tel Aviv University) - I was surprised at how little I understood of even the events that have occurred in my lifetime. I generally keep up with news but I clearly needed more context than the news stories provided…..or maybe the passage of time has brought enlarged perspective of historians.
• Introduction to Systems Biology (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) - Probably the hardest course I’ve taken on Coursera so far.

And only had one that continued on for the full month.

• The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Nubia (Emory University) - This one has short videos and then pointers to reading. I am supplementing the recommended reading with items from the Internet Archive and some books I got via paperbackswap. This one will be over by the end of June - which is a good think because I have so many more that are starting!

There were two that started right at the end of May.

• The Diversity of Exoplants (University of Geneva) - I am taking this course to understand more about what my daughter’s research is all about in graduate school.
• Preventing Chronic Pain: A Human Systems Approach (University of Minnesota) - I am fortunate to not currently have chronic pain….but prevention is always easier than recovery. And there are others in my family that do have challenges caused by pain.

The challenge increases in June as three more courses start up. There are just so many good courses being offered that I can’t seem to resist.

• Paradoxes of War (Princeton University) - Every course I have taken from Princeton has been excellent….and I’m looking forward to this one.
• An Introduction to Global Health (University of Copenhagen) - This course and the next one on the list are part of my trend to think more globally about issues. There seem to be so many areas that transcend the boundaries of nations and governments.
• Globalization and You (University of Washington) - It will be interesting to find out how this course meshes with the one on Global Health.

It’s going to be quite a course load by the end of June!

Coursera Experience - May 2014

I finished up two courses in April:

• Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets (Brown University)
• Roman Architecture (Yale University)

They were both thoroughly enjoyable and the Discussion Forums held a rich assortment of pictures that is used as a ‘last hurrah’ for the course material. There are two courses that continue into May and one that starts just at the end of the month:

• The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Tel Aviv University). I have read one of the reference books I found on Paperbackswap and still have another one to go. I also browsed The Architecture of Cairo course material from MIT which seemed to integrate some of what I was learning at the end of the Roman Architecture course and this one.
• Introduction to Systems Biology (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai). At first, I thought this course was going to take me way back to the biology courses I took as an undergraduate….but then I realized that it was going to do much more than that. This one is integrated biology with all the modeling and statistical analysis I did in my computer science based career!
• The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Nubia (Emory University).  I could resist starting another archaeology related course!

And there are 2 more that start up at the end of May

• The Diversity of Exoplants (University of Geneva). I want to take this one since it is such a hot topic in my daughter’s field.
• Preventing Chronic Pain: A Human Systems Approach (University of Minnesota). There are several people in family that deal with chronic pain; I’m always interested in learning about the current state-of-the-art on topics like this.