Gleanings of the Week Ending May 20, 2017

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.

Million-Dollar Prize Hints at How Machine Learning May Someday Spot Cancer – Hopefully this type of technology will reduce the number of false positives that have been so common as we’ve used advanced imaging to find cancer (too many times when biopsies have been done and it has not been cancer). Note that the winning team was from a Chinese university. No country – even the US – can rest on past innovation for their future.

How farmers put apples into suspended animation – 9 in 10 apples bought in the US are grown in the US. This article talks about how apples are stored so that we have them throughout the year rather than just in the fall.

Frosty Monarchs – This was a post from earlier in May…but it has great picture of the milkweed egg. We had some cooler temperatures here in Maryland after the milkweed came up; there was frost on the rooftops but the it must not have gotten to freezing at ground level since the milkweed was unscathed.

Antarctica’s Blood Falls Helps Unravel the Inner Workings of Glaciers – Briny water flows (i.e. in liquid form) flows under the ice of the glacier!

Golden years are longer and healthier for those in good health in middle age – When I read the headline, my first question was - what did they define as “middle age”? The answer was ages 40-59. It was a 40 year study with 18,714 participants. It makes the point that living healthy in mid-life is important to health later in life.

It’s Raining Blood and Feathers: Catching the Spring Raptor Show – There is so much going on in the spring…and it not just flowers and song birds.

Dragons on the Hunt – Komodo dragons bring down a water buffalo. (5-minute video)

Cost of Zika outbreak in the United States could be high – There is a lot of complexity….but even assuming a lower incidence rate that has been observed in other parts of the world and that only the southern tier of the US would be impacted…still results in high costs. Prevention costs money and treatment even more. The range from the models is $183 million to $1.2 billion. Another article on the broader topic of mosquito-borne illnesses: Researchers analyze what a warming planet means for mosquito-borne illnesses.

The Art of Botanical Illustration, Scientific Botany – Some of these botanists/artists I have found before…I’m going to check what Internet Archive and Hathi Trust have in their scanned collections for each of them.

Serene Photos Highlight the Tranquil Beauty of 100 Japanese Gardens – Eye candy…even better if you have a garden near you to visit.

Monarch Caterpillars Saga II

It was about 40 degrees on the morning I went out to look for the caterpillars again and decide which milkweed plant to cut (the one with the most caterpillars was my criteria). I didn’t find any caterpillars! I decided to wait a few hours for the temperature to climb a little. By early afternoon it was in the 50s and I found a caterpillar on one of the plants.

It was near the base of one of the leaves, close the stem. I couldn’t tell that it had munched nearby but the caterpillars do go through cycles of eating voraciously and then resting as they develop…and it had been cold during the night.

I carried the fish tank out to the front flower bed. I’d found a glass flower arranger that I planned to use to hold the stalks of milkweed upright and their ends in water.

The stalk turned out to be a little bigger than the hole so I trimmed it around the edges enough for it to fit. Then I took the whole thing back inside and covered it with netting.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the caterpillar becomes active and thrives in my Monarch Caterpillar nursery.

Monarch Caterpillars Saga I

Last weekend, my husband commented that we had milkweed coming up in our front flowerbed (milkweed plants circled in white in the picture below) and I needed to cut it down. Once milkweed is established it comes up year after year from the roots.

I decided to check for Monarch caterpillars on the plants first. Sure enough – I found caterpillars. The first one I found was tiny. I almost didn’t see it. It was less than a quarter of an inch long!

The other two were a little further along. The yellow, black and white stripes typical of Monarch caterpillars were more evident.

I decided I would try raising the caterpillars in an old fish tank that was previously gathering dust in our basement. I’ve cleaned it up and purchased the netting to cover the top. My next post will be about my adventure cutting the milkweed with the caterpillars on it and setting up my Monarch caterpillar nursery. I have plenty of milkweed to nourish the caterpillars until they make their chrysalis. When they hatch – I’ll release the butterflies near a good patch of milkweed so they can lay more eggs and continue their northward journey.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 4, 2017

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.

Face of 9,5000-year-old Man Revealed for First Time – A mummy from Jericho. The skull was covered in plaster…with eye sockets containing sea shells. Now just the skull inside, a probably face has been revealed via digital imagining, 3D printing and forensic reconstruction.

Site Diary: What we found inside the Morecambe Urn – A cremation urn…with fragments of bone…painstakingly sorted. At first they thought there was too much bone to be just one individual, but the analysis of the fragments they were all from the same person: young adult, relatively healthy.

Magical Photos of the World’s Oldest Lake Frozen Over – Eye candy….but educational too.

New Publication Reveals Birthplaces of Eastern Monarchs – The whole region east of the Rockies contributes to the Monarchs that make their way to Mexico. I’m glad that so many people are planting milkweed appropriate for their area of the country!

How solar may save Ukraine’s nuclear wasteland – What to do with the area around Chernobyl. There is a project to start installing solar panels. The electric power lines are already there so getting the electricity generated to the power grid.

Eye-opening Photos Capture the Terrifying Beauty of Melting Polar Ice Caps – It’s winter even though we haven’t had any substantial snows in Maryland yet…I’m enjoying photos of ice instead for their beauty but realize that this is an indicator of a warming planet. Some of these lakes are formed from very old ice.

TED Dialogues: An urgent response to a dangerously divisive time – I’ve signed up to be notified of the events. The first one will be on 2/15 at 1PM EST. The speaker for the first one will be Yuval Noah Harari. I enjoyed his class on Coursera – A Brief History of Humankind.

Seven heart-health habits could save billions in Medicare Costs – $14 billion per year in Medicare costs could be saved if all beneficiaries achieved ideal levels in 5-7 heart-healthy habits (the 7 are: cigarette smoking, physical activity, diet, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels). Of course – it all starts before you get to Medicare age. How many of the 7 habits are you achieving?

What Peter Pan Teaches us about Memory and Consciousness – Barrie was an astute observer of how we learn to think.

Peacock colors inspire ‘greener’ way to dye clothes – 3-D colloidal crystals (polystyrene nanoparticles and polyacrylate for mechanical stability. It does not produce contaminants…but are the particles themselves problematic? The article didn’t say but microbeads and plastics have been in the news as problems in the oceans – already.