Gleanings of the Week Ending January 10, 2015

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.

Birding in the National Parks: Return of the Snowy Owls - It looks like this winter will be another one for seeing Snowy Owls in the northern states of the US! There were some sightings in Maryland last winter so I am hoping…

Did Venus Once Have Oceans of Liquid Carbon Dioxide? - Maybe the geological features on Venus (rift valleys, river-like beds, and plains) were may be liquid carbon dioxide rather than water like they are on Earth.

From the Feature Well - This is the summary of 2014 special issues from The Scientist. Looking back at them provides a good review of Biology issues and progress for the year.

The "Rule of 50" Helps You Know When to Give Up on a Book - How do you know when to quit reading a book? Usually I decide via scanning before I every start reading rather than determining ahead of time a number of pages I’ll read before deciding. I can’t remember the last time my scanning failed.

Monarch Butterflies May Soon Be an Endangered Species - The population has declined by 90% since the 1990s. It’s very sad. The agricultural changes in the mid-90s killed the milkweed (food plant for the caterpillars) at the edges of fields. Now there needs to be a concerted effort to increase the availability of milkweed.

The Most Amazing Meteorological and Space Observatories Ever Built - Beautiful and functional architecture from around the world.

Top Planning Trends – 2014 - A look at traffic data on Planetizen…popular tags overall and popular posts for each state. The most popular post for Maryland was about high-rise, mixed-use suburban developments.

Significant link between daily physical activity, vascular health - These type of studies come out frequently…with some nuance defined a little better than before. Hopefully no one is waiting for another study to transition some sedentary to active time every day. Now that I think about it - do these studies prompt people to become more active?

A Look Back at Our Most Popular Photos of 2014 - From the National Wildlife Federation. The very first one (a snowy owl) caught my attention.

National Park Service Launches Website Honoring 22 World Heritage Sites in the United States - Did you know that there are 22 World Heritage Sites (a UN designation) are in the US?  Most of them are National Parks…but now all. The list can be found here.