Gleanings of the Week Ending July 25, 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.

It's official: Workplace rudeness is contagious and Kids expecting aggression from others become aggressive themselves - For some reason the results of these two studies seemed similar to me. They both found that our environment - and expectation of our environment - have impacts on our own behavior.

This New Map Shows Your Risk of Catching Lyme Disease - Maryland it in the dark blue - not a surprise. I hear often enough about people in our area discovering they have Lyme Disease. Wearing long pants tucked into socks is difficult when it is a hot day.

Iron: A biological element? - Much of the iron of our planet was deposited by bacteria living two and a half billion years ago. At that time in Earth’s development there was little oxygen in the atmosphere and many organisms metabolized iron instead of oxygen.

Intensive End-Of-Life Care on the Rise for Cancer Patients - As the population in the US ages, end-of-life discussion are important to more and more people - not just cancer patients.

What Happens to Your Blog when You Die? Why You Need to Appoint a Social Media Executor NOW - Another ‘end-of-life’ consideration…then one developing because of modern technology.

Let This Video Show You How Air Bubbles Form, Rise, and Erupt in Sand - For anyone that has ever wondered about craters or sand…..high speed video captures more than the eye can detect.

Organization of North America's bird species: List updated - The update includes some reorganization…but also some species new to North America!

E-waste: What we throw away doesn't go away - A problem for just about everywhere in the world…and it is about more than old phones and computers.

5 Simple Tips to Turn Your Yard into Pollinator - Some good basic tips.

The Women Who Rule Pluto - Good to hear that there are technical women behind parts of the Pluto stories in the news recently.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 13, 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.

18 beautiful houses for tiny people - Photographs of doll’s houses …inhabitants and furnishings too.

How past Native-American settlement modified Western New York forests - Larger nut-bearing trees were more abundant near settlements!

Rebuilding Sandbars in the Grand Canyon - I had learned about the attempts to rebuild sandbars in the recent Coursera offer on Water in the Western US…so this acted to remind me of the class, probably locking in what I learned through a surprise repetition.

Ultrasound is making new waves throughout medicine - Ultrasound is being used for more and more imaging these days….and is more portable than a lot of the other imagining technologies.

10 Ways to Save Pollinators - This is not just about honey bees….it’s about all pollinators.

Multi-tasking: Benefits on exercise - So doing something else while you exercise may not be such a bad thing!

Beyond Automation - Five paths toward employability is an automated…augmented world of the future.

Sewage Pollution: The Next Great Threat for Coral Reefs - 96% of places that have both people and coral reefs have a sewage pollution problem (85% of the waterwater entering the sea in the Caribbean is untreated). Sewage that reaches corals includes: fresh water, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, pathogens, toxins. Ewww! Not good for human health either.

The Shifting Sands of the Sahara Are a Lesson in Dune Dynamics - Illustrations of dune patterns (seen from above)

5 Ways to Make Environmentally Conscious Food Choices - I had thought of all 5…but this is post is a good summary to: support good companies, buy local, storing your food, growing your own, and choose less packaging.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 28, 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.

Pollinator Partnership Planting Guides - Planning a garden? How about giving the pollinators in your area a boost too? This site has a planting guide for ‘ecoregions’ in the US - accessed by entering your zipcode!

A Wet and Wild look Inside the 'Mushroom Houses' Of a Fungi Farm - Ever wonder how mushrooms you buy in the grocery store are grown? This post includes a short video. If we had household gardener robots - would you grow mushrooms as well as vegetables?

The Surprising, Depressing Reason Why City-Dwelling Robins Sing at Night - When I saw the picture at the front of this post, my first thought was “that’s not a robin.” But it is - a European robin. I was thinking of the North American variety. It is disturbing that our lights are messing up circadian rhythms - our own and other organisms.

What is the oldest city in the world? - It is surprisingly controversial. How many of the possibilities in the article have your heard about before?

Deconstructing mental illness through ultradian rhythms - A study that suggests that regular meals and early bedtimes may lead to a better life and prevent the onset of mental illness. The study discovered a new dopamine-based rhythm generator. The full paper is available here.

Retracing the roots of fungal symbioses - Mycorrhizal fungi live on the roots of host plants where they exchange sugars that plants produce for mineral nutrients that fungi absorb from the soil. It is hard to visualize - and often not well understood. Now genomics is being applied. Climate change will put whole new stresses on symbiotic relationships. I hope the knowledge gained from this type of research will help us maintain or increase food production as the environment changes.

Liquid Biopsy - Fast DNA-sequencing machines are leading to simple blood tests for cancer - There are some technologies that are so appealing…that you wish they were already available. But it is not easy. So far - the work is for specific types of cancers. The ability to do faster DNA sequencing is improving the prospects.

Ocean circulation change: Sea level spiked for two years along Northeastern North America - Climate change and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)…most of the models predict a weakening of the AMOC over the 21st century and it appears that there was changed in the 2009-2010 time frame.

Computational Anthropology Reveals How the Most Important People in History Vary by Culture - This study looked at articles about significant people in the English, German, Chinese and Japanese language versions of Wikipedia as a data source.

These Brilliantly Colored Bolivian Buildings Look Like Alien Spaceships - Wow! Almost too much color…but certainly different than the majority of buidlings.