Gleanings of the Week Ending September 17, 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.

Sensory Biology Around the Animal Kingdom – Beyond sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing.

A Variety of Ways for Students to Explore National Parks Online – Not just for students….these resources could be worth a look before traveling to a national park or helping to savor the visit after you return.

Proprioception: The Sense Within – The sense of position and movement of our limbs, the senses of muscle force and effect, and the sense of balance --- easy to take for granted, more important that you might think at first.

Six Snapshots of Geoscience Research from National Parks – Our National Parks highlight the value of these special places for more than recreation…they are often places uniquely suited to increasing our understanding of Earth.

Thanks to this man, airplanes don’t crash into mountains any more – Don Bateman’s terrain mapping device....a long development cycle.

Bumblebees Pick Infected Tomato Plants – And does this compensate to offset the costs of viral infection when it comes to seed production from the tomato plants?

The Flower Sense of Hawkmoths – Olfactory receptors in the proboscis….but what attracted mw to the article was the picture of the hawkmoth (made me think of my recent hummingbird moth observations).

Late boneset: A fragrant late-summer pollinator favorite – Thinking about late blooming plants that sustain pollinators into the fall. Late Boneset is one….goldenrod is another!

“Skeleton Flowers” Turn Beautifully Transparent in the Rain – Botanical eye candy from colder regions of Japan and China

The Value of Water in the Nebraska Sandhills – Water is valuable to every environmental niche on Earth…this blog post focuses on detailing water in one type of place. Water percolates down and into aquifers below the root zone of plants!

Deck Garden Challenges – July 2016

Through June and into July, it rained frequently enough for the pots on the deck to not need other attention. The day lilies bloomed profusely earlier in the month with almost no effort on my part. Give them a reasonably deep pot and they do great.

But then the rains stopped. Everything started to wilt and I pulled the house attached to the spigot down below up to the deck to make watering easier. Now that the temperatures are getting into the high 80s or 90s in our area of Maryland, I water every morning while the deck is still in the shade and the temperatures are still in the 70s. I empty and refill the bird bath every morning too (a way to make sure I am not breeding mosquitoes!).

The day lilies are about done for the season. I’m going to use every pot and large container I have around to transplant day lily bulbs from the flower beds where the deer at the flowers before they could bloom. There are both yellow and red day lilies that should bloom on the deck next summer if I manage to dig the right bulbs!

I’m transferring attention to plants that the birds and butterflies will like now or when they go to seed in the fall. I’ve already had gold finches checking the zinnias; the flowers have not quite got to seed yet so this bird was out of luck.

The black eyed susans will be popular for their seeds too. I planted some sunflowers but they don’t even have buds yet.

I haven’t harvested any mint yet this year and I’m not sure that I will. I love the smell of the plants when I am watering.

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 April 30, 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.

Sharing a Passion for ‘beautiful’ bees – A nature photographer’s project to tell the story of North America’s native bees. There is some information about how he gets his images without stressing the bees too.

Getting to the Root – 18 genes are related to hair related traits --- but we are only beginning to understand how they work.

How do we get our drinking water in the US? – With Flint, Michigan’s water problems, awareness is increases across the country that we should not take our drinking water ‘goodness’ for granted. For a more chemistry perspective – take a look at Water Treatment – from Reservoir to Home from Compound Interest.

Sugar: The Benefits of Cutting Back – The results of a study involving children and teenagers.

7 Tips to Reduce Food Waste (and Save Money) – Nothing truly new in this list…but all good ideas. Now to just apply them all the time.

Genetic Resilience – A study of half a million human genomes, reveals 13 adults that had mutations for 8 different severe childhood genetic disorders…yet had no reported signs of the disease. We have a way to go in understanding how genes work as a system; none of them work in isolation and our studies of them in a standalone fashion is a simplification too far.

Are hazardous chemicals in your cosmetics? – The 4 to look for and avoid are: phthalates, parabens, triclosan, and oxybenzone because they interfere with the body’s natural hormones.

Thyroid tumor reclassified to curb over diagnosis of cancer – The detection of tumors has outpaced the research about what tumors need treatment versus those that are relatively benign. This is a case where a type of thyroid tumor previously classified as ‘cancer’ is being reclassified as non-invasive and with a low risk of recurrence. Are there more tumor types that patients are worrying about now that will eventually be reclassified along these same lines?

America’s Ten Most Endangered Rivers of 2016 – The one near me is the Susquehanna but the 10 rivers on the list are all across the country.

Dirty Dozen Update! Fruits and Veggies Worth Buying Organic – The latest list from the Environmental Working Group.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 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.

Surgery, Stem Cells Treat Cataracts – Removing a cataract damaged lens but leaving the individuals lens epithelial stem cells (conventional cataract surgery removes them) allows the lens to regenerate. Initial results are good; if sustained this may be the new ‘conventional’ treatment for cataracts.

Man-made Earthquakes are on the rise, but they don’t have to be and As US Oil Production Increases, More Americans at Risk of Man-Made Quakes – Two articles about man-made earthquakes. The second one includes a map. Central Oklahoma has a risk of a damaging quake this year as high as the risk in California! Are the building codes in Oklahoma taking earthquakes into account? If they do, it is probably a recent update since earthquakes were not common in the state until recently.

Beware of Food Fraud – Olive oil is at the top of the ‘food fraud’ list evidently.

Streamer – USGS site that traces steams/rivers upstream and downstream. I you even wondered where the river near you comes from or goes --- this is an easy site to use. It map based so it is a simply as zooming to the river of interest and selecting upstream or downstream highlighting.

A Treasury of Prairie Wildflowers – This is a great time of year to get out and look for wildflowers no matter where you live. Even dandelions have their own charm (particularly if viewed with a magnifier).

6 Primary Transformative Paradigms for the Auto Industry – You’ve probably read about most of these in some form. I like collections like this that help me develop a framework for areas of technology (in this case ‘cars’).

Restoring the American Chestnut – Evidently there are blight resistant cultivars of American Chestnut but it is challenging to grow the 100s of seedlings for field trials and then restoration planting. This article is about experiments to optimize root production in the seedlings.

7 Citizen Science Projects for Bird Lovers – Another motivation to get outdoors this spring!

CDC expands range of Zika mosquito into parts of Northeast and Zika Attacked a Baby’s Brain as Doctors Watched – Scary stuff. I am already gearing up to walk around the yard and make sure we don’t have any standing water (and empty and refresh bird baths every other day). This is going to be a tough battle to keep the virus from spreading (and if it does keeping the mosquitos that carry it from continuing to spread it).

Successful dying: Researchers define the elements of a ‘good death’ – The themes culled from 32 studies were: preferences for a specific dying process, pain-free status, religiosity/spirituality, emotional well-being, life completion, treatment preferences, dignity, family, quality of life, relationship with the health care provider and "other." The bottom line is to ‘ask the patient.’ That seems to be common sense but how often is it actually asked by medical professionals and family member?

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 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.

19 Different Foods that Surprisingly Bloom Beautiful Flowers – Great visuals and informative too. Think of all the different kinds of pollinators needed for these flowers too.

Fulfilling Water Needs as Big as Texas – The Nature Conservancy has created the Texas Water Explorer – wish Maryland had a similar app although I did find Water Quality Assessment Maps for Maryland which have much of the same information. I liked the picture of the Pedernales – brought back memories of a vacation in the state park along the river almost 40 years ago.

New knowledge for managing tree-killing bark beetles – After learning more about the southern pine bark beetle when I visited Chincoteague, I’ve been more aware of the damage it is causing…noticing articles like this one. There is really no good news.

Monet-esque Micrograph and Bug Brothers and Subterranean settlers and Zika viron and Cretaceous Chameleon – The Scientist almost always includes an image in its newsletters. Here’s a collection from March.

Blood test can predict risk of developing tuberculosis – It would be good if a blood test could do this. I remember having to get chest x-rays for my job since I responded to the TB skin test (i.e. was a latently infected person) …and repeated chest x-rays are not a good thing.

It has fast become antiquated to say that you ‘go online’ – Living constantly online…it’s becoming the norm for more and more people. And even when we turn off our devices, our online world continues while we are away. It is the new normal.

Developing better drugs for asthma, high blood pressure – The point of the project is to avoid complications from drugs that require treatment – separate from the original reason the person was taking the drug in the first place. It’s a good goal but I prefer the research toward interventions that address the root cause of a problem rather than starting with a drug that works most of the time and trying to avoid complications from it – which seems to be the goal of this research.

Sleep: The A B Zzzzs and  Learning with the Lights Out and Desperately Seeking Shut Eye and Under the Cover of Darkness (infographic) and Who Sleeps? And Characterizing Sleep (infographic) – The Scientist has had a number of interesting articles about sleep. I wonder how often a person’s sleep (or lack of sleep) is the primary cause of a health issue….and how often doctors decide to treat a sleep problem unless is overwhelming obvious that sleep is the problem. Some sleep problems may be very difficult to treat and may require a significant change in lifestyle which is often very difficult.

These Ancient Trees Have Stories to Tell – I like trees…and these are artfully photographed. They were printed in black and white; I think I like trees in color more.

The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now – I like the idea here – particularly that it takes into account the patient’s history and circumstances…not just symptoms. One of the things I have observed is that doctors typically key off one or two recent test results rather than taking the patient’s full history into account. They have the problem – like all of us – of being overwhelmed by data. Having an AI that would take all of that into account would benefit the doctor by saving a lot of patient history review time and the patient would get a more informed diagnosis and treatment.

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.