Gleanings of the Week Ending November 12, 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 well are the world’s rivers protected? – The HydroSHEDS dataset includes high-resolution imagery that can be used to assess river quality…measure progress toward conservation targets.

Oregon DOT’s Columbia River Gorge Bus Service a Smashing Success – Something to add to my list of ‘things to do’ when we make our plans to vacation in the Northwest US.

Should birds stay, or should they go? – Some bird trivia…particularly about birds in Alaska.

Interactive: See How Global Health Has Changed Since You Were Born – A fun way to learn a bit about the history of global health.

Urban Forests: what city trees do for us and what we should do for them – Trees in the city...cost effective and good for our psyches too.

Wild cat brains: An evolutionary curveball – Cats are different….the size of their frontal lobes is linked to their social natures in a different way that people and monkeys. Cheetahs (social cats) have small frontal lobes and leopards (solitary cats) have large ones.

Jumping Worms: The creepy, damaging invasive you don’t know – I saw this article and have now see other reference to this invasive species. Aargh! I looked at worm pictures from our Belmont Bioblitz and was relieved that the worms we found were not this species!

Significant Bronze Age city discovered in norther Iraq – A dig only 45 kilometers from territory controlled by Islamic State!

The Lost History of South Africa – Rock art of the San people...older than the cave site in France.

How each one of us contribute to Artic sea ice melt – For example - The carbon dioxide emission for each seat on a return flight from London to San Francisco causes five square meters of Arctic sea ice to disappear.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 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.

Desalination could harm Texas bays – It is important to get intake and discharge points for desalination right to avoid adverse environmental impacts.

What’s changed in genetic since your high school biology – My high school biology was at the very end of the 1960s….a lot has happened since. I’ve taken some classes to update myself but it is always interesting to see a summary of the high points in articles like this.

Maintaining healthy forests takes more than planting trees – What about massive wildfires and invasive forest pests. A healthy forest is a diverse mix of young and old trees, dead trees, and openings. Forest scientists are realizing that homogenous and overgrown forests need to change. A follow-on post talked about technology for foresters in the field.

Humans Never Stopped Evolving – A discussion of more recent human traits.

Strange Minerals from Siberian Mine Are Unlike Anything Found in Nature – Naturally occurring metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)?

Toxic blue-green algae adapt to rising CO2 – This does not bode well for fresh water supplies as the CO2 levels rise.

Protein Packed Produce for Meatless Monday – Meat is not the only food with protein…think veggies too: peas, broccoli, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, artichokes, spinach, kale and cauliflower!

The Best Schools in the World Do This. Why don’t we? – An peek into a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Neanderthal in the Mirror – A short history of our understanding Neanderthal skeletons....seeing them as more and more ‘human’ over the past century.

PDF Quads (from National Geographic) – National Geographic as a web interface that allows anyone to find any USGS quad for downloading and printing!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 26, 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.

Forests reveal lingering effects of native cultures – The researchers looked at patterns of honey locus in the Southern Appalachian region. The article drew my attention because the native culture in the area was Cherokee (maybe some of my ancestors) and I had read something similar about the native stands of bananas.

Goodbye, America. I’m becoming a nomad (again)! – Mike Elgan is currently in Cuba and blogging about the experience….a lot more about daily life in Cuba that the Presidential visit.

Pregnant T. rex could aid in dino sex-typing – A T. rex with a medullary bone – the same as modern birds (female) have to shell their eggs. It comes and goes with the bird’s reproductive cycle so not only indicates that the fossil was a female --- but that it was also in the egg laying part of its reproductive cycle.

Climate variations analyzed five million years back in time – We have to go back into the geological history of the Earth a very long way to find a climate as warm as what we are heading towards and we cannot detect the detailed variations….but we already know that there were abrupt climate shifts back then.

Artist Paints Elaborately Colorful Scenes Using Only Her Fingers – This is quite different than a child’s finger painting? My favorites are the lily pads with the fish underneath, the deer looking through yellow leaves, and the curled up fox.

Tunable windows for privacy, camouflage – I would enjoy not having to add blinds and/or drapery to windows….but it would have to require very little electricity to be opaque (since that is the mode that probably would be wanted most at night when solar energy was least available).

Bald Eagle Cam (DC) – Just in case you have not seen the story elsewhere. This article has a link for the live cam and the twitter feed. Yesterday when I looked the day was warm enough that a parent was standing to the side of the nest while the babies slept (they are still young enough that they fall over in a ‘food coma’ after they eat!

Potential Zika virus risk estimated for 50 US cities – A very scary map. It has been long enough ago that German measles caused birth defects when pregnant women contracted the diseases…this time we don’t have a large number of people in the population that have immunities from having the disease previously so if the US does have an outbreak it would have traumatic outcomes.

Chocolate Chemistry – On a happier note – chocolate. Dark chocolate is my favorite ‘splurge’

21 Enormous Man Made Holes – Mines, nuclear explosions, wells…lots of reasons humans have made giant holes on the surface of Earth.