Gleanings of the Week Ending June 20, 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.

Soft Tissue Detected in Millennia-Old Dino Bones - New ways of looking at very old bones reveals unanticipated results (but not DNA).

Far From Sterile, Some Hybrids May Start New Species - Coyotes in the eastern US are quite different than their western counterparts and they are beginning to fill the niche left by wolves. Maybe they will help control the too large deer population!

Renewables Reach Highest Share of U.S. Energy Consumption since 1930s - Historical stats about renewable energy...with emphasis on the 1990-2014 time period.

Two similar articles: Why doctors should treat the healthy too and Interventions among healthy people save the most lives - The challenge is that most doctors are trained to treat illness and disability…not help people retain their health.

Data scientists find connections between birth month and health - The data for the study was from 1985-2013…1.7 million patients treated at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/CUMC. It interesting result but the researchers point out that the risk related to birth month is relatively minor compared to the more influential variables like diet and exercise.

The Weirdest (And Most Violent) Ways That Plants Release Their Seeds - Short videos. As with so many things botanical…I could not resist including it in the gleaning list. It includes how violets disperse their seeds and I’ve just started noticing the seed pods this year (I have several locations where I am watching the plants to see the seeds disperse).

Global freshwater consumption crossing its planetary boundary - Scary result.

Biodiversity reduces human, wildlife diseases and crop pests - Another reason to worry about the extinctions happening in the world right now.

Sunrise and Sunset Photos Capture Stunning Wildlife Silhouettes - Ending with some great images…and a reminder of the special light at the beginning and ending of the day.

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 June 06, 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.

Everything We've Learned about Mummies Using 21st Century Technology - Mummies fascinate just because we know they are often from the distant past…new technology adds elements to that fascination.

It’s Time to End the Gar Wars - Learn something new about native fish….and the history of conservation.

Why Kids Need to Dig in the Dirt Again - Play in the outdoors….not such a common thing for children as it used to be. Sad.

What Dose of Nature Do We Need to Feel Better? - Evidently there is a lot of research right now about the health benefits of spending time in nature….not just for children either.

New U.S. Water Rule is Crucial for Clean Drinking Water and Resilience to Droughts and Floods - As water supplies shift (too much and too little), the clarification will become more important. I was surprised that prior to the clarification, drinking water for 1 in 3 Americans came from streams without clear protection from pollution and degradation. Sustaining or improving the quality of water supplies is a key component to a sustainable planet.

Monarch Butterfly Conservation Series - I’m putting these videos on my ‘to do’ list.

Watching the Simultaneous Release of 11,000 Marbles - Mesmerizing.

Why you want Google Photos - Something new I am looking into.

16 Photographs of Animals Caught in the Rain - My favorites are the tricolor heron and monarch butterfly chrysalis photos.

These Maps Show Just How Screwed China Will Be After Sea Levels Rise - This is if all the ice melts….which may be a possibility if the world continues on current trends….and even if the ice does not melt completely, there are a lot of people living in coastal areas that are very close to sea level.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 9, 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.

How to Make Fresh Ginger-Lemon Tea - I modified the recipe a bit - made a slurry of the ingredients (with less water) in a smoothie maker then boiled it. After cooling - I strained the liquid into ice trays and am savoring a few cubes at a time for ginger-lemon flavored water.

No-Bake Breakfast Cookies - An option to try instead of purchasing breakfast bars? This way - I would know exactly what is in them.

Baroque organ performance of works by Johann Sebastian Bach - Listen to the music….and watch how a German baroque organ looks and is played!

This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind - Some historical perspective…but there are always portions of the population that do not change their mind for many years afterward.

As the river rises: Cahokia's emergence and decline linked to Mississippi River flooding - I have visited Cahokia…and realized there is still a lot to learn about the site.

The Lake Mead Water Crisis Explained - The drought is causing the late to drop lower than it has ever been. At some point the lake will not be able to provide the water allocation to Nevada and California and Arizona…and it won’t generate as much electricity either.

Can Elon Musk's battery really cut your power lines? - The technology may or may not be ready for prime time and cost effective…..but I cheer that the discussion is happening and hope that we are reaching a tipping point where the majority of people in the US realize that we need to move off fossil fuels as fast or faster than the rest of the world or we will lose whatever competitive edge our society has at present. And another story about solar power policy: MIT says solar power fields with trillions of watts of capacity are on the way.

The first self-driving 18-wheeler hits the highways - The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles granted it a license to operate on public roads in the state! It is self-driving but not driverless. Drivers are still required for exiting the highway, on local roads and in docking for making deliveries.

A Brief Guide to Atmospheric Pollutants - A nice summary (click on the graphic to enlarge) from Andy Brunning at Compound Interest.

Record global carbon dioxide concentrations surpass 400 parts per million in March 2015 - Not good. This article provides a history of how and where the 400 ppm gets measured.

Coursera - May 2015

Both of the courses from April are finishing up and I’m determined to not load myself up with new courses in May because I have so many outdoor activities planned for the month.

I did enjoy both of the April courses. Maps and the Geospatial Revolution course is immediately applicable to a Tree Tour I am doing as a project for my Master Naturalist certification. It will include a map, of course.

The Water in the Western US course was good on a number of levels. There was a segment on how they are adding sediment back to the water flowing into the Grand Canyon to rebuild the sandbars there (and it seems to be working)….brining back memories of the place from earlier this year. One memorable and scary factoid from the course: The Central Valley of California has subsided significantly since the 50s and 60s and is now below sea level; levees are all that separate it from San Francisco Bay….all the fresh water in that area (water supply for San Francisco) could become saline within days if an earthquake caused those levees to fail!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 18, 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.

10 Geological Forms we’ve studied for Years and Still Don’t Understand - Some of the forms we thought we understood….only to discover additional mechanisms played a role (in canyon formation, for example).

Why the FDA Has Never Looked At Some of the Additives in Our Food - In the past 5 decades, the number of food additives has skyrocketed from about 800 to 10,000….and many of them have come to market under the ‘generally recognized as safe’ provision in the FDA safety-review process. Some of them have caused severe allergic reactions or long term health effects. This is a scary aspect to our food system. The article prompted to look more closely at the processed foods I buy and try to skew my food purchases to whole foods that I prepare myself.

Hawksbill Turtles: A Rare Good News Story for a Species on the Brink - Hurray!

This Elevation Map of Mars Makes the Red Planet Much More Colorful - From the German space agency

This 19th Century Art Is Made Entirely Out Of Butterfly Wings - I’d much rather see live butterflies!

A Chart Showing You How Much Water It Takes To Grow All the Food You Eat - Were there any surprises on this chart?  Each circle represents the gallons of water per ounce of a food. I found myself wanting more; I wanted to compare whether soymilk (on the graphic) took more or less water than almond milk (not on the chart).

Exceptionally preserved fossil gives voice to ancient terror bird - The fossil is from South America of a bird flightless that was 4 feet tall and is the most complete ‘terror bird’ discovered with 90% of the skeleton preserved.

Top 5 Interesting Nests in North America - It’s the time of year for birds to be building their nests in our area….and there are some interesting ones in this post.

These Knotted Cords Are a Sophisticated Ancient Counting Tool - The Inca’s knotted counting system…that we still don’t completely understand.

Greatest mass extinction driven by acidic oceans, study finds - A key in the past to understand the impact of ocean acidification.

Coursera - April 2015

My Coursera workload in March was light because of the Master Naturalist course workload during the month. It will pick up a little in April.

I finished up the video/reading portion of Australian Literature: a rough guide (University of Western Australia) in March. I appreciated the approach of selecting readings to demonstrate contradictory perceptions: coast and center, home and away, justice and injustice…all with the backdrop of Australian landscape and history. I was surprised at how deep the historical context turned out to be in a short course but perhaps any course about a literature fitted into a national boundary has to bring that nation’s history to the fore.

I started one course during March: Maps and the Geospatial Revolution (The Pennsylvania State University) and it will continue though most of April. It has a linkage to the project I am doing for my Master Naturalist certification - involving a map, of course.

Water in the Western United States (University of Colorado Boulder) is the next course to start (today!). In Maryland, our challenge is more often water quality rather than quantity…in the Western US, the challenge is both.

Now that I have successfully ramped down my Coursera activities so that I could focus on the Master Naturalist class - I’m thinking about the way I want to enjoy Coursera offerings going forward. An annual cycle of activity is beginning to emerge for my volunteer and vacation activities - with peaks in the spring and fall. Should I try to make the peaks for Coursera workload in winter and summer? Is it even possible? It is so hard to not sign up for a course that interests me whenever it is offered!

Sustainability - Water Use

There are projections that say that water will become a bigger problem in the years to come both because of increased population and climate change. So it is wise to think about how we as individuals can use water more sustainably. Here are some strategies I’ve implemented to reduce the amount of water we use in our home:

• Yet the yellow mellow. We don’t flush our toilets after every urination. This could be a bigger water saving strategy for houses that don’t have low flow toilets (our house is new enough that it was built with low flow toilets originally).
• No drips. We maintain our faucets so that no water is used when they are turned off. This is not a hard maintenace task (although one that usually requires turning off the water under the since before the job!).
• Take short showers. Sometimes I time my showers because it is so easy to enjoy standing under the hot water. I can’t remember the last time I took a bath - which almost always use more water than showers.
• Use the dishwasher - don’t pre-rinse dishes. The dishwasher takes less water than hand washing dishes…but only when we don’t thoroughly rinse off items while loading it up.
• Wear clothes more than one day. It depends on our level of activity. Many days we can wear our clothes for a couple of days unless we do something that is dirty or hot/sweaty. Daily changes of underwear and socks don’t take much room in the laundry!
• Load up the washer. Launder clothes when there is enough to fill the washer rather than doing several smaller loads for the same clothes. We always use cold water so generally can do different colors together (unless they are new and may fade).
• Develop rain-watered yard. We water vegetables and new plantings but not the grass. It rains enough in Maryland that this is an easy strategy. If we lived in a drier area - I would probably not have a grass lawn at all.
• Rinse water for watering indoor or deck plants. During the summer, I keep a container in the sink to capture rinse water when prepping fresh veggies….and use it to water pots on the deck or indoors. The downside is that water is heavy! Maybe I’ll figure out a way to capture and utilize gray or rain water that doesn’t involve carrying it by next summer.

Another aspect of sustainability when it comes to water has to do with runoff. The water that runs off our yard flows into the Patuxent River and then into the Chesapeake Bay. There is a band of forest that starts at our house and extends for 0.25 miles to the river. The forest floor is deep with leaf mulch that acts as a sponge to slow the water down as trickles toward the river. We have minimized our application of yard treatments over the years and have not added any additional impervious sources (other than the house and the driveway).  The trees have gotten bigger and are shading the back of our yard enough that the grass is thinning. I’ve started letting the forest leaf mulch accumulate in those areas rather than leave the ground bare (and eroding). Next fall I’ll plant daffodil bulbs to hold the leaves. At some point perhaps I’ll to get ferns started in that shady area that gets the first runoff from our yard. Plantings will absorb water and/or slow it down enough that more will soak into the sediments rather than taking soil to the river.

I've stopped using the disposal in the kitchen sink and started composting instead. Using the disposal contributes to the nutrient enrichment of waste water that causes algal blooms (and dead zones); compost is a better destination for food parings and cores!

There is quite a lot we as individuals can do to utilize water more sustainably.