Gleanings of the Week Ending November 14, 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.

Globe Is Set to Cross 1 Degree C Temperature Increase Threshold in 2015 – Not good. The averages for temperature and carbon dioxide concentration is the atmosphere are still climbing…and we have done nothing so far to change the trend.

Weight’s the Matter? – The Scientist has an issue on obesity and I am including the articles I found most interesting in this gleanings list. This post outlines the articles available…from causes to the link to cancer (did you know that obesity has replaced smoking as the top preventable cause of cancer death in the US?) to possible side effect of environmental chemicals to weight loss.

Obesogens – Environmental chemicals change cause metabolic changes in animals causing them to gain weight. It is harder to prove for humans…but there are a lot of obese people these days. Maybe sedentary life style and high calorie diets are not the only reason.

Microbesity – Gut bacteria play a role in obesity too.

How to Design within Novel Ecosystems – Strategies when it isn’t possible to restore an area to its natural state….how to create something that still has high ecological value.

Ancient brains turn paleontology on its head – 520 million year old arthropod brains. When the first one was discovered, it was viewed as a fluke. Now there are more and the assumptions that said that brains are never fossilized are falling away.

6 Asian Noodles – Sometimes an article encourages action. This one caused me to add soba noodles to my grocery list and I’ll be trying them this week! I like that they have more protein than most noodles.

Insect Wings Made to Look like Blooming Flowers Explores Natural Concept of Mimicry – Beautiful work by a Paris-based artist….although I have to make an effort to not think about all the insects that were sacrificed.

Scientists Grow Beautiful Designs for First Ever Microbial Art Competition – A different type of media: bacteria and fungi in petri dishes!

The Chemistry of Silly Putty – A simple ‘toy’

3 Free eBooks - April 2015

It seemed harder than usual to pick my favorite 3 eBooks to highlight this month. The visuals in all of these are spectacular.

Tuck, Steven L. A History of Roman Art. Wiley Blackwell. 2015. Available on the Internet Archive here. I enjoyed this book - many of the pictures taken by the author - as a follow on to the Coursera course on Roman Architecture last year.

American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: New York. 1987. I remembered a type to the Catskills several years ago….and several of the places depicted by these artists. I realize now that I learned a lot about composition of landscape photographs from the Hudson River School artists.

Godman, Frederick Ducane; Salvin, Osbert. Insecta. 1901. I enjoyed the electronic version of the Biologia Centrali-Americana made available in the Smithsonian. The digitization project it not complete but I looked particularly at the Lepidoptera (butterflies) volumes (Rhopalocera and Heterocera) and enjoyed the color and variety of butterflies as of 1901. How many of them still exist. There has been a lot of habitat change in the past 114 years.