Gleanings of the Week Ending September 03, 2016

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.

Edible food packaging made from milk proteins – I’m not sure how this works to reduce packaging since to be edible it would have to stay clean (i.e. another layer of packaging?). Still – it would be great to reduce the amount of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging.

Zika Infects Adult Neural Progenitors Too  and How Zika infects Mother and Baby – Two articles from The Scientist. Zika is a hot research topic right now…and a public health concern.

Research priorities for the field of atmospheric chemistry – The development of a predictive capability to provide foresight into the consequences of rapid changes in the Earth system is need to help in preparation and decision making. Right now the field is focused on observing, learning and discovering for fundamental understanding…so there is data to support attempt to develop a predictive capability.

New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection – The Guaico Culex virus that infects mosquitoes has 5 genes and each gene is individually packaged. A mosquito cell has to have 4 of the 5 packages to be infected. The 5^th package may cause the infection to be potent. Once again – a case that shows how little we really understand about life on Earth.

How Aluminum Changed the World – A little history for the week.

Wildflower Wednesday: Chicory – Like the author of this post – I like chicory. The blue color redeems it from being considered a weed for me!

Invasive Species Spotlight: Canada Thistle – Evidently it was introduced accidently to North America in the 1600s!

Photos of Frozen Flowers Capture the Paradoxical Beauty of Preservation and Destruction – Eye candy for the week….maybe an idea for some photographic experiments for this winter.

Hope for reversing stroke-induced long-term disability – What a boon it would be for an aging population where having a stroke often reduce the quality of life.

Actin Architecture (image) – Filaments in a cancer cell imaged via confocal microscopy.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 18, 2016

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 dirty is your air? – Based on this article – I am trying to get in the habit of turning on the vent fan when I am cooking….and opening some windows when the outdoors temperature is pleasant.

Serious Putty – A clay with antimicrobial properties…even against resistant strains! More research is needed – but it is exciting that this could be a totally different mechanism for fighting infection that the current antibiotics on the market.

Snow in Vietnam and Other New Climate Patterns Threaten Farmers – This is from the Business Report section of the MIT Technology Review. The article focuses on farmers in Vietnam in an area that got snow for the first time in their life time (and historically) last winter and how weather patterns are impacting their finally honed rhythm for crops. It would be interesting to hear stories from farmers around the world. Climate is changing globally – but not always in the same way.

Sunflower Spirals: Complexity Beyond the Fibonacci Sequence – The results of a crowd sourced look at sunflower spirals: 1 in 5 did not conform to the Fibonacci Sequence. Some of those non-conformers approximated it and others approximated more complex mathematical patterns! Either way – I like the look of sunflower spirals.

Genome Digest – Recent findings of genomic research on giraffes – carrots – zebrafish and gar – herring – Atlantic salmon. A lot has changed since I got my biology degree in the 1980s.

Seeing the Inevitable, companies begin to adapt to climate change – Most companies are aware that climate change is likely to affect their future but are not planning for it with any consistency or depth. Those furthest along are those already dealing with climate change on a daily basis: agriculture and insurance. Ikea and Ford are two companies used as examples in the article.

Tranquil Impressionist-Style Paintings Showcase Beauty of Natural Parks Around America – Eye candy for the week!

Life in the Dark – Photographs of sea and cave creatures that live their whole lives in the dark.

C40’s Executive Director Mark Watts on how mayors are changing the way we think about food – Area of focus are food: procurement, production, distribution, and waste.

Frog, Turtle Species Being Reintroduced to Yosemite Valley – The California red-legged frog (the largest native frog in the western US) and the western pond turtle are being reintroduced to lake, river and meadow habitats.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 11, 2016

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.

New Climate Spiral – A visualizing of average global temperatures. Do this little exercise with the graphic – if you live to be 100, how much hotter will the planet be than when you were born? For me – it is about 2 degrees…almost 3 degrees hotter than in 1850.

Climate change poses threat to World Heritage sites - Melting glaciers, rising seas, increasing wildfires and harsher droughts….these could diminish the value of protected sites and even make them unsuitable for World Heritage designation. That would have a domino effect into local economic development, in particular the tourism sector.

Bionic leaf turns sunlight into liquid fuel – And at a higher efficiency than the fastest-growing plants!

Washington grapples with a thorny question: What is a GMO anyway?  and Report: Still lots to learn about GE Crops – The terms GMO and GE are inadequate to describe the complexity of what is happening now. Both of the articles are about a recently released report on the situation.

What’s up with microbeads – Plastic microbeads cause long term health effects in our waterways (streams, rivers, lakes, oceans). There are US regulations that are being phased in over the next few years to require that manufactures no longer make products with microbeads but prior to that individual can stop purchasing the products. I’m going to check packaging to avoid products with microbeads; the key ‘ingredients’ to avoid are polyethylene, acrylate copolymer, and polypropylene.

Top 25 informative maps that teach us something uniquely different about the world – Displaying data by location makes for easy comparison. If you did not already know about the US and paid maternity leave – the map makes if very clear – not something to be proud of.

Teenage brain on social media – It’s always been true that teenagers are better at doing than not doing (i.e. inhibition develops more slowly than other forms of cognition). This study was about how that translates into the social media realm.

Antibiotics from scratch – Drug resistant bacteria are becoming more and more problematic. This research is a ‘bright spot’ in developing antibiotics to stay ahead. No one wants to go back to the time before antibiotics.

Arctic Foxes ‘grow’ their own gardens – From Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Image of the day: don’t eat me – Usually moths are rather drab – not this tiger moth!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 21, 2016

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.

Maryland climate and health report identifies state's vulnerabilities to climate change – Extreme weather, increased risk of foodborne illnesses, health impacts of extreme heat (hear attacks, asthma), increased accident risk from extreme precipitation.

Why vultures matter and what we lose if they’re gone – We have black and turkey vultures in our area of Maryland. I see them frequently and appreciate their place in the ecosystem – cleaning up carrion. Without vultures – other scavenger populations grow, often with negative consequences for human health.

Night Vision Problems and Driving – Something else that happens to most of us as we get older. I was surprised that the article did not mention astigmatism as more problematic at night if it is not corrected. I always notice my glasses not being quite right at night before I do in the daytime and it is usually the astigmatism correction that needs adjustment.

Colorful Watercolor Paintings of Radiant Trees in Nature – I couldn’t resist some eye-candy for this collection of gleanings since so many of the other items seem so serious.

New Zika Diagnostic – I’m glad they are making progress at diagnostics…now we have to make progress on prevention too since having a lot of infected people is going to be a public health crisis.

Test Your Sleep Smarts – How many of these did you know? The explanations of the answers are included…and sometimes contain links to more detailed information.

Team highlights ways to address global food challenges – Agriculture produces enough calories to meet basic human dietary needs worldwide…but one out of eight people in the world do not have access to sufficient food. This study presents a set of strategies to overcoming the challenges of providing food for the global population.

How Rising CO2 Levels May Contribute to Die-Off of Bees – Evidently an increase in CO2 often causes a decrease in the nutritional value of plants. A detailed study of golden rod pollen showed that pollen from plants in 2014 contained 30% less protein than pollen from 1842 (with the greatest drop occurring between 1960 and 2014). That’s important to bees that depend on goldenrod pollen for late season food. It’s important to us because nutritional value of crops like wheat and rice are similarly impacted by higher CO2 concentrations.

Too much folate in pregnant women increases risk for autism, study suggests – Another case where too much of a good thing is not good. A lot of the nutritional information is about minimal requirements. Supplements make it possible to get much higher doses than the minimal requirement. There appears to be a correlation with very high level of folate right after giving birth and the risk of autism spectrum disorder.

Meet the Bee Expert who Helped Invent the BioBlitz – I noticed this article just as we were finishing up the Belmont BioBlitz this week….and decided to include it in this week’s gleanings.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 14, 2016

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.

Nanoscale solutions for hospital acquired infections – Antibiotic-resistant pathogens are problematic…and racing to find new antibiotics is getting harder all the time. Seeing different solutions – like these (click in the red circles to see the description) is reassuring.

Umami Flavor on the Rise – The ‘pleasant savory taste’ of soy sauce, hard cheeses, and mushrooms or nutritional yeast….but how to get the flavor without high sodium.

Changing the world, one fridge at a time – What can we do about food waste? The problem is in the production side in the developing world and the consumer side in the developed world…so in the US, it is in each of our refrigerators and pantries. I’ve gotten better over the past few years and rarely have anything spoil. I also dry orange peels instead of putting them into my compost!

Green light for plant-based food packaging – Part of the solution to food waste? Based on this story from Science Daily – I’m not sure this one is ready for prime time.

How Safe is Your Drinking Water? – A well-organized article with some tips on how to find out more from Berkley Wellness.

Enthusiast Builds Website to Collect, Share Free National Park Maps – Find it here. This is a site to bookmark and check when you are planning a trip to any National Park.

A Surprising Look at Crow Family Life – We are seeing more crows this year – recovering to the numbers from before West Nile Virus killed so many of them. I welcomed hearing about cooperative breeding among crows in this article (and maybe it includes the blue jays too).

9 Dangerous Beauty Trends – How many of these did you already know about?

How a Cancer Drug has saved people from going blind – My grandmother was blinded by macular degeneration so I’m always interested in the ongoing research to prevent or treat it.

Kids win another climate change lawsuit – A Superior Court judge ruled in favor of 7 young plaintiffs ordering the Washington (state) Department of Ecology to promulgate an emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature about how to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in the 2017 legislative session. Similar legal action is pending in North Carolina, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 19, 2016

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.

Eyeglasses that can focus themselves are on the way – I’m not sure whether this is the technology that will actually do it….but I sure would like glasses that adjusted to my needs rather than the static versions we have now.

Thickly Layered Paintings Literally Pop Off Artist’s Canvas – Bright and colorful….good paintings to pair with a spring day!

Down the Drain: Here’s why we should use rainwater to flush toilets – Good rationale but it seems like the retrofit for an existing house would be expensive. Our house had 3.5 bathrooms and they are not close together. The logistics of getting the collected rainwater to the toilets would take some design work.

Time to rethink your vegetable oil? – Research about what is good about linoleic acid. The study was funded by NIH (better than if it had been funded by lobbyists pushing grapeseed oil).

World Average Temperature Could Rise by 1.5 Degrees as Early as 2020 – This is close enough to be in the lifetime of the majority of us.

On-the-spot diagnosis of certain cancers and other diseases is closer to becoming a reality thanks to sensitive biosensor – If this technology is effective and done for a lot less cost than current methods (mammograms, colonoscopies, ultrasound, x-rays, biopsies, etc) – it will be quite a boon for patients. But will the vested interests of our medical system allow it to replace all that infrastructure in place for diagnosis?

An Interactive Timeline of the History of the Earth – A resource listed for the Big History Course I am taking. After landing on the page – click on the red triangle on the left of the screen and the timeline beginning with the Big Bang appears. Click and drag the triangle to the right and see more details on the progression along the timeline. When the triangle gets to 1 billion years ago, another bar will appear below with a new triangle on the left. Continue in this mode to the present. The page gets very busy!

Potential new therapeutic target for hypertension may offer less side effects – This therapy seems to be focusing on something closer to the ‘cause’ for age related hypertension which is very appealing. The more we understand about the body as a biological system, the more therapies will be of this type.

These 27 Solutions Could Help the U.S. Slash Food Waste – When I saw the picture of the food scraps at the top of the article – I realized how far I’ve come in the way I prepare food. Some of those green ‘scraps’ (stems and green leaves) looked good enough to go into a stir fry or soup! If everyone learned to use the produce they buy more completely – there would not be as much waste to deal with.

Facebooks is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard – In 2012, 30 million users with Facebook accounts had died…some estimates claim that 8,000 users die each day. Just as Facebook has changed the meaning of ‘friend’ and ‘like’….it leaves digital legacy of its users.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 13, 2016

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.

Lava flow crisis averted (for now) – We saw the cooling flow described in this article from Science Daily when we were in Hawaii last December!

We must better communicate the health benefits of nature – Not everyone is outdoors as much as I am --- or has a great view of the outdoors from their office window. I remember an instance when I was outdoors with students on a middle school field trip and realized that many of them thought about the outdoors in terms of streets and parking lots rather than hiking paths, trees, and birds. The hike and what they were seeing was a new experience for them.

Sally Ride reminds us that one thing has not changed for female astronauts – An interview from 1983… the types of questions she got from the press.

Inside the Eye: Nature’s Most Exquisite creation – From National Geographic.

In New Anti-Aging Strategy, Clearing Out Old Cells Increases Life Span of Mice by 25 Percent – A good thing or the modern equivalent of ‘snake oil’? If it does increase life span – how healthy is that extra time?

Sign of early settlement in the Nordic region date back to the cradle of civilization – We think of the transition from nomadic to settlement living happened first in the Middle East but this find in Sweden indicates that it may have happened about the same time in Nordic prehistory.

This uncrushable robot cockroach just wants to rescue you – Building a robot that can compress itself in much the same way a cockroach can…. Another instance of observing nature and implementing the same solution via technology rather than biology.

The Truth about Processed Foods – Every wonder what the difference is between highly, moderate, and minimally processed foods in articles about healthy diet? This article provides some definitions. I changed my food log for a few days to put categorize foods and discovered that most of the foods I consume at home are unprocessed or minimally processed because I make most of what I eat from scratch. There are a few moderately processed foods. The highly processed are things like salad dressing or stir fry sauces; I also drink almond milk which is ‘highly processed.’

Organic Farming could help feed the planet and protect it – A good graphic comparing conventional to organic farming based on some research from Washington State University. One of the authors is quoted as saying: “The challenge facing policymakers is to create an enabling environment for scaling up organic and other innovative farming systems to move towards truly sustainable production systems.” As a consumer – I have already made the decision to buy organic as often as I can.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 9, 2016

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.

Here’s how climate will affect what we eat – Several alarming items from this post: “High quality chocolate will be less available in the future, and if you want it, you’ll have to pay a lot more for it” and crops that grow in small geographic areas (most things besides stables) will be most severely impacted. It appears that diets will become more standardized (maybe boring too).

A Breathtaking view of the World’s Oldest River System – The New River Gorge in West Virginia…maybe a vacation destination?

Mapping the National Parks – Topographic maps, national scenic trails, geologic maps, and remote sensing…there is a lot of information best displayed on a map!

Ancient city of Pompeii unveils restored homes – The results of 12 projects done by a 2012 partnership been the EUs European Commission and Italian authorities. I was glad to see that some restoration work is being done; the many tourists take a toll on the site.

The Best of Cool Green Science: Birds & Birding Edition – Pointers to 10 birding posts from 2015 on The Nature Conservancy web site.

The Year in Food: Artificial Out, Innovation in (And 2 More Trends) – How many of the trends have you noticed? Some of the labeling (‘all natural’ and ‘clean’) is not well defined but it is pretty clear that consumers are voting with the dollars – which forces the food system to respond. I know that we don’t go out to eat as often as we used to, do most of our grocery purchases around the periphery of the store, and compost the small amount of food parings we don’t eat.

Mapping 260 years of Global Carbon Emissions – A short video map of the world that shows the global emissions from fossil fuel burning from 1750-2010.

Chocolate + Fresh Fruit = Easy, Impressive Vegan Desserts – All of these desserts look good to me….and they are on the healthier end of the spectrum for desserts!

These Are Our Favorite Earth Images of 2015 – The image of earth from space – awesome!

Appliance upgrades that save the most water, energy and cost – Thought provoking article. Sometimes deciding the ‘best bargain’ is more complex that we realize. One surprising result: one of the best appliances to update for water efficiency was the gas furnace, not the more intuitive shower head or dishwasher, because of the water associated with producing energy.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 2, 2016

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.

12 Machines that show modern farming isn’t the bucolic life you imagine – Wow! The way our food is harvested is mechanically amazing but also seems violent. I wondered if it was dangerous for the workers that tend the machines.

How do you prepare for the isolation of space? – Using Antarctica as a training location for space missions.

What’s the difference between reindeer and caribou – It’s past Christmas – but I didn’t see this article in time. Evidently they are the same species! But reindeer show the impact of domestication.

New kind of thermal vent system found in Caribbean – They are formed of talc rather than sulphide minerals.

How Juneau handles its garbage – They ship their recyclables south via barge and try to minimize the garbage that they landfill nearby (although space is limited). Other municipalities may not face quite the transportation challenge that Juneau faces (no overland transportation from the city) but the long term issues toward sustainability are the same.

Photography in the National Parks: Your Armchair Guide to Mesa Verde National Park – It’s been over 30 years since I was Mesa Verde; these pictures encourage me to plan another visit.

Is This Snowy Wonderland Or The World Inside A Petri Dish? – Cut paper versions of bacteria and other organisms

Our Energy Transformation in 2015 – Even with low oil and gas prices, we are still shifting way from fossil fuels. Oil consumption in the US is on a downward trend and the adoption of clean energy hit record rates in 2015. For the first time in history, carbon emissions fell even as the world economy grew.

US Wild Bee Populations Waning – Not good. Most of our agriculture needs pollinators and yet these are the very areas where the wild bees are being decimated.

New Species Abound – And these are new species that are large enough to be visible. What about all the soil microbes that we know so little about? It’s time we internalize that we really don’t know all the species on our planet.