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!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – October 2016

More than half my ‘little celebrations’ this month were place/activity specify. There were 3 celebrations of familiar places/activities:

• I spent 4 mornings at Belmont for BioBlitz with fifth graders. The weather was near perfect – much better than the wet weather for the event last spring. Every day held a few surprises and I was pleased that my husband joined me this fall rather than my volunteering on my own.
• My walk around Brookside was a fall morning – a little cool – that was near perfect for walking around the garden loop. I’ll have to go back to see the mum exhibit in the conservatories.
• Mt. Pleasant Farm is probably one of my favorite places in the fall. What’s not to like about hiking with elementary school field trips! This fall the 1^st grades were the most frequent visitors. I got plenty of practice leading those hikes.

Another 3 of new places/activities:

• I’d never been to State College (Penn State) before. We picked a great weekend to go – colorful fall squash, gourds and leaves everywhere.
• Waggoner’s Gap was also new. The weather was not great for raptor spotting…so I celebrating finding the place….but want to go back again to actually spot some birds.
• Being with high schoolers assessing the Middle Patuxent River at Eden Brook was new too. The place was full of fall leaves and the river had plenty of scenic variety….and the perspective of high schoolers doing field work (sometimes with water flowing over the tops of their boots) added elements to the celebration that went beyond just going to the place on my own.

There were some serendipity sights that I celebrated via photography:

• Getting out to the meadow before the dew dried to photograph spider webs and
• Bright fungus growing on a tree where lightning had struck (and killed the tree).

And mixed in with those celebrations was one ‘lazy day’ that I celebrated because it was so different from the rest of the month!

Fall Beginnings

This past weekend, I volunteered Fall Festival held at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm. It was a misty day. As I drove to the event, I was using the windshield wipers and wondering how many people would show up --- but there were already quite a few people there when I arrived about 11:30 (I wasn’t the 1^st shift of volunteers). I was early enough to take a short hike through the meadow to try out my new camera. I held it so the lens would not get misted…and experimented. One of the first pictures I took was of a cabbage white butterfly that was perched on a flower; I didn’t see it move at all and it had droplets of water on its antennae!

There were lots of spider webs that were made visible by the mist. I didn’t see the spider on this one so maybe they don’t like a web full of water droplets! The sheer number of webs in the meadow – on plant stems, in the grass – was quite large and it occurred to me that they are probably always there but just not as visible when things are dry.

Do you see the bug underneath this thistle flower – using it as an umbrella?

The break in the stone wall allows the paths to connect. I like the area because the rocks are covered with lots of lichen and moss.

The bridge was warped by the storm water surge from the same event that almost destroyed Ellicot City last summer. You can tell that the water was moving under this bridge (left to right)! Before the storm the bridge was straight.

I hiked back to the Nature Center where I was volunteering in the Children’s Crafts area. They made owls with glued on google eyes and stamped feathers (using celery stalks as stamps). There were over 70 children over a 2-hour period!

Only two children make owls with outstretched wings…and one of those was a younger child that decided that using a finger on the stamp pads was more fun that the celery.

And a good time was had by all….

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 30, 2016

We finally got some rain after a dry spell and I’m enjoying the flowers on my deck this morning.

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.

Human intelligence measured in the brain – A study that used resting-state MRI analysis on 1000s of people around the world…areas of the brain which are associated with learning and development show high levels of variability (i.e. they change their neural connections with other parts of the brain more frequently, over a matter of minutes of seconds). Further studies using the new technology may rapidly improve our understanding and diagnosis of debilitating human mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.

Common Foot Problems (and what to do about them) – Most of my foot problems went away when I stopped wearing high heels!

Postcards provide link to Edwardian social media – A different perspective of the early 20^th century. There is a searchable archive that is available here; I enjoyed doing searches with some family names and locations. The two most common topics that people wrote about were the weather and health!

Amazing spider silk continues to surprise scientists – Phonomic crystals – that’s new vocabulary for me this week. Evidently research on spider silk has shown the potential of new materials (to synthesize) to dampen sound or provide insulation.

Hundreds of years later, teeth tell the story of people who didn't get enough sunshine – Dentin layers formed during a time when a person did not get enough Vitamin D to fully mineralize the structures that form dentin (and bone) provide a window into that aspect of nutritional health long after the person dies…longer lasting that the bones. Dentin layers are also a better indicator because they are not constantly remodeled during life as bones are.

The key to conservation is not what you think – A thoughtful piece about the lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the environmental community.

NASA’s Kepler confirms 100+ exoplanets during its K2 mission – Lots of validated exoplanets to pick from for further study by NASA’s upcoming missions: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and James Webb Space Telescope!

The mystery of why you can’t remember being a baby – A summary of research on the topic….and we still don’t really know the answer.

How the body disposes of red blood cells, recycles iron – It happens in the liver, not in the spleen as previously thought…and requires bone-marrow-derived immune cells as the recycling cells.

Orangutan Imitates Human Speech – 500 vowel-like sounds…more vocal fold control that we previously thought could be exhibited by a non-human ape.