Gleanings of the Week Ending November 5, 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.

Oldest known planet-forming disk discovered – Citizen scientist played a role in this discovery. Hurray for NASA’s Disk Detective project!

Daddy Longlegs Won’t Kill You – Having just finished the fall season of outdoor field trips…I enjoyed this article about daddy longlegs/harvestmen which is a frequent find. I’ve picked up some trivia to share next year about them.

Hard of hearing? It’s not your ears, it’s your brain – Evidently, many older people find understanding speech difficult even when their hearing (the ear part) is fine.

Risks of Managing Prairies Exclusively for Plants – Plants are a part of the environment that are sometimes the easiest to see and ‘manage’ ---- but that might not result in a health system. It’s a more complex situation and we often don’t have the depth of understanding to build a sustainable environment that is comparable to the ‘natural’ one that once was there.

Futures Ghosts? Wildlife on the Brink of Extinction – Have you heard of these animals before…and realize they are near extinction? The rusty patched bumble bee has just recently been ‘in the news.’

World’s largest study shows effects of long-term exposure to air pollution and traffic noise on blood pressure and $37 Billion = Health & Climate Costs from Gas Cars in 10 States Every Year – Two articles about impact on health caused by human-caused degradation of our environment.

The Chemistry of Mummification – A post prompted by Halloween. I was a little late in reading it.

Blue Leaf Special – Chloroplasts may be more than just photochemical…they may also be involved in light propagation and light capture….and the interplay between the three functions.

Extreme cold winters fueled by jet stream and climate change – Improving the long-term forecast of winter weather in the UK and US.

So you want to talk to a journalist? – A tutorial for science types – before they talk to journalists!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 5, 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 Forest Loss is Leading to a Rise in Human Disease – Zika has been in the news lately – but there are other diseases associated with forest loss as well: malaria, dengue fever, Chikungunya, yellow fever, and Ebola. There is building evidence of how and why it happens.

New interactive guide tells the story of forest products in the South – Many years ago, I worked for St. Regis Paper in Texas before they were bought by International Paper – so I read this article with interest to see what has happened to the industry in the past 30 or so year. The guide is located here.

Invasive Plant to Avoid: English Ivy, Barberry, Butterfly Bush, Winter Creeper, Daylilies  - I liked these articles because they provided alternative to these invasive species to use in landscaping. I still have daylilies that I’ve had for years but I’m not going to be containing them rather than propagating them!

Spruce Tree House to Remain Closed at Mesa Verde National Park – Sad that this is closed. We probably have some very old slides from our vacation to Mesa Verde in the late 1970s that I should retrieve from storage!

Consumers have huge environmental impact – Thought provoking. The site for the EUs Glamurs project is here.

7 Resources for Natural History Nerds – Don’t let the initial picture stop you from looking at the rest of the article – it is only a lizard. These are impressive resources. I knew about only 2 of them before seeing the article. I’m bookmarking this article.

Getting the Word Out – More scientists are realizing that it is part of their job to get the interesting aspects of their work out to the public as part of modern instantaneous news. The public is demanding timely information on cutting-edge science!

Five Close Encounters of the Crocodilian Kind – The pictures are good….and the crocodilians are from around the world.

Lead, Plumbosolvency, and Phosphates in the Environment – A well written explanation of how water-works can go very wrong.

The Scale of the Universe – I’ve started taking a Big History course on Coursera and this one of the resources in the first week’s module. Scale is always a challenge and this site does a reasonable job in visualize the very small and the very large.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 06, 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.

Tranquil Oil Paintings Reflect Peacefully Ripping Water Scenes – Gives me an idea for a photo project. And this one does too: Seeing the Trees through the Forest: Vestiges of Ancient Woods

7 Easy and Delectable Vegan Quick Breads – Goodies in winter!

Joyful Portraits of Centenarians that are Happy at One Hundred – Hurray! To be happy and 100!

This Is What 17 Different Foods Look like Growing in Their Natural Habitats – All these images are ‘beautiful food’!  The majority of these do no grow in Maryland (except in conservatories)…and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cashew tree even in a conservatory.

America’s Broadband Improves, Cementing a “Persistent Digital Divide” – Rural areas are still problematic….maybe stratospheric drones and balloons will be deployed.

Why the calorie is broken – It turns out that the concept of ‘a calorie’ is not a clear cut as we expect….that there are lots of ways the amount of energy we get from food can be changed. In general – the processes or cooked a food is, the more energy we get from it!

The Scientific Outreach Gap – This was a study done in the UK but the same is true in the US and it isn’t that the public is not interested. My daughter has volunteers for outreach events for astronomy and astrophysics for the past few years and the events have been well attended – almost overwhelmingly so.

Beyond Half Dome: Five Yosemite Sites – Adding to the places I’d like to go (eventually)

The Mycobiome – There has been a lot of research on the human microbiome but most of it, so far, has been about surveys and studies of bacterial species. There are fungi that are there too…and research about them has just started to appear in papers in the past 5 years.

Evidence-based health care: The care you want, but might not be getting – Yes! This is what I want but it seems very hard to get. The study was specifically about hospital settings but it matches my experience everywhere in the US health system. The survey revealed that things like ‘quality’ and ‘safety’ was at the top of the priority list…but how is that achieved without being ‘evidence based.’  I think what is being measured is not skewed toward the patient but to what is easiest to measure (and that could actually be detrimental to the patient).